Chen G.

This may sound like blasphemy, but I always though the Dresden Amen from Parsifal would have been a hell of a substitute for Also Sprach Zarathustra in 2001. The Verwandlungsmusik would have also been great for some passages.

Showrunners: We take our Dwarves very seriously. Also showrunners:

I do think that's one of the more admirable aspects of the movie: its the one sequel in which you can tell the filmmakers went "how can we make the most different, indeed diametrically opposed, followup to the original?" And so where Raiders is globetrotting, Temple of Doom really takes place mostly in one place. Where Raiders is very upbeat, almost giddy, Temple of Doom is, as I said, macabre. There are a lot of other comparisons like that. I still don't particularly care for it, though.

Its unclear: some people who have seen the first two episodes (of whom I'm incredibly jealous, not for the footage for not having a chance to meet some of my colleagues who went) claim that we see Fell beasts straight out of the movies and a quick image of Sauron in his iconic armour.

I agree its strange, but I wouldn't read too much into it just yet.

Maybe Doug is saving up for something he planned with TORn or something, I dunno. At this point, I do think it’s premature to be too presumptive on the (admittedly notable) quiet on the Adams front.

A little bit, yeah. But that's a very common premise for prequels: is it not what Qui Gon does in The Phantom Menace, too? The whole idea is that we intrude upon this civilization at a time of peace and prosperity, but also of complecency, and its up to one up-and-about character to shake the others out of their idleness. You'd honestly struggle to make this show and not make that its premise, so fine by me. The difference is that Gandalf is mostly calm and collected, whereas this Galadriel is decidedly not. She's closer to someone like Thorin, perhaps; but where I suggest that Thorin balanced his more abrasive traits (cantankerousnes, haughtiness, neuroticism, insularity) with a lot of fortitude, valour and appreciativeness, its at this moment not entirely clear to me that this would be the case with Clark's Galadriel.

I don't mind a very feisty, somewhat hellbent Galadriel in this, at least conceptually. Very "zen" characters, which is how we envision Elves, are very boring characters, dramatically. It works for minor roles or glorified cameos, but for a major role in a series? Not so much. Its why Jackson gave Elrond a parenting crisis and made Galadriel creepy as all hell in The Fellowship of the Ring: so they actually have some source of anguish or internal conflict, which is exactly what makes characters psychologically compelling - its the same thing that allows Hamlet to monologue for as long as he does, or allows Tristan to basically speak his thoughts for some 40 minutes with little by way of plot actually happening around him. My only concern is that this Galadriel will be so hellbent, so fixated, that it will become grating to the audience. One of the things that helps Galadriel (but which also makes the narrative a little simple-minded) is that if she's insisting that Sauron has returned - even if we didn't know The Lord of the Rings - we'd assume she's correct because of Chekov's Gun.

Its not dark in the sense that Schindler's List is dark. What it is, is macabre. Its not bad, but I don't particularly enjoy it. Its not a movie I think very fondly of, in spite of some undeniably strong things that are in it (not least of which is Williams' score).

Same. I always find attempts to read biographical anecdotes into an artist's work rather strenous, and this case is no exception. I actually think when it comes to Lucas, he would like us to read biographical details into his works, because he does suscribe to this idea that the artist writes about himself, and he believes this gives his pulpy films an added artistic pedigree. It serves the same function for him as all that talk about Joseph Campbell.

Pretty much, except there's a prologue first (which the album very clearly tells us) with Galadriel as a little kid, and

I have a similar feeling regarding the show itself in some fan outlets: people seem to be satiated enough that they just accept stuff like the Harfoots which I have a fundamental issue with, and it makes one feel like something of a buzzkill… It can feel quite alienating…

Disagree. I like movies to be earnest. Period.

On their own, they could be seen as somewhat intense. But within the context of what had come before... You can't spoon-feed audiences some 40-odd hours of what are ostensibly action-comedies (actually, I would say, action-farces) and then expect them to take anything seriously. That's the one thing Avatar has over the MCU: its earnest, and in today's world that counts for a lot, at least to me.

The antler guys are hunters that the Harfoots are evading. And yeah, those things are stupid too! Like Nick said, I think these people got too carried away in "we're making a fantasy show!"

I actually like the idea of the sea monsters. Bringing something of the flavour of the Odyssey into Tolkien! And at least they didn't give into the temptation of having it be another Watcher in the Water!!

Not all: Some extended edition segments are the original cuts of what he recorded for the theatrical: The Farewell to Lorien sequence is that: its the theatrical recording that's the alternate.

Warners had it downloadable as an isolated score track back in the day...

The announcement trailer had Howard Shore music: a pretty nice exposition of some of the major ideas of the score, honestly.

Think about it: in terms of the storytelling order of Howard Shore's "cycle" we have this piece and then the music of the Hobbit announcement trailer, and between those two we basically have a brilliant little overture for 20 hours of music. And some of us are still holding out for a Howard Shore War of the Rohirrim score!

Its like the jagged reef against which their claims of "we didn't want to make a prequel" crash like the waves. I do hope we're not dealing here with filmmakers who traffic in half-truths like a Lucas.

I agree. Its why I picked the Gladiator example. This show could and should have been all politiking like the scenes with Lucila and Gaius plotting against Commodus, or like the Scottish Council, or like scenes with Allenby in Lawrence of Arabia, for that matter. Those kinds of dynamics, except with characters like Miriel, Pharazon, Celebrimbor, Annatar, etecetra. Its not just that the tone of the Harfoot scenes is sugary, its that the interjections of an adventure story into the context of a Machiavelian drama is...I mean, who makes soup and say "I know what this is missing, lets chuck a chocolate cake into it!"?

The overall atmosphere of those movies is nevertheless very gloomy, and they end with the hero dying as a result of his own folly. And again, the very fact that the "everyman on a quest" thing had been done so thoroughly in two very expansive trilogies, is all the more reason for this show to rather lean into the more Machiavelian aspects of its premise.

Not really, no. Calling them "Harfoots" is just a kind of technicality/semantic thing, like how George Lucas pitched the aliens in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Spielberg as "interdimensional beings." You know what this is like? Its like if in Gladiator, intercut with all the grim revenge story of Maximus and Lucilla being menaced by the increasingly-unhinged Commodus, we would cut to a subplot about a character named Bob (about as anachronistic as "Elanor Brandyfoot") who goes on an adventure to Rome for some reason tangentially connected to the plot. Some stories don't need an "everyman on a cross-country adventure" storyline. Its cloying.