Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

I watched a review of the season ender by Nerd of the Rings with a theory that Kemen could be the Mouth of Sauron/Ringwraith and it just made me even more disappointed that the show managed to complete maybe 25% of the immersion into the world that it should have.

There should've been theories and excitement about the next season and mostly it's just flat, down to some terrible world building for the most part

Would be mental if that's the case,

Numenoreans live long but 3500 years long? No way.
 
I mean if he has a ring then he's going to go on till Sauron lasts, pretty much.
Think he was referring to the Mouth in particular. I dont think he is supposed to be "undead" and therefore is mortal. The creation of the Nazgul timeline you could argue doesn't mesh but I can see that modification working a lot better because of the reason you stated.
 
Yeah I think it's pretty set that they're going to get the Nine onto the scene by the next season for their imminent fall thereafter.

I hope they make Bombadil a Ringwraith to reaaallllyyy feck with everyone.
 
I watched a review of the season ender by Nerd of the Rings with a theory that Kemen could be the Mouth of Sauron/Ringwraith and it just made me even more disappointed that the show managed to complete maybe 25% of the immersion into the world that it should have.

There should've been theories and excitement about the next season and mostly it's just flat, down to some terrible world building for the most part
It's kinda like the Narsil thing - they're just in a room, Miriel says have this sword, by the way it's called Narsil, Elendil goes away with it. So much stuff is just "look, it's that thing from Lord of the Rings". Tbh the hobbit plot gets a lot of deserved flak for it's general cloying pointlessness, but I genuinely think Numenor is one of the worst realised things in any adaptation I've seen, both as a setting and dramatically.
 
It's kinda like the Narsil thing - they're just in a room, Miriel says have this sword, by the way it's called Narsil, Elendil goes away with it. So much stuff is just "look, it's that thing from Lord of the Rings". Tbh the hobbit plot gets a lot of deserved flak for it's general cloying pointlessness, but I genuinely think Numenor is one of the worst realised things in any adaptation I've seen, both as a setting and dramatically.
I do think that this show would be way better received if Numenor had been done a lot better. It should be the epitome of human achievement and power in that time. They clearly understood some of that but it didn't translate well. Season 2 at least gave a bit more meat to some of their characters and gave us someone to properly hate (Kemen) but it still feels out of place. If it weren't for the actor playing Elendil who I do think was cast pretty well - it would have been utterly shambolic.
 
Rogue One and subsequently Andor?
Yeah, good point. Andor was probably the best thing I watched last year. Then again, is it really a prequel? Almost none of the characters are major pieces of the 'main' show. Like they all could all be alive or dead (mostly) in Epi IV and I wouldn't know so nothing is spoiled.

Whereas so many of these major prequels are like - hey want to know where the arch-villian and arch-hero really started? Wait til we put scenes of them risking their lives on screen! The tension will be unbelievable!
 
Yeah, good point. Andor was probably the best thing I watched last year. Then again, is it really a prequel? Almost none of the characters are major pieces of the 'main' show. Like they all could all be alive or dead (mostly) in Epi IV and I wouldn't know so nothing is spoiled.

Whereas so many of these major prequels are like - hey want to know where the arch-villian and arch-hero really started? Wait til we put scenes of them risking their lives on screen! The tension will be unbelievable!

I think that's the problem with a lot of prequels. They try to show you the origin of everything in the original.

To stick with Star Wars, Solo boils Hans Solo's seemingly storied life of adventure into one crazy week.
 
The brilliant minds behind this masterpiece shared some insights into the creative process.
Apparently they've only decided that Stranger was Gandalf inbetween seasons, so perhaps they don't even know who the Bad Wizard is yet...

It probably is how Tolkien's creative process would've looked like (he famously was discovering information about the Middle Earth more like a scientist and less like an author) if he didn't have his talent, understanding of the world and was also forced to publish his works immediately.

 
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The brilliant minds behind this masterpiece shared some insights into the creative process.
Apparently they've only decided that Stranger was Gandalf inbetween seasons, so perhaps they don't even know who the Bad Wizard is yet...

It probably is how Tolkien's creative process would've looked like (he famously was discovering information about the Middle Earth more like a scientist and less like an author) if he didn't have his talent, understanding of the world and was also forced to publish his works immediately.


Yikes.
 
There's so much wrong with this show.
Some terrible characters/actors, tone is all over the place (whimsical with the hobbit type people and Durins wife but then you'll have characters stabbed 50 times by orcs the next scene). They try to make heroic moments that don't make any sense like the dwarf king flying to his death vs the Balrog for no reason, the asian elf who had a boromir death for whatever reason, and on and on and on.
Absolutely terrible.
 
It was for me and improvement on Season 1. But it still lacks proper heart for me, the 7th episode should have felt devastating but it lacked that emotional substance. I've just finished the finale so will let it sink in before giving my thoughts.
 
It was for me and improvement on Season 1. But it still lacks proper heart for me, the 7th episode should have felt devastating but it lacked that emotional substance. I've just finished the finale so will let it sink in before giving my
 
I did think while watching it though that they've should never had gone with a continuous linear story. Condensing the storyline to this degree has produced far too many problems and also diluted imo the importance of several storylines. The show would have really benefitted following the structure of Andor. Having focussed storylines confined to three/four episodes. Have the main characters be Elves so you have the same actors play them throughout the show. But then have mortal characters be cameos for specific storyline arcs. That way you focus the story on key events which get finished within small story arcs. It also helps show the mortality of man/dwarf which emphasis' the brilliance of the Elves and the disaster and tradegy of the fall of Eregion (for example). I couldn't care less what happened with Numenor for example as we haven't seen enough positivity for the nation, this is why they should have had Minastir as it shows what a noble and brilliant people they are/were. It makes the fall that much sadder.

You could for example still condense certain storylines. The birth of Minastir as an example happens 25 years or so before the Rings of Power are forged and Annatar departs Eregion. That to me would be an acceptable use of condensing. But the sacking of Eregion happened almost 1,500 years before the birth of Elendil! I'm sure they probably think people would get confused by characters only having small cameos and then leaving or being recast for older selves. But I don't think that would be true at all. It just requires decent writing and for the audience to understand (which they would fairly quickly) that the show is a bunch of small storys telling the story of key events of the entire second age.

It's why the fall of Eregion felt like nothing to me. We didn't know enough about the city or it's people. We basically had 2 characters from the city with any lines and pretty much the entire storyline was inside one building.
 
I think my expectations for season 2 dropped rather than it got better. It probably has improved a bit but expecting very little was half the reason i enjoyed it. Its a fairly marginal improvement, its still a pretty weak show.
 
I did think while watching it though that they've should never had gone with a continuous linear story. Condensing the storyline to this degree has produced far too many problems and also diluted imo the importance of several storylines. The show would have really benefitted following the structure of Andor. Having focussed storylines confined to three/four episodes. Have the main characters be Elves so you have the same actors play them throughout the show. But then have mortal characters be cameos for specific storyline arcs. That way you focus the story on key events which get finished within small story arcs. It also helps show the mortality of man/dwarf which emphasis' the brilliance of the Elves and the disaster and tradegy of the fall of Eregion (for example). I couldn't care less what happened with Numenor for example as we haven't seen enough positivity for the nation, this is why they should have had Minastir as it shows what a noble and brilliant people they are/were. It makes the fall that much sadder.

You could for example still condense certain storylines. The birth of Minastir as an example happens 25 years or so before the Rings of Power are forged and Annatar departs Eregion. That to me would be an acceptable use of condensing. But the sacking of Eregion happened almost 1,500 years before the birth of Elendil! I'm sure they probably think people would get confused by characters only having small cameos and then leaving or being recast for older selves. But I don't think that would be true at all. It just requires decent writing and for the audience to understand (which they would fairly quickly) that the show is a bunch of small storys telling the story of key events of the entire second age.

It's why the fall of Eregion felt like nothing to me. We didn't know enough about the city or it's people. We basically had 2 characters from the city with any lines and pretty much the entire storyline was inside one building.
Yeah, this was the way to do it. On the one hand they've done it to allow more space to develop the characters, but on the other have also spent no real time developing the characters because they're also trying to cram in the story of every other Second Age event simultaneously (and a few Third Age ones too). Numenor should be a character of its own, a paradise that you see grow in wealth, power and cruelty over centuries until the only thing left to claim is immortality from the gods. Dwarves would've benefitted too - the Durin reincarnation could've stayed, the effects of the rings would've been subtler, the change of Khazad-dum over time etc.

I think Payne and McKay are genuinely incompetent, but they had enough talent in the rest of the writing room to generate good character drama if given the opportunity. More's the pity.
 
Really? I am trying to convince myself to watch S2 after boring season 1. So, it is better than S1?
Yes, it's much better than S1 (granted, the bar is pretty low). It's still pretty poor overall but works well as a hate/cringe watch.
 
It's why the fall of Eregion felt like nothing to me. We didn't know enough about the city or it's people. We basically had 2 characters from the city with any lines and pretty much the entire storyline was inside one building.
I think the show has real issues with scaling. It suffers from cheap production's syndrome which is surprising given the budget. The random village where Theo & his mom (R.I.P) live has roughly the same amount of people as Eregion or Numenor and the amount of elves that we see at Rivendell at the end isn't that different from the amount of elves we've seen in all of Eregion throughout 2 seasons... even though the city was supposedly massacred and barely anyone had survived?
 
I actually found season two way duller than season one. Yeah it was far more solid and consistent without the stupid lows such as the horse scene but it didn’t really have any of the highs of season one either. It was also all really predictable.
 
I have no idea why I opted to watch all of that. And I’m definitely not a Lord of the Rings nerd. I guess that makes it even weirder that I sat through all of it.