Rings of Power Amazon buys up Middle-earth, it searches the One Ring! (Rings of Power news thread)

[Chen G. 3,944]

The issue to me is that, approached right, this show could have looked and felt more like Braveheart/Gladiator, not less: a lot of the storylines: Gil galad, Celebrimbor and their foreign relations with Khazad Dum and, later, with Annatar; Numenore and its coup and forced political marriage, all feel like something closer to the politicking of the Scottish Council or of Commodus and the Senate or any number of historical films with Machiavelian overtures.

 

It should have been less fantastical, not more!

 

But there are things in this latest teaser (and its predecessor) I quite like so we'll wait and see.

[Mr. Who 919]

Based on the trailers, Rings of Power goes into the a certain fantasy category that includes Wheel of Time, the Witcher, Shadow and Bone etc where everything looks very hyped and kind of over the top and too clean (including the costumes, the characters themselves etc).

 

I definitively won't watch the show as it airs but if the reviews are very good I might check it out sometime in the future. I am definitively not anticipating it though because of things like meteor man, hobbits that shouldn't be in the show with shire names, Galadriel seemingly having little resemblance to the character in Tolkien's work and the timeline hodgepodge.

[Servant of Morgoth 20]

I will try to give to this tv series a fair chance without preconceptions and prejudices based on the leaks I've known and the things I've seen so far. But it's tough you know. There are a couple of things that I really don't like: the harfoots and the huge ammount of screentime they're getting(it seems reading among the statements of the two showrunners there will be many spotlights on them, too many OC characters from Meteor Man being potentially an OC Maia to Adar the surrogate main villain of season 1 who will probably steal the role that should belong to Sauron since the beginning and not since season two and of course timeline compression's consequences on the storyline of Numenor and on themes like immortality vs mortality, fear of death, Numenorean colonialism and much more.For example I would hate if in the show Ar Pharazon will take all the blame for the downfall of Numenor which even for a disgusting character like Pharazon it's too much and very far from what Tolkien wrote and said.

But what really makes me sad and also a bit angry are two statements from the showrunners: "we're writing the book Tolkien never wrote" and  "we're doing what Tolkien would do".

 

 

[Chen G. 3,944]

Its a complex situation. I think everything to do with the Harfoots scrapes the absolute bottom of the barrel for me: its just cloying in a way I don't like, and with the addition of Meteor Man its just...bah!

 

However, I do like some of the visuals I saw. Yes, a couple look overly-polished and/or too fantastical, but I do think others look very appealing, including this Valinor and Ost-in-Edhil; and, storyline-wise, I think the Elven and Numenorean storylines have great potential.

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

6 hours ago, Servant of Morgoth said:

But what really makes me sad and also a bit angry are two statements from the showrunners: "we're writing the book Tolkien never wrote" and  "we're doing what Tolkien would do".

 

Yep. And this basically encapsulates my issue with the series. I don't care how good, or bad, the visuals look, the entire premise is fundamentally flawed at conception.

 

They're pretty much admitting what we already know...it's not adaptation. It's expensive, algorithmically & agenda driven, fan fiction.  And if they really said "we're doing what Tolkien would do"...well, that's shameful. 

[Servant of Morgoth 20]

47 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Its a complex situation. I think everything to do with the Harfoots scrapes the absolute bottom of the barrel for me: its just cloying in a way I don't like, and with the addition of Meteor Man its just...bah!

 

However, I do like some of the visuals I saw. Yes, a couple look overly-polished and/or too fantastical, but I do think others look very appealing, including this Valinor and Ost-in-Edhil; and, storyline-wise, I think the Elven and Numenorean storylines have great potential.

 

 

I agree with you about the aesthetic and the visuals. Sometimes it looks too oversaturated or too clean or too generic like the lastest fantasy tv series The Witcher, GOT, Shadow and Bone, Wheel of Time and so on. If I have to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of all the pieces of armours and weapons we've see so far but overall they are fine. 

I can't really have an opinion about how the Elven storyline is going to be from what FoF said about the elves leaks but I fear the worst for Numenor storyline. Because at least for me you can't really get through Numenor's decline, mortality vs immortality, colonialism and its consequences ,the breakdown of Numenor society in two factions, everthing they did for bad or for worse if the show is going to basically takes place in an handful of years as In Deep Geek said quoting the showrunners themselves 

Also season 1 is going to be basically introducing the world, the main themes and storylines and the characters. Half of them are OC characters or storylines and I fear there are decent chances I'll get bored after a couple of episodes lol

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 hour ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

And if they really said "we're doing what Tolkien would do"...

 

The showrunners visited Tolkien's grave, and one of them (I can't remember who) said he imagined Tolkien talking to him. Its...yeah...

 

But I would love to see the stories of characters like Celebrimbor, Gil-galad, Pharazon, Miriel et al dramatized. So I don't have the fundemental issue you have with it (although I understand it). I just want to judge it as television, but already stuff like the Hobbits, Meteor Man, and the villian magically turning a stretch of land in Harad into Mordor don't inspire confidence in me.

 

At the same time, I do see a lot of potential in Elrond in the way they set him up as a young ambassador of both Gil-galad AND Celebrimbor (although I could do without the rockstar hairdo) and I actually think the PTSD Galadriel could turn out nicely. Hearing Edwards describe Celebrimbor - sans the bravura of someone like Ben Walker talking about Gil-galad - inspired some confidence in me (again, sans the schoolmaster-with-an-edgy-haircut look). A lot of the visuals - not all - look sweet: Valinor and Ost-in-Edhil spring to mind, and there's a value to witnessing the belle epoque of Middle Earth, so to speak. I even like the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic for the Lindon Elves.

 

So I'm on the fence. At the moment I'm more enjoying the thrill of the detective work than necessarily looking for the show with baited breath.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

 

 

21 hours ago, Chen G. said:

The showrunners visited Tolkien's grave

 

They must have gotten quite a shock when they heard him turning over!

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 hour ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Just as I don't expect you to share my skepticism

 

Oh, but I do! You know I do!

[Brónach 1,301]

On 10/07/2022 at 1:08 PM, Mr. Who said:

Based on the trailers, Rings of Power goes into the a certain fantasy category that includes Wheel of Time, the Witcher, Shadow and Bone etc where everything looks very hyped and kind of over the top and too clean (including the costumes, the characters themselves etc).

 

I think there's actually an overuse of portraying locations, costumes and people as colourless and dirty, and then muting light on top of that for no reason. This isn't a 20th century war. It's particularly damning in supposedly historical movies and the cinematic tropes they enforce there.

On 10/07/2022 at 8:00 PM, Servant of Morgoth said:

I can't really have an opinion about how the Elven storyline is going to be from what FoF said about the elves leaks but I fear the worst for Numenor storyline. Because at least for me you can't really get through Numenor's decline, mortality vs immortality, colonialism and its consequences ,the breakdown of Numenor society in two factions, everthing they did for bad or for worse if the show is going to basically takes place in an handful of years as In Deep Geek said quoting the showrunners themselves

 

The time compression in this suuuucks. You can't be so chickenshit so as to not let time pass characters die between episodes or in episodes themselves, while only other characters remain. That would be like the obvious thing to do.

On 09/07/2022 at 7:46 PM, Chen G. said:

 

I guess some people define that term differently. For me, mythology is fictionalized prehistory and therefore, being mythological, it should feel very matter-of-fact like a historical movie, rather than being self-consciously fantastical or surreal or what have you.

 

Yes but also a lot of known mythology follows dream logic so it's a bit of both.

[Chen G. 3,944]

7 hours ago, Brónach said:

I think there's actually an overuse of portraying locations, costumes and people as colourless and dirty, and then muting light on top of that for no reason. This isn't a 20th century war.

 

Yeah, I mean we go to the movies in part to derive some aesthetic enjoyment from the pictures and a huge part of deriving enjoyment from pictures is colour, so to grade your movie to have unnaturalistic, garish or dull colours to make some statement about the subject matter is to cut your nose to spite your face.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

No one utilizes color grading as effectively as the Coen brothers

[Chen G. 3,944]

Anyhow, this is Season One's main antagonist, Adar:

 

 

Seemingly involved in a production of the Wolf Glen scene from Der Freischutz.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

5 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Anyhow, this is Season One's main antagonist, Ada Lucius Malfoy :

 

 

 

Fixed.

[Barnald 365]

 

If you didn't laugh you'd probably cry...

[Holko 9,499]

Are these Númenorians?

[Barnald 365]

Yep. The magical island of Numenor, which looks like something straight out of generic fantasy crap:

 

[Holko 9,499]

2 minutes ago, Barnald said:

Yep.

Then why do their helmets look like Rohirrim when they have nothing to do with aaargh

[Chen G. 3,944]

2 minutes ago, Holko said:

Then why do their helmets look like Rohirrim when they have nothing to do with aaargh

I think the thinking behind it must have been “well, we want to throw-back to as much of the films’ imagery as we can, but we have no Rohirrim. Oh well, let’s just transpose Rohan-style armour to the Numenorean cavalry!

 

For what it’s worth, I quite like most of these pictures.

[Barnald 365]

2 hours ago, Chen G. said:

For what it’s worth, I quite like most of these pictures.

 

I'll see you those images and raise you this:

 

[Holko 9,499]

Damn, I hope someone connected a generator to JRR and Christopher's bodies...

[Mr. Who 919]

Some more images here:

https://ew.com/tv/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-numenor-first-look/

 

I can't put my finger on what it is but there is something off about the images. The young Isildur picture for instance looks a lot like some kind of cosplay.

Just saw that the longer trailer was released:

 

The Rivendell theme is hinted in the beginning

[Van_Etten 111]

So the premiere is less than 2 months away and they still haven't announced officially who's scoring this?

[Evanus 217]

Sooo are they gonna release expanded versions of the Hobbit scores to coincide with this? That's all I care about, honestly.. 

[Jay 37,322]

11 minutes ago, Van_Etten said:

So the premiere is less than 2 months away and they still haven't announced officially who's scoring this?

 

That more is more and more common these days!

[Disco Stu 15,495]

10 minutes ago, Evanus said:

Sooo are they gonna release expanded versions of the Hobbit scores to coincide with this? That's all I care about, honestly.. 

 

I'd wager there's a better chance of John Williams hand-delivering the complete recording sessions of the Indiana Jones series to your front door  

[Bilbo 3,709]

Was that Harfoot woman supposed to be doing an Irish accent? Please tell me she wasn’t because that’s fucking terrible .

 

Also, this is a bit of a stretch: 

[KK 3,307]

I will say that visually, the new trailer does look much stronger than the last. The bits of plot that I could gather do sound dumb though.

[Chen G. 3,944]

11 minutes ago, His Royal Noelness said:

Was that Harfoot woman supposed to be doing an Irish accent? Please tell me she wasn’t because that’s fucking terrible .

 

Yes, the Harfoots are given Irish-esque accents.

[Bilbo 3,709]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

Yes, the Harfoots are given Irish-esque accents.

Oh Christ.

[Chen G. 3,944]

Yeah, so far I'm not liking ANYTHING coming from the Harfoots direction. And the way Meteor Man manipulates fire does make him seem like Gandalf which is an idea I absolutely hate.

 

But I think the glimpse at Numenore looked nice (except Miriel's helmet, that's stupid), Khazad Dum looks sweeet, and the Elven stuff is growing on me.

[Pellaeon 593]

This fall there will be published a new book collection of many of Tolkien’s 2nd Age writings, entitled The Fall of Númenor: and Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth.

Trade + De Luxe eds.

 

No new Tolkien texts in here. “This edition draws on ‘Akallabeth’, ‘Of Rings of Power’ and material from ‘Peoples of ME’, ‘Sauron Defeated’, ‘Nature of ME’, ‘The Lost Road’, ‘Letters’, ‘LOTR’ etc.” However, it appears editor Brian Sibley was given a rather free hand to “draw… together many of the threads from the tales of the Second Age into a single work.” “I hope that this opportunity to read, as a single narrative, an account of those years, will provide a new appreciation of … the monumental events of the Second Age.” Great idea!

[Jim Ware 526]

2 hours ago, Van_Etten said:

So the premiere is less than 2 months away and they still haven't announced officially who's scoring this?

All in good time. Gives them the opportunity to throw it all out, start again and keep the PR machine happy.

[Jay 37,322]

I watched the new trailer and honestly it didn't make me any more or less excited for the show than I already was, which was essentially completely ambivilent towards it.

 

The conversation between Elrond and Galadriel just felt really wrong, mostly because Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett played those characters so well, it's just hard to get into anybody else playing them in live action.  It probably would have been better to make a show with no characters that were in the movies at all.

 

The music.... the parts that weren't trailer-ized sounded OK, the trailerized stuff was as bad as all other trailer-ized stuff these days.

[Chen G. 3,944]

22 minutes ago, Jay said:

The music.... the parts that weren't trailer-ized sounded OK,

 

Speaking of the parts that weren't "trailerized"... are those not the arpeggios we associate with Rivendell? I mean, its just an arpeggio, but it sounds pretty much like it to me...

[Jay 37,322]

Oh definitely

[Holko 9,499]

Obi had DotF and BotH too...

[Monoverantus 363]

Huh. Curious.

Indeed, the first four notes are the Weakness and Redemption pitches, which in its placement and major setting would be a hint to Rivendell. But the following song is actually built off the same pitches in reverse order.

[Chen G. 3,944]

1 minute ago, Monoverantus said:

But the following song is actually built off the same pitches in reverse order.

 

I had suspected as much, and it has since been pointed out to me. Its nice to see it spelled-out, though.

 

One wonders if this means anything beyond just a teaser...

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

2 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

This fall there will be published a new book collection of many of Tolkien’s 2nd Age writings, entitled The Fall of Númenor: and Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth.

 

 

It's the feel-good book of the summer!

[Chen G. 3,944]

Its like Titanic except its the land that drowns!

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

4 hours ago, His Royal Noelness said:

Also, this is a bit of a stretch: 

 

I think if they had any respect at all for Tolkien they'd at least just say "Inspired by..."

[Monoverantus 363]

4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

One wonders if this means anything beyond just a teaser...

That's the question to rule them all, isn't it? Including the pseudo-Ring theme and kinda-Gondor, there's still no telling if any of this will actually reflect the show at all.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

I'll say this for that trailer. The Wargs look better than Peter Jacksons.

[Bilbo 3,709]

1 hour ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

I think if they had any respect at all for Tolkien they'd at least just say "Inspired by..."

“from the guys who saw (some of) The Lord of the Rings movies”

[mstrox 6,647]

Looks fine, and might be good.  Trailer music is expectedly awful, but hoping for something good in the actual show.

[Jay 37,322]

Yea I have never let any trailer's music affect my assumptions of what the actual score in the thing will be

[Servant of Morgoth 20]

The third and main teaser was fine, sometimes even great. Much better than the previous two for sure.

Still my fears and worries for the series remain the same

[Jay 37,322]

Get an avatar!

[Brónach 1,301]

On 14/07/2022 at 5:28 PM, Chen G. said:

Yeah, so far I'm not liking ANYTHING coming from the Harfoots direction. And the way Meteor Man manipulates fire does make him seem like Gandalf which is an idea I absolutely hate.

 

I'm starting to think we're being trolled in classic Sauron fashion with the "Gandalf"