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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

JohnC

By JohnC,
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JoeK

JoeK

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Posted

Well, clearly I'm not in the mood to watch any more of this. 20 minutes in and I want to throw my TV out of the window.

 

Sorry, but you can't spunk away all this money on special effects alone. 

 

The script is fucking atrocious.

 

And depicting hobbits (or whatever they were before becoming the ones we know in the books)) as slightly dubious gypsies is a fairly gross stereotype as far as I'm concerned.

 

Oh well.

 

Edit: Finished the first episode, and my mood didn't really improve. 

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DarhkFox

DarhkFox

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, JoeK said:

Well, clearly I'm not in the mood to watch any more of this. 20 minutes in and I want to throw my TV out of the window.

 

Sorry, but you can't spunk away all this money on special effects alone. 

 

The script is fucking atrocious.

 

And depicting hobbits (or whatever they were before becoming the ones we know in the books)) as slightly dubious gypsies is a fairly gross stereotype as far as I'm concerned.

 

Oh well.

 

Edit: Finished the first episode, and my mood didn't really improve. 

 

oh. I'm really looking forward to watching this - i hope i have a better experience with it.

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Mikes

Mikes

Posted
Posted

Have watched the first episode.

 

I

Fucking.

Love it.

 

Some things I think they slightly missed the mark - some characterisations, some film making - but overall it was excellent and really hit the mark on "this is well before everything else and it's all a bit empty" everywhere.

 

Only thing I can't get over is I keep thinking the actor playing Elrond is missing his false teeth.

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hauk

hauk

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Posted

Only watched the 1st episode so far, but not massively enthused yet. Hoping it gets better as this was the set up episode and those can be slow with new shows. Some of he dialogue was a little clunky and there was some very actory/lovie type performances. Visuals were amazing though. I do wonder if after watching Game of Thrones I just find the LOTR type stuff a little simplistic/silly. Kind of like how the LOTR movies made all those 80s fantasy movies seem dated. Hoping it picks up though. I watched all of the first season of Wheel of Time and that got much better after the first few episodes so hoping the same thing happens here.

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JoeK

JoeK

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Captain Kelsten said:

I dunno about Galadriel not ever wearing armour in the books but can we agree she looks fucking phenomenal in the armour on the show, yes?

 

moryfdd-clark-galadriel-armor-rings-of-p

 

She looks badass. 

 

Put a scar on her face and she'd have made a pretty good Ciri.

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Chindie

Chindie

Posted
Posted
31 minutes ago, Captain Kelsten said:

I dunno about Galadriel not ever wearing armour in the books but can we agree she looks fucking phenomenal in the armour on the show, yes?

 

moryfdd-clark-galadriel-armor-rings-of-p

 

She looks badass. 

She looks great (...Morfydd Clark :wub:). She just doesn't seem to be dressed like or particularly acting like Galadriel ;).

 

Obviously I'm sure she's personally doing a great job with the material she's been given.

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Keyboard Koala

Keyboard Koala

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, hauk said:

Only watched the 1st episode so far, but not massively enthused yet. Hoping it gets better as this was the set up episode and those can be slow with new shows. Some of he dialogue was a little clunky and there was some very actory/lovie type performances. Visuals were amazing though. I do wonder if after watching Game of Thrones I just find the LOTR type stuff a little simplistic/silly. Kind of like how the LOTR movies made all those 80s fantasy movies seem dated. 

 

Yeah, that's my experience as well. After GoT I found it hard to go back to The LotR and The Hobbit trilogies, but for nostalgia's sake. Hence why I enjoyed the new HotDr a lot more than Rings of Power. 

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Captain Kelsten

Captain Kelsten

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1 hour ago, Chindie said:

She looks great (...Morfydd Clark :wub:). She just doesn't seem to be dressed like or particularly acting like Galadriel ;).

 

Obviously I'm sure she's personally doing a great job with the material she's been given.

 

Galadriel from the films or Galadriel from the books?

 

I always thought Cate Blanchet's portrayal in the films was a bit...off. Not off from the books just a bit odd in general. I guess she was going for all-knowing and ethereal but it always struck me as a bit weird :lol:

 

 Also, LotR is set what? 10,000 years after this or something equally daft? By LotR she's probably calmed down a bit, isn't so young and brash and impetuous or whatever.

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Chindie

Chindie

Posted
Posted
Just now, Captain Kelsten said:

 

Galadriel from the films or Galadriel from the books?

 

I always thought Cate Blanchet's portrayal in the films was a bit...off. Not off from the books just a bit odd in general. I guess she was going for all-knowing and ethereal but it always struck me as a bit weird :lol:

 

 Also, LotR is set what? 10,000 years after this or something equally daft? By LotR she's probably calmed down a bit, isn't so young and brash and impetuous or whatever.

 

I've never been the biggest fan of Blanchett's portrayal, but I think she's going for the right thing, more or less. She just does it badly. She's going for a mix of ethereal (which all the elves are to an extent - something the adaptations never quite nail is that elves in Middle-Earth aren't just another 'race', they're basically inherently mildly supernatural), unknowable, royal and to an extent removed from the trivialities of life. Which is difficult to do without it becoming a bit... am-dram... and she, for my money, fails.

 

But roughly that's what Galadriel is. Her background is as a cousin to important characters in the First Age (IIRC... I'm almost certainly wrong on this in some respects), she's on the periphery of big events (she follows a rebel elf leader because it basically aligns with her own desires, but then switches sides when the elves have a 'Cain and Abel' esque event that she cannot support), she goes to Middle-earth as part of the exodus from the West via a crossing of a extremely dangerous ice bridge, and then she wanders about for hundreds of years being a second tier elven leader in the new land, including a period where she is mentored by an angel (in essence). 

 

By the time of LotR she's a great leader in the elven world having established a home for her people that at that time is the greatest Elven land there is, has become extremely powerful via the use of a ring of power, and is an extremely knowledgeable and mystically powerful being. She quite literally can flatten fortresses with her mind.

 

She's never described as a warrior. She's not pathetic, she's not weak, she has been involved in battle (her U-turn in her rebellion saw her get involved in a fight but the extent to which she actually fought as opposed to directing her command is unclear - again at this point she's basically a footnote to the events) and she's done things that are physically challenging, even being described as physically big and strong as well as beautiful, but we never have her shown as a fighter, a soldier, a warrior. She isn't one. In later life when we do know she fought, she does so as an immensely powerful witch, in essence, and that's a unusual thing for her do even then - she protects her kingdom through her aura, her presence, rather than crushing evil directly. From what we've got here, it seems, this isn't really Galadriel.

 

I think it would be better to have this character be someone else, a new original character, but I appreciate the writers are in a difficult position with that as there's not really room to shove a new character into the lore that we know, and the other obvious choice, Elrond, draws an even bigger line under Tolkein having a bit of a dirth of important women. It's also indicative of the thin cloth they're working with here - they've got 2 major stories, with some 'minor' ones that entwine with them, which you can elaborate on to build out a show, but it's still not much to make a 5 series long show out of. Making Galadriel do something interesting in the Second Age is an easy change to make from a plot POV but it's flying in the face of the source.

 

But then so is

Spoiler

having Gandalf run around in the Second Age or having Hobbits be at all relevant to anything

so I guess they're not that bothered.

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Delargey

Delargey

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Chindie said:

She's never described as a warrior. She's not pathetic, she's not weak, she has been involved in battle (her U-turn in her rebellion saw her get involved in a fight but the extent to which she actually fought as opposed to directing her command is unclear - again at this point she's basically a footnote to the events) and she's done things that are physically challenging, even being described as physically big and strong as well as beautiful, but we never have her shown as a fighter, a soldier, a warrior. She isn't one.

 

In later life when we do know she fought, she does so as an immensely powerful witch, in essence, and that's a unusual thing for her do even then - she protects her kingdom through her aura, her presence, rather than crushing evil directly. From what we've got here, it seems, this isn't really Galadriel.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

having Gandalf run around in the Second Age or having Hobbits be at all relevant to anything

 

 

I get that people are somewhat precious about a franchise they love but there seems to be a lot of heavy lifting here insisting thar she's not a fighter on what seems to be a pretty under developed period of her life.

 

This isn't the Galadriel of lotr so it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to believe she was more fighty in her younger days before she had the knowledge to become a mad magic user. It certainly doesn't seem to be a massive contradiction, no?

 

I've only read Lotr and the hobbit so don't have much invested in this fantom but the other magic users I've seen can get pretty tasty with a sword so this doesn't seem that much of a jump.

 

 

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Festoon

Festoon

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Chindie said:

But roughly that's what Galadriel is. Her background is as a cousin to important characters in the First Age (IIRC... I'm almost certainly wrong on this in some respects), she's on the periphery of big events (she follows a rebel elf leader because it basically aligns with her own desires, but then switches sides when the elves have a 'Cain and Abel' esque event that she cannot support), she goes to Middle-earth as part of the exodus from the West via a crossing of a extremely dangerous ice bridge, and then she wanders about for hundreds of years being a second tier elven leader in the new land, including a period where she is mentored by an angel (in essence). 

 

By the time of LotR she's a great leader in the elven world having established a home for her people that at that time is the greatest Elven land there is, has become extremely powerful via the use of a ring of power, and is an extremely knowledgeable and mystically powerful being. She quite literally can flatten fortresses with her mind.

 

She's never described as a warrior. She's not pathetic, she's not weak, she has been involved in battle (her U-turn in her rebellion saw her get involved in a fight but the extent to which she actually fought as opposed to directing her command is unclear - again at this point she's basically a footnote to the events) and she's done things that are physically challenging, even being described as physically big and strong as well as beautiful, but we never have her shown as a fighter, a soldier, a warrior. She isn't one. In later life when we do know she fought, she does so as an immensely powerful witch, in essence, and that's a unusual thing for her do even then - she protects her kingdom through her aura, her presence, rather than crushing evil directly. From what we've got here, it seems, this isn't really Galadriel.

 

I think it would be better to have this character be someone else, a new original character, but I appreciate the writers are in a difficult position with that as there's not really room to shove a new character into the lore that we know, and the other obvious choice, Elrond, draws an even bigger line under Tolkein having a bit of a dirth of important women. It's also indicative of the thin cloth they're working with here - they've got 2 major stories, with some 'minor' ones that entwine with them, which you can elaborate on to build out a show, but it's still not much to make a 5 series long show out of. Making Galadriel do something interesting in the Second Age is an easy change to make from a plot POV but it's flying in the face of the source.

 

But then so is

  Reveal hidden contents

having Gandalf run around in the Second Age or having Hobbits be at all relevant to anything

so I guess they're not that bothered.

 

Wow, but, y'know, she's clearly a warrior, like all the elves in the First Age, when necessary. I admire all the effort you've put in here, but it doesn't really tally with Tolkien's writing, unless you believe all the elves fight when necessary, except for Galadriel? I mean he describes her as valiant, an Amazon, how she tied her hair back for athletic feats, her name is Man-Maiden.  "She was called Nerwen ‘man-maiden’ because of her strength and stature, and her courage."

 

She was clearly a fighter.

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Chindie

Chindie

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

Wow, but, y'know, she's clearly a warrior, like all the elves in the First Age, when necessary. I admire all the effort you've put in here, but it doesn't really tally with Tolkien's writing, unless you believe all the elves fight when necessary, except for Galadriel? I mean he describes her as valiant, an Amazon, how she tied her hair back for athletic feats, her name is Man-Maiden.  "She was called Nerwen ‘man-maiden’ because of her strength and stature, and her courage."

 

She was clearly a fighter.

Thanks for the disdain.

 

We can disagree. Hopefully the show is good enough it doesn't matter.

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Festoon

Festoon

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Delargey said:

 

I get that people are somewhat precious about a franchise they love but there seems to be a lot of heavy lifting here insisting thar she's not a fighter on what seems to be a pretty under developed period of her life.

 

This isn't the Galadriel of lotr so it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to believe she was more fighty in her younger days before she had the knowledge to become a mad magic user. It certainly doesn't seem to be a massive contradiction, no?

 

I've only read Lotr and the hobbit so don't have much invested in this fantom but the other magic users I've seen can get pretty tasty with a sword so this doesn't seem that much of a jump.

 

 

 

Yup, it's really not as much of a leap as the #notmygaladriel gotchabros on YouTube stuff is making out. The floaty-la-la Galadriel is a later life version of her as stated in Unfinished Tales, in the Third Age she became "unconquerable in resistance (especially in mind and spirit) but incapable of punitive action. In her scale she had become like Manwë with regard to the greater total action."

 

Which, to me, shows punitive action was part of her life to that point, till she got a little old ring and levelled up.

 

Elrond also hung up the sword and became a healer.

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Festoon

Festoon

Posted
Posted
Just now, Chindie said:

Thanks for the disdain.

 

We can disagree. Hopefully the show is good enough it doesn't matter.

 

No distain, seriously. I've taken a different interpretation from the books, looking into it a bit, it seems Tolkien was constantly moving the goalposts with the character in any case.

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