Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power [Amazon] *Spoilers*

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119662955#Comment_119662955

There's absolutely nothing in the show that requires scenes or characters of "light relief". It's been devoid of any kind of tension at all, largely because it's been so dull. We're 5 episodes into this and, practically, nothing has happened.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119663131#Comment_119663131

Very long winded alright.

a_squirrelman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119655300#Comment_119655300

Don't know what the feck that rant was or what you're implying. 😂 I have standards and I pay full attention but carry on. Do try to be less condescending.

nix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119663405#Comment_119663405

Ah sorry dood, it wasnt a jab at you enjoying it, power to you!

But more of your comment about posters being OTT, i find them pretty grounded given the state of the show, its mostly just discussion, which is what this place is for :)

And it was hardly a rant :P

ixoy

Well I'm enjoying it, probably helped by the fact that I am not familiar with the back lore to 'Lord of the Rings', having last attempted some stuff like 'The Unfinished Tales' about 30 years ago and not likely to revisit it any time soon (my TBR pile being too big). Sure there's issues, like what johnny_ultimate has pointed out, and it's far from perfect but it looks like it could be all coming towards something now. What I do think is the characters chemistry is often lacking with the clear exception of Elrond and Durin, which are by far the most interesting pairing in the show.

Sure, I can understand some being frustrated at its spurning of the source material (there's a reason I won't watch 'The Wheel of Time' because I am familiar with it), but enjoying it certainly doesn't mean you've a a lack of attention span or any critical faculties! You can accept the flaws and, even if the sauce isn't perfect, enjoy the meat of it.

fritzelly

Thought I would be looking forward to each new episode of this show, but it's become background noise while doing something else

So very little happens in each episode and it's more about just having lots of talky talky

Flinty997

I've read all the books but speed read a lot of the more involved history or lore as I'm not that interested in it. All this history is overkill for most of these stories. How much have they changed it?

Wheel of Time they butchered in all sorts of inexplicable and horrible ways.

corkie

@Flinty997 How much have they changed it?

Perhaps the biggest problem for the series is something that is likely to be the root cause of a number of its adaptive choices: Tolkien never wrote a book focusing on the events of the Second Age, and the production does not have the rights to the book in which he did write the most about it.

https://collider.com/rings-of-power-book-reader-analysis-criticism/

So the script writers are crafting/making it up.

liamtech

Glad im not the only one, who wonders where Galadriels hubby is!

Tony EH

@johnny_ultimate

On the last note, I think this is a show that'd benefit from tighter editing or indeed shorter episodes, as each episode has only crept closer to the feature-length over the course of the season so far. I get they're dealing with multiple perspectives, but 60+ minutes every week is a lot of television.

It wouldn't be if something happened during those 60 minutes. But this show has been sooooo non-eventful it feels like an age every time you sit down to an episode. It genuinely has to be one of the dullest programs that I've seen in a very long time.

silverharp

"Rings of Power Has a FATAL Galadriel Problem" by a channel called Disparu, basically shows that Galadriel is evil and manipulative but more importantly the writers dont think she is because they themselves have no moral compass.

https://youtu.be/BjYVtU1oLOc

Busi_Girl08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119664794#Comment_119664794

Is she also not meant to have at least one child by this stage too?

Nody

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119665887#Comment_119665887

Yes; around 300 years into the second age Celebrían was born, father being her missing hubby Celeborn and the daughter goes on to then marry Elrond in the third age and gives birth to Arwen and twin brothers. But for what ever reason they appear to have ignored anything and everything with that part of the story (as I can't see how they can retcon it back in during second or later seasons).

Brief_Lives

Having not read the Silmarillion, or anything beyond Hobbit & Lord of the rings, this kind of historical inaccuracy in a fictional character doesn't bother me as I don't even realise it...

It is just the show is so flat and boring... and Galadriels character is abyssmal..

corkie

The Red Book ¦ Why did Sauron hoard mithril? | Tolkien Questions & Answers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxJJOZIENg8

Comments on the video, are also worth reading.

Agent Coulson

Good article in the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/28/irish-people-have-faced-centuries-of-discrimination-why-are-lord-of-the-rings-accents-so-offensively-bad?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TomSweeney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640152#Comment_119640152

The 1st 2 Hobbit films were quite decent actually, it's the 3rd one that is a complete f*cking disaster!!

corkie

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Ud%C3%BBn_%28episode%29

https://variety.com/2022/tv/recaps/rings-of-power-udun-battle-episode-6-1235389168/

Watching it now, maybe edit this post later.

Coincidental!!

sekiro

At this point they have gone too far for me to actually think of this as an adaptation of Tolkien. It's not.

Where we are at now is basically watching a rip-off of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. So many pieces here are just straight up copying Jackson's work.

So Mount Doom's origin story is that some no name guy stuck a sword/key into a rock and this caused a flood and that caused Mount Doom to erupt again. Is this really the best they could come up with? Why not at least make it that some character with a bit of motivation and purpose deliberately brought Mount Doom to life? They've had a previous 6 episodes to build up to it!

jones

I have got to say episode 6 is a cracker.

If they continue this momentum for the last two episodes it'll be a very strong ending to the first season. I'd previously said I felt episodes 4 and 5 felt a bit samey but episode 6 is a top notch pay off IMO.

The White Wolf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119654810#Comment_119654810

There are definitely good parts and bad parts. The problem is that the bad parts are.....really, really bad.

I’m done. Not wasting my time any more. Going to take a look at the new Jeff Bridges drama

BruteStock

The southlands are the same little village with a few cottage houses from episode 1. They make the world feel very small and unoccupied.

GuyLadriel doing parkour on the horse.. Ffs😅

One cannot quench a thirst by drinking seawater 😂

How did Galadriel miss all those orcs digging tunnels in the Southlands while she was on the hunt. Halbrand even told her he was driven out by them. Seems a bit silly when you think about it.

Antor sensed a darkness within Galadriel as she was about to cut his throat and he was right. Galadriel is an evil 5 foot William Wallace . The show has no respect for the character that was written by Tolkien.

AMKC

So watched the latest episode of thisctoday and loved it. Its so much better than that boring dull House of Dragons show.

At least on Lord of the Rings things actually happen and it does not skip 10 plus years in a heartbeat which is what that other show did in one episode as well as having terrible badly edited episodes so I gave up on it. Never was really into the GOT anyway.

sekiro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119686025#Comment_119686025

There are times watching this where I wonder how far they could go with this before people would say it's impossible to just sit back and enjoy it without some kind of thought springing up shouting "what the hell this makes no sense".

They sailed all the way from Numenor in those little ships. 300 soldiers plus food and horses etc. Then it's what two or three hundred miles to (soon to be) Mordor and across the mountains. They do this journey it what feels like a quick overnight trip. Showing up in the exact correct spot at the exact correct time.

Galadriel has urged Numenor to go to war with Adar and the orcs and they've agreed just in time to set sail and arrive at the exact spot where they need to be.

This happens and then this happens and then this happens and there's no real substance or build up to it. I get that people enjoy seeing battles on screen and volcanoes exploding and what have you but surely there needs to be some kind of context or scale to it all.

"The Southlands" just seems to be a single village of maybe a couple of hundred people or so? There's no sense of scale or any indication that this village is of any real importance to Sauron or anyone else apart from the people who lived there.

Adar is the one thing that they sort of managed to get right but really the Southlands should have had at least one big city or fortress and he needed to build the orc army and wage war on that city for enough days that the script can allow time for the Numenoreans to show up. A lot of the Southlanders stories could have actually taken place behind the besieged walls over a few episodes.

Why wouldn't Adar and the Orcs just destroy the dam? Why did they even need the weird sword/key thing to begin with? If the Southlands has a city that has an outpost that protects the dam and Adar wants to siege the city as a distraction to the real task of destroying the dam. Numenor shows up and saves the city but the dam gets destroyed.

It's like they wasted so much time on unimportant things and then got to episode six and decided to rush things as quickly as possible.

Considering the money involved here the whole battle just felt small and unimportant.

5 Episodes of not much happening followed by an episode of basically mindless action. It sucks.

corkie

Rings of Power Episode 6 BREAKDOWN | Lord of the Rings on Prime Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04wNiebJSoY

He mentions 'Mithril-chlorians' in the above video and I thought he was getting the franchised mixed up?

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Midi-chlorian

@AMKC You complain about a 10 Years (ship) slip/(skip) in the other show. But don't see the lack of time and scale in TROP, see above post?

I will repeat my earlier comment on it.

Coincidental!!

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119686619#Comment_119686619

You complain about a 10 Years ship in the other show. But don't see the lack of time and scale in TROP, see above post?

What ship lol?

You mean slip.

It works better in TROP less noticeble at least to me anyway.

ixoy

Turning up in the nick of time is a long held tradition of TV, including of course 'Lord of the Rings' itself. I agree that it could have been done better - a quick montage of them going across the lands over a few days would have been easy and not stolen any momentum - but it's a very common trope that few bother to refute. You break dramatic tension when it's not a pivotal moment and it's rare to see it not done. And the wider logistics issues of baggage trains, etc is pretty much never seen outside of novels.

Stuff like Galadriel's acrobatics on horseback - are they really any worse than some of the stuff Legolas got up to? Worthy of a little eye roll but still better than shield surfing.

What I don't get is how they did know to get to that particular village. I don't know if I did miss something or if it is indeed the capital of the Southlands..

corkie

@ixoy What I don't get is how they did know to get to that particular village. I don't know if I did miss something or if it is indeed the capital of the Southlands

From the first episode?

The village of Tirharad

If the name of this village didn't sound familiar to you, you weren't alone. Tolkien didn't create Tirharad, but he didn't create anything in this area that would later become Mordor. We know there were men living in what was then called the Southlands, because Tolkien wrote of how Shelob would prey upon men and elves before Sauron claimed the land as Mordor. 

The name Tirharad is a mashup of "watch" and "south" in Sindarin, which makes some sense given the way the village is essentially policed by the Silvan elves from their watchtower. This episode lays out how the descendants of men who served Morgoth settled in the surrounding area, and the elves keep a close eye on them out of concern that corruption may once again enter their hearts. We know that some men did serve Morgoth, whose fortress Udûn existed in the northeast part of the area that later became Mordor, so it isn't a stretch that men would've settled here after the wars.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/how-does-rings-of-power-differ-from-tolkiens-works-a-full-breakdown-by-episode/

So just the primary/main village in the southlands (for this show)?

Apothic_Red

Action good, occasionally great

Dialogue mixed, "I will keep you alive to see all all your babies die" next sentence "I will slit your throat here now". It's as if they had 2 scripts & they are trying to piece them together in the editing room.

When did the slipero occur with the Morgul blade, I missed that, threw me a bit.

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119687559#Comment_119687559

A billion dollars doesn't buy you much these days

silverharp

there were no harfoots!! again they have no attention to detail and very little makes sense. Tardis ships, warp speed, magic horses that can gallop at full speed for a day or more carrying armored troops, a tower held together with gaffer tape, eye rollingly convenient just in time. battle tactics that make no sense, Adar just rocks up to the tower not knowing its meant to be empty, the orcs are randomly disarmed or dont have bows and arrows when its convenient, the villagers are defending a wooden village that has no protection and is overlooked by high ground

Meanwhile Galadriel is being evil again and we are supposed to be rooting for her, pondering genocide against the orcs and promising to torture Adar by keeping him alive to watch it happen , until she changes her mind 2 seconds later and tries to kill him lol

The key was pointless, it would have been easier for the orks to destroy the dams. Then the convenience of passing the key without anyone checking it.

Its written by children with no sense of timing , this episode was rushed and should have been done over 2 hours.

Also for a billion dollar show there is no sense of scale, the Southlands would appear to be no bigger than Co Wicklow with a population of less than a thousand.

BruteStock

😂 He's not lying though is he 😮

https://youtu.be/4pF4QpkDdac

Varik

Looking at the writers stuff from an old article they were attached to multiple different projects that don't seem to have gone anywhere or went on with out them.

They seem to have bluffed their way into it playing multiple studios off one another before each in their own time realized they were ****, Amazon the only one without the sense to replace them.

Mr.Nice Guy

I enjoyed the action in this episode. Some of the dialogue bits were ropey.

I have to agree Galadriel comes across as pretty evil. Not sure that's what the writers were intending but we'll see.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119686430#Comment_119686430

This.

I wonder was something missed in the edit that showed how the Numenorians knew where exactly to go?

There is a scene on the sea journey, with the Queen Regent looking at a map and placing a magnifying glass over one particular bit, which was so quick I couldn't even read it, even when rewinding.

Why didnt Galadriel kill that Adar guy when she got the chance? Why did they not check the wrapped up parcel he was carrying was in fact the article they were trying to recover when they caught him ?

Had they known it wasnt the Key they could have dispatched someone to the site of the fallen tower to prevent the Key being used by the old tavern keeper.

Anyone else thinking this entire show is going to be one disaster after another?

Lets face it, the story of the Good King becoming corrupted by the Ring and being the Withchking, is ahead of this, so maybe that is Halbrand? And he, the newly proclaimed king whose history is accepted by the fact that he carries an engraving? An engraving he could have stolen or taken, and in fact this episode does give a clue that there is more in his past that may not be as it should.

This particular location is important to the story in that the Key and the Door is located there, why we don' t know yet, but I suppose the dam and the volcano have more relevance than explosive value. Maybe it opens some ' evil pathway' for Sauron??

I think the acting and the battle scenes are pretty good, but it just doesn't tie together as well as it should and is lacking in a reasonable explanation for some of the key moments.

I agree that the slow pace of the last few episodes is a total contrast to this but at least we were told what was going on in those episodes whereas in this I found it so rushed and confusing with so many unanswered questions . Could have spread this over 2 episodes or at least added extra time to expound the plot a bit more clearly.

Having said that I am enjoying this and the HOTD, and THT, and glad that there is something of interest/escapism to be watching in these dark nights.

billyhead

So who do you folks think Sauron is? I have a feeling that it's the old mysterious man who crashed down to middle earth.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119689922#Comment_119689922

He's definitely a player alright.

There was some mention of Elrond's dad carrying a star? Just in passing like.

Didn't this guy fall with a star?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119687711#Comment_119687711

Imagine what the Vikings team could do with a budget like this...

pjohnson

Aside from Bear McCreary on the music everything else seems like its being done almost as work experience by novices.

Like sure some plots/moments land but others are just nonsensical or just get rapidly flown through in order to get to the next '"important" bit. Thats why characters and locations are just warping all over the place.

The scripts are similarly ropey and some of the cast are dreadful, Clark is getting worse and worse and when the lead of the show is one of the worst actors on the show no wonder things are so flat.

For a series with so much money and was in development for so long it manages to look cheap and rushed. Very strange.

The Continental Op

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119690008#Comment_119690008

But isn't that the problem here, they had the budget and then went looking for ways of spending it.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119689540#Comment_119689540

that was hilarious

johnny_ultimate

A battle episode was always coming - it’s the fantasy TV / film way - and, while I’m generally indifferent to that sort of thing in general, I was mostly impressed at the direction, with the exception of the CG-enhanced gymnastics here and there which felt off. Despite the fact a lot of the fighting took place at night, the action was largely clear and coherent, helped by relatively long takes in several sequences that gave a good sense of space and movement. A lot of modern action scenes rely on rapid edits, so nice to see a TV show - which are sometimes more reliant than film on ‘coverage’ to cover up the budgetary limitations - do a decent job. Well, some of the long shots did seem to be spliced together using the aforementioned CG gymnastics, but mostly it worked. And it’s nicely brutal for a show obviously aimed at a fairly general audience - lots of flying orc limbs and human bloodshed.

There’s definitely room to improve the sense of scale and timescales (although I did think the episode made it very clear that everything was happening over a 48-72 hour period). Felt it was a bit confusing when it jumped to the riders post-sunrise vs the darkness of the inn in the village. But I did enjoy how many times the episode reversed the factions’ fortunes (including the old LotR ‘cavalry arrives at the last minute’ trick), offered up a seemingly but ultimately false happy ending, and then finished up the episode on a cataclysmic downer.

I was wondering where they were going to go with the next two episodes until the last three or four minutes went and upset the status quo. Definitely a fairly sudden counter to ‘nothing much has happened’ complaints, but the show certainly could have benefited from some of the ground quite rapidly covered here being spread out a little over the last episode or two (perhaps an episode taken to emphasise the duration of the Numenor fleet’s journey rather than its preparations).

On the current ‘big budget genre TV’ scale, I’d rate this above House of the Dragon (watchable but unimaginative and tedious) but behind Andor (a show I expected to dislike but have been pleasantly surprised by). Curious to see if that’ll change over the three shows’ remaining episodes - been interesting to see the strengths and weaknesses of three ‘franchise’ shows operating on grand, expensive canvases but all having a very different vision of how to use said canvas.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119689948#Comment_119689948

Yes that's a big thing in Tolkien's legendarium

Eärendil (Quenya; IPA: [e.aˈrendil]) was a great Half-elf mariner who voyaged to Valinor, entreated before the Valar on behalf of the Children of Ilúvatar, and carried a star across the sky at the end of the First Age. His acts had been prophesied of among the Elves centuries beforehand.[4]He was the father of Elros, the first King of Númenor, and of Elrond, the Lord of Rivendell and an important figure in the Second and Third Ages.Eärendil was the first, seminal character of J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/E%C3%A4rendil

Can't see Meteor Man having anything to do with that though, would be too much of a travesty of the source material even for Amazon

Goldengirl

Just a thought..

Any idea who our Man who Fell to Earth might be?

Looks definitely Elvish. Or Wizardly..

It's Lord of the rings for people who don't care about Lord of the Rings. Though I had to laugh when one of the two arrows that hit Bronwyn disappeared. It was probably in a brown bin outside the tavern.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119690342#Comment_119690342

Here's some speculation on his identity

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a41040562/rings-of-power-meteor-man/

A lesser, non-Gandalf wizrd seems to be the favoured theory...

ixoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119690102#Comment_119690102

Whatever about plot points, acting, etc I'd find it difficult to say it ever looks cheap. It certainly seems to have the money visibly pumped into the production end (SFX, etc).

mewso

I would describe the whole battle as predictable rather than bad. Our elf hero is about to die. Did anyone not expect his missus to appear behind to save him? Did anyone really think they had won when so many effective red shirts survived the first battle against their fellow villagers? I did find it amusing when Halbrand (is that the name of the king of 20 people?) comes from the opposite direction to Adar and Galadriel. He must know all the shortcuts being the King and all.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119690884#Comment_119690884

Hah, yeah.

Many many small inconsistencies that make you go "wut?"

The shambling orcs who are archer snipers.

Orcs bring a battering ram to open the door of the local pub (how did they know it was barricaded?)

Arondir pulling the arrow out of Bronwyn (just leave it in, there's a battle on!)

The orc army who waits patiently for the surgery to finish.

The army that has inexplicably ridden through the night in a battle ready state to find this random town. The orc snipers have since disappeared.

Galadriel is a good 30 seconds behind Adar, and Halbrand 20 seconds behind her, yet we get this weirdly timed chase scene (love the shot to show the horses legs haven't been absolutely shattered by the fall)

Galadriel disappears for 30 seconds after Adar falls off the horse so he and Halbrand can have a moment.

Galadriel can't make up her mind whether to kill Adar or not (and plenty of well timed interventions)

No one checks what's in the rolled up cloth except the boy, and how did he get it back? Last I saw Galadriel had it.

And that's all the the last 20 minutes.