The Rings of Power: Coping in the Dark
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- The Rings of Power: Coping in the Dark
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Art and Animation by Just Some Guy
Original trailer concept: FMA Brotherhood & Black Summoner
Music: "Enkon Hakuchuumu" by Sakagami Souichi - Copyright (C) 2015 Trial & Error/Sakagami Souichi All rights reserved.
Trial & Error: www.tandess.com...
#ringsofpower
At the theater I work at, we still have an ad for Rings of Power playing in the preshow trailers for the movies. I asked my boss about it since the show's over, why are we still showing it? According to him, Amazon's still paying for the ads to to be shown. I guess Amazon's just that desperate.
lol, that's funny to hear. And certainly in keeping with Amazon's whole marketing approach to RoP. They've certainly promoted it faaar more than any other show (and it's *still* not the most popular one!). During the week after the final ep dropped, in what seemed like a last desperate attempt for more viewers, they had it taking up the entire Prime Video front page with an enormous PLAY button, lmao. I've never seen them do that with anything else.
If you open official, licensed Photoshop, you get a massive Guyladriel artwork as opening screen. To this day.
@@jesperburnsAnd illustrator has the black dwarf queen.
"Rings of Power Season 2 having Galadriel drive a Ferrari into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man while waving an AK-47 and screaming "IT'S NOLODORIN' TIME!!!" is a GOOD thing - here's why."
-Headline from 2026 (probably)
We’ll need to Replace the AK-47 with a sword or bow & arrow because guns are bad.
- ROP writing staff
“Why is this upsetting to some? I’d love to see where Tolkien ever explicitly said this didn’t happen.”
More preachy girl bosses! Just what the primarily all male audience that typically shows up for fantasy shows is looking for. Yay more WNBA LOTR. What could go wrong.
Are you assuming the gender of the Marshmallow person?.
Brace for the “it’s a fantasy land with elves, magic and dragons, yet it’s the presence of a modern sports car that’s not believable?” argument…
It's totally insulting to Tolkien's memory that Amazon decided to create a completely new story set in the LOTR universe using just some mentioned lore as an inspiration, when the original material is one of the best and most complete works ever written. Imagine what it feels to create for decades a product that changed forever the history of entertainment, and a company believes that the best possible benefit they can get from your work is simply to make up theirbown vision of the story that doesn't even follow the lore and values of your work
That mithril storyline is so bad it deserves to see a gallows built for the creators.
@@soothsayer1964 - they somehow managed to leave the “story” out of the storyline.
Telling us the story Tolkien never did indeed.
In fairness I think making a new story within Middle Earth is totally fine. I mean, we already have a basically 'perfect' trilogy of movies showing the story we all know. A weird reboot would have been pointless. It's just that they had zero writing talent to actually pull it off.
@@TheWildManEnkidu I would agree if not for the fact that, to this day, only LOTR and the Hobbit have been adapted, not to mention that LOTR is the only material that has been succesfully adapted. If there already existed movies or show adaptations of The Sillmarilion, maybe a new story could be a good idea. But for now, the best we can do with Tolkien's work is trying to adapt the Sillmarilion
This. I've always thought the general idea of "re-writing someone else's story" to be extremely insulting.
If you dedicated your career to writing a complete masterpiece that is beloved, then I show up and go "I'm going to copy all your settings/characters but make up my own story for profit", then that would be extremely crappy of me to do that.
Currently re-reading _The Silmarillion_ in the evenings. The language is majestic, the worldbuilding awe-inspiring, the entire conception breath-taking in scope and grandeur; truly a masterpiece of high fantasy. ... Oh, hi _Rings of Power_ , didn't see you there. No, no, we weren't talking about you. Not in a thousand years.
I loved when they chanted 'The sea is always right!' in the book. Pivotal foreshadowing and perfect use of words by the wordsmith Tolkien.
Did you find where Tolkien said “Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!” or “Do you know why a shit floats, while a rock sinks…”? 😂
What chapter had the blacksmith speech "Elf ships on our shores. Elf workers taking you trades. Workers don't tire, don't sleep, don't age!"
@@kbo572 "THEY TOOK OUR YOBS!!"
It is also written in the driest manner possible. As fantastic as the world building is, it is a slog to read through.
“Someone just stole all your possessions and kicked you in the groin - and why that’s a good thing.”
I would have absolutely loved a series where every episode we have new humans. You could even use the same actors to portray descendants and such. Heck, it might make the Numenorean's hunger for elvish immortality more stark, since the audience keeps losing characters constantly that they grow to like, while at the same time showing why the elves view the humans as fickle. For a regular human lifespan, we'll see that the men who take up the 9 rings are (for the most part) generations divided from the numenoreans that caused the fall of numenor. But for the elves (and audience), that was just a few episodes, or perhaps a season ago, and they're the same ones.
It would do SUCH a good job of driving home the reason why men seek after immortality, and at the same time show beautifully how the elves (who do not understand the mortality and short lives of men), believe men to be fickle.
I wish I could give this comment a like more than once.
well said , actually that kind of dramatic approach to the story would add more gravity to the existence of eldar from the viewer's perspective , instead of them being some fucking immortal woodland sprites and i too do wish I could give this comment a like more than once
But that would require good writers and showrunners, which I'm pretty sure Amazon all used up to make the Jack Ryan series. Besides that and Clarksons Farm I havent seen anything good from Amazon.
That sounds fine in theory, but it would make each episode, in and of itself, feel like a waste of time: "Here's Bob, let's follow Bob and his family, learn all about them, their worldview, their beliefs, and then have them do ONE thing that has any lasting significance before the all die. Next episode, here's John, let's follow John and his family, descendants of Bob..." The overarching themes might be good, but the pacing would be fucking terrible and it'd be boring. The first few episodes would be tolerated, but then everyone would tune out because only a few characters would actually be regular, and even they would do nothing plot-relevant for centuries at a time.
@BWMagus I agree with your point but look at how many anthology series have been successful with reusing actors, look at House of the Dragon using multiple time skips per season, look at Black Mirror having a new cast every episode. I think it's a great idea and would have been much better than what was dumped before us with this show
When Fellowship first came to DVD I bought it on a whim. I didn’t know anything about LOTR, but I had just been gifted by very own TV with a built inn dvd player for my 16th birthday. So I was in a dvd buying spree. I immediately fell in love with the story and bought the LOTR trilogy to read after I finished it for the 5th time. If I had seen this show first, I would never even bother to read any of Tolkiens books.
Yup, saw Fellowship on tv once when I was like 10 years old and while waiting for the other films to premiere on tv, (i was too young to watch them in the cinema) i read the second and third book. Eventually I found out my uncle had a very old edition of the one volume english version and he gave it to me. I mustve read the books at least 5 times by now and watch the movies every couple years. I also watched rop just to laugh at jeff bezos setting a billion dollars on fire that he now cannot spend on building a bigger dick rocket.
Good to hear all of this from someone who actually knows Tolkien's works. So many channels run after amazon's money....
Since Amazon has been running after Tolkien's money, that is entirely appropriate!
What do you mean with "so many channels"? That is completely wrong, the opposite is true. We have countless channels criticizing the show, but not a single one praising it.
Funny that they mention condensed timeline as a good thing.
I personally consider abysmal pacing as one of the universal sins of modern cinema - no time for buildup, no time for things to develop - instead a storyline is butchered into a series of loosely connected scenes that are supposed to fill a coherent narrative, but without the feeling of time passage or developments to set in.
Stories are no stories... they are amusement park rides with a thin narration.
It's like how nuStar Wars/Trek has decided all space travel takes less time than most Ubers.
My kid bought a book for it's cover the other day. She was horrified to discover Reader's Digest condensed books existed. She will keep the book for insta purposes and track down the original novels. I was proud as fook.
People are going to old media and entertainment now. Old books, old shows, old movies.
There is a subsection of people that love the 90s but never grown up during that time.
I think that's two separate points; the pacing is terrible in RoP, and it's not even consistent; somehow Galadriel and Nori spent months between the same two events that were like a week or so apart for Arondir. But that's not what the article is about; it's about taking stories centuries apart and trying to spin them into one consistent narrative. This is unfaithful but not necessarily a bad idea, and it has no effect on the pacing of the overall result--it could be good or bad.
Wehad barely 2 hours with boromir and we love him greatly
Even less time with Faramir in the books and he is such a great character.
The dude who played “Not Gandalf” is appearing at my local con next month. It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction he gets 🤔.
Keep us updated :)
Hopefully doesn’t get too much crap. A job’s a job, and unless someone’s going out there and running defense by being a jerk to fans, like the woman who played Captain Marvel did, I never like being hard on actors who are given a garbage script.
Hoping for nothing stronger than polite applause and mild interest, in either direction. Everyone's taken a sh!te 'it pays the rent' job at least once.
@@piratebear3126 agreed. I was thinking more of a lack of attention than any kind of abuse. I guess I’ll find out.
Afaik he wasn't part of the whole propaganda-sry, marketing-tour where they told the fans they're all sorts of ists for not getting behind all the lore butchering, so he shouldn't get any shit from people just for taking a crappy job to pay the bills. I might be wrong tho, I just couldn't keep up with all the nonsense they've been spewing and stopped watching/listening to any of their attempts to popularize the show at the cost of demonizing the actual fans of the alleged source material.
Something good we can take from this awful show is that Bakshi and Rankin-Bass's animated adaptations now look much more rounded and faithful to the spirit of LOTR in comparison. Heck, the song "Where There's a Whip There's a Way" is infinitely more enjoyable than the entire Amazon show.
💯
I thought it was, "Where There's A Whip, There's A Way"?
The Ralph Bakshi version always has a special place in my Hart even if it never got the ending it deserves, the Cartoons eeeeehhhh not so much.
Definitely both were Wwaaayyy better!
Despite their flaws and limitations, they better captured the essence of Tolkien than ROP
Bro I love your channel! Thanks for your work!
It might of been a wild concept for LoTR to have Madrial go to a town talk to the leader about the mountain pass. Then after she returns from the mountain the town is different and when she goes to the leaders home it's their grandchild now talking about the time her grandfather told her about Elves visiting.
You could also do impact story telling.... where she comes back and towns and areas are gone because she chased the orcs out of the mountains and they descended down and wiped out the towns in the area.
But that would take creativity.
Man! Those are really good ideas. You don't mind if I steal them, do you?
Let's be honest, guys. Every second of our life we wasted watching this, our only thoughts were: "Please, tell me the Dagor Dagorath is near..."
who actually watched it?
@@sirzorg5728 The brave YT reviewers like Gary (to name just one) who later put together a video summary for us to stomach.
Reminds me of when Winston Churchill said "Never in the history of mankind has so much been shilled by so many for a show watched by so few."
When the actors were interviewed they kept saying they turn to the books for inspiration and knowledge that sh*t was hilarious!
Obi-Wan Died 2/3 of the way through the 1st Star Wars Film, and despite that pathetic Disney show, he is one of the most popular characters in Star Wars
These 'writers' really can't do a 2 second google search can they?
That’s asking a lot. Huffing your own farts is really hard work.
Of course not! That would get in the way about tweeting about how castrating children is a good thing, you bigot! ;p
They can and do. What they are doing is a deliberate attack on Tolkiens work. They are fueled by malice
Just because you know how a story will end, doesn't mean that the story isn't worth experiencing. The story of Romeo and Juliet isn't ruined by knowing the ending, which is revealed in the first utterance of the play, the pay off from the characters is still there. Knowing that Aang will defeat the Fire Lord doesn't ruin the Avatar: The Last Airbender story, because the payoff leading up to his final fight was earned. ROP wants all the kudos while putting in zero work to earn that character payoff. Make it make sense! Thanks for the great video.
Just a quick point, these writers are actually proving Tolkien right on the points he’s using to justify this crap
“This thing called ‘storytelling’” - Bwahahahahahaha!!! That observation actually made me laugh out loud. Thank you for your wit, in addition to the scope of your knowledge of Tolkien lore.
"here's why it's good" any time you hear this, it's a sure fire signal these "journalists" don't know what they are even talking about
This reminds me of a friend that does art restoration for a living. He was telling me about how much work it is to restore old art and being as faithful to the orginal art and the intentions of the artist as possible. That means researching and sourcing things long before you even get a hold of the work. Then you have garbage "restorers" that don't care about the history of thoughts behind the piece and just start working on it and believe they can "improve" someone else's work but usually lack the skill to pull off what a master artist has created. He is sometimes tasked to repair such "restorations". Trying to rewrite the LOTR while not having the skill is pure f-ing hubris.
Hubris and Pride rule this time.
Agreed with what you said. It's sad how desperately companies try to *tell* people it's a good movie/show, or that audiences loved it despite horrible reviews. Disney's a huge fan of that stuff as well.
Agreed and agree with everything you so eloquently state. But im going to be picky and split one wizards whisker. Saying that the chapters (shadows of the past and council of Elrond) are info dumps is technically true, its true in the same way that the Mona Lisa is a just portrait and the Statue of Liberty is just a big statue of a woman. They are my favourite chapters, they set the scene and embed Frodos journey in Tolkeins wonderful world. Keep up the good work.
I've been slowly and carefully reading the Silmarillion for months now. I'm in the middle (I hope) of Turin Turambar's misadventures. His sister has just been mindwiped by a dragon, and he hasn't seen her in so long he doesn't recognize her when he meets her. Tolkien had a certain way of telling stories, a way very reminiscent of how Beowulf is written now that I think about it, and I grow to appreciate it more and more. For those who don't know, Tolkien was working on his own translation of Beowulf, and one of the poem's features it its repeated reminders that Beowulf will die, and there is nothing that can stop that from happening. We're told of his death in different ways in 5 or so different places to remind us that even great Beowulf is doomed to die.
Tolkien wrote a translation of Beowulf, actually. Its quite good.
Makes as much sense as Christ being crucified at Rome then 30 minutes later he's in downtown Detroit in a gun battle.
Rome Township, Michigan?
I just played LOTRO's new region the other day and in a single flashback instance - all of seven minutes - they told more of the story of Antheron duping the elves of Erigion into crafting the rings and why the elves bought his lies - and told it more in line with Tolkien's actual lore, than the whole of Rings of Power.
Even if all you have is the line of Numenorian Kings and the timeline from the LOTR appendixes just think of all the story there: Antheron and Celebrimbor, Gilgalad and Elrond as the go-between between Celebrimbor and Gilgalad, SEVEN dwarf kingdoms,) Nine lords or heroes of men! (Who were the Nazgul before they became Sauron's slaves and how did the rings change them!) Galadriel and Celeborn moving to Amroth's kingdom in Lorien and how Galadriel transforms it (even before she gets the ring - the lore in Fellowship implies she _created_ the Mallorn trees - that is so, so much better than Xenaladriel.) And then you have all the drama going on in Numenor actually described in the appendix.
Instead they made up a story so entirely unlike Lord of the Rings, if they just changed the names of the characters and places the Tolkien estate couldn't have sued them.
I mean, Galadriel did not create mallorn trees, she was just only person who could get them sprout in Middle-Earth.
Numenor was home to mallorn trees described to be much vaster and larger than any of their kind that grew in Middle Earth.
@@matiasluukkanen7718 I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.
I sang of wind. A wind there came, and in the branches blew.
Beyond the sun, beyond the moon, the foam was on the sea. And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden tree.
That sounds to me like Galadriel created the mallorn tree in Valinor before she returned with the Noldor to Middle Earth.
Your pieces are consistently the most well thought out and reasoned of the modern entertainment critics I follow. Even your Desantis/Disney piece was top-notch and I appreciate that you stuck to stating the case as you saw it probably knowing ahead of time your audience, generally, wasn't going to see it the same way.
And "Panera Bread version...." 😅
So adaptations should be fanfiction. That's pretty much what this article is saying. I couldn't even make it far past the first half hour of this show. It was that bad and no, I did not read LOTR. So I can't imagine the agony for those who read the books. 😢
It is hell.
Nuff said.
Its like spitting on the face of this fandom - one of the oldest and most respected of all fandoms of fantasy and one of the most scholarly of them. I m Tolkien fan for 28 years. I wrote 10 papers on the topic. I was active on 2 big forums for about 20 years. It almost missed that I would be writing PhD from Tolkien mythology. I cannot accept such travesty of 2d age events as they made in this TV show. It was tiring marysuish RPG fanfic with soap-opera level of acting and dialogue - I mean I know that PJ movies flattened a bit high level of books language but what they did here is travesty of books language :D The show got rich and q. nicely designed costumes I agree ( with the exclusion of plastic armors of Numenor and horrible looking synthetic textiles of Numenorian aristocracy ) but sometimes the costumes of charachters were ill-asorted, discodrant - for example elven maid-servants looking like catholic nuns for whatever reason :D and king Gilgalad whose name means "starlight" got all-golden costume :D and this "laurel wreath" of his in which he reminds me of Luis XIV on his costume balls :) There is many of such distortions that just pushed me away from it :)
"Fan fiction" would have been telling a story about the people of Harad (the South, which Tolkien only described sparingly) like thousands of commenters have said should have happened. This was more like fan fiction of very current, very niche literary criticism.
Tell me you didn’t read Tolkien without telling me you didn’t read Tolkien
You never have to jump through so many mental gymnastics when your being honest.
My FAVORITE character in Game of Thrones was Oberyn Martel. He was only alive for half a season, and it didn't matter, he was still my favorite character because he was competent (to a point), formidable, and moral. So yes, I absolutely agree, less screen time will not make a beloved character loved less. If anything, MORE screen time allows writers more chances to absolutely destroy the character and make them into something they're not, thereby making characters love them less (which was also the case with many Game of Thrones characters).
Wait Gandalf in the 2nd age? From what I understand from my loose knowledge of the lore Gandalf and the rest of his kind didn't come to Middle-Earth until some point in the 3rd age.
Correct
@@shanenolan5625 Plus, it was mentioned in Silmarillion that Olorin did go to elves, but unseen.
@Ilya Rysenkov yes correct he did, but as an elf . Not as a man ( wizard) true ilya. Although in some versions of the text the two blue wizards came in the late second age before the other 3 . ( in the third age ) they came a thousand years later
Another point is that, by condensing the timeline, it also neuters Sauron of his menace and grandeur. He goes from a monster that held Middle Earth in a reign of fear for thousands of years, to some guy that ruled for like a year or two and then got his finger chopped off.
That's the one thing that really gets my goat.
Why do shows that claim that they are going to have multiple seasons have to rush so much?
It's never going to end well and you can use the extra time to explore and expand the world and characters so the audience can connect with them better, making them invested in your world and hence the story.
because they get bored and think they are the best?
*insert the actually meme* The One Ring was forged in Mount Doom, or Orodruin, not Barad Dur. I'll go back to my hole now. Thank you for all your hard work, I really appreciate what you do.
Rings of Power: *Burns to the ground.*
Amazon: *We aRe MaKiNg a cHanGe iN hIsToRY!!!!*
Tolkien fans are not having this garbage, and it's glorious to see that, It makes me so happy that Tolkien fans are coming together and uniting against this show. Amazon is going to lose a billion dollars and none of us are going to complain.
Amazon doesn’t care about making or losing money though. They care about promoting their agenda
@@Ex_Homosexual_Man_Healing_Is_P agreed and that why half of people didn't even finish this show and nobody going be watching season 2
@@SoldierSpiderx true I know a lot of Tolkien fans who refuse to even see the trailer for the next one. All these shows are going to be continuously produced so they can continue to promote the Kalergi Plan
@@Ex_Homosexual_Man_Healing_Is_P fact and they double down on season 2 and try get people to come back just like the witcher season 3 now that Henry it gone and the writer try put the back on him but he was the main reason why people watch it and the worst part of this show that they had a Tolkien lord on the set and he was give them advise not to do what they was doing and they fired him and try said he was ruin everything and come to find out he was tell them the lord and the character
You have to understand that time jumps are only possible with good writers and prducers.
Rings of Power is at a high school level.....
...i think it may be a bit lower...
I'ma be honest I've read My little pony fanfics back in 2011 that were better structured and better writen than what ever these hacks came up with for RoP.
You said exactly what I was thinking. Thank you *Just Some Guy*
I love how they put that ridiculous shot of "Finrod" into their collage. It sets the tone from the get-go.
The defenders of this abomination are the true virus in society. Their sheer denial of reality kinda remind me of that comedy bit in Monty Python where the black knight keeps getting limbs hacked off and he says, "Tis just a scratch!" I pity those people.
Strong Waman
Stunning….brave….inspiring.
JSG your breakdown of this article is 🔥🔥
According to the logic of the article, the best way to tell Tolkien stories is to not tell them at all.
or to make up your own story and slap tolkien's name on it.
@@-Siculus-Hort- exactly
We live in hell lads
Maybe it's a purgatory?
**hopium insert**
You bring up an important point: Sauron as "Annatar the Giver" is genuinely charismatic and not overtly sinister. Nobody realizes there's something wrong with the Nine/Seven/Three until Sauron activates the One, because vulnerability to the One's influence and amplifying the wearer's own vices being subtly woven into the enchantments are the only actual downside to the other Rings. The whole point is that by the time there's anything discernibly wrong, you're too addicted to the benefits. The first hit is free, and you don't need to know it's a hit.
It's almost like Wokoids actually *can't understand or imagine* manipulations that aren't fake victimhood, bluffing with overacted condescension, or the "I'm sorry you're stupid and I had to discipline you" of an abusive spouse.
Bro i love your videos. You are truly versed in the canon (i am not) and can critically pick apart the show with knowledge of the lore. Instant subscribe
5:39 with Gandalf mentioned in the article, is that character’s identity no longer speculative?
also to JSG’s point, if done right there’s no reason that ending the show when Isildur takes the Ring should feel like a let down to the audience. it’s very challenging, but it can be very gratifying to see the build up and reveal of something already known to take place.
I know not everyone likes the show, but there was a part in Better Call Saul where I either genuinely thought Saul was gonna die or I trusted he lived but couldn’t see how under the circumstances. in something like a prequel show, a significant part of the art is in capturing the attention of the audience to the point where such prior beliefs can still be challenged.
If done right this show having its end point being Isildur taking up the ring after we'd seen him as a mere lad just trying to make his way in the world could work but nothing from amazon shows this as being possible.
@@theliato3809 for real - just the way you put it it would be so cool as though it’s the start or culmination of his redemption as a noble character.
Another aspect of the dichotomy of Immortal and Mortal characters is the pathos of Immortals making friends with Mortals. Much *could* have been made of Galadriel's dealings with a group of Men, only to come back and find a completely different group of Men there in, what to her would be, a blink of an eye.
There could be *young* Elrond telling her of how his *brother* chose the life of a Mortal, and how that affected him.
There could have been a discussion between the dark elf and the human woman about how the Valar specifically forbade relations between the two races, giving an "our love can never be" sense of tragedy.... instead of the will-they/won't-they/have-they-already bland relationship they gave us.
There could have been a story about how the dark elf decided to protect the descendants of the human woman he cared about... about how that affected how other humans treated that family... about how the other elves thought about his actions...
The dichotomy of Immortal and Mortal characters allows for *so much* storytelling.
Four examples of stories adapted for tv that cross multiple generations:
Roots, I Claudius, Vikings, Foundation.
All of them feel EPIC in the true sense of the word. The elves are a immortal, so they should have been the focus of the series. The fact that the showrunners saw this as a problem to overcome rather than an opportunity to tell an epic story, really shows their incompetence.
No, the people that do this kind of thing will never stop.
"If it's got a pulse, it's gettin' reamed."
BRILLIANTLY SAVAGE!
9:41
"Amazon's gonna treat Tolkien's work like a bunch of priests at a boy scout convention. If it's got a pulse, it's getting reamed."
LOL🤣
Actually, Tolkien world and first and second age are PERFECT for a series format, because you have the immortals (and some of then can be present through every season), and mortals, that can die through the seasons.
But you know what?
This show has so many flaws, that ruining the timeline it's just a tiny thing amongst all atrocities they did.
Yeah, making an entirely new story is hard. I mean, it's not as if they had a perfectly written, already complete story laid out in front of them.
*Oh wait.*
They did the time laspe thing in the new Thundercats show. Small fey creature aging quickly compared to Lion-o. The impact of his death was well done and you felt the loss of someone who literally spent their entire life on a journey with you but that to you it was only a day. Rings of Power couldnt do that if they had a million monkeys banging on keyboards for a hundred years.
Ah, September!
I went to an EW&F concert in Seattle circa 1977. 😊
Godric was only in like two episodes of true blood, but his characterization and suicide were some of the most powerful moments in the whole series.
Thank goodness we have you as a voice of reason in this churning sea of madness. I love listening to you roasting the inepts who dare to desecrate Tolkiens masterpieces. Thank you for speaking on behalf of the Real fans and in defence of Tolkien, it does me good that someone cares.
Great video! Keep your foot on em, JSG. Nice and tight. 💯 💯
I always interpreted the lore to be thst The One Ring was Forged in Mount Doom and then used to complete the building of the Barad Dur Tower.
The Tale of Years indicate that
Barad dur is getting started/ under construction in or near 1000 Third Age.
But in the story of LOTR, it’s indicated that the tower’s foundation was created with the power of the one ring.
Game of Thrones Season 1 communicated through casting that one of the main characters was going to die early. That's how good it was originally - using even the casting to tell the story. (That's one of Sean Bean's things, he dies in most of his roles.) Unlike today where the casting exists to check the infinite checkboxes of endless diversity.
Of the legion of readers, commentators and desecrators of Tolkien's works that thrive in these dolorous days, your dry wit, satiric repose, thorough 'cunning of the lore' and unfanatical respect for the stories make me suspect that you would be one of the (un)happy few who'd escape his censure.
Now thats a nice sentence
Wonder how much of Amazon's budget went on entertaining reviewers.
You really pointed out the flaws in that article's arguments.
Amazon's ROP showrunners have contempt for Tolkien, who was a white European male and a devout Catholic. By extension, they also have contempt for his fans. The showrunners and all of the Hollywood in general believe they are improving the source material of all franchises including Star Wars, Marvel, Witcher etc by adding diversity. They don't seem too fussed about storytelling as they seem to think adding diversity automatically improves the source material.
You can read the interview of the ROP showrunners, which was in the Hollywood Reporter in Oct 2022. One of them said all of the Tolkien fans who hate the ROP show are "patently evil" because the only reason they could have for disliking the show is that they hate diversity. The same article made reference to Tolkien being a gateway for extreme right people, and "fascist adjacent".
Anybody trying to make a reasonable argument for sticking to the source material, and/or pointing out valid criticism of the plot, plot holes, gaps in logic, costumes, hairstyles, CGI, etc will be accused of racism, sexism, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Thank you for the video!
And as a result. The more sane that actually want to bring diversity in the right/healthier way are frowned upon because of the corporate idiots enforcing their garbage into stories with the disguise of social activism.
It was a sad fate for uncle Benji to end up like this after all he went through
This is the best thing I ever saw.
Nice new intro dude!
Reading the CBR article cited, it seems that the author, Christian Petrozza, whose stated interest and experience is in film and television, disdains the literary aspects of Tolkien's (and probably everyone else's) work. The final sentence: "The Rings of Power has centralized the key characters and events into a series where audiences were taken on an adventure, not just recited to in a lecture." He sees the tale of the Second Age as "a dense tome of fantasy history", and seeks "adventure", while observing that "purists lament the end of wearing tweed and smoking a pipe whilst pouring over epic prose in wood-paneled studies, but there’s neither time nor the attention span to make it all into a visual medium. … Televised fiction in a series format needs character-driven stories, which spelled doom for an age of on-screen prose." Since these characters (inexplicably described as 'relatable and consistent'!) are central to the story*, the underlying philosophical or metaphysical elements are unimportant.
And so he writes, in rather dubious prose, "If the race of men cycled through countless generations over the course of a single season, so millennia of chronological ground was covered whilst keeping action high, the emotional impact of the characters would have diminished. Galadriel’s noble ambitions and Elrond’s desire for a dwarven alliance were admirable, but the age dilation and collected wisdom in comparison to the inherent vulnerability of human characters paled to the stakes audiences felt when Isildur and his father set sail for Middle Earth as the humans of the Southlands are slaughtered by orcs." Let us put aside for the moment the straw man of 'countless generations over the course of a single season', something for which no one ever expressed a desire. What he utterly misses is that the mortality of the human race (and the discomfort of the Elves with the ravages of Time in a changing mortal world-hence the Three Rings) IS the center of the story of the Second Age. It is what the whole thing is _about_ ! If the relatively short life span of the Númenoreans is not _shown_ to us (remember, Mr. Film and Television Expert? show? don't tell? visual? not prose?), how will we understand the corruption of mortals 'doomed to die' by the Nine Rings, or the desire of the King's Men for the immortality of the Elves, leading to the downfall of Númenor? It will be merely another story of people seeking temporal material power-and I think that is all that this film and television child is seeking.
He doesn't understand Tolkien's themes in the slightest; and Rings of Power was such a mediocrity (at best) of storytelling even ignoring its supposed connection to Tolkien, that it is not at all clear that he understands video drama either, for all his pretensions. So enamored is he of 'character-driven stories' that he is willing to overlook the inept portrayal of time and distance, the ridiculous mithril plot convolutions (pro tip: do not spend a spy to find something without telling him what he is looking for), the pointlessness of the Stranger plot line, and the jaw-droppingly absurd 'Mount Doom Origin Story', because, doggonnit, Galadriel(??) and Elrond and Durin and Isildur(? he can't even bother to mention Elendil's name?) are such relatable and consistent characters.
Like so many things, it would be laughable were it not so pitiable.
*already a dubious choice: Tolkien wrote that Elves, who do not think as we do, can not be central to a narrative story.
Just saying people wouldnt have the patience for dense tomes of fantasy history when people were extremely hyped for 8 years about a tv series adapted from extremely dense tomes of fantasy history with just a little bit of sex, minimal magic, and a couple of dragons, in between the intrigues and family history lessons, makes me think that its rather this writer who is extremely dense.
Studio: we’re subverting ur expectations and that’s a good thing. We are also changing everything u love about the story and that’s a good thing and if u don’t like it ur patently EVIL and that a bad thing. So are run sentences but idc
Preach dude. Reasoned coherent and true.
Oh, Tolkien...
Am I glad you're not around to see this shit.
You are putting 1 million times more effort into this than they did. They literally just slapped the name on some crap they wrote, probably slightly modified plotlines they had ALREADY written in their failed writer days, and expected it to coast to gretness because it says LotR.
"Hundreds of shows have had characters show up and disapear..."
*Looks fondly at a picture of Hank Scorpio from the Simpsons* ohhh my dear Scorpio...our love was far too bright and thus could never burn that long...*cries*
"...and here's why it's a good thing!"
I have only the deepest contempt and disrespect for articles written like this.
Great essay. Thank you for posting and sharing your thoughts.
I've seen this song and dance once before; in the show "Heroes".
The original show pitch was to have a totally new cast of actors portraying new characters each season.
But the Hollyweird agents wouldn't allow that - they would only allow their good actors to work on the show if they signed multi-season contracts.
In short time, the show's writers ran out of stories for this repeat cast, and the plots got more and more wild until the whole thing petered out.
Rings of Power is doing the same thing. If the show focused on the Elves and spread each season out by centuries, then all of the other characters would only last one season before aging and dying. Only Dwarves and Numénorians would last two, maybe three seasons before dying off.
Hollyweird agents won't let that happen.
This talk of the RoP writers trying to adapt a whole season from the condensed appendices material from LOTR reminds me of what was said in this Complete Tolkien Companion book I have, by J.E.A. Tyler. It amounts to a carefully compiled encyclopedia on Tolkien lore and all the characters, places and events thereof.
On the topic of Frodo Baggins, he said of his adventures, "That tale is told in great detail elsewhere (and in such superb style) that it would be unnecessary - and impertinent - to attempt any précis of it here."
Tyler at least knew his limitations. He respected the lore enough not to mess with it, but merely summarise to the best of his ability.
Could have been so much better.
The Kinstrife, a game of thrones civil war. The last days of Arnor, where the bad guy wins for a change. Want some adventure? The forefather of the Rohirrim journeys to slay a dragon and claim the loot.
There, 3 easy pitches set in Tolkien's universe. Minimal room to screw up; just shoot a war/adventure movie with the canon of traditional cinema.
But there's more: a first contact scenario between the Numeroeans and the people of middle-earth, in the days of the Navigator.
Hire the guys who did the costumes for LotR, and reshoot the Last of the Mohicans or 1492. There, done.
My favorite would be the Children of Hurin for a proper fantasy drama. Then follow up season 2 with the story of (the sons of) feanor and the silmarils. How their greed and power led their whole people to ruin. Season 3 through however many you want to make can detail the war of the elves and men against Morgoth. Then the second age, also has so many great settings, the akallabeth, the forging of the rings, the founding of gondor and arnor and the story of the heirs of anarion, the fall of arnor, the slow decline of the power of gondor due to recurring wars and the plague, could all have their own season. hell, you could write an entire season just about the war between the gondorians and the black numenoreans in Umbar. Have some cool naval battles, badass costumes, good set designs, and youve basically got a show. It doesnt need to have any magic or high fantasy tropes.
@@TheSuperappelflap
The Children of Hurin is not part of the appendixes, it's a full fledged book and that why I didn't include it.
Turin Turambar would deserve a 2-hour long movie, made by a director and crew respectful of source material.
That is to say, hopefully next decade. After the woke BS dies down.
@@PipoZePoulp You are right, i checked and while beren and luthien are briefly mentioned, turin is not.
still, there is so much content mentioned just in the pages of the appendices that i could easily come up with a 5 season story arc covering the events from the founding of the numenorean colonies in middle earth to the last alliance, and then there wouldnt even be any issues with timeline compression.
i really dont get why they made the show about the forging of the rings by some elves when there is such a good story about people in there.
about greed, and power, and corruption, and war, and political intrige. if they wanted to make their game of thrones in the LOTR IP, thats obviously what they shouldve gone with. took me all of 10 minutes to skim through the appendices and come up with that.
@@TheSuperappelflap
They - Amazon - overreached badly. You can't forge the ring unless you know how important it is. That ties in with the plight of the Elves and the return of the Noldor.
To understand how important it is, you have to introduce Melkor, and Valinor, and the Silmarils.
That's far too much content to introduce when you don't even know if season 1 will be successful.
@@PipoZePoulp even then i think the rings and the elves making them should be backstory, not front story. there are so many more interesting stories to flesh out.
I miss the silver age "Just Some Guy"
The executives behind RoP were so preoccupied with thinking they could that they didn't stop to think if they *should.*
Love your new intro. It's very Chazz-tastic. This is a Yu Gi Oh GX reference.
(Chazz it up!)
Shadow of Mordor had a better Celebrimbor. The RoP version feels too inept and dumb to have achieved what he's being credited for.
the maternity dress also didnt make it easy if you wanted to try to take this show seriously for some reason. im pretty sure in season 2 we find out that he and elrond are lovers and celebrimbor is preggers.
Dope intro !!
6:56 One ring was forged in the mount Doom and the foundations od bard dur were built with the help of the one ring, it's said in the books, that's why the foundations remains after the first fall of Sauron after defeat by elendil
At this point, I hope Rings of Power goes the distance and burns money for all five seasons. I want to see these Amazon lackey jackasses' complete failure and the shill buttheads try desperately to defend the fiasco.
Read Tolkien. ✌
it will have 5 seasons? ohhhh no.
Read Tolkien! The Battle of Malden was just released, a translation of a fragment of an Old English heroic poem.
Sorry, instant like button push. That initial sentence said it all
“Amazon’s got a tone of money so they can afford the therapy everyone’s going to need” Dude the actress for Galadriel needed therapy just for acting out a basic action scene. I don’t think even Amazon can afford that if it has a repeat in season 2
Nothing would have been more simpel to realize than some time jumps as Tolkiens 2nd age stories are already written episodic. But these Writeres are even to stupind to notice this pattern in Tolkiens work.
Priest at a Boy Scout convention? Damn that's rough yet true
Always a pleasure to watch a LOTR video by JSG.
We totally agree on this. LOTR is one of my favorite series, I read them as a teen. They have destroyed it. The landscape and building visuals take me there in my mind but actors and the storylines less so, if I’m being gentle not at all if I’m being blunt. I could not finish the series. Just was not worth it.
The buildings, both the elves and the numenorean architecture, look very different to what they looked in the films. I liked the visuals in the films a lot better. And those were made with a much smaller budget.
Well, the show had some good: It made me read the books for the first time instead of watching RoP, something that not even the movies could do. So there is that... and I am happy I did
0:20 Defenders Of The Rings Of Power sounds like comic book stuff 😆
I see cope...
I hear cope...
I smell come... of Amazon and Jeffie Bezozos...
JSG, good job. I agree with you 100%.
Great video, but one detail I noticed is that the Ring was forged in the fired of Mount Doom, not Barad Dur. The foundations of that tower were built using the power of the Ring.