The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

https://i.imgur.com/rwClNVV.png

MC Harfoot

Serious question: given the money Amazon is willing to heave around, why DON’T they have the rights to the Silmarillion?

Whatever else is going on, the Tolkien estate has proven canny about how they manage what they have. Essentially they were able to lock in that $250 million for themselves on a hell of a technicality: there was a carveout in the original film rights deal back in the late 60s or so for TV in a specific capacity when it came to LOTR material, which at the time seemed unlikely to ever be realized for any number of reasons. The estate and Amazon negotiated around that -- without having to give up or sell the rights to anything else, which is why the opening credits specify clearly it's LOTR and the appendices they're drawing from -- and got that huge chunk of change, at a time when streaming money and budgets were always looking like they'd continually explode through the roof in turn. Theoretically they could have offered up Silmarillion etc. directly as well but given the money just for that carveout rights deal alone the estate would probably be thinking "Yeah how many billions are you willing to spend?" Which, frankly, fair play to them! Soak Amazon for all its worth; my guess is even Bezos would baulk at some point back then, and of course it's possible the estate just aren't interested no matter what. Christopher was still alive at the time and was pretty clear about where he stood on adaptations in general but as I noted when I started the thread, he stepped down from active management of the estate around the same time the deal was announced; in retrospect he possibly wanted to make sure that what Amazon got was all it ever did.

Aha, thank you, Ned. That makes a lot of sense. Though in some ways you’d think if there were going to be adaptations, they’d like them to be faithful ones. But on the other hand, fuck Amazon.

And the latest episode…man I’m watching with bemused fascination more than anything else now.

Dwarves way cooler in this than in the Peter Jackson films

true but until their plan proves against all odds to be a success also the actual group of dwarves in the hobbit are considered massive losers and weirdos by dwarf society at large (which is why thorin can only gather 13 of them and has to resort to making plans with a wizard and hiring a hobbit)

a joke the films are clearly running with (bcz it suits PJ's animator history and sensibility) is that they've basically run away to join the circus: they are not an army but a troupe, and tbf circus behaviour and skills is how they eventually win out

"So the plan is, park the clown car just around the corner from Beorn's..."

*Beorn getting visibly annoyed at Entry of the Gladiators played at increasing volume*

seem to recall the tension is defused when he realises they're a bunch of clowns and bursts out laughing

(relevant books are in storage currently so i can't look this up, googlebooks stops at p.31)

There's no laughter but Gandalf does cleverly introduce the dwarves by lying about their numbers, and introducing them two by two as he tells his story. One of my favourite bits of the book and completely chopped by hack jackson.

(I can't remember what jackson does instead, it probably does involve pratfalls and laughter.)

🤡👍🏽

Found it - no laughter, instead he chases them as a bear, they run into his house and slam the door on his nose. Despite which he still lends them some ponies the next day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDlC40yhdVw

in the director's cut they fire bilbo out of a cannon (canon)

I’m still charmed by the production values. Strangely, I feel absolutely no emotional investment in these characters and their plots. That’s something I could never say for the first three Jackson films.

Yeah this is all just making me go ‘Well these are choices.”

nu-numenorean dropped: name kevin

probably it isn't but that's what i heard and that's what i want

It's Kemen but the BtB crew have pretty much called him Kevin since the get-go

lol we are as one, i must catch up on BtB!

Hahah no worries, we're still talking among ourselves at this point -- our next episode will be the one with initial reaction and that's not been recorded yet. But yes you should catch up on all our episodes. :-D

o fuk these theo etc scenes take place in pre-sauronised mordor

Yeah they showed that from the get-go with the maps.

don’t you know, SON, we used to be faithful to MORGOTH in these parts! he’s got a beautiful, beautiful successor

re the maps, yes in retrospect i see that, my startlement is p much: "oh i'm supposed to be interpreting this cutaway i'm looking right at in the most obvious way! what a world!"

it's possible i have watched some of the elf show while also scrolling twitter, as JRRT wd have wished

the r’s in his name stand for “retweet”

why do elves have to stand when they're in boats?

I don't think elves sit under any circumstances tbf

i mean i assume it's a "protocol for re-entering heaven" thing and they did it the whole journey bcz they were practicing as you don't want to get that kind of thing wrong

heaven
heaven is a place
a place where nothing
nothing is a chair 🎵🎶

yeah but she was standing in that little boat in Numerator as well! i get standing when entering heaven but it seems like overkill when taken to another boat imo

They don't tire apparently - why not take in the view?

we’ll make heaven a place in middle earth
oooh heaven is a place in middle earth

they're like playmobil figures their knees don't bend

As was classically explained in the MST3K treatment of The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, over a scene showing a model of a boat in a storm where said model sailors are seen to stand stiffly and not move at all: "I glued you to the boat and put rods in your legs for a reason!"

Dear Abby, my elf boyfriend won't go kayaking with me

legolas sat in the canoe in fellowship.

probably cause he never saw the light of the two trees

Have you ever even *seen* an elf's knees? (thinking emoji)

elves on a boat (approved stance):

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b062752a889a7058ae10ed5a558e230f/tumblr_plj7r5QNgz1rbony5_1280.jpg

Truth!

Some further thoughts on this, as I say, strange show

So we're halfway through this _Rings of Power_ season and time for another thread. (Again, as per the one from a couple of weeks ago, long range details of Tolkien's writing will be discussed, so if you want to stay somewhat surprised, avoid this…)

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) September 17, 2022

I dont have any stakes in this & am still enjoying the show as a weird thought exercise w cool visuals that has become a nice chill way to spend my Friday evenings

but I think the inherent genericness of this franken-adaptation is def the most frustrating aspect. it dilutes any sense or feeling of Tolkien to a point where it’s like, well why even reference him or his ideas if you aren’t making it ~worthy~ of him.

like i get you dont have the full rights but embody the values & style ffs, honor him in your dialogue & story, and instead of LARP-level story and dialogue worthy of a final fantasy cd-rom

or: Ned otm

As mentioned somewhere upthread or maybe on another thread, LotR is essentially a story about country rambling. If you don't get that then don't bother. (have not and will probably never see this new series btw)

The country rambling aspect is certainly key, especially to Fellowship, but I don't think that it's the "essence" of LotR.

I agree with Ned & VegemiteGrrl, but I also have this sense that the showrunners and writers really were trying their level best. There's an earnestness to all of it that doesn't seem like phoning it in, but you can tell that they're not experienced at this.

yeah i’ll buy that
that may be the upshot of it all at the end of the day

effects and CGI aside a lot of this show is p sub-par but one thing i do find myself liking is just the sense that the texture of life in middle earth at this particular moment was a bit crappy and niggly and competitive and anxious

arguably this is untolkienish in feel (his routine thing being several thousand years of NIGH AND NOBLE FEELING* now and then offset by the threat of hordes of horrible cockney goblins (plus an oasis of cheerfully cocooned hobbitism to start us off)

but here everyone except the harfoots is a dislikeable bickering dick of one sort or another and the harfoots are all sorts of greenwood proto-celtic weird

I did like what are effectively dwarf druids in the last episode.

Obv Durin should have responded to Elrond's magisterial tale of the burdens of being the son of an elf hero with "Now, the stars, those are the things like faraway gems, right?"

Last episode significantly improved by the lack of the O'Harfoots, too.

I like the scary orcs, and the sound vibration opening credits. It's not bad, though, it's just fine. But I'm not comparing it to any books (I don't know if I ever read any sources for this? I read the Silmarilion about 30 years ago...)

the sources are the LOTR appendices only and strictly