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

[Bilbo 3623]

I’m not surprised they’ve moved from New Zealand to the U.K. for future seasons, there’s no need to be in NZ when you’re creating the whole thing in a computer anyway. 

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

13 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Okay, I think this looks really beautiful:

 

 

I know this is supposed to evoke Minas Tirith, but I see the front end of a medieval Imperial Star Destroyer, and now I can't unsee it.

[Holko 8034]

That's Minas Tirith with the church Cersei blows up with the green stuff on top of it!

[Chen G. 2948]

3 hours ago, Bilbo said:

I’m not surprised they’ve moved from New Zealand to the U.K. for future seasons, there’s no need to be in NZ when you’re creating the whole thing in a computer anyway. 

 

I mean, did we expect them to find a place that looked like this and build Numenore there? Anymore than we did with Rivendell, or with Laketown, or with Minas Tirith?

[Pellaeon 573]

Is it possible this show takes place in two different time periods? Cutting back and forth in some fashion between the “present” of Ar-Pharazôn and the “past” of Celebrimbor? Perhaps in the form of memories of the Elvish characters who straddle the 1,800 year+ gap?

 

Trailers show the Two Trees and I think the Helcaraxë — and those would obviously be flashbacks.

 

The Balrog, that’s a stumper, he doesn’t come into the tale till the year 1980 of the Third Age! Is he just in dreams?

 

I have no Meteor Man theories, but it does occur to me, there are writings in PoMe about how maybe Glorfindel and the Blue Wizards returned to Middle-earth in the 2nd Age, not the 3rd Age.

[Mr. Who 635]

11 hours ago, Holko said:

That's Minas Tirith with the church Cersei blows up with the green stuff on top of it!

Looks a bit similar to the Sept of Baelor lol. This looks way cleaner though and less “lived in”.

[Chen G. 2948]

13 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

Is it possible this show takes place in two different time periods? Cutting back and forth in some fashion between the “present” of Ar-Pharazôn and the “past” of Celebrimbor? Perhaps in the form of memories of the Elvish characters who straddle the 1,800 year+ gap?

 

Trailers show the Two Trees and I think the Helcaraxë — and those would obviously be flashbacks.

 

The Balrog, that’s a stumper, he doesn’t come into the tale till the year 1980 of the Third Age! Is he just in dreams?

 

No, everyone working on the show is crystal clear they've compressed the timeline into, presumably, a few years. That allows the Tirharadrim and Harfoot characters to not only survive to the end of the series, but also to maintain their appearance: from a dramatic standpoint, you don't want Tyroe Muhaffidin's Theo to be 14 in Season One, 20 in Season Two and 35 in Season Four: you want him to mature along the lines of an Arya Stark.

 

That isn't to say there aren't flashbacks: Certainly, the time of the Trees period is a flashback. What you deem the Helcaraxë is actually a mission Galadriel leads into the Forodwaith in "real time" rather than in flashback.

 

The Balrog is a trickier business: I think the shot we see of the Balrog proper is either some First Age Balrog in flashback or perhaps setting-up Durin's Bane appearance so that when Peter Mullan's Durin III talks about a "tempting shadow [that] would bury us all beneath the Mountain" we know what he's talking about. I do think he'll appear, but only as the Season Five endgame to the Khazad Dum storyline, which - yes - would seem to pull on material from the first two milennia of the Third Age.

 

Meteor Man I'm becoming more and more convinced is Gandalf. Having jumped through all these lore hoops to have Hobbits, to collapse the time frame, to seemingly have Durin's Bane and so forth, you wouldn't think they'd pass up on Gandalf.

 

 

[Servant of Morgoth 14]

 

So let's do a small recap. They're doing timeline compression which could mean that they'll merge the war of the Elves and Sauron with Pharazon expedition when he captured Sauron( this is bad because the context is entirely different in the first conflict the Numenoreans went to war for the love and the sake of the elves in the second just for pride and glory), also timeline compression could mean cutting a lot of the battles and even the siege of The Last Alliance. Also I don't give a damn they are doing timeline compression to keep alive and still young their original characters. They're inserting Gandalf for the sake of nostalgia bait, they will probably close the dwarven storyline with Durin's Bane an event that happens only 2000 years after in 1980 TE(huge red flag for me it means Tolkien Estate doesn't give a sh.i.t about them twisting Tolkien's canon)

It's safe to say that at the end of the damn five seasons we'll count  the few things that they haven't changed on one hand.

 

Let me know if I forget something. As this wasn't already enough @Chen G.

[Chen G. 2948]

1 hour ago, Servant of Morgoth said:

Let me know if I forget something. As this wasn't already enough @Chen G.

 

In an interview with EW from ComicCon, the actresses of the two Hobbit youngesters made the parallel to Frodo and Sam...

 

Also, and this is me piecing stuff together so take it with a grain of salt, but this fort will get besieged by Orcs until Galadriel brings the Numenorean cavarly to save the day (ahem...Helm's Deep...ahem):

 

 

Spoiler

And then in what looks like the subsequent victory celebrations, an explosion happens:

 

 

which I believe turns the verdant stretch of land above into...

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

This peaceful land being conquered & turned into Mordor is an idea I'm sure they got from The Scouring of the Shire (and Frodo's vision of it in the film). Which is the rationale they'll use to justify it. 

[Chen G. 2948]

Yeah, but this isn't a case like the Scouring or like Isengard where the continuous indsturialisation and/or war preparations ravish the land: its a case of something going "boom!" (why, how and what the nature of this explosion is, I haven't the foggiest) and there's Mordor.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

I'm not saying it's a 1:1 correlation, I'm saying it's the comparison they'll draw in justifying it. You'll see.

 

In fact they're already engaging in those kind of rationalizations. 

[Chen G. 2948]

They are. Its the same as the rhetoric of "they're not Hobbits, they're Harfoots, you see, and that's why its totally different and not pandering!"

 

This is the real killer for me, though: 

 

Quote

we weren't interested in a show that was a nostalgia play or a retread, or a reboot or a sequel in a lot of the traditional ways we felt we were getting as viewers.

 

We've heard the showrunners parrot this line a few times now, on a couple of occasions. And from what I can see, it just doesn't jive with what their show has to offer, between the Harfoots, potentially Meteor Man and certainly this siege battle.

 

Whether this is intentionally misleading or not is for a later day, I think.

[Servant of Morgoth 14]

Mount Doom was made by Morgoth. The land of Mordor was already barren and harsh because of the volcanic eruptions even before Sauron decided to built his stronghold there

 

In truth I am already tired of all these proto things they're doing. Proto hobbits, proto Mordor, proto Gandalf, proto Durin's Bane,etc.

[Bilbo 3623]

On 12/8/2022 at 2:46 PM, Chen G. said:

 

I mean, did we expect them to find a place that looked like this and build Numenore there? Anymore than we did with Rivendell, or with Laketown, or with Minas Tirith?

No, but the whole thing looks like it was filmed in a big green room with everything added in afterwards not just wide establishing shots like that of Byzantine Tirith posted above.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

Mixed feelings about the production design I'm seeing. Some wide "shots" (whatever "shot" means in context of something entirely created on a computer) look OK. No doubt, I'm guessing, because it's based on Howe's artwork. 

 

But some mid and closer up stuff, especially with people in it, has that slightly surreal "fantasy" look that plagues many shows like this.

[Holko 8034]

 

Some good points in here.

[Bilbo 3623]

T-shirts with printed armour is the way to go obviously. 

[Monoverantus 313]

On 14/08/2022 at 10:45 AM, Holko said:

 

Some good points in here.

Absolute nitpick here, but the Rohirrim look way more Anglo-Saxon than the Númenor cast look Roman.

[Incanus 5569]

Wow, with every new detail that is revealed about this show, the less interested I become. I am not that interested in Tolkien fan fiction that I would actually subscribe to Amazon Prime Video for this.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

Finally, Tolkien's vision fulfilled!

 

[Jay 31058]

Woah, the lady on the bottom left looks like Tahini from The Good Place

[Chen G. 2948]

9 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Finally, Tolkien's vision fulfilled.

 

 

Ah, but you're wrong Nick. That's not Tolkien's vision fulfilled, clearly THIS is:

 

 

The way this shaping up, at its worst this show would make a hell of lark if you've a drink handy.

[Holko 8034]

uuuuugh

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

Dear God.

[Chen G. 2948]

The gist of it is that Halbrand gives Galadriel this look:

 

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

I saw it. Where's Celeborn?

 

[Chen G. 2948]

3 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

I saw it. Where's Celeborn?

 

Seems to be AWOL this season.

 

[Holko 8034]

Elves are of course known to keep a whole harem of lovers.

[Chen G. 2948]

Part of the issue is

 

Spoiler

I think this guy might be Sauron

 

[Incanus 5569]

51 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Ah, but you're wrong Nick. That's not Tolkien's vision fulfilled, clearly THIS is:

 

[Bilbo 3623]

1 hour ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Finally, Tolkien's vision fulfilled.

 

with everything that gets released from this series I struggle to tell if it’s real or parody. 

[Barnald 364]

Quote

The new season will be directed by an all-female director line up

 

Whatever makes you sleep better at night Amazon hierarchy. Your backs must hurt from all those pats.

 

56 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Seems to be AWOL this season.

 

 

He obviously saw the scripts.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

This show just has a hypocrisy underscoring the whole enterprise. The show runners have said consistently that they want to distinguish their series completely from the New Line films for artistic and legal reasons. So what do they do? They hire Howard Shore to write the theme, John Howe to create the design art, film in New Zealand, hire a cast of look-alikes, and create a production & creature design that more or less depicts Middle-Earth the same as the movies. Sort of sounds to me like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They obviously know that the films are the way the public imagines Middle-Earth, and they're not going to risk showing it any other way. It's a commercially sound decision and an artistically cowardly one.

 

Which I suppose gives me mixed feelings. I loved the way the films looked,  but on the other hand, there are countless other talented artists who have depicted Middle-Earth in other ways, who have visions distinct from Howe's & Lee's (to say nothing of Jackson, Richard Taylor & WETA). If they really wanted to set their own path and contribute something unique to the Middle-Earth tapestry, they could easily have done so. But they want faux-continuity with the films (which honestly, I can't blame them for) without saying they want continuity. It's all a wink & nod of Orville level proportions.

[Disco Stu 15468]

The cynicism and hypocrisy just makes my skin crawl.  And the playbook is so rote at this point.  The way they want to affix this perception that if you're a Tolkien fan and you don't watch the show, you're actually maybe abetting fascists or whatever.  I can't roll my eyes higher.

 

But I fixed the headline.

 

The ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Team Already Fears Counts On Racist Backlash Against Cast

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-team-fears-racist-backlash-against-cast

 

-Shame on the media for creating this culture in the first place

-Shame on the marketing team for cynically taking advantage of it all to gin up a 'good guys vs. bad guys' narrative, playing fans against each other for controversy ("earned" media)

-Shame on the creative team for going along with it

-Shame on the sanctimonious viewers that buy into it

-Shame on me

-Shame on you

-Shame!

 

 

[Barnald 364]

Fine post, but can we add 'shame on Amazon for making such garbage'?

[Disco Stu 15468]

I'll leave judgments on the quality of the show itself, divorced from the poisonous marketing, to everyone who will actually watch it  

[Bilbo 3623]

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

I'll leave judgments on the quality of the show itself, divorced from the poisonous marketing, to everyone who will actually watch it  

At least you’ll get a new Bear score from this. I’ll get nothing 😭

 

 

I have House of the Dragon though so it’s not so bad

[KK 3251]

51 minutes ago, Bilbo said:

I have House of the Dragon though so it’s not so bad

 

Yes, this seems like it will easily be the better of the two shows. Neither seems promising on the music front though.

[Mr. Who 635]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

The cynicism and hypocrisy just makes my skin crawl.  And the playbook is so rote at this point.  The way they want to affix this perception that if you're a Tolkien fan and you don't watch the show, you're actually maybe abetting fascists or whatever.  I can't roll my eyes higher.

 

But I fixed the headline.

 

The ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Team Already Fears Counts On Racist Backlash Against Cast

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-team-fears-racist-backlash-against-cast

 

-Shame on the media for creating this culture in the first place

-Shame on the marketing team for cynically taking advantage of it all to gin up a 'good guys vs. bad guys' narrative, playing fans against each other for controversy ("earned" media)

-Shame on the creative team for going along with it

-Shame on the sanctimonious viewers that buy into it

-Shame on me

-Shame on you

-Shame!

 

 

Shame shame shame on the sinner! (That’s the book quote for that scene)

[JohnTheBaptist 47]

Amazing how everyone's already decided the show is terrible without having seen a single minute of it. 

[Holko 8034]

We've seen enough of it and heard enough of the showrunners' and actors' motivations and know how both clash with Tolkien and a good adaptation.

[JNHFan2000 1391]

Anyone mention that the series will premiere with 2 episodes. Or did I miss that being mentioned.

 

https://www.polygon.com/23308109/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-amazon-prime

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere with two episodes

[Bilbo 3623]

4 hours ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

Amazing how everyone's already decided the show is terrible without having seen a single minute of it. 

If what they’ve shown us so far is what they think is the best material to try and sell it to us I’m afraid to see how terrible the rest of it will be.

[Monoverantus 313]

5 hours ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

Amazing how everyone's already decided the show is terrible without having seen a single minute of it. 

On one hand, I'm generally in the camp of nihilists, who thinks that Tolkien's work must be protected from the hands of greedy corporations and soulless commities as much as possible. Seeing Tolkien's work being turned into lucrative , yet occasionally good "content", feels a bit like if Saruman industrialized all of Middle-earth and the hobbits saying "Well at least we got cars now". (Sure, the LotR trilogy was a commercial project too, but I must admit I'm biased due to the raw passion and creativity it excudes. At least let there not be another adaptation of LotR in my lifetime.)

On the other hand, you're completely right. It gets so tiring of how quickly people form camps and decide what to think before they've even seen the thing. If it's good, it's good; no matter who made it or what they've said or how it was marketed. Same if it's bad.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing.

 

There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.

[Servant of Morgoth 14]

I think this is the problem of ROP. It could be a good even maybe great modern generalistic fantasy tv show(with all the issues that being a modern generalistic fantasy tv show brings) but with a very tiny blanket of Tolkien sewed on it. This is way I'm gonna to dislike ROP even much more the two trilogies of Jackson

This tweet is just an example there are many more of people who attended the premiere in LA and posted about it. I think no I'm pretty sure that I'll live again the nightmares I had with GOT and the Witcher adaptations. Beautiful fantasy books totally butchered and twisted in something else

[Chen G. 2948]

I keep my skepticism towards responses coming from glossy premieres and press screenings. Not to accuse anyone going to those of being disingenious, but something about being a little bit dazzled by all the pomp and circumstance seems to put people into a more agreeable mood.

 

Looking for example at responses from the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker, for instance, one must wonder if those people saw the same film we saw in theaters.

[Nick1Ø66 3425]

I'd say I take these insta-reactions from premieres with a grain of salt, except that a grain of salt can actually be useful.

 

One House of the Dragon insta-reaction tweet described the show as "Better than Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad."  So...yeah.

 

 

[Jay 31058]

Apparently the first 2 episodes will drop at 6pm Pacific time on Thursday September 1st, which is 9pm in my local Eastern time zone

 

The remaining episodes, however, will drop at 9pm Pacific time on every subsequent Thursday until the finale on October 13, which is midnight in my local timezone, so it'll basically be a Friday / weekend show for me, I doubt even the premiere will be seen by me that Thursday night