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Television The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
Actually he's probably not Sauron.
I don't think Sauron has entered the show as of yet.
I don't think Sauron has entered the show as of yet.
Sauron is the sword !
Crazy how different people's taste can be. I hope the GOT thing will be better.
Yeah but who's Sauron?
She's well fit.
She looks like Elliot Page.
She's Sauron. So... Is that a bad thing?
Eventually watched episode one.
Christ what a shit show. They have been hyping this and making it forever and this is what they came up with.
Brutal.
Christ what a shit show. They have been hyping this and making it forever and this is what they came up with.
Brutal.
Not at all!
Solius is Sauron confirmed
That’s not the issue at all - the issue is the lack of material. LOTR films were so good because the changes were mainly made for efficiency and getting such a long, complex book reigned in (i.e. Arwen taking Glorfindel’s role vs the Nazgûl, condensation of the birthday/shire timeline, no Bombadil) but the whole plot was there for them to follow as was huge amounts of literature to help them write the script.
Amazon have almost nothing to use and they’re ignoring the timelines they do have - hobbit and LOTR are the wrong age and the appendices have no ‘story’ they’re just timelines, runes, lineages and some broader info on certain characters. Same reason GOT just nosedived once they ran ahead of Martin, it’s a real skill to write something like this - you can’t just throw money at it.
Maybe "Sauron" is just the place inside all of us created by our bickering and complaints.
All of them!!
Nah. I'm talking specially about those saying nothing is happening and that the show is going nowhere. Having to wait a week for each episode maybe is the culprit for people losing the plot.
ps. read many of the comments about the last episode, before watching, and I feel they are watching a different show. Complaining just for complain.
Jail escape scene... I mean, they were ordinary citadel guards (have they seen combat before?) dealing with a beautiful commander warrior Elf princess. I don't think they expected her to try to escape nor they were ready to apply lethal force on her.
Orc on his deathbed having a nice moment with his father/dark lord. Why is that a problem? All creatures need comfort sometime. I liked that scene. Sauron might be evil now, but he might have some good traits in him still? Or is just for manipulation? Either way, not a problematic scene.
The Mithril is Sauron
The friends we made along the way is Sauron
Instant nostalgic flashback to Xena Warrior Princess.
Agreed, and it's why so many fans are angry because of it just not making sense from their perspectives. There's some huge Tolkien nerds that read the books like catholics/christians read the bible, its a religion to them.
The one consultant they had they sacked, for Amazon it's not really about full respect to the lore or characters but being appealing to the masses. Which I get it they've spent billions, my major gripe in series like this and I love Tolkein, I love LOTR it's my favourite trilogy of films and I love the books.
I really hate being politically correct and inclusivity in current tv/films.
I think the writers screwed up really, they needed to consult far more. They want the masses to watch it and LOTR is literally bigger than GOT it has a bigger fan base and they had great lessons to learn from late GOT mistakes, and looking at the LOTR films they know what fans liked.
They need need to write their own material and the Tolkien estate said what "can't happen", obviously Peter Jackson found the hobbit films impossibly hard because he was turning a short book that never really conceived of LOTR at the time into that world where filling in a lot of gaps is just hard.
It's a poison chalice but they did a piss poor job so far still. I don't think either way you can make everyone happy, and it's really hard for anyone to create a series but everyone including Netflix, Amazon or whoever has the money wanted to produce this. It's just a shame it'll fall short in fans eyes.
Fans have issues with people like Galadriel being portrayed as a strong female warrior when she never was, and that the men appear as weak in the series which is again trying to push a certain narrative to fit in with what would sell well now within a tolkein universe.
If this was made in the early 2000s it could have been different but it feels like on TV now you need to tick boxes early on to try appeal to mass audiences. With Christopher and JRR Tolkein dead it's not like they can do much.
Its tolkein through the eyes of political correctness and wanting to appeal to regular crowds. We were never going to get a work of Tolkein it could have been a masterpiece considering the brand though.
I think itll be mediocre, just like the star wars reboots.
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There's something to it. Professor Tolkien was a staunch traditionalist, creating entire races, characters, places and events with concrete purpose to mirror parts of Europe which was devoured by war and paralysing fear of mass death.
Even Hobbit which was source material for younger readers was still reflecting on greed leading to tragedy in contrast to peaceful life of a hobbit.
I'm no expert, but on the DVD extras for Fellowship there's a Tolkien quote about how the story wasn't an allegory for WWII and that he doesn't like allegory. He prefers what he calls applicability, which means a story that has the ability to resonate with the history a person experiences in their time.
I believe he mentions that Mordor would have been occupied instead of destroyed if he was using WWII as the model.
Not that I'm saying his experience in WWI and II didn't influence the work.
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It is not that they are adding new things, fudging the timelines, any of that, it is that the writing has ambitions of being seen as bang average, the dialogue is pure clunk, they are at times trying for some of the ominous portentousness of Tolkien but it just comes out as bad fan fiction.
The dwarves and Elrond, Erandir and the villagers, passable, the rest is not good.
The dwarves and Elrond, Erandir and the villagers, passable, the rest is not good.
It's not entirely about WWII. Tolkien's personal experience during the first war was being under heavy fire and hearing bodies hitting the floor. There's much of escapism and hatred towards war in his work. I understand the whole Hobbit race as him trying to clear his mind of bad places and dark experiences, kinda like Bilbo where he just wanted to be alone and write his book in tranquility.
His creative mind did save him from war trauma, but I doubt he can escape different interpretations of his work which was huge as world itself.
Elrond's calmness and Durin's enthusiasm made it for me somewhat watchable. They should really give these two more time to discuss middle earth matters to a heavier degree to immerse people even more in the show.
Isildur still looks unsure of his fate, maybe that's why he looks bland at the moment...
I mean Isildur eventually takes the one ring instead of destroying it, can definitely see this version of the character doing something that stupid so it's at least accurate in that way.
Definitely.
The road he takes from now on will be at least more exciting and of bigger historic events. That should hopefully build his character more.
Same, I’m not seeing any of the issues others are in here. Too many people trying to be TV critic hacks.
I don’t think it’s that at all. I really want it to be good but some of the stuff is really obvious you don’t need to be a critic to notice it.
The whole cave-in dwarf story I mentioned in the last episode. What was the point of that? Miners in danger off screen? One scene later it’s all good nobody died. There’s no room for things to breathe, it just cuts from one thing to another without any sense of danger or ways of making the audience care.
After that episode I think I’m out, I’ll wait for it to finish and then maybe complete the season but I’m purely watching it because it’s LOTR, there’s next to nothing novel or engrossing coming from this in my opinion - I’m curious to know who Sauron and The Stranger will be but you can’t have that carry a show. You can’t spent a billion on essentially a ‘whodoneit’ (or more aptly, a whoisit in this case) with great CGI.
It’s 100% on the writers, the dialogue is awful and they’ve made the main ‘good’ characters generally unlikable/boring (Elrond’s actor is good I will say). It’s such a 5/10, middle of the road fantasy that just hangs off the coattails of the LOTR world.
It’s 100% on the writers, the dialogue is awful and they’ve made the main ‘good’ characters generally unlikable/boring (Elrond’s actor is good I will say). It’s such a 5/10, middle of the road fantasy that just hangs off the coattails of the LOTR world.
I think there was a bit more to it than that, you could hear a bit of a roar in the background during the cave in. Hmm I wonder what that could be...
Thought the same.
Even so. It felt so rushed. Just felt jarring to watch, and then Elrond talks about his father and I’m just like partridge shrug gif. There’s nothing grounding these characters or making them relatable at this moment. I do hope it gets better though.
She was though... Tolkien fans who cry about this version of Galadriel obviously did not read enough Tolkien.
Good to know its been a while since I read through some earlier texts
I'm finding it enjoyable enough to have watched all 4 eps. The dialogue is what makes it feel so "not-LOTR" to me.
I like it.
Only issuse i have is that the elfs does not look ”elf-like” to me, reminds me almost more of politicians from 300 f.ex. Also the writing for the Elfs is not good.
And I really really really wanted a Balrog to come the last episode, when the mountain started shaking.
It still has potential to be alot better, so i am optimistic.
Only issuse i have is that the elfs does not look ”elf-like” to me, reminds me almost more of politicians from 300 f.ex. Also the writing for the Elfs is not good.
And I really really really wanted a Balrog to come the last episode, when the mountain started shaking.
It still has potential to be alot better, so i am optimistic.