The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[kuririn]

Debuts tomorrow on Amazon Prime.

 

[Antares JS]

I'll probably give it a chance at some point, but my hopes aren't high.

 

[rharshberger]

I'll probably give it a chance at some point, but my hopes aren't high.

Kind of like Amazon's Wheel of Time, its okay, but...

 

[Antares JS]

Kind of like Amazon's Wheel of Time, its okay, but...

The only thing I really liked about Wheel of Time was Rosamund Pike's portrayal of Moiraine. I thought she nailed the character, except for one particular scene that was NOT in the book. Everything else about the show, not so much.

 

[rharshberger]

The only thing I really liked about Wheel of Time was Rosamund Pike's portrayal of Moiraine. I thought she nailed the character, except for one particular scene that was NOT in the book. Everything else about the show, not so much.

Rosamund was definitely a good choice for Moraine, political correctness kind really reared its head in cast selection and story "modification". The scene your referring to was kind of inferred in Moraines past.

 

[CalebJ]

I'm hopeful, but not particularly optimistic after the Hobbit kind of killed things for me. Definitely looking forward to reading reviews and the possibility of being surprised.

 

[Zeta]

It will be skinny little women beating the cr*p out of huge hulking men

 

[Bill S]

More diversity ruining an classic franchise. Pass.

 

[jazzviper1]

No!

 

[Antares JS]

The scene your referring to was kind of inferred in Moraines past.

I disagree. Just because two people are close, does not mean their relationship has to be sexual.

Anyway, again, I will probably give Rings of Power a chance at some point but I'm not in any hurry to do so. I doubt I will like it much given what is known about it, but there's always a chance it will be good, and the only way to know for sure it to see it for myself.

 

[boatgeek]

It will be skinny little women beating the cr*p out of huge hulking men

I dunno, Legolas was a pretty skinny guy, and he certainly beat the crap out of many bigger people. Galadriel is canonically a soldier in the First Age, so you'd assume she'd be somewhere on a par with Legolas.

Not to mention that there's lots of ways to kill without using brute strength.

 

[Funkworks]

I don't talk about political correctness, but just for fun, I sometimes hook shoot one of these:

https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/economics-diversity

 

[Scott_650]

I dunno, Legolas was a pretty skinny guy, and he certainly beat the crap out of many bigger people. Galadriel is canonically a soldier in the First Age, so you'd assume she'd be somewhere on a par with Legolas.

Not to mention that there's lots of ways to kill without using brute strength.

I’ll give it a try but I don’t have a good vibe from the bits and pieces Amazon has released and the heavy-handed way they pushed their show’s vision into established Tolkien fandom. Their attempt with TWoT was fundamentally flawed and not very good - the changes they made were only explicable as a clumsy means to transmit messages that Jordan already baked into his story - letting your characters have viewpoints then acting on them is a much more satisfying storytelling technique than walloping your readers/viewers over the head with your “message”. Like the man said many, many years ago “if you want to send a message use Western Union”. Otherwise tell a good story and let your characters do the work through their agency. I gave up on TWoT after a couple of episodes.

Galadriel‘s creation as a character by Tolkien was complicated and less than straightforward - after she became an integral part of LotR he worked backwards and tried to figure out where she belonged in the prior Ages. At one point he made it clear she didn’t directly participate in Feanor’s rebellion (though her spurning of Feanor and refusal of his request for a lock of her hair - which he saw as a personification of the light of the Trees - was definitely tied into Feanor’s creation of the Jewels) or as an aggressor in the Kinslaying but later writings implied she was more involved than as strictly a leader of her people against Feanor, so Tolkien may have envisioned her more as a “warrior-queen” at some point. So “soldier” would be a definite misstatement; Tolkien definitely portrayed her as a strong-willed leader and the “dark secrets” she may have related to Melian could‘ve been pretty dark.

Regardless of what Amazon does with the character if they don’t make her desire to rule over her own domain the primary motivation driving her actions they’re making a singular mistake - I think her understanding of Saruman wasn’t just from her innate abilities to see into people’s minds, she was more like him (and Sauron to some extent) than she’d probably be comfortable admitting - her interaction with Samwise and Frodo at her Mirror gives us some insight into what she could’ve become, with or without the Great Ring, if she’d given in to the less “angelic” parts of her nature. Galadriel had a definite bent toward seeing things done as she saw fit and a strong desire to rule in her own right.

 

[samb]

... Galadriel is canonically a soldier in the First Age, so you'd assume she'd be somewhere on a par with Legolas.
...

Gonna have to disagree with your interpretation of canon regarding Galadriel. One of the leaders of part of the Noldor that followed Feanor to Middle-Earth, sure. Possessor of one of the Rings not touched by Sauron, okay. Strove against evil with all her strength and "magic", right on. Refused the One Ring when offered, MY QUEEN! No mention of any soldierly activity in the Silmarillion or Lord of the Rings.
Certainly, my interpretation runs 180 degrees from the Amazon series.
I should add that my canon ends after the first edition Silmarillion in 1977. So the volumes of incomplete stories, notes, half-finished sentences, letters to friends just don't mean much to me.

 

[boatgeek]

I’ll give it a try but I don’t have a good vibe from the bits and pieces Amazon has released and the heavy-handed way they pushed their show’s vision into established Tolkien fandom. Their attempt with TWoT was fundamentally flawed and not very good - the changes they made were only explicable as a clumsy means to transmit messages that Jordan already baked into his story - letting your characters have viewpoints then acting on them is a much more satisfying storytelling technique than walloping your readers/viewers over the head with your “message”. Like the man said many, many years ago “if you want to send a message use Western Union”. Otherwise tell a good story and let your characters do the work through their agency. I gave up on TWoT after a couple of episodes.

Galadriel‘s creation as a character by Tolkien was complicated and less than straightforward - after she became an integral part of LotR he worked backwards and tried to figure out where she belonged in the prior Ages. At one point he made it clear she didn’t directly participate in Feanor’s rebellion (though her spurning of Feanor and refusal of his request for a lock of her hair - which he saw as a personification of the light of the Trees - was definitely tied into Feanor’s creation of the Jewels) or as an aggressor in the Kinslaying but later writings implied she was more involved than as strictly a leader of her people against Feanor, so Tolkien may have envisioned her more as a “warrior-queen” at some point. So “soldier” would be a definite misstatement; Tolkien definitely portrayed her as a strong-willed leader and the “dark secrets” she may have related to Melian could‘ve been pretty dark.

Regardless of what Amazon does with the character if they don’t make her desire to rule over her own domain the primary motivation driving her actions they’re making a singular mistake - I think her understanding of Saruman wasn’t just from her innate abilities to see into people’s minds, she was more like him (and Sauron to some extent) than she’d probably be comfortable admitting - her interaction with Samwise and Frodo at her Mirror gives us some insight into what she could’ve become, with or without the Great Ring, if she’d given in to the less “angelic” parts of her nature. Galadriel had a definite bent toward seeing things done as she saw fit and a strong desire to rule in her own right.

"Warrior princess" is a better description for what I had in mind. Exactly how much literal combat she participated in probably depends on how much of the Unfinished Tales you consider canon, etc. However, my general point stands that if you can accept Legolas getting to 100+ kills at Helm's Deep (though let's forget the shield-surfing!), I don't see why one couldn't accept that Galadriel would have the physical strength take down some big dudes. That contradiction was what I was getting at in Zeta's post.

Gonna have to disagree with your interpretation of canon regarding Galadriel. One of the leaders of part of the Noldor that followed Feanor to Middle-Earth, sure. Possessor of one of the Rings not touched by Sauron, okay. Strove against evil with all her strength and "magic", right on. Refused the One Ring when offered, MY QUEEN! No mention of any soldierly activity in the Silmarillion or Lord of the Rings.
Certainly, my interpretation runs 180 degrees from the Amazon series.

Not much point in arguing here. As mentioned above, Unfinished Tales has her taking a more active soldierly role in some cases (eg on the side of the Teleri against Feanor). It doesn't help that Tolkien himself kept tinkering with stories and changing stuff around so you get different versions of a some characters depending on what texts you consider canon.

 

[Antares JS]

I have no trouble believing Galadriel was a very different person millennia ago, but it would be great and aid the believability of the storytelling if her character arc brings her closer to being the person we saw in Lord of the Rings.

That said, not just an elf woman but any elf fighter would focus more on a dextrous style of combat than a brute force one. Typical fantasy elves are willowy, without a great deal of sheer muscle, and it was Tolkien himself who set this standard.

I would have no trouble accepting that an elf, whether male or female, took out multiple opponents using a fighting style that relied on speed and lethal precision strikes, but I will absolutely call BS on an elf winning a fistfight against an orc, barring some exceptional circumstance.

 

[Marc_G]

More diversity ruining an classic franchise. Pass.

While I've read the main books and seen the key movies, I'm by no means a Tolkein buff. Leaning toward not watching this new thing but might get bored one day...

That said, what diversity effort is made in this new efforts and what classic interpretations does it violates? Just curious.

 

[rharshberger]

I have no trouble believing Galadriel was a very different person millennia ago, but it would be great and aid the believability of the storytelling if her character arc brings her closer to being the person we saw in Lord of the Rings.

That said, not just an elf woman but any elf fighter would focus more on a dextrous style of combat than a brute force one. Typical fantasy elves are willowy, without a great deal of sheer muscle, and it was Tolkien himself who set this standard.

I would have no trouble accepting that an elf, whether male or female, took out multiple opponents using a fighting style that relied on speed and lethal precision strikes, but I will absolutely call BS on an elf winning a fistfight against an orc, barring some exceptional circumstance.

+1 the elf would be fast, but the Orc are tougher and would want close unarmed combat.

 

[Scott_650]

While I've read the main books and seen the key movies, I'm by no means a Tolkein buff. Leaning toward not watching this new thing but might get bored one day...

That said, what diversity effort is made in this new efforts and what classic interpretations does it violates? Just curious.

They cast various race/ethnicity actors in roles as Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbi…er, “Harfoots”. Some folks find that a bridge too far - Tolkien’s vision was a mythology for England and he based his stories on Northern European traditional tales and took fairly extensive efforts to describe his characters so where do modern Asian and African appearing actors fit in?

For me it’s more about the show’s creators taking the easy, lazy approach instead of mining Tolkien’s Legendarium - there is plenty of space for modern diverse actors to fill roles that actually fit within Tolkien’s vision - rather than just using some sort of head count system to insulate themselves from detractors.

Tolkien gets unfairly beat up by modern “literary” and “cultural” critics, accused of a various “-isms” and ”-ists”, and given some rather unsavory labels. My favorite anecdote about Tolkien’s supposed “tendencies” is his reply to a German publisher in 1936 about his ancestry, here’s an excerpt:

”…But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient...”

The entire letter is a brilliant takedown of the then current “Aryan purity” requirements a writer had to meet to be published in the Reich. It’s online from various sources and worth looking for.

There’s so much canonical room for people of all modern types in Tolkien’s world - he doesn’t describe all the different versions of Men then existent beyond the Edain - that just throwing random actors into roles is a huge waste of an opportunity. But such is the Age we live in.

 

[Marc_G]

They cast various race/ethnicity actors in roles as Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbi…er, “Harfoots”. Some folks find that a bridge too far - Tolkien’s vision was a mythology for England and he based his stories on Northern European traditional tales and took fairly extensive efforts to describe his characters so where do modern Asian and African appearing actors fit in?

For me it’s more about the show’s creators taking the easy, lazy approach instead of mining Tolkien’s Legendarium - there is plenty of space for modern diverse actors to fill roles that actually fit within Tolkien’s vision - rather than just using some sort of head count system to insulate themselves from detractors.

Tolkien gets unfairly beat up by modern “literary” and “cultural” critics, accused of a various “-isms” and ”-ists”, and given some rather unsavory labels. My favorite anecdote about Tolkien’s supposed “tendencies” is his reply to a German publisher in 1936 about his ancestry, here’s an excerpt:

”…But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient...”

The entire letter is a brilliant takedown of the then current “Aryan purity” requirements a writer had to meet to be published in the Reich. It’s online from various sources and worth looking for.

There’s so much canonical room for people of all modern types in Tolkien’s world - he doesn’t describe all the different versions of Men then existent beyond the Edain - that just throwing random actors into roles is a huge waste of an opportunity. But such is the Age we live in.

I see where you are coming from, and part of me agrees with you.

But the other part says that the same logic could be extended to Star Trek for example. For all that Gene Roddenberry was visionary, the 1960's TOS Federation captaincy ranks in the Kirk era was essentially a white men's club. So, should we rail on more recent imaginings of the era (Discovery, Strange New Worlds) for being more inclusive for folks in top posts? TOS pushed it as far as it could go by having an Asian, a Black Woman (gasp! clutches pearls!), and an alien on the bridge crew. But how many TOS non-white human male captains/admirals/commodores were there? Should we "lock that in" as written originally? I think not.

When stories are handed down and retold to new generations, it's natural to recast them to fit the current times and new perspectives, whether this is done orally, in writing, or in modern video formats. Tweaking Tolkein characters to accommodate a wider range of skin tones and facial features is hardly heresy in my book. Our society is now a diverse, global one, and it's reasonable to expect a person of any heritage to show up in any role. Relegating people of color to "outsider" roles just because those roles weren't previously explored seems wrong to me. So, if they have a Black Hobbit or whatever, so be it. As long as they are short with big furry feet it's OK by me.

This is just my two cents; others can feel differently without offending me.

 

[Rob Campbell]

But how many TOS non-white human male captains/admirals/commodores were there? Should we "lock that in" as written originally? I think not.

There was Commodore Stone (played by Percy Rodriguez) , commander of Star Base 10 (and previously a starship captain) in the episode "Court Martial". It was also implied the captain of the Yorktown was Hispanic.

 

[boatgeek]

They cast various race/ethnicity actors in roles as Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbi…er, “Harfoots”. Some folks find that a bridge too far - Tolkien’s vision was a mythology for England and he based his stories on Northern European traditional tales and took fairly extensive efforts to describe his characters so where do modern Asian and African appearing actors fit in?

I could see being upset if Galadriel was cast as anything other than blonde, since her golden hair touches a few plot points. Otherwise, there's a lot of room for interpretation. Interestingly, the references that I'm finding right at hand (mostly the LOTR fandom wiki) don't actually say anything about hobbit's skin tone, just that they have short brown curly hair and round faces. It's not that much of a leap to get to a Black hobbit from that description. The Harfoots are apparently of a darker skin color than other hobbits. I don't know enough to prove them wrong, but fandom wikis tend to be ... exhaustively accurate.

 

[Marc_G]

There was Commodore Stone (played by Percy Rodriguez) , commander of Star Base 10 (and previously a starship captain) in the episode "Court Martial". It was also implied the captain of the Yorktown was Hispanic.

Well done on Commodore Stone! I forgot about him. 1000 Quatloos to you!

Nonetheless, even if there is an occasional exception in TOS, I stand by my point. Retellings of old stories to new generations always embraces current realities to make the stories more accessible and engaging. For this reason I think some race normalization in remakes is fine by me, as long as it doesn't interfere with important character elements.

 

[Daddyisabar]

If Grace Randolph calls Galadriel both an Elven Mary Sue and an Elven Karen asking for the manager, then we are in deep, deep trouble. Tolkien purists RUN! Jeff Bezos said "Give me Game of Thrones!" A Billion dollar budget and a healthy dose of Wokeness to infuriate the istophobe man babies. Tolkien's sketchy lore needs a new and modern interpretation for the 21st century, including real world issues like identity politics, diversity and virtue signaling. Amazon lawyers have the final say on what intellectual property can be used and how far it can be pushed. Story be damned, normies want Hobbits fighting Orcs, Gandalf fighting demons and nude elves getting it on Game of Thrones style! Show me the Money says Bezos! A sure fire hit for the modern age. Fandom Menace go home, Amazon and Hollywood rule.

 

[cbwho]

I've only watched the first episode and it is incredibly confusing!

 

[kuririn]

I've only watched the first episode and it is incredibly confusing!

It is a multi ensemble cast with several plot lines happening together.
According to a review I read, they are planting the seeds for major developments in the plot line later. Even if you are a Tolkien fan you will probably be confused, but we'll see how it all plays out.
And the visuals?
WOW!
Play the stream on the biggest screen you have and crank up the speakers.
There are a couple of "secrets" alluded to, Might be they are attempting to tell too much in a limited timeframe? Like Dune? I believe it's an 8 episode first season.
We'll see!

 

[Banzai88]

We watched the first 2 episodes as they dropped last night.

Agreed that production value certainly reflects the reported $500M investment that they've made. At that price it's the least one would expect.

As to how successful they're going to be in telling the story of the rings in a convincing and engaging manner......(based on the first two episodes) we'll have to wait and see....

 

[samb]

As always, Daddy brings madd knowledge to the discussion. "Tolkien's sketchy lore"... LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT! Can't argue about canon when we have 30 years worth of the authors rewrites to choose from.

 

[kuririn]

Reviewing "The Silmarillion" and in particular "On the Rings of Power and the Third Age" at the end. Need to re-familiarize myself with Tolkien lore.

 

[mikec]

Reviewing "The Silmarillion" and in particular "On the Rings of Power and the Third Age" at the end. Need to re-familiarize myself with Tolkien lore.

Amazon didn't buy the rights to "The Silmarillion" so you can skip that, as I understand it.