Servant of Morgoth

don't worry, it'll be over after that

Yeah. That point really sunk-in for me when Ian Nathan said in an interview that, when you embark on something like this, "you're not actually doing Tolkien anymore."
 
But I do think there's a difference between extrapolating from 5 pages about the Angmar War into maybe a couple of two-hour-ish movies, as compared to extrapolating from 15 pages into a 40+ hour show...

Oh, I think they are that reckless. Spending what they did was an act of recklessness. Pairing inexperienced show runners with inexperienced writers on such a massive project that they couldn't hope to handle was an act of recklessness. 
 
Remaking The Hobbit and LOTR would be reckless as well (the comparisons would be brutal), but at least it's a proven commodity that they can actually adapt. I can see it happening much more than I can see Amazon committing to another three seasons of a show that's not giving them the cultural moment they want. The fact that HBO is doing the same with Harry Potter shows that a remake so soon after the beloved originals is more than possible.
 
 
The Tolkien estate as far as I know isn't prepared to sell the rights to The Silmarillion. And if they did, it would dwarf the already confiscatory amount Amazon has already paid to them. If ROP fails, I seriously doubt Amazon is going to double down on Middle-Earth. In fact, if both ROP and the new WB films aren't wildly successful, in my opinion the market for the rights to The Silmarillion will be seriously reduced.
 
 
When something is a cultural phenomenon, everyone is always looking for "The next...", which is typically a copycat and fails to capture the moment like the original. 
 
Boardwalk Empire wasn't the next Sopranos, Game of Thrones was the next Sopranos. There will be a next Game of Thrones, but it won't look anything like Game of Thrones.

Of course I'll give it a chance. I'm just really sceptical. One, because of the same challenges the Amazon show has...a lack of fleshed out source material. Even if they do have better creatives behind it (and I believe they will), it's still a tough hill to climb.
 
But in addition to that, I just don't get a sense of any great desire in the cultural zeitgeist out there for more Tolkien on the screen. It was something of a minor miracle that the New Line films succeeded as spectacularly as they did. It was one of those things where you had the right creatives doing the right thing in the right way at the right time.
 
But there’s this assumption in Hollywood that just b/c something works in one medium (literature), it can and must work in another (film), and I'm not sure that's the case here. Add to that, any post-PJ project is just going to feel "smaller" than Lord of the Rings, no matter how epic the subject.
 
I just get the feeling that the moment has passed, and I personally don't think Middle-Earth lends itself to a "cinematic universe". But we'll see.
 
 

I sometimes feel that, too. But I'm willing to give it a chance. I think there's good subject matter in the appendices that's worthwhile to adapt, and with Warners it at least won't be half measures in terms of the overall aesthetic of the thing.

i don't know, i'm pretty good at not thinking on them

I think that’s all definitely true, but the show could still be way better even within these limitations.

See, if I were making it, I'd definitely want my Numenorean soldiers to look like this:
 

 
And the Lindon soldiers to look like this:
 

 
That's just me and what I like.
 
But if I knew I couldn't get those because this show is made by Amazon and not by Warner Brothers, then I'd choose to go a completely different route. Anything else would be a "golden mean" fallacy that only serves to remind you of something else that you could have been watching instead. 
 
But JD Payne and Patrick McKay made the Lindon guards look like this: 
 

 
You can see the similarity: the Elves still have a golden palette, blade-like crests over their helmets and a tall, narrow shield. But all that these superficial similarities do is make you think "man, those prologue Elves looked really cool, didn't they?"
 
If it were just a homage here or there, it would be classy and flattering. As it is, its just stuck in this kind no-man's land between being a prequel and not being one.

Nobody asked for the spiritual prequel of PJ's movies at least not me. 
They were supposed to adapt the 2nd Age where the characters,the tone, the themes are entirely different from what Jackson has to adapt. 
Not only they are taking unrequired liberties from the source material, not only they have entirely undermine Sauron's character the mastermind behind the fall of Eregion or Numenor and all the despair and sorrow through two whole Ages and replacing him with  just a random guy that in the most obvious cliche falls in love with our warrior princess Galadriel. 
The thing above all that leaves me totally desmayed is that they have already proved that they are not enough good to write compelling and engaging storylines and characters
So if they think to survive and keep afloat for other 4 seasons only parroting Jackson, with mystery boxes, subvert expectations, plot twists and giving occasionally  to the book readers some bribes like Celeborn,  they should for their own sake think again and think better
 
I would have been much more merciful if they have tried to to their own thing, follow differents paths and patterns, have enough courage and even a little reckless to break with the past or even with the schemes that we see in every damn fantasy tv series nowdays(this is why they look and feel so generic like they have been made by the same dressmaker)
 
 
 
I mean according to IMDb only this year Bear has been involved in at least 4-5 projects(different medium too from movies to videogames to the new seasons of Foundation and Outlander)
So yes as other composers of the rising generation he has a team that works for me 24 hours per day
Unless he doesn't eat or sleep

the sooner this ends,the better

For better or for worse they will do five seasons. They are legally obliged to produce five seasons as far as I know
The only way we don't get more seasons is literally a  WWIII
Anyway I've watched on Sunday the lastest episode of Second Age Show from Fellowship of the Fans and I've to say that the new leaks kill that little shred of optimism I had for the next season  @Chen G.

i hope this ends as soon as possible

I had apparently written a whole list of praises and grievances back after the finale that I forgot to post, so here it is, if anyone's interested:
 
Aesthetics
PROS: Basically all of it. The major locations are beautiful, the score is amazing, the casting is (mostly) great.
CONS: Short haired elves (Arondir is the only one who pulls it off)
A few kinda weird creatures/armors/costumes (troll and warg, Galadriel’s first 2 armors, the Mystics)
Some disorienting time jumps between scenes
 
Meaning
PROS: Aspirational male friendship (Elrond and Durin)
Interesting takes on Tolkien's text (The inherited sin of the Low Men, do Orcs have souls?, Sauron’s repentance)
CONS: Mangled moral messages (“Nobody walks alone”, but stragglers are left behind?, Elrond’s oath)
Weird twists on Tolkien’s text (Mithril tanning???, the gift of Gil-Galad, de-mystifying of mithril and the rings)
Unnecessarily modern tropes (numerous upstart protagonists that defy their rigid societies, endless rallying speeches)
 
Entertainment
PROS: (Mostly) good performances
Some well-written characters (Adar, Elrond/Durin/Disa)
Some scenes with good pathos (Proudfellows scene, Arondir cutting down the tree, Elrond and Durin)
CONS: Endless mystery boxes (Who is Sauron? Who is The Stranger? Who is Halbrand? Who is Adar? What are the Mystics? What is the sword? Who’s Theo’s father? What’s in the box? What’s in the pouch? What’s in the tower? Why was Halbrand injured?)
Nonsensical plots (The Stranger's amnesia, Mithril plot, Elrond’s oath, the creation of Mordor)
Badly written/uninteresting characters (Galadriel, Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad, Elendil and co)
Problems with timeline/teleporting (Southlands, travel to Eregion)
Corny PJ LotR references

Don't know what season 1 was an introduction to, but certainly not Tolkien.
 
 

“Precious” 😂😂😂

Christopher was still alive at the very early stages of development, I'm told. He made his distaste for the project known, but didn't try to stop it. 

Well, some of the pitches were for Young Aragorn, which I think is pretty...its not lame so much as its too much of a low-hanging fruit. I know at least one other pitch that was very similar to McPayne, but didn't compress the timeline as much, so it basically played like an anthology, which I think isn't the best idea, either.
 
 
I really don't know the inner workings enough. Honestly, its on McPayne for suggesting an adaptation the Second Age based just on the appendices: that's like adapting The Hobbit from the foreword of The Lord of the Rings!  At the point where they came in, the rights situation had already been agreed upon.
 
And it is deeply ironic that all previous adaptations had naught to do with the Tolkien Estate, and now that we one that is, its probably the least accurate of all adaptations.

At the risk of being too ad hominem, I think this is a big point.
 
Early on, Amazon threw a little fan event in London where they showed glimpses of the season: stuff like Galadriel killing the Troll, Elrond meeting the Durins, Poppy and Nori arguing over the Stranger in the cart, etc...
 
McPayne had a Q and A with the fans, and the tenor that emerged overwhelmingly from the event was what big fans of Tolkien's works McPayne were, how they could cite from Tolkien and his letters on the spot, etc...
 
Then we got Harfoots, Gandalf, Mithrichlorians, and all the scientification around the Rings, and the Rings themselves being an afterthought. Now, I'm by no means a stickler for the text - my critique of those points was that they'd be dumb in any fantasy film or show - but it just cast a pall on their fanhood.
 
Slowly but surely, I had the sneaking suspicion that these two are better actors then half their cast.

I don't buy the studio collusion angle on this. Take a look at the Harfoots: on the face of it, that entire storyline would seem like one huge studio mandate. In a way, it was: myself and Fellowship of Fans interviewed one of the prospective showrunners that Amazon auditioned, and he was adamant that they wanted Hobbits in the story.
 
However, looking at the Harfoot storyline in the show, the one thing it doesn't do is play out like some studio dictate. It seems to me that its more accurate to say that rather than Amazon choosing people they can control, they chose people who were innately sympatico with the company's vision for the show from the outset.

Gil-Galad is an awful w⚓️
 
The writing is the show’s biggest flaw (aside from the costumes). The show runners and writers… you would wonder how these people with limited experience or success got these jobs in the first place. I’m still not willing to rule out the whole thing being a money laundering exercise!
 

To a certain extent every major character in ROP has the same template...i.e. the "misunderstood outsider" who is smarter and more courageous than the rest of their people, who thinks differently and transcends their culture's “limited” thinking, whose notions draw deep scepticism, only to be ultimately proven correct.  
 
Galadriel...misunderstood outsider.
Nori...misunderstood outsider.
Elrond...misunderstood outsider.
Arondir...misunderstood outsider.
Durin IV...misunderstood outsider.
Bronwyn...misunderstood outsider.
 
Did I miss anyone? Every one of these individuals is at some point rejected, separated or ostracised from their own people because of their supposedly rebellious or unconventional nature. I think in some ways you could apply this to Isildur and his smarter-than-everyone-else sister as well.
 
It's embarrassing...lazy writers who haven't experienced any of life projecting their own sense of self onto their characters. These characters reflect the sensibilities of the writers and "creators" of this show more than they do anything Tolkien ever wrote.  I wonder if they even realize the degree to which they've done this.

Apart from Celebrimbor/Elrond (which I’ve already ranted enough about) Halbrand is IMO the show’s single most misguided idea. Every single step of his season-long journey is a contrivance built on another contrivance.
- He needs to meet Galadriel, so they both end up on a random-ass raft in the middle of the sea purely out of chance (as far as we know).
- He needs to bond with Galadriel on her quest to the Southlands, so:
  1: though he spends the whole season unwilling to talk about his past, he for some reason tells her exactly the amount of information that she needs for the plot to happen (a hint that her worries about Sauron’s return aren’t unfounded).
  2: he just happens to have found (and kept!) a pouch with a sigil that causes Galadriel to be suspicious of his identity.
  3: she then goes to a library to learn exactly the amount of information that she needs for the plot to happen (that the sigil is proof that he is the King of the Southlands)
- Then, after she’s convinced him to follow her to the Southlands (which I’m honestly okay with) and fought the battle, he needs to be in Eregion so he can be part of the forging of the Rings, so he gets a wound that is simultaneously so bad that he needs elvish medicine, yet not bad enough to prevent him from making the 6-day ride to get there.
- Then he needs to influence Celebrimbor, so he just happens to wander into his forge and meet him after one quick scene of healing.
- And then, she needs to learn who he actually is, so she goes to another library to learn exactly the amount of information that she needs for the plot to happen (proof that he isn’t the King of the Southlands).
No matter how interesting the core idea of exploring Sauron’s possible redemption is, this baffling series of contrivances soaks all the intrigue and meaning out of it. It even affects the other storylines, like the completely unnecessary “Is the Stranger Sauron?” plot, which only exists to not make it 100% obvious that it’s Halbrand.

Not only them. The book fans are second in line. I don't as a book reader really hate Rings of Power. I find it just tedious, boring, bad written(for the most part of it) with infuriating or not compelling enough characters.. And with too many unrequired changes from the source material they got the rights to see all Elendil reduced to a petty lord and a random sea captain or Numenoreans being petty instead of prideful or just the chronological order of the forging of the rings or Sauron reduced and humbled to a middle man 
 
About the aesthetics the things that I didn't like the most are: most of the armors( not just because it's plate armor but because some pieces looked very poor crafted see Numenor's armor or the cerimonial armors of Galadriel and the rest of her company and most of the wigs.
Also not really the biggest fan of this Jackson concept of city-state
The kingdoms overhall seems very small..
Agreed
Instead of losing time with the creation of Mordor show Halbrand travelling across Middle Earth winning the allegiance of many powerful warlords and different folks, using the rivalry between the different lords of the Easterlings for example to his advantage or if you wanna show his moment of repentance showing him teaching men differents skills in agriculture or crafting or smithing.. 
Aspirin Mithril pills subplot  was also awful.. Not the biggest fan of Gil Galad. He is a jerk and also I don't understand why they made him the only one who can decide who is worthy or not of  going back to Aman.. 

Knew you'd be up to the task 
Better yet, he's gonna need to cross a bridge guarded by a monster, prompting him to shout "You will let me pass!" so that everybody's gonna call it clever.

Making a list would be fun. I'll start with what I can think of off the top of my head and update it as I go along:
 
The overall aesthetic is as close to Jackson's as the filmmakers legally could do. Beginning with a prologue with vocals (of Galadriel's no less) over black and aethereal choir. Middle Earth is filled "with strange creatures beyond count" Many of the designs - Balrog, Fell Beast, Sauron in armour, Narsil, Aeglos - are as close to Jackson as Amazon could do without getting sued. Others like Lindon or Durnost come across as the two-dime versions of other Jackson designs like Lorien and Barad Dur. The pains of the First Age "passed out of thought and mind" "What delivry is this?" - "What is this new devliry?" Some shots and sequences of shots are quite similar: surely more than one Middle Earth-themed propery can have a fight with a Troll, but in the course of the fight here, there's a POV shot from one of the Elves on the ground as the Troll is about to stomp him just like Sam in The Fellowship of the Ring. Both Galadriel and Arondir inherit the Legolas Superhero MomentsTM I'd say the timbral resemblences Bear went for with his score count, as well. A lot of filming locations from the films reappear as other places in Middle Earth: the entrance to Moria is now at the High Fells, and there's a whole travel montage of the Harfoots that seems to go from the Plains of Rohan, through Rhudaur, Midgewater Marshes, and finally the Woods of Ithilien. Greenwood is now Trollshaws. All the Harfoot stuff is one big throwback, replete with cute English names (nary a Deagol to be found!) and all imbued with a kind of saccharine, derpy cutsiness. Nori, in particular, is a kind of cross of Bilbo with Luke Skywalker. Elrond sitting in the tree branches recreates the way we meet Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. Magic Fireworks in Lindon The basic premise: one outgoing character fears Sauron's return while the others are complacent, is exactly the same as An Unexpected Journey. "You will linger here, an outcast, poisoned in dark whispers and dreams" as compared to "here you will dwell, bound to your grief." The iconography of Rohan has been dispersed between the Southlanders and the Numenoreans, replete with horse-head sword hilts and a deep connection between Isildur and a horse who will invariably come to his aid, Brego-like. Requisite mortal-and-immortal romance. "She had passed beyond my sight" The Elf ship's approach to Valinor is very much a visualization of Gandalf's "The Grey rain curtain of this world rolls back [...] and then you see it: White shores." Speaking of Gandalf...  "Able to birth a flame [...] as pure as starlight" (you mean, like the Gems of Lasgalen, Celebrimbor?) Elrond and Durin's dynamic very much plays on Gimli and Legolas "Salted pork and enough malt beer to fill the Anduin." Even though its ultimately a hoax, Halbrand is played as an Aragorn-type, and Ostirith as Helm's Deep. The prow of the ship at the front of the Numenorean palace. The beacon that's lit when Elendil's ship enters Numenore reminds me of Amon Din. Sadoc opens his speech almost exactly like Bilbo's Farewell Party Speech. Halbrand's people "are scattered. Leaderless." "Keept it. Token of our friendship." The Palantir. The creation of Mordor is someone's idea of the reverse of the destruction of the Ring. The Palantir "show many visions. Some that will never come to pass." Okay, this one is really stretching it, but Elrond's story of how he saved Durin FROM THREE TROLLS... In remarking of the Numenorean cadets' swordmanship skills, Galadriel manages to both namedrop the Stone Giants AND have the same kind of "talking in Elvish over the head of the warriors" that Legolas and Aragorn do at Helm's Deep. Although the prospect of a siege at Ostirith in the style of Helm's Deep proves to be a red herring, the battle at Tirharad still has many of the visual cues of Helm's Deep, replete with cutaways to worried women and children indoors. Also, the Numenorean cavarly charge REALLY wants to be the ride of the rohirrim. Bronwyn gives Theo a speech along the lines of Sam's peroration at the end of The Two Towers. "Noro lim" to the rescue! Galadriel recounts the backstory of the Orcs along the same lines as Saruman did. "the Secret Fire" is mentioned Galadriel and Theo hides from Orcs under a tree stump bringing to mind the same shot composition as Jackson (and Bakshi). While they're at it, Galadriel gives Theo a speech very much along the lines that Gandalf gives Frodo in Moria. THAT BALROG! Four Hobbits set out on the quest to help Gandalf... When Gandalf banishes the Mystics, they managed to call-back both to the imagery of the Moth AND the Ringwraiths. Even the magic itself reminds me of Gandalf's fight with the Necromancer. When Sauron tries to convince Galadriel to join him (and probably bump uglies along the way) he tells her he'll make her "stronger than the foundations of the earth." "We can save this Middle Earth" is a mirror of "We shall rule this Middle Earth." "Always follow your nose"