Rings of Power Discussion Thread

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TristramEvans said:
eh, a TV show "based on" (*cough*) some notes Tolkien wrote on a napkin isn't something I needed or wanted to begin witth, I'm fine ignoring its existence.
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Yeah, I can't say I'm going to lose much sleep over it. Television/Film adaptations of beloved novels, comics, whatever are almost always short of the mark, no matter how much money or director talent they throw at them. Even highly praised stuff like Jackson's LotR movies failed to adequately capture some of the tone of the books. Game of Thrones couldn't stick the landing, Dune on SciFi channel, etc. At least with this I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, and I don't have to worry about some cynical cash grab sullying the images formed by my mind's eye.
 
I'm going to give it a shot and watch an episode. Whether or not it's 'real' lotr isn't a big deal to me, just whether it's entertaining. The other side of the coin is, if it doesn't grab me, I'm not going to watch it out of misplaced loyalty.

By the gods, I hope it's at least better than Earthsea.
 
Stan said:
I'm going to give it a shot and watch an episode. Whether or not it's 'real' lotr isn't a big deal to me, just whether it's entertaining. The other side of the coin is, if it doesn't grab me, I'm not going to watch it out of misplaced loyalty.

By the gods, I hope it's at least better than Earthsea.
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The animated Earthsea?
 
I watched the first episode of The Rings of Power. I actually liked it quite a bit. The acting is fine, the plot is going along as expected but it looks great. It looks better than the Hobbit movies, IMO.
 
Endless Flight said:
I watched the first episode of The Rings of Power. I actually liked it quite a bit. The acting is fine, the plot is going along as expected but it looks great. It looks better than the Hobbit movies, IMO.
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Yeah I was impressed, a big infodump at the beginning but that was probably necessary so they could quickly orient the audience. I always found the elves in LotR a bit of a bore but the hints here of corruption and, you know, emotion make them much more interesting.

Definitely looks great, as long as you have crap like motion-smoothing turned off your TV, the snow troll and mass battle scenes looked much better than almost anything in The Hobbit films (although the troll and Smaug scenes in The Hobbit were among the strongest in that benighted series).
 
Yeah I also just watched the first two episodes of The Rings Of Power on Prime Video.
I have a few niggles, but overall I'm quite happy with how things are going so far
I'm trying to avoid all the early bad press-mongers about it, but no doubt I will reflect on it all once I've watched the entire season.
At this stage the setting feels like Middle-Earth, and it's reasonably consistent with most of previous visual cinematic interpretation by New Line Cinema.
Filming terrain setting on location in New Zealand certainly helps, as well as the early consultations with Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop.
Really great production values, it looks cool on a big screen televsion
At this stage I'm quite enthusiastic, and eager for more episodes! :thumbsup:
 
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Not sure where the Rings of Power is going, only saw the first episode. So many changes made for no real difference in complexity or clarity, it’s just…not what happened. With 5 seasons already greenlit, they’ll have plenty of time.
 
I've just watched the first two episodes of Amazon's The Rings of Power and the Third Age. It is absolutely gorgeous: cast gorgeous, props gorgeous, costumes gorgeous, locations and scenery effects gorgeous, cinematography goegeous, acting fine with splashes of good. But the pacing is glacial, the script has grammatical errors sticking out like sore thumbs (mostly errors of in the use of English tenses), and the storytelling is incompetent. The writers did not establish a status quo at the beginning and introduced no clear initiating incident; the point of view switches hither and forth between unrelated plot strands without apparent reason, often cutting out of one after a desultory while with its situation the same as when it cut in. There is no narrative focus. My guess is that I'll get bored with it before it is done, even though a lot of it is pretty to look at.
 
My Youtube feed is currently getting flooded with rants about the show, and rants about the people ranting about the show, and I'm just trying to ignore its existence.

So it's basically a Ghostbusters situation again.
 
My friend has watched it and says it looks gorgeous but may as well not be Middle-earth; its just generic fantasy with just some names taken from Tolkien's work. I've no intention of watching as it deviates so far from Tolkien's lore that I have no interest in the show; although I do wish useless hacks would create their own stuff rather than shit on other peoples' stuff but then its the estate to blame for letting them buy it. Tolkien and his son, Christopher, would hate it though. Christopher really didn't like Jackson's films either and I agreed with him on that.
 
Rich H said:
My friend has watched it and says it looks gorgeous but may as well not be Middle-earth; its just generic fantasy with just some names taken from Tolkien's work. I've no intention of watching as it deviates so far from Tolkien's lore that I have no interest in the show; although I do wish useless hacks would create their own stuff rather than shit on other peoples' stuff but then its the estate to blame for letting them buy it. Tolkien and his son, Christopher, would hate it though. Christopher really didn't like Jackson's films either and I agreed with him on that.
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Mostly this. I don't agree with you on the Jackson films.
 
Well, how could you make both exciting and true to the original? The Silmarillion and all the histories are quite a slog to get through. All those damn different types of elves, when they are all a bunch of pointy eared twits. :shade:

Only seen the first 2 so far but I'm liking it ok. I'm not a big fan of jumping around between a bunch of stories at once but that's the norm with many shows. If they are stretching it out for 5 seasons, they need to pace themselves. Using original characters is a sensible route as it gives them room to illustrate the world without hyper fans hyperventillating about it like 'It never mentions Faenor wearing a hat!"
 
Stan said:
Well, how could you make both exciting and true to the original? The Silmarillion and all the histories are quite a slog to get through.
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That's kind of my point. Like I said elsewhere, I am all for creative reimagining of a classic tale and deviation from canon if there's a payoff but so far Rings of Power is quite a slog to get through! I feel like the creators are stretching two hours of content into an entire season. I don't watch a lot of television so I admit that maybe I am an old man yelling at clouds; for all I know, glacially slow pacing and an abundance of pointless "filler" is normal because people are constantly recommending painfully slow and uneventful shows to me.

Anyway I saw episode 3 last night and it was alright. Again I will reiterate that so far the series is a visual feast; great costumes, wonderful scenery, solid casting etc.
 
I have winced out about halfway through the third episode because of terrible dialogue, sloppy storytelling, and my personal bugbear, clunky exposition.

I didn't expect it to be a telling of any of Tolkien's stories, was cool with that, and don't like it anyway.
 
After watching the first 3 episodes of Rings of Power, I can safely say it's exactly as terrible as I feared it would be.

Apart from the fact that it shits all over Tolkien's lore, but that was sadly to be expected: the scripting is atrocious, the pacing is nowhere, the characters are boring and the acting is subpar. what the hell happened to artistic value?

This thing is simply an extremely badly written Tolkien fan fiction. Yeah, some of the visuals are nice. But if all I want is nice visuals, I go to a Howe / Lee's exhibition.
 
I like the RoP characterization of Galadriel. Her downfall is that she is Elven royalty and somewhat obstinate sometimes, but I think she is starting to learn to adapt to her surroundings. And in some ways you can't blame her, as she is treated as special when the folk of Numinore find that she is one of The Noldor.
 
finarvyn said:
I like the RoP characterization of Galadriel. Her downfall is that she is Elven royalty and somewhat obstinate sometimes, but I think she is starting to learn to adapt to her surroundings. And in some ways you can't blame her, as she is treated as special when the folk of Numinore find that she is one of The Noldor.
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Is her noble “obstinacy” portrayed as a merit or a flaw?

Also is there a lot of Hobbit trilogy “Legolas” moments of crazy cgi wire-fu? I hated that stuff.
 
I think the biggest issue with the show is that they are telling a second age story without the rights to the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle Earth books. I mean if you only have the rights to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings and you want to do the 2nd age you're going to have to make up a lot of stuff. The mixing of stuff 1,500 years apart is odd, but I understand some condensing is unavoidable. Not sure the Galadriel parts are actually adding anything worthwhile to the show.
 
Necrozius said:
Is her noble “obstinacy” portrayed as a merit or a flaw?

Also is there a lot of Hobbit trilogy “Legolas” moments of crazy cgi wire-fu? I hated that stuff.
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So far, no wire-fu. Though combat hasn't been the focus.

I'm liking it so far but not loving it. Of course, they did time compression which can be jarring for Tolkien fans - 'oh we must be only a couple hundred years into the 2nd age.' - 'Oh, we must be only a century or two from the end of the 2nd age.' I think the thing to remember is that Tolkien can be slow to start. The first half of Fellowship was basically parties and portents. They are laying the groundwork for a 50 episode story while simultaneously trying to satisfy fans and throw in bits of excitement to keep people watching. It's impossible to please everyone.
 
Stan said:
So far, no wire-fu. Though combat hasn't been the focus.
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Except for Guyladriel leaping from off a sword someone was holding and cavorting around the troll. Genuinely surprised coins and a few hearts didn't appear when she killed it. Then there was the wire-fu with the other elf character and the warg but not sure if that's been in the show yet as I haven't watched it.
 
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Rich H said:
Except for Guyladriel leaping from off a sword someone was holding and cavorting around the troll. Genuinely surprised coins and a few hearts didn't appear when she killed it. There there was the wire-fu with the other elf character and the warg but not sure if that's been in the show yet as I haven't watched it.
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I found neither as ridiculous as several Legolas scenes.
 
Stan said:
I found neither as ridiculous as several Legolas scenes.
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They are still wire-fu though but I don't disagree. They all go in the 'shit bucket' for me. Away with 'em!
 
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i heard that they went back to prosthetics for the orcs rather than CGI like in the Hobbit films. No matter what, that’s clearly a point in Amazon’s favor.

…fucking cgi orcs were terrible.
 
Oh and Elrond.

So I liked Hugo Weaving, but as a kid I grew up with the Rankin Bass Hobbit film and Bakshi’s Roman Elrond. Both had short hair, and were far less grim than Jackson’s take on the character.

The new guy “looks” more like the Elrond of my childhood, to be frank!
 
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