Rings of Power

[Jubal]

Anyone watching it/any thoughts? I've just finished catching up with the episodes thus far

I'm definitely enjoying it - playing fast and loose with the canon in places, sure, but that's what adaptations do. Bluntly, Tolkien's works live and die on feelings rather than plot in any case, and his legendarium is just that, legends that I think are at their best when they live and are retold. I have a few quibbles, mostly about how the Dwarves are presented, but that'd be true of any adaptation that I didn't personally make, I suspect.

[Pentagathus]

Pretty similar, the first episode was rather dull but it got interesting eventually. The writing is very patchy, sometimes it's really quite good, sometimes it's absolutely nonsensical. Almost any scene involving Galadrrrrrrrrreyal is bad, I understand they're trying to make her into a character who needs to show development but she just acts like a total moron most of the time. The whole journey to valinor but jump off the ship and try to swim back to middle earth plotline was pretty funny but I don't think it was meant to be.
I dislike most of the Elfy scenes in general, the over the top Etonion school boy accents that most actors have gone with are really grating for me. Gil Galad's speech felt like a shakespearean play, but not a good one. I think it's always going to be a struggle to portray Elves as almost otherwordly beings when they're so prevalent in the story but I really dislike most of them. Elrond I'm warming to, mostly due to Durin and Disa I think.
Arondir? is the only Elf I've liked all the way through, also the only plotline I was interested in from the start.
Harfoots are kind of annoying, totally not Gandalf is interesting but there were too many plotlines from the start, I think this one should have been left until the others were more fleshed out, or just not included in the first place.
Speculating on who Sauron is and who's going to eventually become a wraith is fun. Pretty sure Harbrand is Annatar, don't see why else he'd be interested in working with the numernorean smiths otherwise. But then I also don't see why he's floating around on a raft in the middle of the sea, but since Galadrrrrreyal ended up there I guess it's the place to be.

Overall I'm enjoying it, the visuals are amazing, the rest is fair to good. Not a great show so far, don't imagine I would ever pay to watch it.

Oh and Elendil is top notch, very good casting choice. Not sure why they made him a nobody former lesser noble instead of next in line to the throne but I don't think it really matters.


Edit:
Also Adar is fun, I like the theory that he's an OG tortured Elf Orc, or perhaps the progenitor to a specific line of orcs (he seems to be Noldorin and remembers Beleriand so I don't think he could be an original Orc whilst fitting within the lore). He's definitely not Sauron.

[Jubal]

Yeah, Arondir seems to be the best pitched and elfiest elf. Galadriel - yes, I can see what they're doing and I don't necessarily disagree with the arc I think they're going for, but they've over-egged it a bit. I think it would actually work better if a) more people knew who Galadriel was and b) they actually had her doing more magic? Like, if she is more obviously a power level separate from the people around her then her frustrated "why aren't these people doing what I want, I'm right" would work better I think, especially if the Numenoreans weren't reacting to her as "just some elf" but "this person has walked out of a history book, what in the world is going on here".

I quite liked the Harfoots, but that's partly really liking the totally-not-Gandalf and how he's played.

Harbrand could be Annatar, but also I think having him being that demi-heroic human who ends up on a bad arc and becoming a ringwraith would be a pretty good plot arc to have.


My inevitable gripes about the dwarves: I think they've made them too rough round the edges for a dwarf kingdom at the height of its power. The wide shots of Khazad-Dum are nice, but everything is very grey and functional. More wall carvings, murals, crystal pillars and objects, coloured walls and furnishings, and a lot more shiny would be nice (I'm reminded of the "a king he was on carven throne, with many pillared halls of stone, with golden roof and silver floor and runes of power upon the door" line in Gimli's song about Moria - and then the dwarf king has a rather disappointingly functional stone seat and an iron crown that honestly looks like any human smith could've made it). Or to put it another way, we often get told about dwarf craftsmanship but we really don't get to see much of the dwarves' sense of beauty or dignity, and instead they're all made out to by angry grumpy little earthy boys.

The rock breaking scene kind of annoyed me for the same reason. I think it would actually have been much more interesting if they'd made that challenge like a harping contest or something instead: it would've better shown Khazad-Dum as a place of music and art rather than just as a really big mine working, and Durin as a prince and someone who wasn't just Elrond's Angry Buddy Who Digs Holes Sometimes.

(Also why does Khazad-dum have a gate you couldn't fit a handcart through, that's just impractical even for dwarves).

[Pentagathus]

Yeah I agree, for some reason Dwarves have become an uncouth, uncultured race who live for work and practicality in these adaptations.

[Tar-Palantir]

The thing that's bothering me most so far is that Halbrand's storyline appears to be exactly the same as Aragorn's. Which is about the least original possible plot for a male human in Middle-earth.
Also Gil-galad looks like your Dad cosplaying I, Claudius. I feel they could have come up with a more original look for the Noldor than cod Greco-Roman imperial. I'm also annoyed by how Gil-galad is presented as way more senior than Galadriel, which isn't terribly true.
I also understand the reasons for compressing the timeline, but it is causing me pain to have events and characters separated by nearly 3000 years all happening at the same time.
On the plus side, I agree the visuals are very good, and I particularly enjoyed Elrond's little monologue about Eärendil. And, overall, the series is a lot better so far than I was fearing.

[Jubal]

I mean, I think if Halbrand turns out to be Sauron or the Witch-King or someone then that does put a twist on that storyline, but also it feels like I'd almost be more surprised if he actually turns out to be a hero at this point after all the random infodrops about "ooh Galadriel might cause the very thing she's seeking to destroy".

And yes, there's a definite "we're going to drop the protagonists' seniority to make them underdogs" thing going on with Elendil and Galadriel.

I'm not finding the timeline condensation bothers me much, in that a) it just feels like a different way of weaving the stories together and b) the original time-framing always kind of annoyed me to begin with. Sure, this version feels far too condensed, but Tolkien and his legacy when it comes to overextending timelines into thousands of years when rather fewer and shorter generations would have suffiiced is not one of the best things he's bequeathed to the fantasy genre.

[Tar-Palantir]

Oh yes, the original timeline is inexplicably drawn-out (why does it take a century from the forging of the Rings for a general war to break out?!), I agree. I'm just slightly concerned that there might end up being too much going on at once, meaning that the individual bits don't get the focus they deserve.

[Jubal]

I'm now up to date! Spoilers obviously to come (actually might just edit that into thread title).

I'm still enjoying it, and I still don't get the "this isn't Tolkien" critique. Did they take every sentence of the books directly? No, and nor would anyone. There are some gripes I have about how it was done, but that doesn't make it not an adaptation... I think increasingly as I get older I find the argument-from-canonicity thing more and more alien to how I think about stories. Like, if you wanted to make RoP more Tolkieny you'd probably start not with any of the canonicity things but by putting more poetry in there, in my view. I think, much like my stance on medievalism in games, that "is it accurate" is the wrong starting question, and that "how is the source material curated, what's taken out and what's left behind" is a much more productive thing to ask - because that can then open doors on why we think certain bits of canon are important, what those do or don't do for the audience, and so on.

My major gripe right now is the Dwarf/Lindon plotline, because I am very not on board with the "mithril is silmaril tree sap" to the point where I find it actively uncomfortable. I think in the first place it seems unnecessary and a bit hackneyed - and opens up new plot holes (why does this not keep happening, what about the forest elves in the fourth age, ete etc). From a storytelling trope it also messes up the core flaw of the dwarves in digging for it. Generally viewers are, I think, expected to agree that saving all the elves in Middle-earth is a good thing, and this makes Durin's pro-dig-for-mithril position a morally justifiable one: even with the outcome of the Balrog etc, saving all the elves is likely to count as a net good thing. But I think the real discomfort for me comes from the extent to which it takes possibly the most conspicuously well known dwarf thing in Tolkien and turns it into Really An Elf Thing Which They Just Dug Up Later, and that sits badly with me, especially as it's never done in reverse. I think part of my feelings here come from being a Caucasus historian, where "this isn't really Your Thing, this is Our Thing and you're just squatting on it" is used all the time with cultural iconography and it's very frequently used to imply people don't belong in places/to justify violently taking that thing away from them. Given the Dwarves' position - heavy Semitic elements in their presentation, diaspora culture, etc - having that applied to them feels uncomfy to me (I'm not suggesting This Is Going To Cause Terrible Things And Must Be Banned or anything, just... it doesn't feel good and it shook me out of the story a bit).

Miscellanous thoughts:

• Still not sure how I feel about Halbrand-is-Sauron as a theory, but it does seem probably increasingly likely what with him being taken to Lindon.
• ...but then who are the creepy people in white following Probably-Gandalf? The man at the centre of that group has cat eyes etc. Can Sauron be in two places at once in this? Or is Halbrand somehow part-Sauron but only part?
• I still don't mind the portrayal of Galadriel, I can see the arguments against it but I certainly don't think the character portrayal is significantly more non-canon than, say, Jackson's Denethor or his Dain Ironfoot, which people complain about far less often.
• I quite like the Bronwen/Theo/Arondir plot, I imagine it will end in tragedy but it seems enjoyable. I don't think it'll happen and it would be a direct canon breach but it would actually be kind of fun if Arondir and Bronwen had a kid who was raised into Numenorean nobility as an alternate explanation for the elvish strain in the lords of Dol Amroth.
• I still like the hobbits. They shouldn't have made them mock Irish while not using Irish actors, and they've overly hammed up a few bits of the acting, but they're very hobbity hobbits in their way, and their song in ep... 5, I think it was, was nice.
• Why is everything so dark? Not all these scenes have to happen in the dark. Also a room with hald as many fires in as a lot of the dwarf rooms seem to have isn't super dark, and dwarves explicitly canonically make lamps, so it's just unnecessary to have everything be so gloomy and grey.
• I think more work needed to be done to establish the goodness and beauty of the elves. Like, part of the themes of Tolkien is elves (and Numenoreans) falling from a high state, and for the elves in particular I think that needs more establishing. It's not clear enough from RoP why allegiance to the elves and their ways is prima facie good, and of the four senior (politically, that is) elves we've seen, one is a maverick and two of the others (Gil-galad and Celebrimbor) mostly come across as somewhat calculating and not necessarily at all omnibenevolent old men. I think they maybe needed more work to make them a bit more sympathetic, which was made harder by the mithrilmaril plotline.
• The Numenoreans are stealing the show for me, bar the bit where I don't understand why Elendil's daughter is so anti going to Middle-earth. But Elendil has been played very, very well, and so I think has Pharazon: they've made a very good choice in portraying him at the start as a calculating and very human official seeking to maximise gain but fundamentally working within the system, as opposed to what he will later become as Ar-Pharazon.

[Tar-Palantir]

I mostly agree with you - I certainly think RoP feels Tolkien, even if I wish some of its extra-canonical excursions were sometimes a bit toned down. One of the big ones for me also being the mithril plotline, which certainly is canonically mad and also, as you say, raises a lot of internal structural questions if we assume RoP is supposed to be mostly consistent with the LOTR and Hobbit films. I don't even feel RoP has done a good job of explaining quite why mithril suddenly matters so much to the Elves and why they're doomed without it, so the whole thing just feels weird. I was also particularly put out by the fact that, on the face of it, Durin III has the strategic nous of a poleaxed sloth. Sure, Dwarves and Elves aren't the best of friends, but consigning one of your major allies to obliteration in a fit of personal pique is not the action of an experienced ruler. So I agree that the Dwarves are getting short-changed again.


I am also confused about who Eminem Skywalker is and how this ties in to anything. I still think Halbrand is not Sauron, but I would enjoy being proven wrong there. And I definitely agree the Númenoreans are being well done.


My real problem that blows everything else out of the water, though, is their scenario for making Orodruin erupt. Like, that's not how volcanoes work. I would have much preferred it if they'd made the Magic Evil Sword into a lava magnet that Adar had to wave around on the peak. That's magic, that's totally fine and consistent with Middle-earth. Instead, they tried to make something that's physically implausible physically plausible and it just didn't work (OK, so my academic background is the real problem here, I know, but the whole thing just made no sense).

[Pentagathus]

I haven't watched the latest episodes yet but the one that started with the Harfoot's singing a walking song doing a Harfoot walking montage started very well and I like the protohobytla now.

[Jubal]

My real problem that blows everything else out of the water, though, is their scenario for making Orodruin erupt.

I see what you did there Will we be getting a full blogpost on that one?

Also, yes, poor Durin III. Fantasy does need more actually canny Dwarf rulers.

[Tar-Palantir]

Yep, I posted it this morning. 4000 words on why the whole thing makes no sense!

[Jubal]

And the season is over! I won't post thoughts for a day or two so people have a chance to see it, but actually I really did think the episode worked well, I enjoyed it.

[Pentagathus]

I'm currently watching it. I like this Harfoot Meteor man thing going on. But the Halbrand

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Celembrimbor arc was god awful. Nine episodes to get this far, it being painfully obvious that Halbrand is probably Sauron and the writers are probably trying to imply that meteor man is Sauron as a red herring and then Annatar just teaches Celebrimbor that metals can be mixed into alloys, and that making a small piece of jewellery uses less metal than a big piece, and they presumably forge the rings in like a third of an episode or so.
The moment Halbrand woke up and was told he should be resting for days I shouted Sauron at the screen, which was a little satisfying. And Saurbrand messing with Galadriel's head is pretty interesting

This show is such an odd mix of meh, ok, genuinely good and genuinely bad. It's a shame, you can see the potential it had in so many places but overall it's rather disappointing for me. I'll probably watch the second season if I have enough spare time and access to prime already, but I definitely wouldn't pay to watch it. Hopefully the pacing is better in future seasons.
I think if HOTD hadn't come out around the same time then ROP it might have compared better.

[Jubal]

Mm, that's fair comment.

Thoughts on the Halbrand/Rings bit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They've still got a lot of rings to make, given we're on 3/20 so far, so they're not short of material in that sense. But I absolutely think they should've cut down on some of the mithrilmarillion bit in favour of getting Halbrand to Eregion at least an episode earlier. I agree that the "hey, have we considered alloys" contribution was a bit lame, though I liked the extent to which I think Sauron's excitement in contributing to the forging had an air of authenticity: yes, he's a decieving power of evil, but some small part of him will always be a Maia of Aule and the resulting drive and aliveness around the act of craft is something I think it's interesting to have in his character.

I do wonder if he's going to return to Eregion in the same or a different form when they work on the Nine and the Seven. I actually quite liked the Halbrand/Galadriel scene, in that I think the dialogue did a good job of having her 'win' in the sense that she talks him into showing who he actually is (the crucial lines being "To save, or to rule?" "I see no difference." - that outlines the essential arrogance in Sauron's corruption, and finally Galadriel is actually making her D&D Wisdom checks successfully). I'd have liked Celebrimbor to be a bit more savvy: in Tolkien's work he's I think generally shown as rather more suspicious of Annatar, which is why he forges the Three in secret.

I haven't found the show a disappointment, but I think possibly my expectations were fairly low. I think they've done a significantly better job than I expected of capturing some Tolkienian themes and ideas, which is nice - I would certainly agree with the case that the pacing and writing weren't ideal and some of the plot adaptations were a bit wobbly, but honestly trying to capture the Second Age of Middle-Earth and ending up with anything other than an unmitigated disaster sort of impresses me given the source material they had to work with. There are some bad points and disappointments, but I think I went in assuming that they'd set themselves a ridiculous challenge that they'd definitely fail at, and even having them hit half the notes right is enough for my end-point feeling to be more a "you know what, fair enough" and take a glass-half-full approach.

I haven't been watching HOTD, the GoT universe never quite grabbed me as much, though I do hear it's good.