The Lord of the Rings - Second Age - Amazon Prime

[Teresa Edgerton]

When he hugged Elendil? My husband and I asked each other, "What was that about?" Until Hal made to embrace Galadriel and handed her back her weapon that Elendil had been wearing in his belt. After that, we were keeping an eye out for other times when he might be stealing things. (Although in the case of Galadriel's blade I suppose a better term might be "liberating.")

Is there any reason this show doesn't have it's own featured tv series thread?

Good question!

Not sure if i'm reading too much into things, but during the scene where Galadrial is first trying to get up on the raft and Halbrand holds his hand out and it looks like Galadrial sort of faints? Is that something?

I don't think so. She'd been swimming, probably, for days, and I think she was just weak at that point. But I might have missed something.

There is obviously a lot about Halbrand that we still don't know even after his conversation with Galadriel when he was in jail, and I don't actually trust anything that he says or agrees to. It's hard to know when he is lying and when he is telling the truth. Is he a good guy, or a bad guy? Is he a man with a past who is going to be redeemed, or a man of flexible morals who will end up being corrupted by Sauron? (Lots of people online already suspect he will end up as a Nazgul.) Is he Theo's missing father?

Tolkien's wise and good characters, like Gandalf, believe in redemption, and so, obviously, must Tolkien himself (being a devout Catholic,) but if you read the Silmarillion and the other lore, Tolkien wrote many tragedies. No matter how heroic or well-meaning a character, from the moment one of them strayed it seemed like it was impossible for him to get back on the right path. Everything conspired against them. But of course Hal is an original character created for the series. Do the screenwriters feel that redemption would make a better story, or do they think watching a sympathetic character being corrupted and destroyed is the better option? If the latter, it's not going to have much (or maybe even any) shock value when everyone suspects him from the beginning. I rather think that, like so many of Tolkien's characters, the producers and writers are the ones who are doomed in Halbrand's case. If they redeem him, cynics will scoff. If he turns out to be or becomes one of the villains, many will say it was blindingly obvious all along.

I think we are going to all be watching Hal's every move and suspecting some sinister motive. We'll probably suspect things of him that the writers never even thought of.


*****

ctg, I think Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam will have to die eventually. They will be healed of whatever wounds or taints the ring inflicted, and live in bliss for many years, but in the end I don't believe that the Valar can withdraw the Gift of Iluvatar.

 

[HareBrain]

ctg, I think Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam will have to die eventually. They will be healed of whatever wounds or taints the ring inflicted, and live in bliss for many years, but in the end I don't believe that the Valar can withdraw the Gift of Iluvatar.

Yes, Ar-Pharazon believed capturing Valinor would grant immortality, but he (or one of his forebears, I forget) was explicitly told this wasn't true: it wasn't a feature of the land itself. (Having said, that, the Valar did grant Beren a second life, so they have some interesting gifts within their power.)

 

[therapist]

Until Hal made to embrace Galadriel and handed her back her weapon that Elendil had been wearing in his belt.

Oh sorry i'm dumb. Don't know how I missed that.

 

[ctg]

Is there any reason this show doesn't have it's own featured tv series thread?

It requires 3 posts, and then dedication on keeping episodic threads up. However, this thread is progressing nicely and people starting from the beginning gets a full picture.

 

[Elckerlyc]

This thread is more about what is and what is not authentic Middle-Earth 'lore', or if such a thing even exists and whether it matters or not.
Interesting, no doubt, but it isn't so much about the TV-show itself, as a viewer's experience.
No doubt people will cry the 2 cannot be separated from each other. Well, they have this thread. For those who can separate the 2 a different thread would be appreciated. To appreciate the series.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

It is entertaining, lively with plenty to watch. It's never going to be anywhere like the books. I'm finding it very watchable.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I met a guy once who was a writing teacher--smart, articulate, gave good writing instruction from what I saw--and yet he said he did not think there was anything worth reading before 1950.

Which is kind of ironic being as 1950+ was the dawn of post-modernism - you know, the time when popular culture began to play with established symbols and play with the meaningless of it all.

But he was of Chinese ancestry, and for him, there was nothing in western literature that had any relevance for him until it became more diverse.

This isn't a criticism of you, but I am still flabbergasted that people require the heroes in the book to be surrogates for themselves. I don't, personally, read books expecting to insert myself into a narrative. I want to holiday in other people's heads! I want to see a broad range of perspectives and characters and histories and possible worlds that are most definitely not like me!

I understand the importance of representation, generally, in showing that our society is constituted by a wide range of people, ethnicities and so on, but the fact Guo Xiaotian is not a British bloke doesn't stop me loving the legend of the condor heroes, nor does the fact that Hamlet was an 11th century prince or Fragrant Lotus a 19th century Chinese girl.

The implication that only Anglocentric culture counts as the "true cultural field" does a massive disservice to Asian, African and South Asian cinema. It's always struck me as an oddly parochial attitude.

The lives of Shakespearean characters had no meaning for him.

Gah!

The problem in today's media is that they are so devoted to trying to do one-size-fits-all that they are not really pleasing anyone.

I think the problem is multilayered.

The big challenge for hollywood is competition and revenue. They're not just competing with tv they're competing with pirating, video games and streaming. That means they have to lean into spectacle in order to drive attention and get bums on seats in cinema.

 

[Vince W]

I've let go of any expectations of seeing something 'authentically' Tolkien and enjoyed this episode a bit more than the previous two. It didn't come across quite so dark which is a step in the right direction. I still find the Harfoots to be a tad irritating but hopefully that will pass.

One thing I think we can do with less of is overly dramatic flowy slow-mo scenes.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh sorry i'm dumb. Don't know how I missed that.

I wouldn't say that at all. If I remember correctly, we didn't get to see Hal pass it to her directly. It was just suddenly there between them during that awkward bit where he clasped her arm, and she (and therefore we, the viewers) had focussed on her knife in Elendil's belt not long before. But if you blinked at the wrong moment it would be easy to miss what happened.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Episode 3 didn't do much for me. It felt like generic Fantasy fare with its epic vistas of cities so over-the-top and grandiose you can't help but be reminded every five seconds you're watching a digital painting.

It also felt too scripted, the interactions between the characters felt forced, not genuine. Perhaps it was too heavy on plot and expository dialogue or smartassery and too light on smaller character moments. Also disappointed that this Halbrand fellow turns out to be nothing more than this show's Aragorn... except he's no Viggo Mortensen. Only the actor playing Elendil was great.

The scenes at the labor camp were better but the Kung Fu escape was embarrassing. Why? Why must everything look so grand and fake?

Still curious to find out who this Adar is... But I hope the subsequent episodes will delve a little deeper. If I just wanted to be bombarded with CGI and references to a lore I know next to nothing about, I'd watch a Marvel film.

 

[Vince W]

The scenes at the labor camp were better but the Kung Fu escape was embarrassing. Why? Why must everything look so grand and fake?

Yes. The fight reminded me of the Shaw Bros. kung fu films I watched as a kid. But that's what younger viewers expect. Personally I'd rather see more Die Hard fights than Marvel ones.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Hal, if he is who Galadriel thinks he is, is not going to save his kingdom. He has no great city, no army, no faithful allies like Rohan to come to his aid. He may try, but he can't be the show's Aragorn. I fear bad things are ahead for Halbrand.

Spoiler

When the Queen gave Elendil—who I agree has a great deal of presence— the sword and said that she had a job for him, and then they cut away before we found out what it was, my husband and I both feared she was going to ask him to kill Galadriel. It would be out of character for him to accept such a task, but we still felt (as no doubt the writers expected we would) that she would demand it. Of course if she had and he had determined to do it, one of them would have emerged from that confrontation dead, and we know that Elendil and Galadriel both have to survive. But still we wondered.

One thing about making changes to the source material is that it ups the suspense quite a bit (as the same thing did for the LOTR trilogy of movies) because you never are really certain—no matter how much you know about the books, the movies, the letters, or other sources—what exactly is going to happen next.

The fight reminded me of the Shaw Bros. kung fu films I watched as a kid. But that's what younger viewers expect. Personally I'd rather see more Die Hard fights than Marvel ones.

Ismael Cruz Cordova has apparently studied multiple martial arts, and combined moves from different disciplines, as well as dance, to create his own fighting style. I would rather the fights in this movie were not like any of those you mention, but rather like the fights in old-fashioned swashbucklers, but I don't care a great deal either way. But then, I'm not a young viewer—far, far from it.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

Yes. The fight reminded me of the Shaw Bros. kung fu films I watched as a kid. But that's what younger viewers expect. Personally I'd rather see more Die Hard fights than Marvel ones.

I don't know about that. Maybe the younger half of the spectrum but even in teen fiction there's a general tendency now to depict fight as more brutal and ugly than dance-like and weightless. Even when fight scenes are choreographed and stylized to the extreme you end up with movies like John Wick with short confrontations that go straight to the point.
That was maybe the jarring thing about this scene, actually. It felt like bad 1990s fight scenes, something that wouldn't have looked out of place in an episode of Xena: Princess Warrior. It didn't pair well with the horrific design of orcs or the overall 'seriousness' of modern-day Fantasy shows.

@Teresa Edgerton , my comparison of Hal to Aragorn was only on the most superficial of levels: he's the pretty-faced traveller who knows how to fight, hides his noble origins and wants nothing to do with a throne out of fear power will corrupt him like it did his ancestors.

I really don't know Tolkien's world enough to be able to pick up on all the signs (I'm baffled by this theory that he might become one of the Ringwraiths) so I have no clue what the writers are planning for him. I can only hope I will be pleasantly surprised, but at the moment I don't see him as you do. I think they're going for a Han Solo vibe with him, or maybe that sellsword from GoT... Bron, was it? The cocky loudmouth who fights better than most but has a kind heart deep down. So at the moment I don't see dark clouds on his horizon (they have Isildur for that), but rather redemption, acceptance and maybe even a bit of Elven romance.... which would really make him the show's Aragorn.

So here's hoping you're right.

 

[farntfar]

Just got home and I have now watched the 1st 3 episodes almost back to back.

So, a few of my thoughts.

Harfoots
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the faux-Irish harfoot accent, or indeed that all the dwarves are made to sound like John Rhys-Davies.

Somebody mentioned some time ago that he was dreading that we would have a Harfoot (Lenny Henry) speaking with a Brummy accent. Well he at least must now be happy not to have that.
But what else should they have chosen.
I myself complained about the books themselves, that the Shire was all too middleclass home-counties.
Almost any accent would have upset someone, and a mishmash of Scouse, Geordie, Welsh and westcountry, with some Derbyshire and South African thrown in for good measure would have been unbelievably worse.

One thing that does please me, although it seems to distress others, is their camouflaged houses or carts.
If I remember correctly Theoden spoke to Merry about the Eorling tradition of the Holbytla. Something like, "For it was said that they could vanish in the twinkling of an eye, and change their voices to the piping of birds."
There was a scene in episode 3 where they did indeed all disappear in the twinkling of an eye, beneath their camouflage, so that all you saw was a field of strange lichen-like mounds.
It struck me as a perfect representation of what Theoden had described.

The stranger.
This surely has to be Gandalf.
I went back to look at his firefly map, to see if it might correspond to the 7 Istari, but in fact there are 12 stars in the pattern, so probably not.
Mind you, if this is Gandalf, and if we continue with the Southlands theme (and maybe further afield) we may come across more wizards than the 3 we already know. What special interests will they have?

Slightly confused about exactly when we are, especially in terms of Numenor. Surely Elendil comes quite late in that story, being part of the elf-friends who are in opposition to the royal family who are planning to invade Valinor, but they don't seem to have quite reached that yet. But maybe that isn't so clear in the LOTR appendices.

Overall, I'm enjoying it, in the spirit which Teresa describes as someone's vision of what we don't know and probably all imagined a bit differently.

 

[svalbard]

A few points on Ep3 and taking into account the above posts.

1. I think Hal is been set up as the tortured hero. The Campbell archetype. Or an tinfoil hat theory could be that he is one of the 'kings' corrupted by Sauron and the rings of power.

2. The Stranger is definitely Gamdalf. He has always had a connection to the Hobbits and this might be an origin story.

3. Agree with one of the posters. Arondir is my favourite elf at the moment.

4. Elendil looks suitably heroic.

5. Numenor looked spectacular.

 

[thaddeus6th]

fartnfar, I thought there were five Istari? Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the two blue wizards.

Are there a couple more? (Entirely possible I'm mistaken, it's been a while since I read anything by Tolkien, just curious who the extras are).

 

[ctg]

Are there a couple more?

There are more, but not in the Middle-Earth.

 

[farntfar]

fartnfar, I thought there were five Istari? Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the two blue wizards.

I believe you're right, Thaddeus.
I'm not quite sure where I came up with 7 from, a popular number in several religions.
At any rate, it still doesn't correspond to the stars or fireflies that the stranger displays.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Waiting for all episodes of Season 1 to be released before watching it, but have enjoyed these reviews:

Amazon’s expensive Lord of the Rings gamble pays off in fantastical fashion: The Rings of Power review

A magnificently magical and mystical return to Middle-earth

www.techradar.com

The Rings of Power’s setting and lack of extensive plot and character-specific source material means it doesn’t require an in-depth understanding of Tolkien’s works to enjoy it, either. It benefits from telling a story set in an age with relatively little background information – compared to The Lord of the Rings anyway – to draw from, negating the anxiety-inducing prospect of having to binge watch other shows and movies to catch up.

Rings of Power looks good, but it's unlikely to win over Tolkien fans

Will Tolkien lovers be happy with the Amazon TV show?

www.techradar.com

There’s a lot of new stuff here, and tinkering with Tolkien’s legendarium has garnered the showrunners a lot of criticism from dedicated LOTR geeks. But people criticizing the changes have to remember that when Peter Jackson and co. were creating the LOTR movies in the nineties, big changes had to be made to create those adaptations, too.

My general impression before seeing it is that this series is primarily about extending on the existing cinematic audience developed by the Jackson films, and that any Tolkien purists are inevitably going to be disappointed.

 

[SilentRoamer]

But that may just be my attempt to make the whole "we are sending you across the sea to Valinor as a reward" make more sense. That bit and the prologue are for me the weakest parts so far.

I really didn't like the prologue. I just cannot imagine Elven children bullying each other in the undying lands. This is taking human angst and importing it into Valinor.

The Elves were always filled with an otherworldly grace to me (something which I believe Jackson captured with Blanchett as Galadriel) - this also includes the prologue, I just don't think it was delivered anything like the authoritative and powerful prologue of the films.

My other criticism (which runs on similar veins) was Galadriels killing of the Ice/Snow troll - it just isnt fitting with her character as I see it. It also doesn't help with the obvious wire work and the spinny sword flourishes (which I always hate).

This is not to say I don't like the actress, I think she is doing a really good job, Its just she is doing a good job portraying a character that I don't recognise as Galadriel.