Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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Lindir wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 7:28 pm Im going to be the sourpuss here and say that I don’t like any of these weapon designs, with the exception of maybe that sceptre. Everything else feels like it belongs in the Elder Scrolls.

One of the things that I love about LOTR and even The Hobbit is how they designed the weapons to reflect real world cultures and so the weapons looked incredibly realistic for a fantasy series. I think the most unrealistic was probably the dwarvern culture tbf.

But these just scream “fantasy”, which is why I likened them to the Elder Scrolls because they feel like the dragged them from that world and not from the middle Earth we know. I was hoping for more continuity between this series and the movies but clearly that is not to be the case.

The weapon design in the Witcher series and even in GOT feel superior to what we see here.
It's not you alone, I feel exactly the same.

Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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Lindir wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 7:28 pm Im going to be the sourpuss here and say that I don’t like any of these weapon designs, with the exception of maybe that sceptre. Everything else feels like it belongs in the Elder Scrolls.

One of the things that I love about LOTR and even The Hobbit is how they designed the weapons to reflect real world cultures and so the weapons looked incredibly realistic for a fantasy series. I think the most unrealistic was probably the dwarvern culture tbf.

But these just scream “fantasy”, which is why I likened them to the Elder Scrolls because they feel like the dragged them from that world and not from the middle Earth we know. I was hoping for more continuity between this series and the movies but clearly that is not to be the case.

The weapon design in the Witcher series and even in GOT feel superior to what we see here.
I get where you are coming from, but this series is what, 5 thousand years before LOTR... Wouldn't it be conceivable there would be a shift in weapon design?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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BladeCollector wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:51 am
Lindir wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 7:28 pm Im going to be the sourpuss here and say that I don’t like any of these weapon designs, with the exception of maybe that sceptre. Everything else feels like it belongs in the Elder Scrolls.

One of the things that I love about LOTR and even The Hobbit is how they designed the weapons to reflect real world cultures and so the weapons looked incredibly realistic for a fantasy series. I think the most unrealistic was probably the dwarvern culture tbf.

But these just scream “fantasy”, which is why I likened them to the Elder Scrolls because they feel like the dragged them from that world and not from the middle Earth we know. I was hoping for more continuity between this series and the movies but clearly that is not to be the case.

The weapon design in the Witcher series and even in GOT feel superior to what we see here.
I get where you are coming from, but this series is what, 5 thousand years before LOTR... Wouldn't it be conceivable there would be a shift in weapon design?
Considering Glamdring is over 6000 years old , I don't think so. There is no continuity between these visual representations. Which is a shame, as they like to say they had John Howe work on designs and have Howard Shore working on the soundtrack, meaning there is some sort of tie to the original LOTR trilogy, but obviously not. They are definitely going in their own direction and hoping to cash in on the Game of Thrones crowd with the LOTR name.

I also have a feeling that half of the character posters that were revealed are made up people and only a handful are recognizable names like Elrond, Galadriel, and Isildur as to not confuse people with actual lore and facts.

Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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BladeCollector wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:51 am
I get where you are coming from, but this series is what, 5 thousand years before LOTR... Wouldn't it be conceivable there would be a shift in weapon design?
Possibly, but one thing that a lot of fantasy settings tend to do is technologically 'freeze' advancement for pretty much all of the established history that we are given on that world. Reading about Middle-earth in the early First Age or late Third Age, a period of roughly 7000 years, there is not a single appreciable difference that is apparent in the texts, other than a few oblique references to the Orcs' love of 'machines', and Saruman's mind 'of metal and wheels'. So while, yes, aesthetics and design can vary somewhat, there is literally nothing new in the way of innovation, meaning that most things are not being improved on and would remain looking essentially the same.

I get what Lindir is saying. These look more like high fantasy concepts than what we are used to. Don't forget also that Sting, Glamdring, and the decidedly odd-looking Orcrist were supposed to have come from the First Age, and they are not really distinguishable from things we see being wielded in the Third Age. To take a sudden detour into the world of Tamriel (Elder Scrolls) with the designs is... odd. The broken hilt looks 100% like a Daedric weapon, and the sun pommel sword like an Altmer blade. Not sure I'm sold on these designs as representative of Middle-earth specifically, but I do like them as their own thing, if that makes sense.
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Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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N2darkness wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 7:17 am
BladeCollector wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:51 am
Lindir wrote: Fri Feb 04, 2022 7:28 pm Im going to be the sourpuss here and say that I don’t like any of these weapon designs, with the exception of maybe that sceptre. Everything else feels like it belongs in the Elder Scrolls.

One of the things that I love about LOTR and even The Hobbit is how they designed the weapons to reflect real world cultures and so the weapons looked incredibly realistic for a fantasy series. I think the most unrealistic was probably the dwarvern culture tbf.

But these just scream “fantasy”, which is why I likened them to the Elder Scrolls because they feel like the dragged them from that world and not from the middle Earth we know. I was hoping for more continuity between this series and the movies but clearly that is not to be the case.

The weapon design in the Witcher series and even in GOT feel superior to what we see here.
I get where you are coming from, but this series is what, 5 thousand years before LOTR... Wouldn't it be conceivable there would be a shift in weapon design?
I also have a feeling that half of the character posters that were revealed are made up people and only a handful are recognizable names like Elrond, Galadriel, and Isildur as to not confuse people with actual lore and facts.
To be fair, the actual lore is confusing 😝

I'm just going in with no expectations. Judging things by posters and production stills and even publicity shots is hard. I remember losing my mind (in a bad way) when Thorin and the rest of the dwarves were released and in the end, it pretty much worked.

The older I get the more indifferent I am until I see the finished product, heck these days I try to avoid trailers.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Amazon's Series "The Rings of Power" Weapon Replicas

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I have not really paid that much attention to the weapon design so far. The site I was looking at was being very slow to load. Thus, I had not yet gotten to the point of pondering whether the look was consistent with what we got from Jackson's crew.

It's true, ideally the esthetics of a thing should evolve over a period of thousands of years and yet hero weapons we've already seen, like Glamdring, should stay the same. That nothing is exactly the same means that either they have not shown us anything we saw in the movies (and to answer Val's question, no I don't have confirmation that one of the swords was Narsil; that was just some joe's theory), or they've chosen to diverge from the movies.
Image


Here's the one I think someone thought was Narsil. It does indeed have a sun motif, but other than that, it looks so different from Jackson's movies that I just don't want to believe this is Narsil. Of course, it is likely that Warner/New Line own the rights to the designs from Jackson's movies, which could mean that Amazon is not allowed to copy them to any extent greater than sticking to the book's descriptions.

Also note the design on the bearer's breastplate. That looks very, very Celtic to me. One area where Jackson's movies excelled was the use of an Anglo-Saxon esthetic for Rohan, which I though complemented Tolkien's use of Old English to represent Rohirric in the books. Did Amazon cantilever off that and go full Celtic? I'd find that a mistake, because that look is so distinctive that it pulls you out of the reality of the world you're trying to immerse yourself in. Beyond that, Tolkien was a bit of a Celtic-sceptic, or at least he took exception to a review that found his creations Celtic. If I recall correctly, as a philologist he did not like the Q-Celtic languages (Irish, Scottish, Manx). At the same time, he did like Welsh, a language of the P-Celtic branch, and supposedly created Sindarin to evoke Welsh.

Daniel Greene, who does a fantasy/sci fi channel on YouTube, noted that one of the swords evokes the Two Trees in being both silver and gold. Looking at the pommel, you can definitely see the Trees. Below where the hand is gripping it, I suspect those are the blooms of the Trees.
Image
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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According to recently posted blurbs to accompany those pictures, that top pic is Elendil, so that's indeed Narsil.

The holder of the Two Trees dagger is Galadriel.

I won't go into detail on the others as I'm sure you'll find out soon enough. I'll be interest to hear your thoughts on such 'gems' as Adar and Meteor Man, but it's been a rough day of discussing this topic on the internet for me, so I'll refrain from replying and annoying more people in the process.
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Just spent an hour of my remaining 20 years reading about 6 pages of posts at the FoU forum.
So ...first question ...What is this Meteor Man thing? Are the writers introducing a character really named "Meteor Man" ?
or is this some kind of inside joke? Because the name Meteor Man just screams "Super hero a la MCU" .
Second.. like Val ("I am with you, Gandalf" yet again) I am out.
Pax to Buckeye but (entering my clairvoyance trance) I'm going to predict a wholesale disaster for Tolkien/ME purists.
And so I will now retreat (probably permanently) to the strictly literary world of Tolkien.

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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Valkrist wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:39 pm According to recently posted blurbs to accompany those pictures, that top pic is Elendil, so that's indeed Narsil.

The holder of the Two Trees dagger is Galadriel.

I won't go into detail on the others as I'm sure you'll find out soon enough. I'll be interest to hear your thoughts on such 'gems' as Adar and Meteor Man, but it's been a rough day of discussing this topic on the internet for me, so I'll refrain from replying and annoying more people in the process.
Deimos wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 11:35 pm
So ...first question ...What is this Meteor Man thing? Are the writers introducing a character really named "Meteor Man" ?
or is this some kind of inside joke? Because the name Meteor Man just screams "Super hero a la MCU" .

And so I will now retreat (probably permanently) to the strictly literary world of Tolkien.

Oh my.

Why is Galadriel wearing plate armor? Why does Galadriel have a dagger?

You know, when you posted that link from FoU, I said, I'm not going to click on that, I'm probably happier not reading that stuff. Later I thought, I'll give it a look and so I clicked on it. The first thing my eyes lit on was someone saying he/she wished his/her eyes could unread that page but it wasn't possible, so he/she was just going to have to live with it. That was all I needed to see, apparently, as I immediately closed the page.

I can accept that Tolkien's writings on the Second Age are too skimpy to form the basis of a 5-season TV series, even one with only 10 episodes per season. I can accept that new characters and new situations will have to be created to "flesh it out." But "Meteor Man?" I can only pray that's an inside name. If not, cue Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in the original Halloween saying "Laser Man? Tarantula Man? What about King Arthur?"

Another question that occurred to me is this. This is supposed to be a 5-year series (Amazon made that commitment to the Estate). If it is going to cover the whole Second Age, how is Elendil even showing up this soon? He would not even have been born until SA 3119, a little over 300 years before the end of the Age. How is he going to be in the first season, when even Sauron supposedly is not showing up until the second season? Or is this why the faces are not shown, as they are using stand-ins for roles whose actors won't be cast until later? Or is this possibly Tar-Elendil, born in 350? Or is this show going to slice and dice the chronology, like Pulp Fiction on steroids? Maybe some of these questions are answered in that page which I won't permit my eyes to see.

I still want to keep an open mind about this, and go into it unspoiled, but these things are disquieting. I can only hope that perhaps they are feelers put out by the production to gauge fan reaction to some of their nuttier ideas, much as Jackson did. But I don't have a lot of faith that that's the case. Amazon has so much potential to make something really special here, a 5-season series devoted to taking the time and telling the story right, and winning the hearts of the fans forever. If they are going to squander that, well, "that's a shame" would not even begin to describe the losing of such an opportunity.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

Re: The Rings Of Power

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We had two threads on basically the same topic, the weapons and so forth from the new series. I merged them. This was my first time doing this under phpBB, so unfortunately I merged the senior thread into the junior thread instead of vice versa. Apologies to Jash for that, but at least you still have the first post.

I moved the merged thread out of Media (but left a redirect), as that forum is for discussing the shows, movies, etc. themselves, to the New Products forum, where the original thread was, as the discussion seems to be mostly about the weapons and costumes. Then again, none of these are announced yet as buyable replicas, so perhaps this thread should be under our standalone thread on the show itself? That's called LOTR TV Adaptation and located under the Tolkien forum. I'll let the other admins weigh in on whether we should merge this thread into the original show thread. My vote would be yes, but I don't know how many feet I want to yank the rug from under.

The original show thread was created before it was known what the series would cover, let along what its name would be, hence the generic title. Unfortunately it's about impossible to rename a thread (topic, in phpBB parlance). You can rename it, but it only renames the topic and leaves the old name on the individual posts. Hey, it's freeware, so kind of hard to complaint too much, right? Supposedly an extension was in development to address this, but that was in 2016 and I didn't see anything newer than that. If Guardian Wolf has any insights into this, it would definitely be helpful to clean up some of our old thread titles.

And thus with everyone now thoroughly confused, I'll be on my way.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I couldn't resist not read the FOU thread (at least the part of the supposed leaks of the identities)... and I hope that some things are not true, especially Adar and Meteor Man.

The posters gave me hope with only the small downside/doubt about the weapons... this now makes me less optimistic.

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I'll post these here for Olorin so he doesn't have go through the mess of comments.

Re: Meter Man - No, I honestly don't think that's the character's name, it might simply be that it is not known yet and thus they didn't have anything to go on at the time so they only posted that as a description. Seems like they are going to play up the mystery identity thing so posting the actual name would be self-defeating.
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Lastly, we did wonder whether this was being floated as a false flag to generate 'testing the waters' chatter, and I didn't think so as it is much too late to change anything. My suspicions were confirmed when someone else posted this:

I'm gonna try (my hardest) to not get too involved in all the scuttlebutt this early in the game over a few hand posters. I'm patiently waiting until we've seen more before making any snap judgements. I really am. Lordy, we still got 7 months to go. But my Spidey-Sense is certainly tingling in the back of my head & I'm starting to feel I understand why Tom Shippey left this project so early on.

I'll simply say these things for now;

1) From what I've heard--which isn't much--most (though maybe not all 100%) of those hand poster-to-character coalitions are indeed true.
2) I've spoken to someone who has already seen a trailer & given their position, I believe them. They would not go into ANY specifics, and I didn't press the issue. What was told to me "on how the show will be accepted" by the fans depends greatly on one's POV: If you're more of a hardcore, Tolkien-lore dogmatic individual, you may have issues. (I'm putting that mildly.) If you're more of a casual LOTR fan or one who subscribes to having "modern day sensibilities" injected into your 75+ year old stories (think diversity, flawless females, many new non-canonical characters & situations, etc.) then you'll probably be overjoyed with what you see.

The person I spoke with did not know when WE will be seeing this first trailer, but if the timing of the release of these posters is an indicator & knowing there is a finished trailer (of some sorts) already in the can, it doesn't take a genius to GUESS it could possibly air during the Super Bowl. (Next Sunday). So...we shall see what happens, I suppose.


Lastly, why is Galadriel wearing armour? I would venture that her book-lore depiction in the LOTR movies of a soft-spoken woman that wears a dress and sits beside her husband at home is not a good rolemodel for young women. Thus, in this new series, she will likely wear armour, wield a weapon, a kick all sorts of Morgoth ass?
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Re: The Rings Of Power

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Valkrist wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 7:23 am Lastly, we did wonder whether this was being floated as a false flag to generate 'testing the waters' chatter, and I didn't think so as it is much too late to change anything. My suspicions were confirmed when someone else posted this:

I'm gonna try (my hardest) to not get too involved in all the scuttlebutt this early in the game over a few hand posters. I'm patiently waiting until we've seen more before making any snap judgements. I really am. Lordy, we still got 7 months to go. But my Spidey-Sense is certainly tingling in the back of my head & I'm starting to feel I understand why Tom Shippey left this project so early on.

I'll simply say these things for now;

1) From what I've heard--which isn't much--most (though maybe not all 100%) of those hand poster-to-character coalitions are indeed true.
2) I've spoken to someone who has already seen a trailer & given their position, I believe them. They would not go into ANY specifics, and I didn't press the issue. What was told to me "on how the show will be accepted" by the fans depends greatly on one's POV: If you're more of a hardcore, Tolkien-lore dogmatic individual, you may have issues. (I'm putting that mildly.) If you're more of a casual LOTR fan or one who subscribes to having "modern day sensibilities" injected into your 75+ year old stories (think diversity, flawless females, many new non-canonical characters & situations, etc.) then you'll probably be overjoyed with what you see.

The person I spoke with did not know when WE will be seeing this first trailer, but if the timing of the release of these posters is an indicator & knowing there is a finished trailer (of some sorts) already in the can, it doesn't take a genius to GUESS it could possibly air during the Super Bowl. (Next Sunday). So...we shall see what happens, I suppose.


Lastly, why is Galadriel wearing armour? I would venture that her book-lore depiction in the LOTR movies of a soft-spoken woman that wears a dress and sits beside her husband at home is not a good rolemodel for young women. Thus, in this new series, she will likely wear armour, wield a weapon, a kick all sorts of Morgoth ass?
Yes, I have assumed since I read it that it will not be called Meteor-Man (in superhero plan) and that it was an internal provicional or descriptive name.

For me, the problem is the fact that it arrives in a meteor... it is something that I do not it fits with the Tolkien world. I seem to remember that the only meteorite named in Tolkien's work is from which the metal is extracted to forge the Anglachel sword and its twin, which is realistic, but nothing about meteorites in which people fall... and I have no idea one way to represent that and not be ridiculous. How does it arrive in a meteorite, crash into the ground and survive? Or is the meteorite a capsule like Superman's? The problem I find is not the name, it is the situation they describe.

We'll see how they show that without it being like Goku crashing into a mountain or something out of Looney Tunes, where falling from great heights doesn't do any damage.

Maybe I'm taking it literally and it's something that doesn't show up, or I don't know.

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"Yeah, yeah, that's nice, gotta go" chuckles Wayne Knight as Dennis Nedry confronted by a dilophosaurus in his mad dash across Jurassic Park.

Or, how to sift something good, or at least reassuring, out of this.

If Galadriel is wearing the armor and bearing a dagger in the flight from Aman, I don't have a problem with that. Tolkien said she was eager to be gone and see wide new lands, and rule a realm of her own. Going off from the relative safety of Aman, you'd want to take measures to protect yourself, especially following after Feanor's crew, who just murdered many Elves . What I will say, though, is that if you're going into the far north, the last thing you want to wear is metal. It instantly becomes cold and makes you cold. In my job, I often wear steel-toed boots and in the winter, they are very cold, particularly if I have to walk through snow. And the steel is encased in leather, so it's in direct contact with neither me nor the environment. Interesting, though, if this bit about the ice crossing is legitimate, it is yet another First Age sequence in a production that is supposedly limited strictly to the Second Age.

Adar? Carine? I guess file this under "allowed to create new storyline/characters." I'd hope Adar were not a brother of Galadriel. Is it not enough that the House of Feanor is full of bad guys?

Meteor Man.... If this guy fell from the sky, or is assumed to have fallen from the sky due to lack of any other explanation of his origin, it's one thing, but if he literally arrived in a meteor, you've got to ask whether we are adapting Tolkien or HG Wells.

The Super Bowl theory for trailer release is a popular and logical one. If it holds true, in a week we may have a better idea about some of these things, unless it is short and/or has no dialog.

Tom Shippey's departure.... I never did hear exactly how that came about. Everyone is probably bound by non-disclosure clauses. But if even a few of these rumors are fact, he'd have walked early. He's a true believer in the Word of Tolkien, and I'd imagine if his name is still associated with the production in any way, it would be because he didn't have the power to make them remove it.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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The Meteor Man thing to me reeks of forced invention for the sole purpose of introducing a character that possibly has a speech or hearing impairment as a way of a nod toward the representation of actors with physical disability needing more representation. It's a good move except for the nonsense description of how he appears on the scene. Are they sure they've read the same books we did, or is there much more than meets the eye here? Did the Hobbits that find him badly misinterpret the method of his arrival and what would they know about 'meteors' anyway? The whole thing just sounds so insanely outlandish that I can't reconcile it with anything that makes sense. I also can't stand how whoever wrote that blurb is trying so hard to convince us that this is going to be an exciting storyline. It's a bit sad, to be honest. Also, a blue wizard? The Istari arrive much later than when this series is supposed to take place, but there's so many characters from different eras being thrown about as is that I no longer know what to think.

Galadriel: fair point about protection while crossing the ice, and armour would be a logical choice considering the murderous Feanoreans are just ahead of her. As for metal and cold, weren't Tolkien's Elves supposed to be more resilient to temperature extremes or did I imagine that? When Legolas is in the Pass of Caradhras, I got the sense that it wasn't just the snow depth that didn't bother him.

Adar: why? Just why? The House of Finarfin is one thing that is beyond well established, even if one counts Gil-galad bouncing in and out of it - was he Orodreth's son or Fingon's? So, here we are creating a whole new character. Fine, but why make him the sibling of another about whom we know so much about already, making this addition that much more confusing and needless? Reminds me of Spock suddenly having a sister after 50 years of established canon. Furthermore, he's Sauron's lieutenant? Ok, some Elves did turn out to be a little on the rotten side (Feanor, Caranthir, Curufin, Eol, Maeglin, etc), but to go so far as have one be Sauron's actual second? I find that more than a little hard to swallow. It has no precedent anywhere, and I'm already imagining the family dynamics and forced melodrama that will lead to the rift between Galadriel and this new brother that justifies a betrayal of his nature too horrific to contemplate by anyone that understands Tolkien's Elves. Yes, Feanor had a black heart, many of his family did. Even Thingol was a bit of a jerk at times, but that had more to with obsession for the Silmarils and innate arrogance. Never did they contemplate allying themselves with the enemy to achieve their goals. Adar makes no sense to me and forces my mind to reject the concept outright.

Carine I can take or leave. The story does need more female representation and there's little we know of Elendil's family beyond him and his two sons. His wife isn't even named and we're not even sure if she made it to ME, so if he had a daughter, I find that very plausible. Carine is an example of how a new character can work, but not if she is a gender-swapped Anarion. There I draw the line. But I use her as an example to contrast where an invented character might work versus something like this Adar.
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Olorin wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:20 am We had two threads on basically the same topic, the weapons and so forth from the new series. I merged them. This was my first time doing this under phpBB, so unfortunately I merged the senior thread into the junior thread instead of vice versa. Apologies to Jash for that, but at least you still have the first post.

I moved the merged thread out of Media (but left a redirect), as that forum is for discussing the shows, movies, etc. themselves, to the New Products forum, where the original thread was, as the discussion seems to be mostly about the weapons and costumes. Then again, none of these are announced yet as buyable replicas, so perhaps this thread should be under our standalone thread on the show itself? That's called LOTR TV Adaptation and located under the Tolkien forum. I'll let the other admins weigh in on whether we should merge this thread into the original show thread. My vote would be yes, but I don't know how many feet I want to yank the rug from under.

The original show thread was created before it was known what the series would cover, let along what its name would be, hence the generic title. Unfortunately it's about impossible to rename a thread (topic, in phpBB parlance). You can rename it, but it only renames the topic and leaves the old name on the individual posts. Hey, it's freeware, so kind of hard to complaint too much, right? Supposedly an extension was in development to address this, but that was in 2016 and I didn't see anything newer than that. If Guardian Wolf has any insights into this, it would definitely be helpful to clean up some of our old thread titles.

And thus with everyone now thoroughly confused, I'll be on my way.
I apologize to you, Jash and everyone else for making a mess by creating that Rings Of Power tread... I just thought that since we are nowhere close to having products/replicas from the new show it would be better to place those posters in a new tread about the show itself in Media part of the forum... Sorry
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift - that's why they call it the present."

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EagleFriend wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 10:52 am I apologize to you, Jash and everyone else for making a mess by creating that Rings Of Power tread... I just thought that since we are nowhere close to having products/replicas from the new show it would be better to place those posters in a new tread about the show itself in Media part of the forum... Sorry
No problem.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Valkrist wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 10:32 am Carine I can take or leave. The story does need more female representation and there's little we know of Elendil's family beyond him and his two sons. His wife isn't even named and we're not even sure if she made it to ME, so if he had a daughter, I find that very plausible. Carine is an example of how a new character can work, but not if she is a gender-swapped Anarion. There I draw the line.
Me too. I don't mind the roles in Foundation that were gender swapped, as one of them was no more than a cipher and the other is onstage only for two stories. And in a set of books where you can imagine everyone being middle-aged white guys, it was great to have two smart, resourceful black women.

But Anarion.... OK, admittedly, he is also little more than a cipher, but this is Tolkien we're talking about. No swapping! Jackson put a black woman into the crowd scene in Laketown and that made perfect sense. Laketown was a commercial center. But to change an existing character....I think they would violate the strictures laid down by the Estate. Then again, what is the Estate going to do? Shut the production down? While they could, I doubt they would.

After my earlier comments about Tom Shippey, I wondered, what did he think of Jackson's movies? I googled it and the results were...inconclusive (though I did not do an extensive search). There is a lengthy transcript of a talk he gave on the subject (https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/ ... nd-message), which I was skimming liberally toward the end after it became clear he was never going to say flatout whether he liked it or not. He definitely approved of some of Jackson's storytelling choices, noting how it would have been a poison pill to follow Tolkien precisely in certain areas, but he also notes the movies were "teenagered" by making Mary (as the transcription would have it) and Pippin bigger screwups than they were in the books, and things of that nature. The two most amusing anecdotes were waiting to see his name in the credits ("right after the guy who empties the Porta Potties") and his gentle mocking of purists vying for dominance by who can spot the most trivial change. He himself notes Aragorn would have been 88, not 87, when he revealed his age to Eowyn, having just had birthday two days prior.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I still remember sitting in New Line Cinemas office way back in 1999 waiting to see what the weapons from the films were going to look like. We were just entertaining the idea for the movie license, but wanted to see what they were going to look like before signing anything. As a huge LOTR fan, I was not really expecting much or getting my hopes up than any of it would look like Tolkien's Middle-earth, or the look of Middle-earth I had in my head. I was fully expecting to be mildy disappointed.

There were three huge 3-ring binders on the table for us to look through. The New Line rep told us we had 15 minutes to look through them and left the room. I was expecting hokey sword and sorcery Dungeons and Dragons fluff, but as soon as I saw what the costumes, armor, and sets looked like I knew this was going to be something special. Then I got to the weapons and my excitement grew even more. Not boring and plain looking historical weapons. Not over the top fantasy weapons (for the most part). They had made weapons that looked both functional and like they came from distinct cultures with different histories. They were not the type of weapons I had imagined, but they looked like they came from Middle-earth to me, and I really, really liked them. I could tell which swords were which - Sting, Glamdring, Narsil - from the first glance, before I was even told.

Anyway, it was an exciting moment that I still remember vividly. That's when I had the feeling those films were going to work. When I saw the weapons in these images for the Amazon show my initial feeling was what I thought I was going to have before I ever saw the LOTR weapons - mild disappointment. That has not changed, but I'll wait and give the show a chance. Nothing I have seen or heard about the show so far has given me hopes that this is going to work, but we have seen very little so far. What little I can see of the costumes looks good.
KRDS

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Nasnandos wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 6:02 pm I still remember sitting in New Line Cinemas office way back in 1999 waiting to see what the weapons from the films were going to look like. We were just entertaining the idea for the movie license, but wanted to see what they were going to look like before signing anything. As a huge LOTR fan, I was not really expecting much or getting my hopes up than any of it would look like Tolkien's Middle-earth, or the look of Middle-earth I had in my head. I was fully expecting to be mildy disappointed.

There were three huge 3-ring binders on the table for us to look through. The New Line rep told us we had 15 minutes to look through them and left the room. I was expecting hokey sword and sorcery Dungeons and Dragons fluff, but as soon as I saw what the costumes, armor, and sets looked like I knew this was going to be something special. Then I got to the weapons and my excitement grew even more. Not boring and plain looking historical weapons. Not over the top fantasy weapons (for the most part). They had made weapons that looked both functional and like they came from distinct cultures with different histories. They were not the type of weapons I had imagined, but they looked like they came from Middle-earth to me, and I really, really liked them. I could tell which swords were which - Sting, Glamdring, Narsil - from the first glance, before I was even told.

Anyway, it was an exciting moment that I still remember vividly. That's when I had the feeling those films were going to work. When I saw the weapons in these images for the Amazon show my initial feeling was what I thought I was going to have before I ever saw the LOTR weapons - mild disappointment. That has not changed, but I'll wait and give the show a chance. Nothing I have seen or heard about the show so far has given me hopes that this is going to work, but we have seen very little so far. What little I can see of the costumes looks good.
Kit - you've summed up exactly how I felt looking at them too. Far too close to the wilder 'Hobbit' stuff, and too close to 'Warcraft'. They nailed it with the first 3 films, it seems a little of the magic has since gone.

I'm still telling myself these characters are actually the Valar, from a prologue scene. This would justify the wild fantasy look, as they are gods. Still hoping all the 'worldly' beings wield objects much closer to the original 3 films.

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Yeah, I decided to give it a rest over there for a while, and now you've made me break my word to someone by posting here as well on this. :huh: :club:

Look, I have zero problems with well-thought out counters to my views and opinions, but when they start to take on a personal tone, it's time to bow out and get away from all the noise. Our forum may be more quiet than most, but it make me appreciate the thoughtful discourse here all the more. :thumbs_up

The photos from today... well, not impressed, I'm sorry to say. Not one bit. Again, all I could think of when looking at them was Game of Thrones/Witcher/Wheel of Time/Elfstones of Shannara/etc, and I'm listing those in ever-decreasing quality. Not a single image there invokes Middle-earth for me, except perhaps the male dwarf (Durin?), which perfectly nails the look in terms of continuity.

I mean, Galadriel with full plate armour and sword, walking through what looks like a human settlement on fire? Listen, I get how desperately in need this tale is of empowered women. I've mentioned before how the way that Galadriel is depicted in LOTR (except maybe for her brief stint as the Dark Queen), isn't exactly a paragon of inspiration for young women, because... well, I guess she's not killing people, delivering witty quips, and showing how badass she is? That direction changed in the Hobbit movies, and it was not a good look for me because it began to alter the perception of the character into this warrior queen that she never was. Yes, we are told in the books how she used Nenya to throw down the walls of Dol Guldur, but not that she was powerful enough to make Sauron run like a frightened schoolgirl. In this new series, we appear to have Warrior Queen Galadriel, confidently striding through a scene of conflict (conjecture here, but almost a given), and ready to cut down any smarmy male that so much as looks at her sideways. Why? Because that's what they think is what audiences want to see, not because it has anything to do with the way she was written by Tolkien, which is a far cry from what is being previewed here. I'm already predicting that Galadriel will be, in some similar ways, the new Daenerys Targaryen of this show.

For the bazillionth time, I don't have a problem with inventing new characters to fit the narrative that they want to tell, just don't change established characters so wildly that they become barely recognizable caricatures of their actual and former selves.

I have been reading the comments over there (FoU), and I agree with those saying that the inclusion of black elves only makes sense if they are presented as a self-contained culture within the overall concept of 'elvendom'. To sprinkle them liberally wherever you please (that goes for Asian elves as well) simply to fill diversity and inclusiveness quotas feels unnatural with PJ's movies in the rearview mirror. Again, it's not that it's altogether outlandish to imagine that elves with such characteristics exist - if humans like the Haradrim and Easterlings look different from the men of the West, then why not the elves as well? However, geographical and historical considerations should be taken into account, and the sudden appearance of such racially-distinct elves has to make sense, not just brushed under the rug as pretending that they were there all along. I get this series owes no debt of continuity to the PJ movies, but they, along with the books, have a left an indelible notion of how certain things should appear, not the least of which is Tolkien's own background and the time in which he wrote those books. I feel those things can be respected and acknowledged while moving forward into today and explaining how and why there are black elves, and where they've been all this time. Or maybe one of the writers read the term 'Avari', saw that it translated to mean 'Dark Elves', and took that to a whole other level of literal interpretation?
This Space for Rent

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I think for the next however many months, I dont want to see any pictures, read any articles, etc. I will just watch the show. All I've seen so far is a few pics without any context and 50% of the internet spewing vile nastiness. The show might suck, it might be awesome... it might be a wonderful experience that isn't a 100% faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work, even it was 100% faithful, it could still suck.

Just going to have to wait and see for myself
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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BladeCollector wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 11:03 am I think for the next however many months, I dont want to see any pictures, read any articles, etc. I will just watch the show. All I've seen so far is a few pics without any context and 50% of the internet spewing vile nastiness. The show might suck, it might be awesome... it might be a wonderful experience that isn't a 100% faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work, even it was 100% faithful, it could still suck.

Just going to have to wait and see for myself
The only wise thing to do, in all seriousness.

The internet can really be a curse sometimes. I liken it to Pandora's Box, and I'm pretty sure everyone understands the analogy.
This Space for Rent

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I took a quick look at the pictures and I am not impressed either positively or negatively. I thought, well, those look interesting. I haven't seen a whole lot of other fantasy so I don't have a whole lot to compare them to.

As for what sort of story they tell, since the contract supposedly expressly forbids them from contradicting anything Tolkien wrote, my concern is mainly whether the invented stuff will overwhelm the "authentic" stuff. I don't want it to be like Foundation, where only about 5% of it is from the books.

I read very little of the Vanity Fair article. The impression I got is there's going to be, at least initially, a strong emphasis on happenings in the First Age. How that squares with being limited to the Second Age, I do not know. Maybe they have an episode or so to set things up.

At the end of the day, I'm like Blade Collector. I just want to see the thing and figure out if I like it. I hope it's good. If it's not, I'll live. It seems like life is so fraught, especially these last few years, that I find it increasingly difficult to get too exercised over entertainment.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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Sorry, but I can't get past the "Diversity for the sake of diversity" part.
I have to agree with whomever it was at FoU that said have diversity among the elves (or any race of ME) is fine so long as it's consistent, that is, like a tribe.
You can have a bunch of elves/dwarves/men etc that are black or Asian or Native American [whatever] so long as the entire group (tribe) is that same ethnicity.

Tolkien had different "races" of orcs and they all stuck to their respective group/tribe.
You had the Uruk-hai, who looked different and WERE different from the orc (or goblin) "maggots" of the Misty Mountains who looked different and were different from the orcs of Mordor. And none of those groups played well together.

This practice of "Oh we can stick and Asian here, and a black over here and a Samoan there and, oh, I guess we have to have a few crackers, but they can be gay and female" is nothing more than the writers/producers/Bezos parading their "woke" credentials.
They are shoehorning modern sensibilities into multiple ancient cultures. It's blatantly anachronistic and it doesn't work.

As someone else on FoU stated, very very few of the pics, whether of people or places really evokes a sense of ME.
Its got elves and dwarves and [maybe?] Hobbits (!) and the all the recognizable place names but it has nothing to do with Tolkien's ME.
I absolutely will not be watching it.

I'm going to a Super Bowl party where there will be at least a half dozen people who are readers of JRRT.
I don't know if they plan to watch the trailer, but I can say with certainty that I will be in another room (with my chips and salsa and beer...and the dog.)
Last edited by Deimos on Fri Feb 11, 2022 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

"Eternity is an awful long time, especially towards the end."

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.
It also depends on what sort of person you are.” -- CSL

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The photos actually made me a little more interested but I was very much against this. I agree with the above. I think representation is important but it should never ever be just to fill a quota or appear to be “woke”. It should make sense within the narrative.

The photo of Galadriel, though it has ruffled feathers here, is what makes me interested and also the photos of Elrond. Though they’re different to what we got in Jackson’s middle Earth movies there’s something that makes me interested.

I’m now more in the camp of wait and see as opposed to being so against it:
"All those moments will be lost, in time... like tears, in the rain..."

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Well, thanks everyone for commenting! To be honest, I feel much more relieved now that I saw some opinions similar to my own... I was starting to believe that nobody was seeing what I saw :shock: You have expressed my thoughts better than I could have done.
I like to remain cautiously optimistic about this series, because I sincerely want it to be good! But can't help but notice some aspects that I find completely unnecessary in what has been revealed so far :huh:

I usually enjoy Matt's comments on things, and I think he spokes well about this subject too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO8RiRhWII4
I do not share all of his excitement, but more of his fears.

Anyway, the official trailer is coming this Sunday and it might be good (once again, I really hope so). The first episode is airing in less than 7 months, it's going to be intense until then! I hope the show delivers and doesn't tear Tolkien's fandom apart...

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Lindir wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 9:35 pm I agree with the above. I think representation is important but it should never ever be just to fill a quota or appear to be “woke”. It should make sense within the narrative.
Unfortunately, that one element takes this right out of the both the Tolkien book universe and the movie universe for me. Tolkien already did the hard work of creating carefully fleshed out world building and history for Middle-earth. All they had to do was drop their made up story and characters into that. I suppose it's possible that they will make an effort explain this by alluding to separate cultures for specific races in the show narrative, but the exec producer in that VF article said they are doing it because it's “only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like”. It should reflect Tolkien's world, not our world.

Oh well. I guess we will see, but this is Amazon. They have already proven that they are full on board with the woke-everything-is-a-melting-pot rules for casting and sexuality, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense for the material. They just did that with the Wheel of Time show, and it made me tune out before finishing it.
KRDS

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Deimos wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 6:14 pm Sorry, but I can't get past the "Diversity for the sake of diversity" part.
I have to agree with whomever it was at FoU that said have diversity among the elves (or any race of ME) is fine so long as it's consistent, that is, like a tribe.
You can have a bunch of elves/dwarves/men etc that are black or Asian or Native American [whatever] so long as the entire group (tribe) is that same ethnicity.

Tolkien had different "races" of orcs and they all stuck to their respective group/tribe.
You had the Uruk-hai, who looked different and WERE different from the orc (or goblin) "maggots" of the Misty Mountains who looked different and were different from the orcs of Mordor. And none of those groups played well together.

This practice of "Oh we can stick and Asian here, and a black over here and a Samoan there and, oh, I guess we have to have a few crackers, but they can be gay and female" is nothing more than the writers/producers/Bezos parading their "woke" credentials.
They are shoehorning modern sensibilities into multiple ancient cultures. It's blatantly anachronistic and it doesn't work.

As someone else on FoU stated, very very few of the pics, whether of people or places really evokes a sense of ME.
Its got elves and dwarves and [maybe?] Hobbits (!) and the all the recognizable place names but it has nothing to do with Tolkien's ME.
I absolutely will not be watching it.

I'm going to a Super Bowl party where there will be at least a half dozen people who are readers of JRRT.
I don't know if they plan to watch the trailer, but I can say with certainty that I will be in another room (with my chips and salsa and beer...and the dog.)
I agree with you. But I am clear that they will not and that we will see a hodgepodge of people of being different colors everywhere, without any logic... like in Two Rivers of WOT, which seemed more like a comopolitan modern city, than a medieval-style town.

Another thing that they put in the Vanity article and that makes me sad is that they condense the thousands of years of history of the second age in just one generation, just so as not to lose the human protagonists throughout the seasons... to me, it seems a missed opportunity to show what makes elves special, that they remain immutable in time while men are born and die. As they are going to do it, the only obvious difference between men and elves is going to be the pointy ears.

I will see the series for sure, just as I see many other fantasy series that will surely be worse than this one. But honestly, with each thing I see or read, my expectations lower...perhaps that is Amazon's advertising strategy, lowering the stratospheric expectations of true fans of Tolkien works so that later we see a series that will not go beyond mediocre.

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Nasnandos wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 3:31 am
Lindir wrote: Thu Feb 10, 2022 9:35 pm I agree with the above. I think representation is important but it should never ever be just to fill a quota or appear to be “woke”. It should make sense within the narrative.
Unfortunately, that one element takes this right out of the both the Tolkien book universe and the movie universe for me. Tolkien already did the hard work of creating carefully fleshed out world building and history for Middle-earth. All they had to do was drop their made up story and characters into that. I suppose it's possible that they will make an effort explain this by alluding to separate cultures for specific races in the show narrative, but the exec producer in that VF article said they are doing it because it's “only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like”. It should reflect Tolkien's world, not our world.

Oh well. I guess we will see, but this is Amazon. They have already proven that they are full on board with the woke-everything-is-a-melting-pot rules for casting and sexuality, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense for the material. They just did that with the Wheel of Time show, and it made me tune out before finishing it.
For me too, I already take it as a fantasy story from another world or a fan film.... I hope they make me change my mind but the truth is that I don't think so.

Doing these things in a world with such a rich mythology, where everything is described, with well-defined origins and genealogies, seems to me to be disrespectful to Tolkien's work. I guess it's the curse of the times we live in, where is more important the political agenda, looking good and that everyone feels represented in everything (although minutes before and minutes after they don't give a damn about what they are going to see), than doing things well respecting the author's work.

I'm so glad the original trilogies were made 20 years ago.

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I guess I can call myself a hypocrite, because I was going to stay out of this but here goes....

I think one thing people are forgetting is, people b*tched and moaned for LOTR and The Hobbit, just back in the late 90s/early 00s there wasnt the impact of social media as there is today. People where complaining that The Hobbit didnt look like LOTR with PJ at the helm, now people are complaining that this doesnt feel like PJ. Well this isnt PJ, everyone was ticked at PJ for the Hobbit, and to be honest, my less than 2 cents opinion, The Hobbit was a trash book that I had to force myself to finish. His other stuff had multiple versions, edited together from this that and the other from notes and scribbles. (Also, Tom Bombadil was a stupid character and PJ did a major service to the story by removing it and the the scouring of the shire *ducks and covers*)

I am by no means a Tolkien scholar, but it would be VASTLY impossible to stick to the Tolkien lore 100%, even if you stuck by only named characters, the world would be rather empty, you're going to tell me there's no room for invented characters because JRRT didnt write the name in a book?

Not to delve into political or social arguments, but if you look at this publicity stills and get upset because there's a black Elf or Asian human in middle earth because JRRT didnt SAY IT specifically, then I really dont know what to tell you.
XerachCruz wrote:

I'm so glad the original trilogies were made 20 years ago.
"Wokeness" didnt start within the last 20 years, its just become a political buzzword to stand against/be upset about change
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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I suppose I should just keep my mouth shut because I'm clearly a minority opinion here (absolutely no pun intended), but it seems like people are condemning this show on the basis of a few stills, without having seen any actual footage with dialog. There could be plausible reasons given why a darker Elf shows up amidst lighter ones. Or not! Honestly, if they make an effort of presenting some explanation, that draws more attention to that character, which I would think would simply further enrage those who are against wokeness. Not that I claim any understanding of the animus against it, anyway. All that "woke" means to me is that people may seem different, but we are all the same in that we deserve the same rights, respect, and dignity irrespective of our backgrounds or race.

And as to whether it reflects Tolkien's world, Tolkien did not describe every last detail of his world. He described some things in minute detail but others nearly not at all. I don't recall that he gave much of any physical description of Frodo. He did describe Gollum in The Hobbit as "darker than darkness," with occasional other references to being dark. Yet nobody made so much as a peep about Jackson's depiction of Gollum, because it fit in with how we envisioned him. It's said that we all create God in our own image, and it seems perhaps we create Gollum in our own image to some extent as well. And sure, it's easy to rationalize that the "darker than darkness" description is because Bilbo is seeing him in the near darkness of the cavern, or to use our later knowledge from LOTR that he is a Hobbit, and therefore just envision him as a Hobbit who has led a particularly rough life. Some people point to the description of Legolas' "dark head" silhouetted against the twilight during the Anduin journey as evidence that he had dark hair, despite the fact that even Edgar Winter would have a dark head when silhouetted against the twilight. Conversely, Legolas seems always to be depicted as blond in movies and art, while Tolkien actually presented Elves as primarily not blond, unless they were of the Vanyar or had some Vanyarin ancestry. But no one has inveighed against blond Legolas.

Beyond that, Tolkien's world is our world. Middle-earth is Europe. In known historic times, many different races or ethnic groups have swept back and forth across Europe, leaving descendants, cultural legacies, and orphans. Why should it be any different in the "further-back" history that is Tolkien's writings? There could be a hundred and one reasons why there's a sole dark Elf among the others. Getting all worked up about this in advance of seeing it is as if someone had said, "That FOTR trailer showed the Balrog as having wings! They didn't have wings! This is an outrage! Those bastards killed Kenny!" LOL.

All I'm saying is don't be so on the lookout for problems that you condemn a show or movie without having seen a second of it. There were all sorts of warning signs ahead of Jackson's movies. Yet all of us here watched them (even if we went in with our backs up) and at the end of the day loved them, warts and all. Again I will go back to what Blade Collector said yesterday and agree with him, and quote him here: "I think for the next however many months, I dont want to see any pictures, read any articles, etc. I will just watch the show. All I've seen so far is a few pics without any context and 50% of the internet spewing vile nastiness. The show might suck, it might be awesome... it might be a wonderful experience that isn't a 100% faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work, even it was 100% faithful, it could still suck. Just going to have to wait and see for myself" Sage words! And that's what I'm going to do. But hey, everybody is entitled to different opinions, so if you want to reject it out of hand, that's your right. You do you. I'm just saying you might end up depriving yourself of something you would really have liked.

End of rant, and probable end of my presence in this thread. I really want to try to go into this show unbiased, and that won't be possible hanging out here.
"Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten...."

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I was explaining to my wife, who has never read Tolkien, what all the controversy about the casting has been about and used this analogy.

Say someone makes a historical drama movie or tv series about a specific tribe of Aboriginal people, from long before Europeans arrived in Australia, say 20,000 years ago. They make the landscape, clothing, boats, buildings, et cetera, all look period correct for what we think those things look like. They cast a actors that look and talk like what we think those people looked and talked like, but diversify it a bit by throwing in a white Irish actor, an American actor from California, a few Japanese actors, et cetera. Don't worry about the accents all being different and not representative of what that real isolated culture would have look like. Now do the same with a historical drama about an ancient Japanese culture, or a native American culture from 10,000 years ago.

That's not even trying to be historically accurate or representative of those people. Of course, in this day and age, cancel culture would probably set out to destroy the show and those actors for cultural appropriation before it even aired.

Tolkien's Middle-earth is just a fantasy pre-history of England, but it has carefully crafted world building and history that feels like a real historical place. For many Tolkien fans, trashing that is akin to the examples I just described. That said, sometimes it works. Ridley Scott does this kind of thing all the time with the casting in his historical dramas. He does not even worry about trying to have consistent accents. I just watched Ridley's film The Last Duel. It's a French period drama, but three of the leads are not French and speak with plain American accents and dialect. Ridley did the same thing with his first movie, The Duellists. Both are still great movies.
KRDS

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BladeCollector wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 4:24 am I guess I can call myself a hypocrite, because I was going to stay out of this but here goes....

I think one thing people are forgetting is, people b*tched and moaned for LOTR and The Hobbit, just back in the late 90s/early 00s there wasnt the impact of social media as there is today. People where complaining that The Hobbit didnt look like LOTR with PJ at the helm, now people are complaining that this doesnt feel like PJ. Well this isnt PJ, everyone was ticked at PJ for the Hobbit, and to be honest, my less than 2 cents opinion, The Hobbit was a trash book that I had to force myself to finish. His other stuff had multiple versions, edited together from this that and the other from notes and scribbles. (Also, Tom Bombadil was a stupid character and PJ did a major service to the story by removing it and the the scouring of the shire *ducks and covers*)

I am by no means a Tolkien scholar, but it would be VASTLY impossible to stick to the Tolkien lore 100%, even if you stuck by only named characters, the world would be rather empty, you're going to tell me there's no room for invented characters because JRRT didnt write the name in a book?

Not to delve into political or social arguments, but if you look at this publicity stills and get upset because there's a black Elf or Asian human in middle earth because JRRT didnt SAY IT specifically, then I really dont know what to tell you.
XerachCruz wrote:

I'm so glad the original trilogies were made 20 years ago.
"Wokeness" didnt start within the last 20 years, its just become a political buzzword to stand against/be upset about change
I don't compare him to the PJ movies, I compare him to what he says in the books. And I understand that they create new characters, that's not something that bothers me at all, the second age would be pretty empty if they didn't, as you well say.

In addition, I was on that internet when people complained from PJ movies, and most of the complaints seemed disproportionate to me, as do most of them now ... but now I do see some complaints that are justified, since the changes are much more drastic now... like compressing 3000 years into a single generation, that's a madness.

At that time I understood the changes, it was logical that TomBombadir be eliminated because he is a character who would look like he somehow does not fit the plot and would be ridiculous on screen. There were many changes, but I think they were all more respectful than some now.

Clearly this series is aimed at the casual audience that has ever seen the PJ movies, and not true fans who have read and loved the books.

And I have not said that it bothers me to see Asian or black actors in the series, it seems very good to me, it only bothers me that they change the appearance of the elves, omitting how Tolkien described them, because he did describe them with white skin. On the other hand, it doesn't bother me that there are humans, dwarfs or black hobbits, because there, although it doesn't mention it, there is no contradiction.

I have simply commented that it does not seem credible to me that they are too mixed in a small town. It is better that all the Hobbits that appear in a group are all black, or Asian, it does not matter... what is not credible is that they do as in two rivers in WOT and there are people mixed randomly even within the same family. Because it is a small medieval town, made up of a few families, not a big city where people from all over the world come and go. The WOT merchant, who was black, is the only one who did not clash with me, because he was passing through. It's just the lack of consistency that bothers me... it's like they put white actors as Wakandans in Black Panther, just to meet a quota, it doesn't make sense with the background of the story.

That's what I was referring to 20 years ago, because those are things that today, for the sake of inclusion, they do with current fantasy series and that are clearly anachronistic things, just like including hairstyles or modern makeup for attrack young people and that everyone feels represented. With these things they only manage to reduce the credibility of the setting, take you out of the story...sometimes in current fantastic series it seems that an actor is about to take a smartphone out of his pocket. :D

And another thing that I don't like about today is that if you comment on something that is interpreted minimally against what is politically correct, they immediately treat you as racist or homophobic without paying attention to your reasoning.

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XerachCruz wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 6:00 am
And another thing that I don't like about today is that if you comment on something that is interpreted minimally against what is politically correct, they immediately treat you as racist or homophobic without paying attention to your reasoning.
People can disagree all they want, but if someone (not specifically you) need to throw around say a term of "wokeness" because you disagree with it, then said person might need to take a break and look at "wokeness" across history.

Like I will be the first person to say this TV show sucks, if it, in fact, does suck. But why complain now over some stills and publicity shots, thats what I dont get. Spend months getting all worked up over something is going to hurt the experience of seeing it for the first time (at least for me). Even if I think something does suck, I still watch it because I feel I need to be part of the overarching story. Like I like star wars, but I think personally think Mandalorian is about as exciting as watching paint dry and Boba Fett should have been left in the sarlacc pit

I used to be like that, but as I've grown into an old man, I just dont have the energy to "pre complain" about something. People have brought up wheel of time in this threat. I am new to Wheel of Time, I am currently on the 6th book. Wheel of Time, the TV show doesnt really bother me, for one reason, its an adaptation. It takes elements from a book series and makes a TV show from those elements, if you hate the adaptation, awesome, the books are still around. I take it for what it is, I personally enjoyed the show, there are a couple things I was disappointed that were left out/changed. For instance, that first glimpse of the Myrddraal Rand got in the first part of the first book, I really would have loved to see that on screen. But I get the change, they were trying to keep the "dragon reborn" a mystery in the TV show, whereas in the book, it was at the forefront that Rand was going to be the dragon reborn. Now if they would have actually changed the Dragon Reborn to any other character, to me that is a shift in the overall story and I would have been more disappointed.

I guess what I am getting at is, books are the books and adaptation are the adaptations, they can coexist, and if one taints the other for you, then you still have the original. (I use the word you in the general sense, its not directed at any one particular "you" in this thread or forums.)

As a last example, while I avoid working while at work. I watched the movie Ready Player One when it came out, I liked it as a movie, it was aight. I read the book not too long ago and I am thinking "was I drunk when I watched movie, I dont remember any of this" so I rewatched the movie, and lo and behold there were LOTS of changes. I kind of chalked those changes up to just the exorbitant cost that would be needed for some of the licenses to show in the movie. If they make Ready Player Two into a movie, I am sure there's a LOT that would have to be left out. But now I am rambling at probably need to get back to work.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: The Rings Of Power

99
BladeCollector wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 6:22 am
XerachCruz wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 6:00 am
And another thing that I don't like about today is that if you comment on something that is interpreted minimally against what is politically correct, they immediately treat you as racist or homophobic without paying attention to your reasoning.
People can disagree all they want, but if someone (not specifically you) need to throw around say a term of "wokeness" because you disagree with it, then said person might need to take a break and look at "wokeness" across history.

Like I will be the first person to say this TV show sucks, if it, in fact, does suck. But why complain now over some stills and publicity shots, thats what I dont get. Spend months getting all worked up over something is going to hurt the experience of seeing it for the first time (at least for me). Even if I think something does suck, I still watch it because I feel I need to be part of the overarching story. Like I like star wars, but I think personally think Mandalorian is about as exciting as watching paint dry and Boba Fett should have been left in the sarlacc pit

I used to be like that, but as I've grown into an old man, I just dont have the energy to "pre complain" about something. People have brought up wheel of time in this threat. I am new to Wheel of Time, I am currently on the 6th book. Wheel of Time, the TV show doesnt really bother me, for one reason, its an adaptation. It takes elements from a book series and makes a TV show from those elements, if you hate the adaptation, awesome, the books are still around. I take it for what it is, I personally enjoyed the show, there are a couple things I was disappointed that were left out/changed. For instance, that first glimpse of the Myrddraal Rand got in the first part of the first book, I really would have loved to see that on screen. But I get the change, they were trying to keep the "dragon reborn" a mystery in the TV show, whereas in the book, it was at the forefront that Rand was going to be the dragon reborn. Now if they would have actually changed the Dragon Reborn to any other character, to me that is a shift in the overall story and I would have been more disappointed.

I guess what I am getting at is, books are the books and adaptation are the adaptations, they can coexist, and if one taints the other for you, then you still have the original. (I use the word you in the general sense, its not directed at any one particular "you" in this thread or forums.)

As a last example, while I avoid working while at work. I watched the movie Ready Player One when it came out, I liked it as a movie, it was aight. I read the book not too long ago and I am thinking "was I drunk when I watched movie, I dont remember any of this" so I rewatched the movie, and lo and behold there were LOTS of changes. I kind of chalked those changes up to just the exorbitant cost that would be needed for some of the licenses to show in the movie. If they make Ready Player Two into a movie, I am sure there's a LOT that would have to be left out. But now I am rambling at probably need to get back to work.
I have never said that the series sucks or is going to be terrible. I haven't seen it yet to comment on that, I'm just saying that from what has been shown, I have the impression that they are going to make the same mistakes as in other current fantastic series. Anachronistic errors that undermine credibility and can make it mediocre, when it could be magnificent... but only the time will tell.

I don't talk about it because it's something that really worries me, not like other problems in the real world that really affect me, such as work or personal problems... but I would like the serie to be the best possible to satisfy that mythology of Tolkien freak that I am.

I'm just trying to have a civil debate with people who love the same things like me around here, even if they have different points of view. I've tried it for the FB group, but I couldn't talk without being misunderstood and insulted (even if I'm very polite), and the threads end up being closed by the admins because you end up getting involved in a fight of other more radical people. Because no one there wants to hear the opinion of others, just yell at each other. Personally, it is difficult for me to answer in English, it takes me a long time to write an answer and I understand that it can lead to misunderstandings because I make mistakes in the translation, so I am considering not talking about anything on FB group. Just only see the collections and give likes.

I'll see the entire series for sure, and I know I'll like it, although I suspect I won't love it... but I hope I'm wrong. But I will surely see it complet, just as I am watching WOT and it entertains me.

And I can't comment on WOT as an adaptation, because I haven't read the books, I've only criticized it for its production (costumes, hairstyles, makeup...) and casting of extras (too cosmopolitan on occasions where it didn't make sense). Things that have taken me out of fiction at times, making me see the actors on the set and not the characters.

I understand what you mean by adaptations. But when you love the original work, you always want that when an adaptation is made, even if things are changed, the story is respected in the background and that it is taken with the seriousness and respect that you think it deserves... but in the end one is resigns oneself with what they do and enjoy it, it is not a reason to get angry or hate.

Re: The Rings Of Power

100
All very good points being voiced here, and all without the nastiness I'm seeing elsewhere. Just want to say thank you, and I love this place.

Olorin, I'm guessing you won't read this as you're headed for the hills, but while I completely get what you're saying, I still think it's possible to have discourse about this series before it airs so long as the opinions and being presented are done in a thoughtful way. I stopped posting at FoU because one particular individual became hell-bent on drowning out every other voice by out-shouting anyone he didn't agree with. It's one thing to have hope and enthusiasm for this show; it's altogether another when they cross the line into derogatory and constantly-challenging language on a personal level. I see none of that here, so I feel this thread is lessened by your absence. :(

Personally, I'm very much done with the casting issue. It was something that for me, was a given the moment this series was announced and I made myself accept it long ago. I posted above how I thought it should be done in a way that is in keeping both with the world that Tolkien created for us, and in a way that also reflects how cultures mingled throughout our own history. I give you the example of Durin looking like a Dwarf out of the PJ movies, and his wife being a person of colour. In his writings, Tolkien only really mentioned three of the seven Houses, and only the history of Durin's House is explored in any great detail. So, could one of those other four Houses be comprised of black Dwarves that lived far to the East or South? Absolutely. Is it strange than an underground-dwelling race would naturally develop that skin pigmentation? Uhmmm... no, but whatever. Dungeons and Dragons has black elves dwelling underground and no one really makes a fuss about that lack of logic. Anyway, if the story is (however invented it may be) that Durin marries a princess from one of these other Houses to cement an important alliance, that's great. Do I trust the writers to make that a point of plot exposition rather than expecting us to just accept that Durin's House has always been multiracial and that this marriage is nothing to fuss over because it happens all the time? Well, that's where my hope fades, because no, I don't have faith in them doing that. Am I jumping the gun by casting aspersions on something I haven't seen yet? Absolutely. Am I doing so based on a preponderance of evidence based on current trends in the entertainment industry? You bet I am. Given that, I'm not sure why it's such an awful thing to consider, and call others out because their hope gets worn down by a constant barrage of lousy reimaginings and reinterpretations of things we care about.

Like BC said, I agree with the thought that no matter how good or awful this turns out to be, the books are always there, existing in our own corner of the multiverse - inviolate and sacrosanct. But if the bait and lure for people to watch this is that it is based on those books, I think there can and should be a reasonable expectation that they will make a considerable attempt to cleave somewhat to that material, rather than cynically attaching a recognizable and bankable brand name as a way to sell their own undercooked stories and characters. I think this is why book fans get riled up - it's always a case of bait and switch, and like idiots, we keep believing that next time they'll get it right, then foam at the mouth when they fail (unsurprisingly) again.

But... moving onto to what is the final nail in this coffin for me, and something that XerachCruz has now mentioned twice but no one else has addressed. Whatever your feelings on black elves or Galadriel Warrior Princess, this one excerpt from the article in Vanity Fair is what I simply cannot reconcile with any desire to watch this adaptation. And again, I maintain that it is perfectly valid to make these assertions without seeing a single minute of footage because when these facts are voiced by the people making the show, how can you take it at anything other than face value? So, here's Exhibit A:

´In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”´

So, there you have it. 3000+ years of history are going to be told through the lens of a single generation. What does this mean for any hopes of a somewhat faithful adaptation? Well, basically that you should forget about it right there. It means that Elendil and Isildur are contemporaries of Celebrimbor, to use an example. It really does explain why Durin doesn't have a number next to his name either, or why Pharazon is not listed as Ar-Pharazon. It means that the forging of the Rings of Power and the Downfall of Numenor will be set apart by a few mere years. What I'm getting at, and this should be rather obvious, is that the compression of time forcefully removes the incredibly rich history of Middle-earth and minimizes the impact of those events on how entire generations of the peoples of Middle-earth and Numenor are affected and shaped. Things like the long process that corrupted nine kings of men into the Nazgul? Probably over and done with in the course of a couple of scenes because those characters (if they even appear) have to interact with a static cast rather than what would happen if they actually changed actors out every season to jump ahead a few centuries. Imagine going into the Appendices of LOTR, and taking all the listed events and lineages of the Second Age, and condensing and crowding them down to a time period of just a few years, assuming they apply minimal aging to all the human actors. That is what we are going to be presented with, and that's where I well and truly have to check out.

If that alone isn't enough to douse the fires of hope in anyone that was wanting this to be more than any other average fantasy series out there, there's this additional nugget:

The story begins with the wicked god Morgoth having been defeated and his apprentice, Sauron, has vanished. Galadriel is hunting down the last remnants of their collaborators who also killed her brother. Their series reportedly juggles 22 regulars and multiple storylines ranging from the dwarf mines of the Misty Mountains at their peak to the high politics of the elven kingdom of Lindon to the powerful Atlantis-like island Numenor. McKay also says don’t expect “Game of Thrones” levels of sex and violence as they aim to “make a show for everyone, for kids who are 11, 12, and 13, even though sometimes they might have to pull the blanket up over their eyes if it’s a little too scary.” They do admit the biggest deviation of the text will be some time compression of significant events. J.A. Bayona (“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”) helms the first two episodes of the series which debuts on September 2nd.

The takeaway? Great that they're making an effort to not engage in gratuitous content and disrespect Tolkien's material in that fashion. That was one of my earliest concerns and was gratified to read at least one positive in all that. However, if anyone that understands the character of Galadriel - even when one considers there are some gaps in her several millennia-long personal history - can still reconcile her with that synopsis given, then I'm afraid I'm not sure what books you read. With this context now, the photo of her in armour and sword begins to paint a clearer picture, as does the rumours of Adar being her brother who is also Sauron's main lieutenant. I honestly can't think of a more poorly written fan-fiction trash concept than this, if it indeed proves true. It really just tells me that these writers don't understand the source material at all, or worse, simply don't care. It leaves me thinking that this show will have an elven woman character named Galadriel in it, and that's where the similarity to what Tolkien wrote ends. What we are being primed for is a Galadriel that is a revenge-driven assassin, hunting down and killing all the baddies that wronged her family. I can't think of anything more generic that doesn't feel like it's been lifted out of two dozen recent Hollywood movies than this.

Anyhow... that's brings my particular rant to a close. I feel exhausted and drained and have no one to blame myself for how much of my energy and time this has consumed over the past week for me. It's stupid really, and I ask myself, why do I care? I keep going back to the whole "we'll always have the books" argument, but then I realize that what I am truly lamenting is that there is a whole new generation of people out there for whom their first experience with Tolkien and Middle-earth will be this series. Same thing happened with the PJ movies, though to a far less egregious extent, and I recall several conversations I had where I explained how and why things were different, and if they did enjoy the movies, then they should give the books a try because the movies are not the complete, true story. With this series, that mountain has become as tall as Everest because there is no precise set of books to point to, and you can't teach someone how to fully appreciate Tolkien - you have to put the effort in yourself. Anyone that does not know and watches this for what it is may well dismiss Tolkien as some teenage drama pulp hack writer, and can we truly blame them?

For me, that's the real crime here.
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