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

[Bilbo 4,277]

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. 6,028]

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 2,696]

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. 6,028]

But...but...

 

[Nick1Ø66 8,111]

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 518]

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 497]

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 1,428]

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 1,405]

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 1,428]

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 1,405]

Fair enough.

[Stark 975]

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. 6,028]

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 1,405]

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 975]

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 1,405]

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 8,111]

 

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. 6,028]

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 1,405]

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 8,111]

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. 6,028]

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 237]

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 8,111]

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 437]

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. 6,028]

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 975]

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 8,111]

 

7:57-9:25

 

[Bilbo 4,277]

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 8,111]

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. 6,028]

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 8,111]

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.

  

Where are you reading this?

[Chen G. 6,028]

(EDIT: okay, this is the wrong thread but nevermind)

 

So, thinking about how season three of this wretched thing...

 

Season One and Two both aired in essentially the same time: the one airing in 1 September, the other in 29 of August. Season Two started shooting again on October 6. Season three...has publically not yet so much as recieved an official greenlight, in mid January.

 

I don't doubt they'll make it - although one can expect budget cuts and tighter oversight - but even allowing for them being able to make it quicker and cut the whole thing closer to the wire, we're surely looking at another two year wait. Can a show that has clearly failed to grab the public imagination (or industry acclaim, cf. the various guilds nearly ignoring it alltogether) survive a two year draught, especially with "rival" productions in the pipeline sure to steal much of its thunder?

 

But, even more to the point, what if after that period of Amazon-enforced radio silence, when season three DOES come, its still another ho-hum affair? One snoozy season is a fluke, two are a pattern, but three? As I contemplated the latter point, I started thinking: what do they have to work with in season three? The whole show is based on such scant material - especially relative to its projected runtime - that its relationship to Tolkien is not unlike that of a Tolkien-esque project a-la Willow. But at least season two had the Forging of the Rings and the siege and fall of Eregion. Season three has...what?

 

Okay, there's Numenore. I'm not sure we'll get to the actual downfall just yet, and at any rate these writer expounded such energy and focus to the Elves that Numenore had been kind of going through the motions, especially in this latest season. So what do we have left? The obvious answer would be, the war of Sauron and the Elves. He besieges Khazad-Dum but cannot breach it, and is resigned to attack Imladris until a shared Galadhrim-Naugrim force repels him. This happens not before he conquers much of Eregion, alienating the local Gwathuirim in the process and threatening Mithlond, until an intervention force from Numenore helps repel him to the Gwathlo from where he escapes only with the skin of his teeth.

 

That's a nice story, but here's the thing: there's practically zilch of it in Lord of the Rings. All we get of this period is appendix B which denotes the following:  

 

Quote

1699 Sauron overruns Eriador.

1700 Tar-Minastir sends a great navy from Nu´ menor to Lindon. Sauron is defeated.

1701 Sauron is driven out of Eriador. The Westlands have peace for a long while.

 

Man, to be stuck in such a critical juncture for this show, commercially, with such flabby material at your disposal...

[Rachael Foley 10,009]

Well, we do have the the 9 rings and Ringwraiths to set up.

[VenomVeVenom 229]

26 minutes ago, Meredith McKay said:

Well, we do have the the 9 rings and Ringwraiths to set up.

The One Ring, Barad-dûr, the Witch-king, the Dark Wizard (likely one of the Blue Wizards rather than Saruman)... There isn’t much story left to fill two seasons, but if they handle it well, it could still be good. I just hope they bring in better writers. The dialogue is still stiff and, honestly, cringey at times.

[Rachael Foley 10,009]

I wouldn't be surprised if they threw in the Dead Marshes somewhere.

[Chen G. 6,028]

22 minutes ago, Meredith McKay said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they threw in the Dead Marshes somewhere.

 

They already had: 

 

[VenomVeVenom 229]

By the way, they managed to throw in the Barrow-wights. Aren’t these guys supposed to exist only after the Witch-king is defeated and all that?

[Bilbo 4,277]

1 hour ago, VenomVeVenom said:

but if they handle it well, it could still be good.

Nothing they’ve done so far suggests this is something they will be able to achieve 

[tomsmoviemadness 4,762]

 

 

[Jay 45,797]

I'm primarily happy to get more Bear score.

 

I'm hopeful the show's writing will improve and I can enjoy the 3rd season more than I did the first 2, but I am not holding my breath for that.  Luckily, how good or bad the show is does not affect how dedicated Bear is to writing an amazing score, from what I can tell.

[Quintus 6,313]

I had originally planned to suffer through S2 until I learned about the orcs having their own Bold and the Beautiful subplots, which was just too much even for me.

 

I was initially impressed by the first two episodes of S1, which felt every bit the feature length double bill pilot, but then they switched directors for everything that came after and the whole thing kamakazi'd. 

[Richard P 5,239]

If the writing improves that'll be great, but I don't get that bothered by a show that alternates between being exciting and terrible.

 

A third season of Bear's music is the takeaway here.

 

Spring is only a month or two away ( consider it March onwards) so you wonder what was actually stopping the official greenlight. I haven't dug into how the show has generally done reception and ratings-wise, but a lot of what I've read suggested Amazon is in too deep financially and reputation-wise to cancel it, were it doing badly.

[Chen G. 6,028]

The bit of that's of the essence here is shooting "this spring." Rumours have this as being somewhere in May.

 

That's very late relative to season two: it started shooting in early October and it still took two years! Not sure this particular show can last such a long period of radio silence.

[Quintus 6,313]

The fact that they're skipping ahead to much later events strongly suggests they're pivoting for the wrap up, after the frankly disastrous reception to the show up to this point.

[Richard P 5,239]

So if filming starts in 3 months and it takes two years, we're looking at release summer 2027. Half the world will forget about it by then.

 

At least Bear gets a nice break...

[Chen G. 6,028]

3 minutes ago, Quintus said:

The fact that they're skipping ahead to much later events strongly suggests they're pivoting for the wrap up, after the frankly disastrous reception to the show up to this point.

 

Nah, it's all down to a simple fact: they don't have the rights to the ins-and-outs of the War of Sauron and the Elves, so they're going to jump forward three or four years, tell us that a war had taken place and put Sauron into a stalemate and now he has to forge the One to break the impasse.

 

2 minutes ago, Richard P said:

So if filming starts in 3 months and it takes two years, we're looking at release summer 2027. Half the world will forget about it by then.

 

That's what I'm thinking. Although if they do it quick and dirty I guess late 2026 is a possibility.

[Nick1Ø66 8,111]

This will be the last season. My guess is that Amazon has already told the showrunners to end season 3 as a soft wrap. "Soft" on the outside chance that the show won't continue to be a ratings disaster.

 

Amazon won't just let LOTR go though, they've paid too much for the rights. They won't go the fanfic route again after this disaster, however. Assuming they have the rights to do so, we'll see a proper TV series adaption of LOTR, and potentially The Hobbit as well, from them.  You can be sure they'll be watching how the Harry Potter series on HBO performs, as a new adaption of a relatively recent, and beloved, film series.

 

Bad luck for New Line though. Season 3 of ROP will likely come out in relatively close proximity to The Hunt for Gollum, further poisoning the well in the minds of a general public that doesn't distinguish between various corportate owners of expensive fanfic content.

[Chen G. 6,028]

2 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Season 3 of ROP will likely come out in relatively close proximity to The Hunt for Gollum, further poisoning the well in the minds of a general public that doesn't distinguish

 

That is a real shame. Something like The War of the Rohirrim was clearly never going to make a buck, but the amount of people I encountered who went "I didn't like Rings of Power, ergo..."

[Nick1Ø66 8,111]

18 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

That is a real shame. Something like The War of the Rohirrim was clearly never going to make a buck, but the amount of people I encountered who went "I didn't like Rings of Power, ergo..."

 

It is a shame, because I thought The War of the Rohirrim was quite good. Yes, it was essentially fanfic, but I'll give them credit for getting the tone right and making a pretty engaging film. I even thought that most of the call backs were tastefully, and appropriately done (with a couple glaring exceptions). I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and anime isn't even really my thing. It definitely has its flaws, but it was a worthy effort. 

 

And yeah, there are many reasons for the film's commercial failure...lack of serious promotion, the fact that it was animated and the story had a fairly narrow appeal. But ROP "poisoning the well" certainly didn't help. I mean, from what I saw, the reaction to the film was mostly a collective shrug...at best...from even film and book fans. It's no wonder the general public was unenthused. I attribute this partially, at least, to ROP.

 

That said, this was an instalment of one of the most beloved film and literature franchises of all time, and it should have done better than that simply by virtue of having The Lord of the Rings in the title.

 

[Richard P 5,239]

Could it be that Tolkien mania has just faded a bit since PJ's films? They seemed to almost reinvent the possible scale of a fantasy film back in 2001. Certainly, one area of RoP that can't really be majorly faulted is the visuals and technical aspects, but they're largely standard and expected now. Maybe having Lord of the Rings in the title isn't enough to get bums on seats. Being animated and no tentpole director involved likely didn't help WotR either.