The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

my anticipation for this is in the backyard having a smoke waiting for ppl to do the heavy lifting for me

also i feel like the tolkien of it all is just a trick to get me to watch an incomprehensible borefest full of elves

Seconded

Well the three of us podcast cohosts watched it here via a jury-rigged Watch Party -- I'd already seen it the previous evening as well via the special screenings -- and...the trick comment re VG's post is not entirely far off. We all have our different takes on it but I'm officially the most generous of them, and boy howdy, this is a mix of technical accomplishment, good casting, a couple of individual moments that are very Tolkien in the best way and a whole looooooot of CHOICES re story/dialogue that, phew. It would absolutely work better if it was a separate non-Tolkien story entirely (and even then it would not entirely succeed).

I fear if dmac sees it he will die so I hope he does not.

From my cohost Jared and I would agree with this. But keep the implication of the opening sentence in mind.

There are bright spots. Almost all of the actors are doing their best—Morfydd Clark, Ismail Cruz Cordova, Sophia Nomvete, and Nazanin Boniadi are all somehow able to feel like real personalities. And Valinor as a strangely ominous Twilight Zone presence is great.

— Jared Pechaček (@vandroidhelsing) September 2, 2022

Not had a chance to watch it yet but filesize on torrent sites is pretty large so is it like really long.

It was good. Looks unbelievable. The main overall arc will probably be strong, the challenge is breathing life into the various storylines on the side. Getting us to care.

Will say, dwarves were largerly non-present in Jackson's movies and Durin's a lot better than Gimli already. Kazad dum probably the most exciting new world to explore.

Casting unknown/lesser known actors certainly helps the suspension of disbelief.

GoT ended up like a west end panto with famous people popping up in every role, camera winking and pay-cheque pocketing increasingly visible to the audience.

I liked it but the real test will be putting it in front of the 9 and 13 year old..

My spies have informed me that there is OIRISHNESS in this, so the little curiosity I had about it has now evaporated. But I will watch it with the husband just to be sociable.

Yeah, those nice Home Counties Hobbits are revealed to have evolved from mud-spattered leprechauns. I don't get how that kind of thing is still considered acceptable.

Wife was pretty annoyed by the Irish Hobbits, and especially the music played in the shire. Her other big annoyance was that most of the male actors were "weird looking and not cute."

We only watched the first episode and I was kinda tired but I thought it was officially "fine." Nothing really bothers me about it (the music is bland at best, the Irish hobbits are irritating) but I didn't think anything about it was particularly inspiring or impressive either. I liked the snow troll fight scene, and it's sort of sad that a short action scene was the most impressive or memorable. Elves and humans both being hugely racist is a nice tough I guess.

So fiurst 2 episodes are an hour and a half each?
THinking size of d/ld file bigger than usual. Like twice teh size and stuff.

First ep was just over an hour

This is pretty good!

a big complaint among folks on twitter seems to be “the elves are too ugly”

Eleven can't be choosers

*Elven

I have further thoughts on a particular thing that's irritating me

Collective thoughts are going to be in the next @BytheBywater episode in a month; there'll be more episodes of the series itself to talk about by then. Right now I'm just here to discuss a big issue with _The Rings of Power_: the problem of time and history. Thread! (1/whatever)

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) September 2, 2022

I didn't hate this! The plotting is ropey as hell and the dialogue...oof. But it looks nice, the performances are solid, and the bones of a potentially compelling story are here. I'm enjoying it through the lens of "extremely expensive fanfic"

elves schmelves all these dudes look like relics from third-tier English boy bands ugh

I watched most of the first episode last night though think I may have been falling asleep. So interesting I guess
This is like the Silmarillion plus innit.
Like not sure to what extent it is directly from Tolkien.
Does look good. I assume filesize must be visual data. Every file looks like it is larger than what that duration normally is anyway from my own experience. On a torrent site there are normally several groupings of filesize options from something to watch on a portable screen to something that is several gb per file.
I tend to go toward the smaller end of the scale not quite the smallest since it does look good on a medium size flatscreen. Every option for this seemed to be larger filesize than normal. Range I pick it seemed about 1/3 larger than normal for a standard tv show length.
Subsequently I was expecting it to be epic in length. Which looked like it might be a chore to sit through 2 in a row of.

So looks good and I will get through episode 2 later.

I'm enjoying it with a few reservations (those pennywhistles...urgh). Visually gorgeous.

We immediately clocked the music as being the work of Bear McCreary, who also does the terrible music for Outlander. In the end, the Oirishness didn't bother me that much. I sort of get it? The elves are English, (including that guy who always plays Michael Palin in things), the dwarves are Scottish, so I guess the harfoots have to be from somewhere. But it didn't even seem like an Irish accent they were going for, as much as a sort of Traveller/Gypsy accent, which is way worse. Oh well. Lenny Henry can do what he loikes at this stage, I don't care.
Overall, I liked it more than I thought I would. Certainly compared to House of the Dragon. I'd much rather watch a lot of exposition interspersed with a stone-smashing contest and some business on a raft than mechanical shagging and boring jousting scenes which do not even have Geoffrey Chaucer in them. At least it has colours! And jokes! And it was genuinely kind of affecting to see Khazad-Dum in all its glory.

The Rings of Peace more like

I watched the first ep last night, quite pished and all I can remember was that it had some terrible acting and was rank garbage, but I say that about nearly everything these days.

Quite liked it, it was better than the Hobbit movies anyway.

But so tiresome to do a prequel and yet STILL launch with extensive WHAT HAS COME BEFORES of Morgoth and Sauron v1.0. Like, if you've got years to tell the story of the world before LotR, maybe just fucking tell the story of the world before LotR?

lenny henrys big book of prophecy seems extremely dumb

like something out of bad video game storytelling, not a lotr head but my understanding is that the wider lore doesn't have any of the prophecy/chosen one garbage that is in all mass market fantasy/sci fi media

There’s moments as background — the long dead figure of Malbeth the Seer, a message or two from Galadriel, another long dead dude who was at the Paths of the Dead — but nothing central. So yeah the book of prophecies thing is very left field.

Strange, I didn't read that as a "book of prophecy" at all, but rather a simple almanac. Which made a lot of sense to me in the context of the Harfoots being nomads who need to keep track of the seasons, etc. Did I miss something?

I’m not particularly attached to Tolkien, I also thought this was much better than I was expecting despite some dodgy acting and odd editing flubs. Thought the opening 20 mins of the first episode was really pacey and involving, and that built up a lot of goodwill. Miles better than the new GoT, EOTW and the Hobbit movies (so far)

Accessing TV through the Prime app is always a mood killer though

I kind of died a little when, in the second episode, Galadriel’s new shipmate reveals he was chased out of his home in the south by orcs in recent years by orcs when she’s been stomping around the north for a bazillion years and believes no one’s seen an orc for a long time

really tricky, that Sauron!

Some ppl on reddit theorizing that ship dude *is* Sauron. Tricky indeed!

I doubt any of the characters so far are Sauron but maybe they’re all Sauron!

wizard who fell to middle earth is probably not, though

Meteor Man is clearly David Bowie after he died on Earth

Blind Guardian shoulda done the score

lmao

Husband and I were amusing ourselves with the idea that dude who fell out of the sky is Tom Bombadil, and that as soon as he learns to talk it is all over for this programme that Amazon spent nearly a billion dollars on. (We know it's not him.)

Ha believe me at one point I was thinking “Be amusing if this guy is Bombadil-ish.” He’s being handled better than I expected; having him be unable to really communicate and capable of violent or at least threatening acts makes him a bit of a chaos factor for now.

I have to say a sequence I thought was really striking was the house combat with the one orc. Bayona with good horror and action chops there, and after so much ‘heroes defeat huge rabble of orcs’ over most of the earlier films, turning it into a situation where just one orc can be a brutally terrifying and not easy to kill threat was smart. Be nice if we see more of that.

Yes, it was great to see an orc that was actually terrifying!

I fell asleep during both episodes. I think it was the cliched dialog combined with all the unearned gravitas.

lol im just stitting back enjoying what complete pricks the elves are

which is canon dont @ me

just watched the 2nd ep, it was much better than the first. All that invoking some ancient rite to get into a house where they all hate you and consider you a wanker was pretty good.

easter egg hommage to last of the summer wine also

they should be paying some Compo for that. The hunk on the raft is a very tedious character and a crap actor. On the other hand, Owain Arthur is brilliant.

🚨dots and loops reference 🚨

the writers seem to have played a LOT of Diablo growing up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBu-yUzWXqg

"to the east i go not"

looks pretty east to me dude

Do we know how far Valinor is from Middle Earth?

Like, it doesn't seem the best plan to jump off the boat if you're then in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles from anywhere?