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

[Bilbo 3,906]

5 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

The sad reality is that we will all be watching Season 3 and beyond

I won’t. Season 1 was too much for me. 

[Chen G. 4,767]

12 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

it is the only Tolkien game in town unless the two new Jackson films, the first one directed by Serkis, come to pass.

 

There's three films beginning with The War of the Rohirrim this year, then The Hunt for Gollum two years after that, and then a third untitled film. I think they're definitely moving forward: From what I gather, Walsh and Boyens are writing as we speak.

 

That's good enough a Tolkien game for me.

[TheUlyssesian 2,590]

19 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

There's three films beginning with The War of the Rohirrim this year, then The Hunt for Gollum two years after that, and then a third untitled film. I think they're definitely moving forward: From what I gather, Walsh and Boyens are writing as we speak.

 

That's good enough a Tolkien game for me.

 

War of Rohirrim looks like a dumpster fire to me. I personally have zero interest in it.

[Chen G. 4,767]

But...but...

 

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

4 hours ago, Chen G. said:

 

There's three films beginning with The War of the Rohirrim this year, then The Hunt for Gollum two years after that, and then a third untitled film. I think they're definitely moving forward: From what I gather, Walsh and Boyens are writing as we speak.

 

That's good enough a Tolkien game for me.

 

While I have no doubt that anything Jackson & Co. can and will put out will be superior to what Amazon has done, all these projects still have the same built-in, fundamental issues in terms of "adaptation" that Rings of Power does. A difference in degree, to be sure...what New Line is apparently doing isn't nearly as ambitious...but the fundamental challenges remain the same.

 

From a commercial standpoint, I also have a sinking suspicion that both Amazon and Warner may be vastly overestimating the public's appetite for more Tolkien "content".  People loved Jackson films, of course. But, beyond seeing those two stories on screen...I'm not so sure. The Hunt for Gollum will likely have to make close to a billion at the box office to be profitable, which is roughly what each of the previous films made. So call me sceptical, but I have my doubts that film is going to have that broad kind of appeal. Moreover, while New Line will surely do all it can to distinguish their projects from Amazon's, Rings of Power by its very existence is a liability.  Especially given how much it looks like the New Line films to the casual viewer, and Amazon's deceptive, and intentional, effort to confuse the matter in hopes that the public see their series as connected.  New Line, I think, will come to regard the cooperation, limited as it was, they gave to Amazon in season 1 as a short-sighted mistake.

 

I guess we'll see. The War of the Rohirrim probably isn't going to be much of a test case, as its animated and its box office expectations are going to be checked. That said, if it seriously underperforms, I wouldn't be surprised if that impacted the budget for The Hunt for Gollum. 

 

 

 

[TolkienSS 474]

5 hours ago, Bilbo said:

A lot of people act like people only dislike this show because it breaks canon.

 

A lot of people actually don’t like this show because the acting is bad, the casting is bad, the costume are bad, the writing is bad, the directing is bad, etc, if all that stuff was good I wouldn’t care less about the canon. 

 

Actually, no.

 

If the acting, writing, casting, directing were all exactly as they are now, only faithful to Tolkien's words and spirit, people would like it alot more.

The series was made with ill faith, that's why people reject it.

The bad acting, writing, directing are just the cherry on top that drives RoP from irrelevant to insulting.

 

History is full of bad shows and movies that enough people like because they were made in good faith. Like tons of literary adaptions.

[thestat 448]

Just chipping in - LOTR:ROP. Bear's scores are the only standard of film scoring nowadays. So eloquent, so effusive, so elaborate, so exquisite. The best of the best, even up there with 1990s large-scale scoring and the work of Shore (which is the gold standard for film scoring).

 

The show is a mess, it gets much better every episode seemingly, but the one aspect that needs to be complemented is the performance of Charlie Vickers - truly astonishing act of balancing between emotions, fake and real, passion and perversion, in tiny shots, going from extremes through eye acting, and the overall total transformation from rugged Viggo wannabe to a godly Blanchett.

[DarthDementous 1,266]

13 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

It came to me just how much the showrunners hate Tolkien and what his theme of hope in the face of hopelessness stands for.

Whereas Sam's speech in Two Towers, that there is some good in this world worth fighting for, is trying to put that in words, this show literally ends with female Sam proclaiming "if it's broke, it stays broke, nobody will fix it. The end."

You missed the point. The Harfoot speech at the end of season 2 wasn't about 'things are hopeless and will never be good again', it was about how you have to move on from what can't be repaired and in the wake of that loss build something better and new in its place. I fail to see how that is a message of hopelessness when it's saying that no matter how broken and irreparable things are, there is always a way forward because you can always build something new.

Especially considering the context of this speech is the backdrop of people like King Durin dying...of course that can't be 'fixed', but Prince Durin can usher in a new and better age for the Dwarves in the wake of that loss.

[Taikomochi 1,260]

1 minute ago, DarthDementous said:

You missed the point. The Harfoot speech at the end of season 2 wasn't about 'things are hopeless and will never be good again', it was about how you have to move on from what can't be repaired and in the wake of that loss build something better and new in its place. I fail to see how that is a message of hopelessness when it's saying that no matter how broken and irreparable things are, there is always a way forward because you can always build something new.

No point in engaging with TSS. If someone is committed to hating something in bad faith (see earlier discussion where they complained about DEI and “Afro Hobbits”, i.e. thinly-guised racism), then you don’t stand to gain anything in arguing. Your reading of the scene is obviously the intended one, and only someone with little to no media literacy would think otherwise. 

[DarthDementous 1,266]

4 minutes ago, Taikomochi said:

No point in engaging with TSS. If someone is committed to hating something in bad faith (see earlier discussion where they complained about DEI and “Afro Hobbits”, i.e. thinly-guised racism), then you don’t stand to gain anything in arguing. Your reading of the scene is obviously the intended one, and only someone with little to no media literacy would think otherwise. 

It's less engaging with him and more correcting misleading narratives that may sway those who haven't watched the show who are in this thread

There's a lot of people who are against this show and as such it's easy to take arguments that disparage it for granted, I just want to make sure it is criticised for valid reasons and that confirmation bias is diminished. And by valid I mean based on things that actually happen in the show.

[Taikomochi 1,260]

Fair enough.

[Stark 579]

There are plenty of valid concerns (and I once had a splendid list which I’ve sadly lost), but so many of the concerns voiced are based on a “the writers literally hate Tolkien” frame of reference which is obviously absurd if one actually watches the show. 

[Chen G. 4,767]

10 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

While I have no doubt that anything Jackson & Co. can and will put out will be superior to what Amazon has done, all these projects still have the same built-in, fundamental issues in terms of "adaptation" that Rings of Power does. A difference in degree, to be sure...what New Line is apparently doing isn't nearly as ambitious...but the fundamental challenges remain the same.

 

From a commercial standpoint, I also have a sinking suspicion that both Amazon and Warner may be vastly overestimating the public's appetite for more Tolkien "content".

 

Yeah, the commercial outlook for these works remains to be seen, I agree. But artistically, I do think they could be worthwhile. I'm as thrown by the anime characters in the Rohirrim trailer as anyone, and when they announced Gollum I thought "really"? But at the same time, I'm willing hear the filmmakers out on both.

 

And yes, both are not adaptations in the same sense as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But there is a difference compared to Rings of Power: Rings of Power is adapting ten pages of Tolkien into a figure well in excess of 40 hours. Rohirrim and Gollum are each adapting about two pages, but only for two or three hours... It's a quantitative difference, but its so big its effectivelly a qualitative one.

[Taikomochi 1,260]

Honestly, when you put it that way, they both seem of the same magnitude of source material butter scraped over too much bread, even if they aren’t exactly proportionally identical. 

[Stark 579]

53 minutes ago, Taikomochi said:

Honestly, when you put it that way, they both seem of the same magnitude of source material butter scraped over too much bread, even if they aren’t exactly proportionally identical. 

They undoubtedly are; like adapting a Wikipedia page. But I think it can be done by identifying interesting ideas and expanding based on them (which TROP does more often than not…). While I detest the “fan fiction” label that people throw on every adaption they dislike of anything, expanding on a story summary is… not dissimilar. It just needs to be done well.

[Taikomochi 1,260]

Oh I’m not opposed to it on principle. Just seems like an adaptation that amounts to 1 page source material per 1/1.5 hours of content vs. 1 page per 4 hours of content is not meaningfully different. Like in either case, it’s gonna be like 95% extrapolation. 

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

 

2 hours ago, Stark said:

While I detest the “fan fiction” label that people throw on every adaption they dislike of anything

 

Who does this?

 

[Chen G. 4,767]

9 hours ago, Taikomochi said:

Honestly, when you put it that way, they both seem of the same magnitude of source material butter scraped over too much bread, even if they aren’t exactly proportionally identical. 

 

The numbers don't tell the whole story. The Rings of Power story Tolkien gives us - certainl in Lord of the Rings, which is all they can really use - from up on cloud nine. We know the events, but we know scarce little about the characters and what they did within the framework of those events, which means a lot of extra extrapolating for turning it into a character-driven drama. Especially if you pick two characters - Galadriel and Elrond - as your leads out of considerations of familiarity, when in fact certainly in the case of Galadriel The Lord of the Rings gives you jack squat about her role in the events.

 

In something like The War of the Rohirrim, notwithstanding Helm's daughter, we ARE given a list of dramatis personae, and some vague sense of what they're like, what they want and what part they play in the events. We know what happens to the characters, not just what happens to cities and kingdoms. Same with the Gollum story.

[Taikomochi 1,260]

Ok, well, it was you who first introduced the idea of comparing pages to hours, not me. In any case, all I’m reading from your last comment is that Rings of Power has a lot more breathing room to write and structure the story as they see fit, which, to someone who is interested in the best adaptation rather than the one most slavish to the word of Tolkien, sounds like a very good thing.

 

If we are accepting both adaptations are based on too little source material either way, I’d rather be the one with some degree of creative freedom. 

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

44 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

The numbers don't tell the whole story. The Rings of Power story Tolkien gives us - certainl in Lord of the Rings, which is all they can really use - from up on cloud nine. We know the events, but we know scarce little about the characters and what they did within the framework of those events, which means a lot of extra extrapolating for turning it into a character-driven drama. Especially if you pick two characters - Galadriel and Elrond - as your leads out of considerations of familiarity, when in fact certainly in the case of Galadriel The Lord of the Rings gives you jack squat about her role in the events.

 

In something like The War of the Rohirrim, notwithstanding Helm's daughter, we ARE given a list of dramatis personae, and some vague sense of what they're like, what they want and what part they play in the events. We know what happens to the characters, not just what happens to cities and kingdoms. Same with the Gollum story.

 

There's also the fact that ROP is attempting to dramatize disparate events and characters, many of which have nothing to do with each other, that are separated by thousands of years. Both War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum take place within a relatively short time frame and more or less concern (presumably) a single narrative. 

 

Don't get me wrong, it's all fan fiction. But unlike ROP, the New Line films should at least have passing resemble to something Tolkien wrote. In addition to simply having more talented creatives behind The Hunt for Gollum at least.

[Chen G. 4,767]

13 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

There's also the fact that ROP is attempting to dramatize disparate events and characters, many of which have nothing to do with each other, that are separated by thousands of years. Both War of the Rohirrim and The Hunt for Gollum take place within a relatively short time frame and more or less concern (presumably) a single narrative. 

 

Yeah. Also, at the very least the creatives behind Rohirrim hadn't gone the hackneyed "well, you gotta have Hobbits and Gandalf or else is it really Middle-earth?" These buggers will have shoved a wide-eyed Hobbit into The Children of Hurin!

[ChrisAfonso 204]

58 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

These buggers will have shoved a wide-eyed Hobbit into The Children of Hurin!

 

Mîmbo, the Petty-Hobbit?

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

On 8/10/2024 at 11:34 AM, Bilbo said:

I won’t. Season 1 was too much for me. 

 

ROP writers to @Bilbo:

 

[Barnald 404]

3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

 

Yeah. Also, at the very least the creatives behind Rohirrim hadn't gone the hackneyed "well, you gotta have Hobbits and Gandalf or else is it really Middle-earth?" These buggers will have shoved a wide-eyed Hobbit into The Children of Hurin!

 

They did go the hackneyed 'well, you gotta have Mumakil in this!' road though... (I've seen certain grasping articles based on Appendix A of LOTR, but come on now. You'd have to believe they were ferried up on ships...)

[Chen G. 4,767]

3 minutes ago, Barnald said:

They did go the hackneyed 'well, you gotta have Mumakil in this!' road though... (I've seen certain grasping articles based on Appendix A of LOTR, but come on now. You'd have to believe they were ferried up on ships...)

 

The appendices are clear that Rohan is attacked from the east: could a force with Mumaks not have gone around the beleaguered Gondor and crossed at the undeeps? But anyway, adding a Mumak - or Orcs for that matter, which they also did, or even still a Watcher - is in a completely different ballpark than adding Hobbits and Gandalf as ongoing, major characters.

[Stark 579]

I’d argue that having hobbits hiding out in the second age unseen by even history is a lot less of a reach than Helm’s daughter taking a road trip to Moria.

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

 

7:57-9:25

 

[Bilbo 3,906]

4 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

ROP writers to @Bilbo:

 

 

The only way I will watch more is after a cancellation where it won't help them. 

39 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

7:57-9:25

 

 

A Fred Savage lookalike talking to those two bozos? No thankee Jack. 

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

3 hours ago, Bilbo said:

A Fred Savage lookalike talking to those two bozos? No thankee Jack. 

 

Patrick McKay looks like Mark Zuckerberg's insecure, less successful, not very bright brother.

[Chen G. 4,767]

Meanwhile, the Nielsen figures don't look very good: the season had a pretty big drop before its fifth episode.

 

And by this time last go-around, camereas were already rolling on the thing. Here, it seems there's little chance of that before late February 2025...

[Nick1Ø66 6,076]

7 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Meanwhile, the Nielsen figures don't look very good: the season had a pretty big drop before its fifth episode.

  

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