Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
- Thread starter DWelbz19
- Start date
Well I really like it.
I'm trying not to be too negative in first few episodes of a show, since I was trying to convince people Wheel of Time wasn't that bad (although the last episode nearly broke me, but Covid badly hurt production in season 1). It's fine, I'm just hoping it keeps developing. At least there haven't been any hobbits going down a river in barrels.
I enjoyed that too (with the same reservations about the end) and am looking forward to the next series. i think it's a bit of a problem that everyone's thinking of their review before they even start watching things these days, which can skew perspectives.
tbh I have not thought about this at all while watching. I think they are doing fine with it.
Has to be Radagast. He talks to animals.
idk but Galadriel is pretty much what my sisters are like.
I suppose the word feminine pretty much means different things to different people.
Ive not read the books, so I'm really enjoying the show.
This latest episode struggled to hold my attention. When Galadriel arrived in Numenor it stopped all of the momentum. Felt like the show tried to hang its hat on a epic female staredown but the writing just didnt hit. Not sold on Halbrand either as a tough guy. That said, the water scene and the ending in the slave pit was pretty great. More of that please.
This was like the opposite of House of the Dragon for me this week.
In HotD, the talky bits were good and the action finale was wank.
In LotR, the the talky bits were wank and the action finale was cool.
In HotD, the talky bits were good and the action finale was wank.
In LotR, the the talky bits were wank and the action finale was cool.
A shit ton of stuff happened in that episode to be fair. Still liking it, despite Galadriels transformation into Gollum when atop horses.
I think they must have realized that we have 3 episodes of Galadriel being so one note, angry and unlikeable, they wanted to show a different side to her, but the slow-mo psychotic smile was just part CW, part commerical, part serial killer vibe.
I think this new episode meandered because it felt like an echo of things we'd already seen. Numenor looked like Gondor with added water, the scroll place was like Elrond's library, Halbrand being his people's "lost king" was just like Aragorn, the orcs capturing other races to build tunnels didn't really make any sense... surely orcs don't need to capture and transport slaves because they lack committed manpower (orcpower?), and the hobbit segments seemed like filler. It was all very pretty, though... hooves splashing through surf... sailing ships...
Halbrand will also be Bronwyn's missing husband and Theo's Father right? Have to set up that Twighlight love story, "torn between a noble elf and a savage man"
That was one of the weirdest and most unnecessary slow-mos that I've ever seen
Good video explaining Sauron in the 1st age, this show takes place in the 2nd age, so it shouldn't really spoil anything but info on Sauron from the silmarillion.
I've enjoyed it so far. Nothing outstanding, but it has been watchable. Really wish the elves in the third episode didn't jump and spin every single time they attacked. Totally unneeded, and generally just looks a little bit crap and breaks the flow of the scene.
I'm really enjoying it, the intro shots of numenor were stunning
It's such bad fan fiction, it's like a guilty pleasure. Go back and watch it again and it's very obvious if you know your Second Age Tolkien history that Halbrand is
Sauron
Sauron is Halbrand
Meteor dude is
Gandalf
And this show is ludicrous. But I kind of like it in a bad way.
Last edited:
I thought they were calling him Halbarad the whole way through and that he was eventually going to help Aragorn as one of the Dunadan, so I wasn't doing too well on the history front!
I thought they were calling him Halbarad the whole way through and that he was eventually going to help Aragorn as one of the Dunadan, so I wasn't doing too well on the history front!
I think they deliberately cast someone who looks a bit like Viggo Mortenson and gave him than Dunadan sounding name as a distraction. But the heavy emphasis on charm, the fact he is in Numemor at all and is keen to stay, his interest in becoming a smith, the siggil he took from a dead man, the way he turned into Terminator when he got into a fight, the fact his family all died in the war....pretty obvious who he is.
Really doubt Halbrand is Sauron. Not sure how 2nd age lore confirms that. He doesn't look how anyone imagined annatar does he? Doubt Sauron has been introduced yet.
Sauron goes to Numenor where he charms everyone and takes over - making Pharazon (who was also seen in this episode) the King. Sauron is greatly skilled as a Smith so the whole joining the Smiths guild sequence was significant. The way he said he took the siggil off a dead man's body was fairly obviously saying he killed the real Halbrand - which would make sense if he is taking over that part of Middle Earth to build Barad-dûr. The way he mentioned that his whole family was killed in the war - well that's true when you consider who is family was. The main discrepancy is that Sauron had already forged the One Ring when he was taken to Numenor as a prisoner. I think they are rewriting that because Christopher Tolkien is dead and they can do what they like with the IP. Clearly Galdriel never went to Numenor in the Second Age or met Elendil there so we're far into the realms of fan fiction
It just seems far too early in the story for Sauron to be orchestrating the fall of Numenor and he is not in the form of Annatar. But perhaps the writers don't really give a crap about respecting the lore and timeline. I would just be a bit underwhelmed if he is Sauron, but I guess the show is supposed to keep you guessing. They've probably scrapped the whole Annatar name and form because the suprise factor would be lost.
Why would Sauron save Galadriel's life? The witchking suggestion someone made earlier makes much more sense.
Who knows? We are in the hands of hacks. Why would Galadriel try and swim across the Sundering Sea? It's all contrived. The witchking comes from the North btw
I hear that Galadriel's arc will involve humility so getting owned like that will probably play into it. Maybe they will kiss.
The whole Numenor invading Middle Earth thing seems a bit convoluted for a TV show. The writers seem more interested in going their own way. Clearly all they wanted was the right to call it Lord of the Rings and clearly post Christopher they can do what they like.
Last edited:
It's fine to anyone who isn't the kind of person to talk about actors as "diversity actors".
Exactly. It would not have crossed my mind.
My reading is that he is not intended to be a black elf but that he is a black actor playing an elf that is no different to the other elves. This kind of colour blind casting has plenty of precedent and is nearly always perfectly acceptable and welcome. Personally I would find it a bit weird in an authentic Tolkien setting though, because heredity is so significant that ignoring it so blatantly without an explanation would take me out of the story, but then again this show has no real claim to be authentically Tolkien anyway so it doesn't really matter. It is what it is and should be taken as such.
It doesn‘t matter, that is about it.
And it is ridiculous to assume all elves had white skin.
Well it's not since the one elf mentioned by Tolkien to have darker skin, the other elves thought he was a half orc. But end of the day there's a lot of unconscious bias in Tolkien's writing and that's just because of the subject matter and when it was written. You could easily construct an argument that his writing is itself racist by modern standards and I wouldn't disagree with it.
However I don't see this as authentic Tolkien so it just isn't important. There are so many other things you could quibble with it seems weird to pick out race.
I found the way they did the Diversity in Wheel of Time to be a bit odd, everywhere, from Cities to hick mining towns seemed to have the same mixture of different races as if it was calculated out on a spreadsheet. Didn't really make sense within the history of that world( apocalypse scattering people into isolated communities with little interaction outside of major trade routes or organizations that drew from disparate areas, the Aes Sedai for example should be massively diverse as a group) Think it, along with some other decisions led to poorly established world building, scale, and a lack of distinctly different cultures in the new areas that the story should take the viewer. I know there some of the usual complaints about the 2 Rivers folk but is actually quite ambiguous in the books, the only thing that really needs to be there is the actor for Rand should look strikingly different to the rest of the group.
I thought that was one of the most interesting things about an adaptation, how they would interpret all these different cultures, and outside of the end scene of season one there was little to feed that interest. Hopefully along with all the vast other improvements needed they can step up there as well.
I thought that was one of the most interesting things about an adaptation, how they would interpret all these different cultures, and outside of the end scene of season one there was little to feed that interest. Hopefully along with all the vast other improvements needed they can step up there as well.
The point of colour blind casting is that race in casting is ignored, not incorporated. Skin colour has no more significance than eye colour or hair colour which we mostly routinely ignore. There are select occasions when it doesn't work because race is an intrinsic part of the setup and people should be allowed to say so when that's the case. But for me it's a high bar. However if you say it is unrealistic then that's hard to argue with.
Last edited:
Literally the only part of this I care about in Wheel of Time is the aiel being redheads. Other than that I couldn't care less that this village has some white people, black people, Asians, whatever. I'll never understand people whose viewing experiences are negatively impacted by that sort of thing. Unless colour is very specifically a part of the plot, it's the least important thing to worry about.
To me, you establish diversity of cultures not by skin colour but by clothing, architecture, language/dialect, gestures, whatever. The Shienari were very obviously different from the Two Rivers people in the show, even though they both had some of the same mix of colours (though Shienar definitely did have more Asian-looking people).
To me, you establish diversity of cultures not by skin colour but by clothing, architecture, language/dialect, gestures, whatever. The Shienari were very obviously different from the Two Rivers people in the show, even though they both had some of the same mix of colours (though Shienar definitely did have more Asian-looking people).
I agree. I thought that Galadriel's arc was very interesting in this episode I also liked Arondir's plot, I'm untriaged to see who the orcs are taking him to see.Strange, thought the 3rd episode was the best so far. Come on here and everyone hates it
It’s like some executive was in the room and said, “look we got this beautiful horse whose life is worth more than any of yours, UHD cameras on the budget, and this angrily constipated Legolas lady who’s never smiled before so do something different with it. I don’t care how, make it happen.“
Plus this is arguably particularly well suited to a colourblind casting approach given characters are already divided into fantasy races (elf, dwarf, hobbit, etc.). I'm not sure there's much storytelling need for consistency of appearance within each of those groups beyond the features that identify the fantasy race they belong to.
Incidentally the actress who plays Galdriel was in the recent film adaptation of David Copperfield, which stands out in my mind as a recent mainstream example of that colourblind casting approach being used effectively. Like theatre, film/TV doesn't need to be naturalistic unless the story actually demands it.
I suspected this after the second episode - almost certain now.
I think it will be an anti-Aragorn storyline, falling to the dark side and all that.