The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

i'm into some of those percentages but i feel very alienated by the one thing that seems to unite everyone about this show, which is "well at least the CGI is great"

man, i hate this CGI shit

yeah, huillet-straub that shit

im probably not even joking, new zealand is pretty

Also seems like they spent a shit ton of money building these elaborate sets but it just looks like they're wandering round Disneyland half the time xp

When I say "beautiful cgi vistas", I mean, they're beautiful in the way Limgrave or Leyndell are beautiful in Elden Ring, but that there's a video game and this isn't

this thing has felt so much like a video game for the whole series... hackneyed dialog, fetch quests, keys that unlock cut scenes. the whole thing feels so much like it was written by people who grew up playing bioware crpgs

like, meteor guy with amnesia is a direct rip of Diablo III

OTM. A special key that fucks the place up because, hey, orcs like it when the place is a shithole.

Also how they knew there'd be a whole army of elves and humans right there at that time.

Also that somebody clearly spent forever engineering this whole mad thing to create Mordor and then lost the key. Why? Why so elaborate? Maybe it's all explained in the Silmarillion which I haven't read, but that's mad convoluted.

And how does each episode seem to drag on so long with filler while whole plot points seem glossed over really quickly and badly. I don't know if my attention wandered at one point but I missed the whole "Who Sauron really is" reveal - it just seemed to be explained really fast and "Yeah this person is Sauron now because that's what we've decided"...

they played spin the bottle and it stopped on Halbrand who now has to spend seven minutes in Mordor with Adar

obvious point but dnd and videogames in general are heavily, heavily, almost more than anything else in the world influenced by lord of the rings

It also regularly expects you to care about certain characters and their relationships to each other without putting any work into their development.

From the first episode it telegraphs that there's some kind of deep connection between Arondir and Bronwyn. It is trying desperately to do a Mulder & Scully-style "will they, won't they" scenario. But the characters are so stone-faced and are introduced to each other in such a way that I couldn't give a monkeys.

As for Nori saying goodbye to her family for what felt like 20 minutes, good god. And good riddance too. What a bunch of obnoxiously-written characters, devoid of any of the heartwarming charm the writers were so desperately trying to inject into them. It's like Bran and his boring mates all over again, with worse accents and sentimental sayings.

The first few series of Game of Thrones worked because the characters were fun and smart and relatable, and didn't talk in fluffy faux-archaic aphorisms.

The first couple of Lord of the Rings film worked because the pacing worked and drew you in to the characters' worlds. Sam and Frodo's relationship was so much more believable than Nori and Poppy's, and I'm not sure why because that was hammy as anything.

xp to Karl, hence we end up with this, an imitation of an imitation that doesn't take inspo from the same places the original did (Finnish mythology, Beowulf, etc). The further we get from the source, the further we get from what made it special.

Also, I'm not sure that the First and Second Age stories necessarily lend themselves well to the format of a serialized TV show--part of the appeal of those stories comes from the sheer mythic distance they have from the protagonists of LotR (the mortal ones, anyway)

they haven't worked out how to not make the dwarves look ridiculous all the time even when they're trying to be sincere

Durin: "Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!"

Elrond: (looks shyly off into the distance)

That is some primo slashfic bait right there, itellyouwhut

I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wd09hi2Pug

The scope of this feels less than grand. I’m thinking about it in comparison to the sweeping vistas of the landscape as seen in the trilogy films, these massive mountain ranges and endless expanses of rocky terrain thru which the characters journeyed, giving the feel of a place which really did extend as far as the eye could see. And even to someone whose knowledge of the middleearth map goes as far as”start in the shire, there’s some woods and some mountains, and then Sauron is thataway” I understood the geography and where everyone was very easily. I still have zero idea where anything is supposed to be taking place on this show, except the southlands mordor. Even with the occasional map reminders.

Character wise Frodo and Sam were twee bastards but they were pretty measured and sharp and thoughtful. Unfortunately on this show Nori is like a cross between the most error-prone Hobbit (Pippin) and a member of the Manson family.

Also that somebody clearly spent forever engineering this whole mad thing to create Mordor and then lost the key. Why? Why so elaborate? Maybe it's all explained in the Silmarillion which I haven't read, but that's mad convoluted.

All of the sword-key thing, and the tunneling and activating Mt Doom and everything, is strictly an invention of the show. And I hate it.

The scope of this feels less than grand.

Almost everything Celebrimbor-focused feels like it's in a studio in particular. It's REALLY obvious.

Ned, is there anything in Tolkien lore that does explain the origin of Mordor? Google is my friend I know but…

Amazing how Andor was made for a fraction of the cost and they have these lush gorgeous real-world locations that feel infinitely more lived-in.

Hobbit music clearly got better over time, the nursery rhymes of the Harfoots are basically Barney songs. Couldn’t believe there was a lyric including “all who wander are not lost.” People used to be raised steeped in literature, not drowning in early era Facebook macros.

this was all very bad but i'll watch next season because hating on it is so fun.

I feel you here, ian.

Ned, is there anything in Tolkien lore that does explain the origin of Mordor?

Not specifically. The closest it gets is in the two pieces towards the end of the Silmarillion going over the Second and Third Ages -- it talks about how he hides himself away in Middle-earth after the fall of Morgoth and his eventual fortification of Mordor, building Barad-dur, occasionally causing eruptions of Mt. Doom, etc. Nothing about how he decided to go there or why, and certainly nothing dumb about a sigil as a map etc. There's room there for elaborations and additions to this bare outline if you like and the showrunners certainly chose a route (the area around the Sea of Nurnen in the southeast of Mordor is said to be fertile and food and supplies are grown/raised there for his armies by slaves, so there's room for talking about at least some of that area being as green/lush as we see in the story) but they chose a very DUMB route.

Amazing how Andor was made for a fraction of the cost and they have these lush gorgeous real-world locations that feel infinitely more lived-in.

Oh, this truth.

Hobbit music clearly got better over time, the nursery rhymes of the Harfoots are basically Barney songs. Couldn’t believe there was a lyric including “all who wander are not lost.” People used to be raised steeped in literature, not drowning in early era Facebook macros.

TOO true.

I'm not sure that the First and Second Age stories necessarily lend themselves well to the format of a serialized TV show--part of the appeal of those stories comes from the sheer mythic distance they have from the protagonists of LotR (the mortal ones, anyway)

Tolkien himself knew this to a strong degree; his earlier work on the Silmarillion had been regularly rejected by publishers, even after the initial success of The Hobbit, and in a later letter he told his correspondent that those background tales would for most readers likely have too much "high style" in comparison to the more explicitly down to earth perspectives and writing focused/seen through the hobbits. He was absolutely right! There's a reason they're not anywhere near as deeply read as Hobbit/LOTR.

Despite myself I quite like Arondir and Bronwyn but that’s probably because I am shallow and they’re both quite pretty.

xpost definitely — i have tried to dig into even just the appendices & i have such a hard time retaining any of it, it’s just not an enjoyable read for me compared to the novels. He’s a beautiful writer but the specificity is just too much for my small brain, i never had much recall but now that i am middleaged, yeesh nope sorry

I don’t want to insult any of the actors but the ease and confidence with which many if not most of the original LOTR actors execute their parts is crucial to making that world believable. I don’t believe most of the actors in their roles here, it all feels too soap opera elevated and not ground level. I can see them hitting their marks on the floor of the stage, not existing as people. Some of the trilogy actors could get stagy but they were going for Shakespearean (hi Denethor), not Cave Dwellers. Part of good acting is sheer charisma too, and that’s largely missing here. Think about how much better the Halbrand role would be if there was a Mortenson-level actor in the part, for example (and it wasn’t a poorly conceived character of course.)

I actually enjoy the slightly more gore and the fairly brutal albeit brief battles tbh, and any destruction that’s been rained down has been viscerally effective if not always…not dumb.

The Bronwyn/Theo/orc fight in episode 2 was quite excellent, Bayona handled that brilliantly. As ever with this show, there are great moments in a sea of sludge.

Huh, I thought "not all who wander are lost" was a LotR thing originally, and made its way from there to memehood. But if Ned hasn't corrected it, then I guess it must not be.

I’m thinking about it in comparison to the sweeping vistas of the landscape as seen in the trilogy films, these massive mountain ranges and endless expanses of rocky terrain thru which the characters journeyed, giving the feel of a place which really did extend as far as the eye could see.

Totally agree with this. A huge amount of the appeal of LotR is the endless journeying, walking through amazing landscapes. The harfoots just seem to trudge through the same little sound stage fifty times.

i'm nowehere near as down as ned on the pure inventions of the show: the tunneling, the volcano-key, the mithril beef, the seafaring digression, harfoot twig-hat lore, fierce bad ugly elf, 3 blue witches, nine saurons for mortal men doomed to die, HOT DARK LORD SEXYTIEMS: i feel like every one of them could have been developed effectively if the writers had some kind of object permanence. but instead they flourish an idea for one or maybe two eps and then just forget it's part of the landscape they're developing? i guess the tunnels did reappear but their role just abruptly shifted

e.g. the idea that a nice green space full of humans getting grimly by was poised above a world like a vast rotten pulullent cheese was GREBT (and a perfectly good extension of tolk's orc-lore)

but it was also given nearly no time to develop, it just hopped from the idea (a couple of scary scenes) to the denouement (a battle) to a -- long break -- totally different purpose = lava-plumbing. and yes, the switching on of orodruin woke everything up abruptly (also good, why not) tho it also afterwards left u thinking "when sauron left mordor did he wind up the clock turn off the volcano and leave the key in someone's cupboard?"

sauron being good with machinery isn't an awful idea? nor is sauron using the volcano as a device! but sauron lost at sea -- that backstory has never emerged -- carefully maintaining the volcano as a device is ancient stone cogs/crystal skull plot silliness (and not in a good way), ie it's a movie cliche (and not a videogames cliche)

on the whole i'm really hesitant to argue that oh, the terrible dialogue, here-and-gone narrative turns, and piously boring characters are all just a product of video game culture (tho i'm seeing various otherwise perfectly smart ppl who play a lot of videogames apparently enjoying this: or shall we say giving it a lot more leeway than we are here): and much more inclined to argue -- as above -- that the show-writers are faced with a near-insuperable problem of differential levels of spoilers (some viewers just know too much lore bcz there IS too much lore, just insanely detailed, closely written crabbed lore; others are coming in semi-cold and just constantly assuming oh this must all be in the silmarillion no matter how often they're told that none of it can be from the silmarillion; and still others are arriving knowing nothing at all) and the origins-backstory problem (which is a general IP plague these days and not a videogames-derived flaw)

anyway faced with this they fucked up a LOT getting us from point zero to ducks-in-a-row at series end -- i think by triangulating hurried between the differentials -- and that included converting several promising in-medias-res set-ups into a generalised viewer anxiety abt Who Someone Is and what The Lore™️ will be that explains their motivations… give us their motivation scene by scene ffs, it doesn't matter who they "are" outside the show.

nori is fine, leave her alone (she's stuck with a poorly rendered and cliched society but luckily she just walked away from it! of course she shd have done this in e2 as is canon)

in conclusion: the lore is the problem, time to fuck sauron

is there a broader point about this series that rubbish is ok and it's ok to be rubbish?

yes but it applies to the whole of tolkien :D

ivnetions i forgot: "im istari but i have -- AMNESIA!"

potentially also a terrific plot-point tho i think v hard to develop effectively via tumbling among the harfoots (whose internal culture hits none of the right plot points really)

the harfoots shd have been less fake-racist-irish and more like a clan of cheekily elusive bugs bunnies SITO

xp yes, reasonable

It is trying desperately to do a Mulder & Scully-style "will they, won't they" scenario.

I'm not sure this works - they seem very fond of each other by the start of the episode, much screentime is spent on why both elves and humans think that theirs would be a doomed relationship, and they're holding hands by the end of it.

i thought they were both just super-boring characters: arondir totally has aragorn disease, bronwen is just a gesture at a role with a simplistic narrative purpose

Oh yeah absolutely! The only saving twist is he's actually a Vulcan.

Huh, I thought "not all who wander are lost" was a LotR thing originally, and made its way from there to memehood. But if Ned hasn't corrected it, then I guess it must not be.

No you’re right on that one, I guess just taking the inspirational poster line from LOTR and sticking it in a new cloying harfoot song was just particularly eye rolling to me.

It's from a poem Bilbo wrote about Aragorn isn't it?

maybe bilbo copied it from the LORE

mark s is right: Very Much In Character for Bilbo to find a cute little half-remembered scrap of something in an old book (or a folk song heard by a busker at the Hobbiton Farmer's Market) and pass it off as his own. Sly laziness is kinda his jam. He will cheat, lie, steal, and dissemble and then play it off with a goofy "who, me?" look.

i mean he totally stole that dude's ring

while employed as a BURGLAR

I hasten to note that I'm not necessarily dissing Bilbz. He's a fun character and sometimes even admirable - but it is fair to say that he's modeled on tricksy Odysseus.

But it's not just the ring; he cheats at riddles and he lies to a dragon and lies to a wizard and to all of his friends and stages an elaborate vanishing act and and and. We can like him without trusting him.

As the writer of his own saga, he has every reason to make himself look good and take the credit. Which he very much does. I don't have enough biohazard gear to wade into Hobbit fanfic, but I hope someone has Rashomoned the story from the perspective of, say, Gimli.

(Long way of saying, yeah, he totally stole that line from an old Harfoot walking song, and basked in the admiration he got for it.)

#ISTANDWITHLOBELIA

lolz

Woolfian lolz

I wake up to all this. (And yes, “Not all who wander” is from Tolkien; “always follow your nose” is from Jackson, and much of this series is from hell.)

is this anything: SHELOBELIA

Hell of a slashfic

Props to SHELOBELIA

But what about

SHELOBELIARAGORN

Or

BOMBABILBO