Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power SPOILER discussion

It looks fine… Some parts looks very TV-y though, but, I guess it’s a TV show, so

Hey, as long as it’s not as bad as that Wheel of Time show…

I like that Tolkien used Welsh so heavily in his work and the elf and dwarf leads in this show are Morfydd Clark and Owain Arthur.

Dragon power!

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DavidM

Also, I know there’s a lot of whining about this show from the usual purist/anit-woke crowds, but both of the latest trailers look fine to me, except for a few shots here and there where the lighting looked super flat and TV-esque… Some costumes looked better than others too… but other than that it looks like they’re at least trying, and it looks like they’re pouring a ton of money into it… so even if the show ain’t the greatest thing ever, it looks at least worth a watch.

Yeah, it probably won’t come close to the LOTR movies, but what does really? Even the Hobbit trilogy fell woefully short… this lowkey looks miles better than those.

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Vikram

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

That’s true…it kinda sucks we’ll probably never get a real live action version of the Silmarillion.

Eh, I don’t know if it would make for a good movie, or even a trilogy of movies… the pacing of that books ain’t very adaptation-friendly, from what little I remember… but if this show succeeds, there’s no reason why they couldn’t green-light other shows set in different periods. It would probably work best as an anthology type of show, actually… so no reason why they couldn’t do a one-off season about another period of interest in the future (again, if this one succeeds and they manage to secure the rights), because in the case of the Silmarilion, I don’t think a chronological story is needed.

WARNING!!! Spoilers and orcs in this thread!!!

The first two episodes premiere Thursday, September 1, 2022 on Amazon Prime!

Here is a positive review: Roush Review: ‘The Rings of Power’ Restores Wonder to ‘Lord of the Rings’ Epic Fantasy

Having been sceptical about this show for a while now, I watched episode one and quite enjoyed it.

I think it has the feel of LotR down well and I think the casting is generally pretty good – Galadriel especially feels right, the pseudo-Hobbits all feel quite natural, and the ‘colourblind’ casting works for me here in the same way that it does for theatre – it didn’t feel like it broke the reality of the show or its world. I also felt like there were hints of the charm and gentle humour of the LotR movies at times (without them ever quite fully getting there.)

The one major weakness I would say is that aside from the first ten minutes, there’s little action here and it all feels like prologue/setup stuff. It feels like writers these days have forgotten the old rule of starting a story at the latest possible point you can, so (and this is true of the new GoT too) you get a whole opening episode to set the scene before the real story can start, rather than grabbing you with something really engaging immediately.

Really the final moments of this episode could have been the start of the show (with a bit of rearranging) and we could have learned about these characters along the way, rather than having their backstories laid out in what feels like an infodump first episode.

But maybe as a result of having low expectations, it was better than I thought it would be, and I’ll look forward to episode two later. I’m glad they dropped two at once as I think this could have felt like a bit of a limp opener on its own.

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njerry

Yeah they definitely left the ‘biggest TV budget of all time’ up on the screen. This show looks incredible.

“It’s another $100k to have Ents in the scene for 5 seconds for no reason at all but it looks cool”.

“Mr Bezos says it’s fine, go ahead”.

I’m quite enjoying a show like this without playing ‘spot the British character actor’ too. I normally do enjoy that, it’s my favourite part of Harry Potter movies but maybe a change and coming in with zero baggage isn’t bad. Apart from Lenny Henry I’ve not seen most of them in anything before, a couple in maybe one smallish part. How badass were Galadriel’s fighting moves?

I agree with Dave that the middle section was too talky, a tittle tweak here and there could have broken that up a bit.  It kind of got away with for me because it all looked so lovely.

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Vikram, Dave

Jon wrote:

As for the “diverse” casting… it doesn’t bother me all that much, but it’s a bit weird… I mean these are all pretty self-contained peoples and places, there’s no real reason why there’d be so much diversity in one place… so yeah it feels a bit forced, but whatever, the actors are doing their job well, that’s what matters.

It’s a complicated subject. Tolkien, who basically set up a template all fantasy follows to a degree, wanted to create a British mythology from scratch which was lacking in comparison the the Norse or Greek or Roman (it does exist with the likes of the Mabiniogion and Boewulf but is much smaller and less known). Albeit he never said it was British at any point in the text.

He published it in the 1950s which while after the arrival of the Emperor Windrush and earlier African settlements in dock cities like Liverpool and Cardiff the UK was still 99.5% white. So as far as I am aware he doesn’t specify any other races or skin colouration. It was just a default white presumption.

This in the modern era also plays into accent, even much later fantasy work will not tolerate ‘new world’ accents. In Game of Thrones you can sound like anything other than American, Australasian, South African. Spanish is fine (the Martells) because Spanish is old. Jackson’s LOTR and GoT also differentiate by accent. The Hobbits all speak in west country farmers accents, the Orcs are cockneys, the Elves are RP, the ‘northern’ Starks all have a Yorkshire accent etc. Except they randomly introduce deviations, Caitlin is Irish for no reason that makes any sense – none of the rest of her family do, Bran plays RP despite being raised the same as the rest of his siblings, the actor playing Littlefinger badly mutes his own Irish accent in and out for no logical reason if others break the rules. Frodo speaks in RP which may be because it is the easiest to understand for the lead or he was shit at doing west country when the American actor playing Sam could but either way it makes no logical sense.

Now in a modern era a lot more of Britain is ethnically diverse and it mixes a lot more than a lot of western countries, I remember the opening page of the Lonely Planet guide to London my wife bought said that you’d see more mixed race couples in London in a day than you would in New York in a month. One issue is that a huge amount of British commercial output is either period piece or fantasy piece which means there is never an entry point into acting for non-whites. Cain and Abel in Sandman being brown actually makes more sense, they are from middle eastern mythology and not European.

There’s a jarring point from Tolkien’s intention pretty quickly in this show, they have decided the Harfoots/Hobbits will have what (most of the time) sound like Irish accents instead of west country. That to me more of a deviation from Tolkien than having a black elf. Skin tone diversity actually always makes more sense than accent, which also rarely makes any sense either. We accept Chris Hemsworth playing Thor as RP even though the character is Scandinavian in origin but he can never play it with his own Aussie voice.

This is very sprawling I know but if we step back from the ‘woke’ or ‘PC’ arguments it makes as much or more sense as anything else to have a mixed race Hobbit.

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DavidM, Vikram, Todd

Yeah sure, like I said, it doesn’t bother me all that much, but I really prefer it when diversity makes sense and feels organic (like in GoT). For example, right now the black elf kinda sticks out like a sore thumb because he’s the only black elf we saw so far, that I can remember at least, so he looks more like the token black at this point… so lets hope we see more black elves and hey, lets have some asian elves too while we’re at it (asian elves should probably be the norm, tbh).

garjones wrote:

It’s a complicated subject. Tolkien, who basically set up a template all fantasy follows to a degree, wanted to create a British mythology from scratch which was lacking in comparison the the Norse or Greek or Roman (it does exist with the likes of the Mabiniogion and Boewulf but is much smaller and less known). Albeit he never said it was British at any point in the text. He published it in the 1950s which while after the arrival of the Emperor Windrush and earlier African settlements in dock cities like Liverpool and Cardiff the UK was still 99.5% white. So as far as I am aware he doesn’t specify any other races or skin colouration. It was just a default white presumption.

It is complicated in fantasy in general. Especially when we’ve had tan Americans and English actors playing Arab and African characters in adaptations of 1001 Arabian Knights going all the way back to silent films.

Essentially, I don’t take the race of the actor in a movie or television show to necessarily reflect the race of the character unless it is specifically called out or used in the story. Like in recent BBC series where a Victorian aristocrat could be played by an actor with African or Asian heritage. Realistically, the character would be a white Englishman, and the actor’s race is irrelevant. The recent adaptation of David Copperfield is a good example. Dev Patel was playing him, but there was no reason to think this meant that David Copperfield in the story had any Indian ancestry.

From a labor rights perspective, it’s been a good practice since restricting casting to “realistic” expectations also leaves many non-white actors out of the running for the best and most well paying roles.

garjones wrote:

Harfoots

Harfeet!

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Vikram, Christian, Todd

Todd wrote:

Harsfoot

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Ben

Todd wrote:

There were several times that the CGI was really crap.

Which parts stood out to you? I thought the standard was pretty high throughout and didn’t ever feel like the spell was broken by the effects.

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Chris-S

Jon wrote:

I mean, the worst I could say is that sometimes you can tell you were watching CGI’d scenes

Which is of course inevitable with certain things that could only be achieved with CGI.

I do think that sometimes people mistake being able to recognise CGI for “bad CGI”. Just because you can spot the technique doesn’t mean it’s been used poorly. Just look at the likes of Gollum for example.

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Chris-S, Ben

I’ll put it this way, I would say CGI is at the same level as what I’ve seen in the Marvel series. I guess I was expecting something more considering the amount money being spent on the series.

Is it just a coincidence or a potential story point that there are no horses in the show? A lot of walking long distances, the elf guards don’t have horses so has to walk half a day to get to the other village. The human evacuees at the end, even though they have cows it seems no horses as they are all walking off.

(Maybe horses are super-rare in this age and only a select few people have them, like the very first automobiles or smartphones. Hopefully there’s a scene where someone very rich and powerful rides by on a horse and everyone else turns and mutters “flash git”.)

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Ben

Jon wrote:

I don’t think elves ride horses all that much do they? Since they’re all “in tune with nature” and all that

From memory I thought they used them for agriculture, but I could be wrong.

Jon wrote:

I don’t think elves ride horses all that much do they?

There’s a lot of Legolas and Arwen riding horses in the LotR movies.

It was just a small observation, it could be purely a visual choice, that the walking scenes looked better. It could be a story point that the poorer humans can’t afford them (unlike all the noble types in the OT). It’s just stood out a bit compared to all the ‘horsing around’ in Jackson’s stuff.

The Orish accents are very close to a hate crime. 😑

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Chris-S, lorcan_nagle

Anyone else sticking with this?

Aside from the dumb conversations about racism and casting that seems to have got undue traction, it seems like talk about the show is pretty quiet in general – more the level I’d expect for a Netflix show that dumped all its episodes at once, with people already moving on to something else.

For me, episode three was enjoyable and great looking if a bit slow. Although the action and plot did ramp up a bit at the end.

I do appreciate the longer (1hr+) episodes too, feels like a show you can get lost in.

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Chris-S, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

Anyone else sticking with this?

I haven’t started yet. LOTR is the only franchise that my wife has no desire to watch, so I will need to find a time when she’s elsewhere. No rush.

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Vikram, Dave

Dave wrote:

Anyone else sticking with this?

Aside from the dumb conversations about racism and casting that seems to have got undue traction, it seems like talk about the show is pretty quiet in general – more the level I’d expect for a Netflix show that dumped all its episodes at once, with people already moving on to something else.

Like Jerry, I haven’t started yet. But I’ve actually been talking (offline) about the show to quite a few people who are watching it. It does seem to be catching on.

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Dave

Yeah the idea is 5 seasons… but I don’t think they’ve hard-commited to that, or rather, they could also just cancel it if it does really badly… unless it’s on a contract somewhere.

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garjones, Todd

Pretending that Pharazôn is played by Kevin Eldon is making this show 78% more entertaining for me.

Dave wrote:

Other than that, having watched the latest episode today, I still think it’s very well made and watchable but (a bit like the new GoT) it lacks a bit of forward momentum.

I’m starting to feel like this whole season is going to end up feeling like glorified setup.

Having said that it does seem like we might be in for a decent siege episode soon, which could be good.

My thoughts are the same.

My big problem is that I’m just not connecting with any of the characters. At this point, they all feel a bit one dimensional. While House of the Dragon is far from perfect, its characters come across more fleshed out. Right now, LotR feels like a D&D campaign. I’m sure they will develop more as the show goes on.

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Chris-S, Dave

A bit Steven Toast too.

Todd wrote:

Dave wrote:

Other than that, having watched the latest episode today, I still think it’s very well made and watchable but (a bit like the new GoT) it lacks a bit of forward momentum.

I’m starting to feel like this whole season is going to end up feeling like glorified setup.

Having said that it does seem like we might be in for a decent siege episode soon, which could be good.

My thoughts are the same.

My big problem is that I’m just not connecting with any of the characters. At this point, they all feel a bit one dimensional. While House of the Dragon is far from perfect, its characters come across more fleshed out. Right now, LotR feels like a D&D campaign. I’m sure they will develop more as the show goes on.

After watching this week’s episode, I think I know why I’m not connecting with the characters.

The acting on the show is not very good.

Maybe it’s the direction, maybe the performers, or both, but the performances are one-note and lack depth. In a recent episode of House of the Dragon, some characters encounter some street performers putting on a play. It’s over the top and outlandish. That’s what the acting on this show feels like. The performances on HotD are top notch. they have sublety and depth. The fantasy cartoon I love so much, Gennedy Tartakovsky’s Primal, has far superior perfomances and the characters don’t even speak or when they do, it’s unintelligible. For me, the performance on the show is Joseph Mawle as Adar. He seems to give a multi-layered perfomance.

I hope the acting improves as the show goes but as it stands, it is becoming a chore to watch.

Dave wrote:

In both LotR and The Hobbit there’s a clear overarching plot, and the characters all have their own immediate goals, all of which drives everything forward. Here it hasn’t really crystallised yet. And five hours in is a long time to wait for that to happen.

What do you mean? We all know what the overaching plot, don’t we? or most people who’ve seen the movies at the very least… =/

Anyways… wooo… this was a good one… the battle episode of the season I reckon, but it delivered on every front… I REALLY like the ending, specifically, it was super well thought out and shot… I didn’t even connect the dots of the tunnels and the dam, but yeah, it makes a lot more sense that the sword being just like a magic key or some shit… I mean, it IS kind of a magic key, but I mean I was afraid it was gonna be a lot more fantastical that that… and yeah, that whole part of the show with the orcs and Adar is really well wrapped up in here.

Hopefully this will be the episode that’ll make a lot of people shut up and stop whining so much, but probably not… either way, yeah this was really nice through and through… only thing I wasn’t a fan of were the “fast travel” aspects of it, but every fuckin show and movie do the same crap, so whatever… Shout out to the costume and make-up departments… orcs look fucking great.

Oh and I guess I was right about Adar, and I’m glad, because that’s a much more compelling character than just a Sauron lieutenant or something like that. I’m really liking most of the “original” characters too, so that’s cool.

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Vikram, garjones

Uhmm, no what I mean is that: yes, the show is indeed about the creation of the rings and the rise of Sauron that should culminate in the battle we see at the start of LOTR when they defeat Sauron. That’s the overaching plot… it’s a bit vague sure, but we know where the show is going… I don’t know if we actually need to know more than that, tbh, but I dunno, what else do you feel is missing?

Well, I don’t know, I guess some of them have been more defined that others, but it’s been pretty clear so far that:

Galadriel is hunting for Sauron, that’s her whole arc so far, so that’s pretty easy in terms of goals and motivations. She’s the main character and that’s the main plotline, so that one at least is quite clear. The other are more side-plots at this point:

Arondir’s part of the plot is probably the more relevant in this season, we’ve seen the culmination of that whole thing with mount Doom’s eruption, laying the groundwork for next seasons.

Ringmaker guy wants to build something super duper, but I think the making of the rigns will obviously be happening in S2 or later, so that should take shape more later.

The dwarves want to mine mithril, we know where it’s going, but their motivation so far is also rather clear, if simplistic.

The elves are a bit concerned about the signs of darkness, but not too much yet.

Elrond is the intermediary between those 2.

Over at Numenor I guess the only relevant thing plotwise is the visions of the end of Numenor, but again, not something that will happen until later.

And the hobbits are, I dunno migrating or some shit… they’re the less fleshed out it terms of importance to the plot or objectives, etc…

I think I get what you’re saying, but I don’t know, it doesn’t bother me all that much because at least the main plot of this season is pretty well defined at this point (Galadriel’s hunt for Sauron), personally that’s enough for me, but fair enough if it ain’t for others.

Todd wrote:

Or a Marvel series on Disney+.

Now, now… don’t exagerate so much =P

Just watched the latest episode and it was pretty good again. Some nice scenes and some great cinematography, especially those post-eruption sequences at the start.

That said, with the finale already on the way next week it’s hard to shake the sense that this opening season has been too slow to get started. But now that it has, I do think it’s on the right track. They basically screwed the pacing though, and even though it’s only out by a couple of episodes it’s probably enough to have pushed a lot of people away.

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Ben

I don’t know, after next week, will the pacing be an issue when all eps are available?

The last couple of eps have certainly exploded the story.  In one respect, literally.  I can’t say I knew what to expect but I don’t think I would have seen both the creation of Mordor and Mt Doom coming.

It’s how it’s being released now.  And you could say the same about numerous comic series.

In both cases we know the reason – weekly release keeps the subscription running, monthly issues subsidise the later trade.

This first series hasn’t been perfect but it’s not done bad at packaging the episodes.  Especially when compared to other stuff running like Andor.

That said I’m sceptical all eps being available will solve all its problems.  More likely is word gets round that there is a significant pay-off later and that keeps people sticking with the early eps.

Yeah I think I read the same article. I do like a lot of what the show has to offer, but I also think there are saggy parts that could have been tightened up better. Hopefully they’ve learned the right lessons from season one and have the support to move forward with a more polished season two.

Yeah, I think it’s a good show that has always looked and felt great, it’s just dragged a little in places early on – but the slow start has at least paved the way for the last couple of decent episodes, so things are going in the right direction.

It’s funny, I kind of feel the same about Andor and the new GoT show too. I think there is definitely a trend at the moment for slow-build storytelling, rather than coming out with fireworks straight away.

Which is fine if the payoffs make it worth it (as all three shows have done for me) – I guess you just have to hope you don’t lose too many viewers along the way before you get to the really good stuff.

I just watched the finale. I wish I could say this season had built towards something worthwhile but honestly I found this final episode really tedious and slow, both overall and scene-by-scene. It’s one of the most boring season finales I’ve seen of anything, ever. It’s no wonder they’re having a major overhaul for season two.

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Chris-S

Two years for season two? Well, shit.

I liked the finale.  Would have liked a bit more in who the shadow Mystics were, but suppose that’s for the next series.  Surprising that Isildur’s fate is left up in the air too.

For all the talk of five seasons, I’m not seeing it at the rate they’re going.

The Sauron reveal worked very well, emphasising the manipulative aspect of him.

The character shield aspect can be fun too.  That was particularly so at the end of episode 6 with Galadriel, who walked into a massive, volcanic eruption, practically going “I’m in the fucking movies, bastards”.

For me, the finale and the season as a whole were mediocre. The acting felt like renaissance fair cosplay. The VFX throughout the season was pretty uneven. For all the money spent on the show, it could have been so much better.

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Chris-S, Arjan Dirkse

Having watched the last two eps with a far better connection, they looked pretty good to me.

Yeah, I agree there are some pacing/structural issues, that much is obvious… episode 7 is probably the most problematic for me and how much time they wasted on pretty much nothing in Numenor, i.e. wasting an entire episode gettin a small contengency of warrior ready, which in turn created some issues in episode 8… it would’ve been better if they had set sail, and arrived to Middle Earth in 7, and then in 8 they had started riding towards the tower… it would’ve been a better use of their time.

There were also some acting issues here and there. And some writing issues here and there too, particularly with all the dialogue references to the movies… it was a bit too much.

But overall it was fine. I’m not a lore expert at all, but I do have enough knowledge to know that they changed A LOT, however, again, there was always the problem of rights (which is in part why I suspect they didn’t use “Anatar” as a character and instead went full Halbrand among many other things) and the premise of them severely compressing time to create a story more suited for a TV show… those 2 hurdles alone were always gonna have people bitch and moan, but in the end, personally I don’t care all that much about any of that as long as it makes for a good show, which it did, imo. To me it felt like LOTR, which is what I was looking forwards to. I know people wanted it to feel like “Tolkien” but that was always a pipe dream…

I will say though, they should’ve hired at least one experienced showrunner too, at least in an advisory capacity to iron the kinks the show undeniably has, specially considering how important and expensive this show is for Amazon (really weird they left this in newbie hands), but they managed well enough and I’m sure they’ll course correct what they need to in season 2… or I hope so. But to me this was a success all in all.

I just hope the numbers of people how watched and enjoyed it are enough to balance the incredibly vocal contingent of haters that have been dominating social media… oh and please, next time don’t air your show against fucking Game of Thrones… whose bright idea was that??? u_u

I enjoyed it enough. Visually was not let down. Some pacing issues but I can overlook that.

It’s the price tag that makes me speculate this is the reason we’re not getting any more of The Expanse, which is what I would prefer.

The Expanse was great but it as much as its fans may love it, myself and Jeff Bezos included, hard sci-fi has never been box office.

Amazon extended it beyond its natural appeal, it was actually cancelled.

Rings of Power has nothing to do with it.

Dave wrote:

For me the production values are some of the best I’ve ever seen on TV, I have no complaints there.

The scripts and structure of the show not so much, but I’m hoping that the relatively untested showrunners can learn from the weaknesses and criticisms of this first season to make the next one much better.

Yeah, same here. A lot of the dialogues don’t work very well, and there are just too many moments that are by-the-numbers TV stuff.

I’m not quite finished, I’m at, uh, the episode when the orcs get ready to attack the tower where Arondir’s at and Númenor has launched its fleet. And in this episode, I started to skip through parts of the Númenor and Elrond stuff – it’s all just a bit boring and cringy.

At this point, I hate both Elrond’s and Gil-Galad’s actors. Well, and the way the show shaped the characters. Elrond just is a bit crap, and Gil-Galad is a huge dick. Most of the actors are perfectly fine, though, they just don’t have a lot to work with. The actors playing Elendil and Durin stand out to me as elevating their material; I also like Morfydd Clark.

I think the direction is probably even worse than the scripts – there are too many scenes of people just vaguely standing around talking.

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Chris-S, Todd

garjones wrote:

I do get the dialogue thing, it is worst with the elves. Galadriel and Elrond have to trudge through some very purple prose it is hard to present naturally. You don’t get that slog with say the Harfoots.

I’d be fine with that, mind you, if they’d managed to do it right and make the elves sound like they should. But they really didn’t manage to find that place. There was a kind of simple elegance to Tolkien’s dialogue whose absence really hurts here.

Although on the other hand, I am quite impressed with the actual dwarvish and Quenya that’s being spoken, they obviously really worked on this with the actors.

(Sidenote: I recently impressed the shit out of a fan of this show because I was able to tell her that there are different Elvish languages and that the Noldor, who used to live in Valinor and only came to Middle Earth to fight Morgoth, speak Quenya while the wood elves, who never went to Valinor and are native to Middle Earth, speak Sindarin. Nerd knowledge from when I was sixteen is really paying off when talking about this show!)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Christian.

Christian wrote:

I’m not quite finished, I’m at, uh, the episode when the orcs get ready to attack the tower where Arondir’s at and Númenor has launched its fleet. And in this episode, I started to skip through parts of the Númenor and Elrond stuff – it’s all just a bit boring and cringy.

Yeah that’s probably the worst episode in all season, can’t blame you for skipping parts of it =P

It’s also pretty close to German pronunciation. There’s probably some etymological reason for that.

Jon wrote:

Yeah that’s probably the worst episode in all season, can’t blame you for skipping parts of it =P

I’ve now seen the one after that, the big battle one. That was pretty impressive, even if plot-wise it all worked out a little too neatly – that silly tower trap working perfectly, the Númenorian soldiers arriving just in time and so on. But it was fun to watch, especially Arondir’s fight with that big orc. And Adar has consistently been the best character on the show – he’s also the one who gave the best speech, and he’s got the best dialogue (“We prefer uruk” indeed!). It’s kind of a neat idea too, to suggest that one of the original elves who were transformed into orcs rose up against Sauron and tried to lead his people to freedom.

Also, his conversation with Halbrand is another hint at Halbrand being Sauron, given that Adar claims to have killed Sauron and Halbrand is clearly holding a grudge. I expect it’s him anyway – we know pretty much all of the other characters from the books, so if Sauron is supposed to be a reveal, it kinda has to be Halbrand. And he’s already been shown to be an expert smith, which, you know, you need to be to create those Rings of Power. And he has carved out a place in Númenor for himself, which we know Sauron did. It’s kinda daft anyway how Galadriel just decides he’s a king and everything based on practically nothing, so that’s all just plot setup for the big twist at the end. But given that, I did appreciate that they went for a bit of romance this episode and didn’t give anything away by having him smile crookedly when she doesn’t look or something.

I just finished watching it. I had a few issues with the pacing and a few of the actors were just annoying, but I’m definitely in the “really enjoyed this” overall camp. I look forward to season 2, whenever that may show up.

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Ben, Dave

That’s a pity, Adar was really good, it may help a bit though that’s a character under quite a bit of makeup.