Rings of Power The Rings of Power show discussion - spoilers allowed for all aired episodes

[TolkienSS 407]

On 17/10/2022 at 1:22 AM, Marian Schedenig said:

 

The music is excellent and among the best for screen I've heard in a long time. I don't think there are many besides McCreary (and team, I suppose) who could have done as well, and I certainly don't think Shore could (or would) have, or would have wanted to. His LOTR scores, excellent as they are in context, contain lots of filler material, and I don't see how he would have filled eight 1+ hour episodes with new music.

 

The proposition that a Howard f'n Shore score would have consisted largely of "filler music" is as disingenuous a coping strategy as newly born "Tolkien superfans" claiming old Tolkien fans never REALLY understood Tolkien.

[Marian Schedenig 8,191]

Coping strategy? What am I using it to cope with? And do you by contrast claim that Shore would have worked non-stop, full time, every day for more than half a year, as McCreery has done to the point of mental and physical exhaustion?

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

I mean that is what he did for both movie trilogies.

[Faleel 5,346]

42 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

I mean that is what he did for both movie trilogies.

Though he didn't conduct or orchestrate the latter part of TH tril.

[Marian Schedenig 8,191]

50 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

I mean that is what he did for both movie trilogies.

 

He had much more time for those than McCreary, didn't he? And as I said, they do contain a lot of filler. Not saying McCreary's scores don't, or do, for that matter (I haven't listened to them outside the series yet), but I do mention it because it was contested above. Also, filler isn't necessarily a disadvantage in the context of the film, but it's musical worth when divorced from the visuals (and more so when divorced from the story) can be debated.

[Score 770]

1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

And as I said, they do contain a lot of filler. 

 

Exactly this. I mean, there are things in music that can be defined in an objective way. A sequence of very simple long held chords in the strings, with the simplest possible voicing, and literally nothing happening on the top of it, is (a form of) filler. It may work and be appropriate in the film (especially if the film is very good in itself, and does not need to be accompanied by a Mahler symphony to transmit emotions and messages), but it has no musical value when taken alone as a part of a piece of music. The LOTR scores contain a fair amount of filler material, in various forms. This does not take anything away from the very notable highlights, but it's not like every single bar of those scores is gold.  

[Chen G. 3,949]

49 minutes ago, Score said:

The LOTR scores contain a fair amount of filler material, in various forms.

 

I think that's wrong. Just because the material is harmonically unadventurous - one's mind wanders to the long monophonic passage at the beginning of act III/scene two of Siegfried - doesn't mean it doesn't forward the storytelling through the leitmotif "language".

[Faleel 5,346]

20 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

I think that's wrong. Just because the material is harmonically unadventurous - one's mind wanders to the long monophonic passage at the beginning of act III/scene two of Siegfried - doesn't mean it doesn't forward the storytelling through the leitmotif "language".

So....filler then.

1 hour ago, Score said:

 

Exactly this. I mean, there are things in music that can be defined in an objective way. A sequence of very simple long held chords in the strings, with the simplest possible voicing, and literally nothing happening on the top of it, is (a form of) filler. It may work and be appropriate in the film (especially if the film is very good in itself, and does not need to be accompanied by a Mahler symphony to transmit emotions and messages), but it has no musical value when taken alone as a part of a piece of music.

You are forgetting two important parts:

 

Emotional value.

Textural value.

 

Those portions allow the room and the textures and colours of the instruments to speak.

1 hour ago, Score said:

 

This does not take anything away from the very notable highlights, but it's not like every single bar of those scores is gold.  

Those are the best parts btw

[Score 770]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

I think that's wrong. Just because the material is harmonically unadventurous - one's mind wanders to the long monophonic passage at the beginning of act III/scene two of Siegfried - doesn't mean it doesn't forward the storytelling through the leitmotif "language".

 

I'm not talking only about harmony. I'm talking about all the aspects of the musical piece. Wagner has nothing to do with this, the Tetralogy is everywhere much more elaborated (including the passage that you have linked). It's not about the use of leitmotives, it's about the compositional techniques: what is the musical idea, and how it is realized, in all its aspects. In this respect, there is an ocean between the Tetralogy and the LOTR scores. I cannot think of a single moment in the Tetralogy where I thought "ok, here he had a couple of minutes to fill and he wrote some strings chords". 

 

1 hour ago, Roll the Bones said:

You are forgetting two important parts:

 

Emotional value.

Textural value.

 

Those portions allow the room and the textures and colours of the instruments to speak.

 

 

I'm not forgetting them. Emotionally speaking, a series of sustained elementary strings chords (taken alone) does not give me anything. Anyone can write those; the instruments can speak much more eloquently than that. Praising the textural aspects is like saying that a string ensemble sounds very nicely, whatever they play. Ok, I know strings and choir sound nicely, there is a reason if composers use them, but this has nothing to do with the value of a specific musical piece; it's a property of the instruments, not of the composition. 

 

I stress again that I'm not talking about the LOTR scores in their entirety, just about the filler parts, which occur often enough to be noticed. And again, I'm not implying that those parts were "wrong" in the context they were written for. For those moments, the movies did not need anything more. But the parts of the LOTR scores that I admire are among the "non-filler" ones.  

 

In the case of ROP, surely I was not overwhelmed by the show. However, in the scores I noticed no filler moments, and this is one of the many reasons why I like them. Almost everywhere the scores are interesting and evocative. I feel a bit like in the case of the SW prequels; at the end I found myself saying "ok, they are what they are, but at least we got some very good music". In the ROP case, IMO we also saw some good acting and other values (such as the visuals); I also think some of the storylines were intriguing, although not realized in the best possible way. 

[Faleel 5,346]

47 minutes ago, Score said:

 

Almost everywhere the scores are interesting and evocative

Debatable.

 

I personally felt they were alright, and the action lacked cohesion and groove.

 

Nothing made me feel like the composer knew me and what I liked to hear. Which is of course ridiculous, but still..

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

13 minutes ago, Roll the Bones said:

Nothing made me feel like the composer knew me and what I liked to hear.

Maybe he only knew you half as well as he’d have liked.

[Marian Schedenig 8,191]

4 hours ago, Chen G. said:

I think that's wrong. Just because the material is harmonically unadventurous - one's mind wanders to the long monophonic passage at the beginning of act III/scene two of Siegfried - doesn't mean it doesn't forward the storytelling through the leitmotif "language".

 

I Shore's case, some of those passages do (though not all of them, I think). Which is why I added context as a relevant aspect. Within the full scores, many rather simple passages have a narrative function, but that doesn't necessarily make them interesting in a purely musical fashion when derived of their context. I think the so-called LOTR Symphony is rather poorly assembled in that it consists of the highlights and many of these connective passages, out of context. A lot of the time, the musicians just played elongated chords. In many ways, these are great scores, but not everything in them is necessarily great music on its own.

 

To get back to what my original point was: Shore wrote quite a bit of filler material for these three scores, where he had a lot of time. I'm sure he would have written lots of filler material for this series (or left a lot of it unscored), regardless of what McCreary has or hasn't done. And I'm almost certain he wouldn't have *wanted* to subject himself to similar workload as McCreary's.

[Tydirium 1,167]

On 21/10/2022 at 7:15 PM, TolkienSS said:

 

The proposition that a Howard f'n Shore score would have consisted largely of "filler music" is as disingenuous a coping strategy as newly born "Tolkien superfans" claiming old Tolkien fans never REALLY understood Tolkien.

 

Are you seriously claiming the LOTR scores don't contain a lot of filler material? Of course they do, and there's nothing wrong with that fact, anyway...

[JohnTheBaptist 57]

10 hours ago, Score said:

 

Exactly this. I mean, there are things in music that can be defined in an objective way. A sequence of very simple long held chords in the strings, with the simplest possible voicing, and literally nothing happening on the top of it, is (a form of) filler. It may work and be appropriate in the film (especially if the film is very good in itself, and does not need to be accompanied by a Mahler symphony to transmit emotions and messages), but it has no musical value when taken alone as a part of a piece of music. The LOTR scores contain a fair amount of filler material, in various forms. This does not take anything away from the very notable highlights, but it's not like every single bar of those scores is gold.  

I have to disagree with this. I know we prefer more classical forms here, but even apart from the role of simple music as effective score, you're ruling out other valid forms of music as having no musical value. Ambient music comes to mind, as well as classical Indian music which revolves around drones.

[Score 770]

3 hours ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

I have to disagree with this. I know we prefer more classical forms here, but even apart from the role of simple music as effective score, you're ruling out other valid forms of music as having no musical value. Ambient music comes to mind, as well as classical Indian music which revolves around drones.

 

That's not what I meant. Maybe, instead of "musical value" (which is somehow subjective) I should have used the term "compositional value". Or "compositional originality", if you prefer. For example, the Prologue of LOTR (in both the film and the original version, though I prefer the latter) is compositionally interesting, as well as very fitting for the film context. An example of what I call "filler material" is the section from 1:43 to 2:40 of track 4 "Very Old Friends" from the LOTR complete recordings. I hope I have made clear enough, above, that I don't deny the possible role of simple music as effective score (I said it two or three times), I'm just talking about the compositional values of the piece of music taken in itself. The Prologue of LOTR requires a very good and skilled composer, that section from track 4 can be written by anyone with basic musical training. The LOTR scores display a singular alternation of both types of musical cues. 

 

[Holko 9,519]

41 minutes ago, Score said:

An example of what I call "filler material" is the section from 1:43 to 2:40 of track 4 "Very Old Friends" from the LOTR complete recordings.

The section that scores Bilbo's pain by starting with simple Hobbit material, souring it, then coming back to transition it to the full calm theme statement that follows? Filler to me would mean it's just there so there's something there but doesn't do anything, this definitely does things. It serves its purpose perfectly, I love it there in the cue. I will never understand why people want to remove everything 100% from context.

[Score 770]

15 minutes ago, Holko said:

The section that scores Bilbo's pain by starting with simple Hobbit material, souring it, then coming back to transition it to the full calm theme statement that follows? Filler to me would mean it's just there so there's something there but doesn't do anything, this definitely does things. It serves its purpose perfectly, I love it there in the cue. I will never understand why people want to remove everything 100% from context.

 

The answer to this is in the rest of my post that you have partially quoted. I have already explained several times what I mean. If you object to the word "filler" (that I was borrowing from previous posts), replace it with one of your choice that is able to capture the difference between a well-thought and well-constructed piece of music such as the Prologue (for example) and a sequence of static elementary chords. Because, believe me, there is a difference, and I'm sure that Shore himself would agree.  

[Chen G. 3,949]

40 minutes ago, Score said:

a sequence of static elementary chords.

 

Static elementary chords that are one of the most important motives of the score...

[Richard Penna 3,684]

I'd say most of FotR is fairly essential but the sheer length of TTT and RotK and the more sprawling editing and scope of the films results in some moments here and there that probably didn't need music. A few sections of the more tense battle music in RotK particularly do go on a bit for me on the CR - mainly the siege on Osgiliath which was microedited on the OST.

 

I rarely listen to the 'wrapping up' bits at the end of RotK where everyone reunites and Frodo goes off to the Grey Havens. Mainly speaking to the insane length of the ending of the film - it's just all too slow.

[Chen G. 3,949]

2 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

 I rarely listen to the 'wrapping up' bits at the end of RotK where everyone reunites and Frodo goes off to the Grey Havens.

That’s my favourite part! 

[TolkienSS 407]

3 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I'd say most of FotR is fairly essential but the sheer length of TTT and RotK and the more sprawling editing and scope of the films results in some moments here and there that probably didn't need music. A few sections of the more tense battle music in RotK particularly do go on a bit for me on the CR - mainly the siege on Osgiliath which was microedited on the OST.

 

I rarely listen to the 'wrapping up' bits at the end of RotK where everyone reunites and Frodo goes off to the Grey Havens. Mainly speaking to the insane length of the ending of the film - it's just all too slow.

 

I thought you lived in a world where everyone appreciates everything on their own merits, and critiquing something with generalisations like "boring" and "too slow" was an expression of closed-mindedness?

[Faleel 5,346]

12 hours ago, Score said:

The Prologue of LOTR requires a very good and skilled composer, that section from track 4 can be written by anyone with basic musical training. The LOTR scores display a singular alternation of both types of musical cues. 

 

Even the simplest composition can change the course of the score.

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

10 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I rarely listen to the 'wrapping up' bits at the end of RotK where everyone reunites and Frodo goes off to the Grey Havens. Mainly speaking to the insane length of the ending of the film - it's just all too slow.

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

That’s my favourite part! 

I was about to say, I probably play everything from “The Mouth of Sauron” to “Bilbo’s Song” more than anything else in TTT or ROTK (except maybe “Lighting of the Beacons” and “The Grace of Undomiel”).

[Mr. Who 919]

“Lighting of the Beacons” and “The Grace of Undomiel” are 2 of my favorite cues of film music! The moment when they arrive in Gondor in Grace of Undomiel with the trumpets playing the Gondor theme is really amazing.

 

To me the Gondor theme (which is hinted in the first score) is a little bit like the Elven theme in the Hobbit which is hinted in the prologue in the first movie and then is used in full in the second movie. Both are themes which I loved in their first respective "hints/versions". When the first Hobbit score was released that elven choir moment was one of my favorite parts and I remember how happy I was when that elven theme was so heavily used in DOS.

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

I just can’t get over the strings when Arwen turns around and rides back to Rivendell. It’s one of the most passionate bits of writing in the score. Right up there with “Flight from Edoras” which I forgot to mention earlier.

 

God, I really need to find time to replay this score!

[Chen G. 3,949]

Rings of Power done gone and recast their best original character and best casting coup...

 

This is going nowhere good...

[Pellaeon 593]

I would guess they have greatly reduced the role, and he didn’t want a bit part.

[Nick1Ø66 4,711]

My guess it that the show is going to have some dramatic changes for Season 2. Cast, tone, storyline, everything. I'd bet odds it will feel more like a reboot than a second season.

 

Whatever Amazon says publicly, they can't be happy about how this all turned out. They didn't pay all that money for a merely "successful" series, they were clearly looking for a Game of Thrones or (early) Walking Dead level cultural phenomenon, and they ended up getting beat by the karate kid.

[Pellaeon 593]

The showrunners did say, “Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.” If I were hoping for a turnaround, those are the sorts of words I’d like to hear.

[Chen G. 3,949]

3 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

They didn't pay all that money for a merely "successful" series, they were looking for a Game of Thrones or (early) Walking Dead level cultural phenomenon, and they ended up getting beat by the karate kid.

 

Me and one of my other Fellowship of Fans peers (not Isolde) talk about this a lot: this show was clearly billed as prestige television - the kind of television people talk about around the water cooler, and notably the kind of show that wins awards. I can barely see this thing getting nominated beyond "technical" categories.

 

Who would have imagined Random Star Wars Show number 36.124 would be such a better show than The Lord of the Rings?! That's gotta sting for people in Amazon.

[Richard Penna 3,684]

I've had several discussions with walking friends and acquaintances about the show but it's usually surface level, i.e. 'cool show' - never anything remotely about story, characters or anything like that. Most people just sort of get a bit bored/disinterested quickly when I mention that I think the music's great.

[Chen G. 3,949]

19 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

I think the music's great.

 

I could see the music grabbing a few awards, definitely.

[Richard Penna 3,684]

If Bear doesn't win any awards I'll assume that TolkienSS has kidnapped every voting panel in the country...

[TolkienSS 407]

On 01/12/2022 at 6:52 PM, Pellaeon said:

The showrunners did say, “Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.” If I were hoping for a turnaround, those are the sorts of words I’d like to hear.

 

Surely you can't be so *****g naive. "Yeah we knew season 1 would be shite, but in season 2 we will make it awesome!"

 

Literally nothing about this show is genuine. The only genuine thing on this show is its fakeness.

[Edmilson 7,433]

I love Ryan's subtle hability of making fun of a movie/TV show while still being completely accurate to its content:

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,711]

Well that's not bad. 

[enderdrag64 624]

 

[JNHFan2000 2,957]

 

[Jay 37,346]

Any idea home much time passed between end of filming and premiere for season 1?

[JNHFan2000 2,957]

24 minutes ago, Jay said:

Any idea home much time passed between end of filming and premiere for season 1?

I looked it up.

 

Season 1 wrapped in August 2021.

 

So we can expect S2 somewhere next year probably

[Monoverantus 363]

To be clear, filming has wrapped in one location. Not all.

 

[Jay 37,346]

Ah that makes much more sense

[JNHFan2000 2,957]

Aha. That dkes make more sense. I also thought it was pretty quick

[Bilbo 3,709]

I actually did sit down and watch this show this week to give it a fair shot. And man, my initial reactions were wrong. It’s actually worse than it looked. 
 

There’s very very little salvageable in those 9 or so hours of TV. It’s an absolute mess. For the sake of the writers I can only hope that it was butchered in the edit. There just seems to be bits missing all over the place. The pacing goes from super fast to boringly slow in places. 
 

I will say the Elrond and non canon Durin stuff was the most well done stuff but Galadriel… Christ. She bears no resemblance to anything in Tolkien or Jackson. And the show doesn’t know whether it wants to be Tolkien or Jackson. It’s schizophrenic. 
 

The money isn’t up on the screen anyway. You get a big wide vista and then cut to the corner of a room. The costumes are awful. Celebrimbor is wearing curtains and the hairstyles look they were inspired by Michael Bolton.

 

Galadriel, Elrond, Arondir, Nori, and girl Anarion all basically have the same basic character arc of “young upstarts challenge the status quo”. But the Arondir/Bronwyn storyline managed to fit every cliche in. And the Harfoot stuff was painful. It killed the momentum every time the story switched to them. And why do they have stage Irish accents? Is cringe worthy.

 

also the three mystery box characters. Adar wasn’t too bad to be fair but Sauron was painfully obvious and Gandalf is obviously Gandalf.

 

But it takes pointless liberties for no reason. It’s all squished time wise but 

 

Celeborn and Anarion are already dead? So how does Galadriel have Celebrian who in turn marries Elrond and produces Arwen and the twins.

 

Gil-Galad is also a total arsehole. He’s supposed to be a hero of reknown but he’s a total knob. 
 

But Galadriel is the worst thing about the show. For some reason the actress doesn’t move a single face muscle aside from in that awful slow motion horse ride. Another thing the show over uses is slow mo. Cheesy as hell. And Arondir’s slow mo video game stuff made was awful.
 

And it doesn’t matter that the show left New Zealand because so much of the landscape is just covered in cgi anyway. 
 

The Mordor PowerPoint thing was hilarious as fuck though. But the forging of the rings was anticlimactic. 
 

If it wasn’t Tolkien related it wouldn’t get a second season. It’s just a bad generic fantasy show that has the license to use Tolkien names. 
 

if someone didn’t make this nobody would want it to be made. 

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

6 hours ago, Bilbo said:

Celeborn and Anarion are already dead? So how does Galadriel have Celebrian who in turn marries Elrond and produces Arwen and the twins.

 

I'm not gonna defend this series, but my understanding is that Galadriel just thinks Celeborn is dead. In any event, they've cast someone to play him in Season 2.

 

6 hours ago, Bilbo said:

The Mordor PowerPoint thing was hilarious as fuck though.

 

I still can't believe actual adults came up with that, put it on screen, saw the finished product and then signed off on it. It's just so fucking absurd.

[Bilbo 3,709]

1 hour ago, A. A. Ron said:

 

I'm not gonna defend this series, but my understanding is that Galadriel just thinks Celeborn is dead. In any event, they've cast someone to play him in Season 2.

It’s still not a realistic timeframe for her to marry, have Celebrian, and then Celebrian grow up and marry Elrond and then Arwen and the twins. The age difference is going to look weird on tv because you’ll know how much older Elrond is. Or they’ll skip over it entirely which is just blatant disregard to the source material to make their fan fiction “work”.

 

I hope they don’t have Celeborn resurrected and sent back to Middle-earth. Poor Glorfindel. 

[Chen G. 3,949]

With all that mind, going into season two, there's reason to believe:

 

Tom Bombadil and Shelob are a thing in this; there's a second Sauron actor, both for flashbacks to Adar killing Sauron AND for the Annatar scenes. The season ends with the sack of Eregion, in a siege that seems to involve the Orcs drying up a stretch of river to get to the walls.

 

So its not like the writers decided to completely change the way they were writing this...

[Bilbo 3,709]

7 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

With all that mind, going into season two, there's reason to believe:

 

Tom Bombadil and Shelob are a thing in this; there's a second Sauron actor, both for flashbacks to Adar killing Sauron AND for the Annatar scenes. The season ends with the sack of Eregion, in a siege that seems to involve the Orcs drying up a stretch of river to get to the walls.

 

So its not like the writers decided to completely change the way they were writing this...

No it seems the criticism has just washed over them and they’re believing their own bullshit 

[Chen G. 3,949]

Its a shame, really. I do think this story is worthwhile: there's something to be said for seeing the "Golden Age" of mankind in Numenore, of Elvendom in Lindon (the latter sadly reduced to Lorien-lite) and of Dwarfdom in Khazad Dum before it all goes to tatters and we're left with the situation we find in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of isolated isles of settlements in a sea of wilderness.

[Bilbo 3,709]

Yes, there’s lots of threads for a good show or shows on the second age of middle earth. 
 

unfortunately this is not it. It’s generic fantasy with Tolkien names.

Credit where credit is due though, I did like this Elendil. He seems like a decent guy doing his best for his family, country, and honour. I can definitely see him as the forefather of Aragorn. 
 

This Isildur… I don’t think I’ll have much sympathy for. Which brings me to the fakeout death for Isildur… why?!??