The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime)

VincentHanna said:
Crying is consistent with the material. Even in stuffy 1940's Britain where men don't cry, Tolkien's characters were often tearful.
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And there's way too much of it in the show.

No-one wants to see everyone crying when the rest of the episode has been so abysmal. And here's why the crying was so insufferable - because it's not been earned, because the story has been told so badly, because the chracaters are so poorly written and unengaging, there doesn't seem like there's any stakes foir the aidence to worry about etc - you can't evoke emotion from an audience with poor material. There's loads of moments in LOTR when you can feel a lump in your throat, or the hairs stand up on your arm or the back of your neck, where the sadness has been earned because you're invested in the characters etc - this has none of those moments.

No doubt you enjoyed the crying.
 
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It's not "defending the show", it's pointing out that crying is very much part of the books so it would be hard pressed to criticise the show for including it, having previously also criticised it for not being faithful to Tolkien's work.
 
VincentHanna said:
It's not "defending the show", it's pointing out that crying is very much part of the books so it would be hard pressed to criticise the show for including it, having previously also criticised it for not being faithful to Tolkien's work.
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But you hadn't seen the EPISODE so you had no context at all, and as I explained there's a whole lot context required to understand why the crying is so unearned, unlike in LOTR where the film illicts emotion from the viewer because it is so well made, unlike ROP which ios very poorly written and suffers from a mediocre cast.

You've also said no-one can have an opinion unless they've watched the show...

;)
 
Thoroughly enjoyed the first 3 episodes back to back in no time.

Some cringe moments, and still don’t like the actress for Galadriel but I can ignore that where it doesn’t affect my viewing experience.

Probably should rewatch season 1 again, but felt a lot more urgency and threat in these new episodes.
 
The actress for Galadriel is just awful. I don't know how they thought she was the right choice.

Some of the writing is still comically bad. The scenes with Celebrimbor and Sauron are comically bad. The Tolkien equivalent of chavs who write on facebook "wot goes around comes around, you no wot you did". You would think that Elves had some braincells knocking around in their wise heads but no, Sauron plays him like a child.
 
VincentHanna said:
In the second age he tricked the Elves in to forging The Rings of Power and appeared to them as an elf called Annatar. From the trailers this looks like what they are going to show us this season. For TV purposes this has all been compacted down, but in the books it took 1000's of years.
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So didn't the other elves or king meet him and question who he is? Or was there an elf by that name and he stole his persona?
 
kakarott said:
So didn't the other elves or king meet him and question who he is? Or was there an elf by that name and he stole his persona?
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he (Sauron) claimed to have been sent by the Valar (Gods of M.E. essentially) to share knowledge and skills with the elves - the elves being naive and idiots took him at his word initially and thus the rings were created :P Seriously, there's a reason that Sauron is called teh great deceiver
 
Haven't watched it yet but heard the twist on the Orcs. This should be good.

I miss the "looks like meat's back on the menu boys" days.
 
doodah said:
Haven't watched it yet but heard the twist on the Orcs. This should be good.

I miss the "looks like meat's back on the menu boys" days.
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Its like so many things that "modern writers" can't seem to fathom. You cannot have a cruel and brutal race who clearly revel in pain, destruction and torture and have no regard for life and then go "ahh yes, but they love their children and don't really want to fight. They just want to be left alone to raise their children". They seem to struggle with this with the elves as well. The elves are old, wise and very intelligent. "What if we pretend that elves are stupid, easily tricked and manipulated with primary school psychology".
 
fez said:
Its like so many things that "modern writers" can't seem to fathom. You cannot have a cruel and brutal race who clearly revel in pain, destruction and torture and have no regard for life and then go "ahh yes, but they love their children and don't really want to fight. They just want to be left alone to raise their children". They seem to struggle with this with the elves as well. The elves are old, wise and very intelligent. "What if we pretend that elves are stupid, easily tricked and manipulated with primary school psychology".
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It's becuase they don't like good v evil, same as the people writing modern poop Star Wars, despite George's consistent take on Light vs Dark, Good v Evil, it's that simple, which as the same as Tolkien's vision for his World. The people who wrote ROP are the same kind of activists. No-one wants to see the Orcs portrayed with little Orclings not wanting to go to war, what is wrong with these people? But we know what the Orc thing is about in ROP, its the writers LARP'ing social justice in Middle Earth - :D

And yes their depiction of the Elves has has been horrible from the outset, starting with the complete mis-casting of Midget Clarke as Galadriel.
 
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VincentHanna said:
Canonically, Sauron did convince Celebrimbor by appealing to his desire to be the greatest smith.

Lots of elves were suspicious of him in the book (inc Galadriel).
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I understand that but I don't know if you have seen the scenes but they are just awfully done. I know they are condensing a larger time span into a short one for the narrative but seriously, they could have done better than this.
 
fez said:
I know they are condensing a larger time span into a short one for the narrative
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I honestly think this is one of the biggest issues with any modern show nowadays. It's not as if Annatar showed up one day and then the next day they were smithing everything - it happened over a period of time which is lost because of these short series which have no sense of time scale. Everything in modern TV seems to feel it needs to be instantaneous now. A slow build up and episodic build on where it's not 100% of the narrative can be so good.

Had to look it up, as it's been a while since I read this part - but Annatar was in Eregion for 300 years...
 
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fez said:
Its like so many things that "modern writers" can't seem to fathom. You cannot have a cruel and brutal race who clearly revel in pain, destruction and torture and have no regard for life and then go "ahh yes, but they love their children and don't really want to fight. They just want to be left alone to raise their children". They seem to struggle with this with the elves as well. The elves are old, wise and very intelligent. "What if we pretend that elves are stupid, easily tricked and manipulated with primary school psychology".
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There are as pointed out above reasons why Sauron was able to trick the elves but yeah you don't want to stop and think about this show, absolutely everything it terribly written if you actually break it down - I was just watching a YT video deconstructing some of it by someone relatively insightful and mostly objective, unlike some who are just out to hate on it, and I feel the more dumb for not noticing just how dumb some of it actually is.

I'm in several minds over the show, I enjoy LOTR content and want to watch it despite the flaws but at the same time if people just accept this **** it doesn't incentivise efforts to make an actual decent show which does it justice.
 
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