I'm guessing it's an allegory of hell. A place with creatures that are not fathomable. Like trying to explain an acid/shroom/DMT-trip. They are simply not describable by words.
Lovecraft is often proposed as an influence for the "existential horror" in the Moria chapters. To my mind a more likely influence is William Hope Hodgson, a British writer who published some fantasy novels before WW1, and whom Lovecraft admired. Watchers, squid-monsters, the "apocalyptic log" i.e. Book of Mazarbul -- all are in Hodgson.
Reminds me of a great Tolkien quote: "Part of the attraction of [The Lord of the Rings] is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background : an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."
it could have been that though....with an imaginative team, instead of the current soul-sucking one. Amazon's soul -sucking team is the problem. Not the concept or the source material.
I don't think Tolkien was agreeing with that as much as he was simply stating it as a fact that he realized. Even the end of the quote tells you that he did want to go there. But knew that he would need a new facade in the distance to view if he did. I think it's more of a regretful statement than one that agrees with the sentiment. Which is why I particularly loathe the concept myself; we're not looking at substance. We're looking at a movie set of a row of houses with less than nothing in them, there is no 'in', it is just a front-facing facade and the back is bare beams and nails. Like some kind of knock-off disneyland attraction. While I do admit that it would come off as boring exposition if it were fully detailed when you're looking back in time at it from the perspective of another story. I disagree that seeing it in its own story makes it boring exposition. No, I think the problem with Rings of Power is that it is just bad and an obvious cash grab. Personally, I care not for the cheap thrill seeking of undiscovered mystery. I much prefer intricately defined substance to "Woooh... try to guess what it looked like or what it's purpose was! Woooooh!"
I believe Christopher Tolkien had the same concern when publishing The Silmarillion: some fans wanted to explore the distant past, while others preferred to leave it as an undefined mythos. Even so, The Silmarillion (the book, as published) takes place partly in Valinor and Numenor, but it still leaves much to the imagination. Any movie or series adaptation of a book has the problem of what to show and what to leave unshown, and readers are always going to differ in how much they prefer. I think Peter Jackson got too caught up in his own visualizations, though in many ways I think he did a good job in the LOTR movies (but not in a certain follow-up trilogy). I lost interest in the Rings of Power early on, as it seemed like an effort to cash in on a popular franchise and rewrite it in a Hollywood-typical manner.
"...unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed" is the key part, though. You can reveal and explore anything; as long as you are creative enough to not only provide compelling answers, but also open more questions.
A good example of Tolkiens restraint in story telling is with the Nazgul. We are told that they were once kings, sorcerers and warriors of old but we know nothing about their mortal life other than that. All we know is that these were once great men who made and shaped the world around them but now they are slaves to Sauron. They are almost pitiable in how they have been robed of all their agency, achievements and even their names to become half dead creatures serving Sauron. It would be tempting to give each of the nine Ringwraiths their own backstory because it is an intriguing idea. Many adapted tie ins have tried to give the Nazgul more depth but it always undercuts the point that Tolkien originally made with them, that evil is dehumanizing and something to be pitied.
For me it’s similar to why the Star Wars prequels failed. Trying to humanize and give Vader a backstory was a fool errand doomed to fail. It’s the same with the Wrath’s.
I am genuinely annoyed that we haven't yet met Gandalf's mother and father, and watched him be raised from an infant to the hero. I really wanted to watch his struggles in high-school, and how he dealt with snarky teenage mean wizard girls, and frumpy grumpy wizard teachers. Maybe this should be the next spinoff - " Middle-Earth Valley High"
I can't wait for Gandalf's first kiss. I want it to be the girl that they clearly wrote the story around, but it'll end up being some one-off side character that the internet glomed onto and forced into the regular cast with an online petition.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 no they will imply he's gay and have homo romantic adventures with his best pal only to finally having him fall in love with some random generically beautiful girl
@@khatack It really isn't, which is my one nitpick with this video. It's essential in TOLKIEN's fantasy, not the genre of fantasy. Tolkien doesn't have a monopoly on fantasy, contrary to popular belief apparently :D The show is absolutely fantasy, perhaps one could say that it's more of the 'modern' style of fantasy like George R.R. Martyn's style of darker and harder fantasy, where things are somewhat more definitively described and there's less poetry and allusion. But it is without a doubt fantasy.
When I came home today I parked my car and got out. I suddenly heard something from the storage container about 10 meters away from me, just barely audible. I froze and listened intently. I'll mention here that I live in a forest, so there were no streetlights, just darkness. After maybe 50 seconds standing still, the noise repeated, my heart nearly stopped, it then repeated again just a second later more strongly. The darkness was so impenetrable that I couldn't see the storage unit door except the faintest outline of where it was. This is a true story, it just happened, and this plays into exactly what you described in this video. I'm standing there, frozen in terror, but when you think about what the possible explanations could be, none of them are quite as terrible as not having any idea at all what made the door rattle.
No. It's not. That phrase doesn't mean anything. It's another bullshit way to tap into the popular backlash against a show and get some clicks without specifying what about it is not good.
@@hawkname1234 Why do you think it doesn't mean anything? The information contained in the sentence is very clear and straight forward: where there was poetry (artfully applied language) in the original, there's just a badly written, uninspired exposition dialog instead. There's nothing meaningless and bullshitty in it as far as I can tell.
@@hawkname1234 Of course it means something. If you have an actual counterargument, put at least some effort into articulating it. If you're just gonna derail legitiamte criticism, then go away.
The Nameless Things concept reminds me of my favorite scene in Andor (Season 1) *spoiler alert* where Bix Caleen is tortured by being made to listen the recorded trauma-inducing death cries of an alien race. The Imperial interrogator, Dr. Gorst, first gives a chilling explanation to Bix of what she's about to hear before a pair of headphones are placed on her. Bix's brow tightens and her breath quickens before she begins to scream in agony, but the audience can't hear what she is hearing -- we are left entirely to our imaginations. Genius.
From the sound of it, it might be based on the Norris & Bittaker tape, an actual recording two serial killers had of one of their killings. The CIA uses it as part of their training to desensitize their recruits, and no full version of the audio exists for public access - just the thought of it fills you with dread and morbid curiosity of what it sounds like.
@@SwitchbackCh I'd guess it was inspired by a scene in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Herzog is filmed listening in horror to a recording of Treadwell's death, but Herzog does not use any of the audio in the documentary. (This wouldn't be the only time Herzog would pointedly refrain from ripping a veil off a mystery, of course.)
I get this argument, but on Cthulhu case, he's a public domain character, so he has more chances of having a good adaptation than lord of the rings prequels (the ones that can be adapted), as they have to abide by the studio that paid for it's rights.
When I read LotR for the first time, I watched the trailer for Fellowship while I was only a few chapters in. The two moments I remember most clearly were "one does not simply walk into Mordor" (because of the meme) and a fleeting glimpse of a Nazgul. It was just a blur of black cloak on horseback, no clear figure or face, but somehow, it struck terror into my heart. From then on, when I read the book, when the Nazgul appeared or were even just mentioned, even now as I write this, I actually shivered. When I saw the movies last year, I remember the pure, all consuming dread and fear I felt when I first saw them charging from their stronghold--faceless, immovable, compassionless, and relentless. They weren't people who could be reasoned with or understood or undermined, outfought or outwitted. They were a force of nature, a seemingly unstoppable force. There was no clear way the little hobbits would escape them, and for much of the series, the best they can do is hide from them or scare them off for a time. For the rest of the series, every time the Nazgul appeared, by some instinct, I shrank back as far back into my seat as I could.
While I agree with your assessment, I would also like to point out that many of these things, such as the backstory of Numenor, Valinor, etc, were described in detail by Tolkien in the Silmarillion and other works. So many of these things are actually explained by Tolkien and not left as a mystery. However, the show does seem to dumb down these things and makes them seem much less fantastical.
@@DreadX10 it definitely does feel like a history book in some parts. But really it’s a collections of short stories, rather than a proper narrative novel. Some of the stories are better than others, in my opinion.
The silmarilion uses such poetic language and is so vague it feels more like reading Homer’s take on Troy than a history book on Troy and that makes all the difference. It feels more like a book of collected legends that would exist in an elven library than a scholarly collection of facts. Even though it’s written like “and then this happened” you’re like ok so what does it even mean to sing something into being.
Tolkien never intended The Silmarilion to be published. The published work we have today was put together by his son from a collections of notes and hand written stories. JRRT had almost 20 years after LOTR to do this himself but he never did. He intended the backstory to remain a mystery.
RoP seems intent on reducing whatever grand themes are in Tolkien's novels down into something more relatable, to make them more "reflective of our world". This only has the effect of stripping them of what makes them magical and wonderous, leaving only what is mundane and boring.
the thing is. it doesnt even reflect the real world either. in fact every book thats written whatever fiction it has always a resemble of the real world. this is why it makes it compelling. a good story has always a good reflection in parts of reality. problem here is that the show is made by people who cant produce a story, incert, lazy writing brimmed with narcissism and sitcom drama. the once single houswives watches.
@@A-Mor-Graal dendrien's point is completely valid though. If something isn't relevant it becomes trivial, and Lord of the Rings and it's lore is relevant, at least for me, because it it focuses on the weaknesses, tempations and corruptions of power. Tolkien did this by refining and reworking already existing myths. However, if the story isn't told in a way that focuses on the greater themes, it becomes inert, stale and ultimately irrelevant.
@@A-Mor-Graal Well of course you have to make it believable in some way, even if it's fiction, in order to immerse the audience. And therefore you must include some real world elements. But a good author is still able to transport them out of this world and into another. The writers of this series are obviously not good authors.
This sounds like a good answer in general, but I'm not sure it applies to Tolkien. His Silmarillion and appendices do go into some detail, and with e.g. the biography of Aldarion we do have a reasonably detailed short-story taking place in Numenor. Maybe it's about striking the right balance; when Tolkien's narrative leads us into Tirion or Numenor, it just leaves other things mysterious, like Valmar or the early kingdom of Elros. If Tolkien answers questions, he poses new ones. RoP only answers questions.
I think it still applies. People keep saying Silmarillion as a counterpoint, but its also one of the lesser beloved books out of the big ones, if we count LotR as one, and Hobbit as the other. The book that does too much explaining was less loved, relatively.
My biggest issue with it is the fact that even if the producers didn’t have access to the parts of Tolkien’s writing that they are going from they still thought it was a good idea. They didn’t have access to books like the Silmarinion which cover this part in the history, since the people in charge of Tolkien’s works wouldn’t give it to them, they still have access to the lord of the rings books (since Peter Jackson got to use it for his movies) but they barley mention anything about this time period except for a tiny bit in the end of the 3rd book.
You make a perfectly valid point in saying that The Rings of Power leaves very little to the imagination : it’s a problem that extends, today, to pop culture and IP entertainment as a whole. And I find it cool that you mention the “nameless things” : the greatest parts indeed lie in the details (and the way we fill the gaps ourselves). But I think your arguments are weakened by two things : - You give no definition or context for fantasy as a genre, so you establish no solid ground to explain why something is fantasy or not. You just stick to “fantasy = leaving things to the imagination”. And although it’s certainly a part of it (or at least some of its subgenres, others are way more “concrete”), it’s certainly not what defines it. Leaving things to the imagination is a quality for any creation in any genre, especially horror, thrillers, romance, mysteries, etc., etc. - Tolkien didn’t consider himself a fantasy writer. He rejected the label, which was very closely connected to pulp magazines and authors like Robert Howard. Tolkien considered himself a historian or an archivist of Middle Earth : his aim was to create mythology, not fantasy. The mythology, he thought, England didn’t have. So to say, he created LOTR as a scholar, not a poet : creating very specific and precise knowledge about Middle Earth and its myths was more important than encouraging people to come up with their own lore (hence the never ending volume of literature that keeps coming up based on what he left behind). Of course, as you said, he left certain things to the imagination sometimes, and there certainly was a poet somewhere inside him (you don’t create Beren & Luthien without the soul of a poet). But that certainly wasn’t “the” thing that defined his approach of what Middle Earth is. I get that it’s difficult to be seen on youtube, and that a title like “Rings of Power isn’t fantasy” is perhaps more likely to catch attention. But I’m sure you can have titles that catch attention without being so far-fetched. Rings of Power, as you said, doesn't really care about Tolkien's real approach : it's just interested in awkwardly compressing its lore into a D&D-friendly shape. Rings of Power is fantasy, and that's precisely the problem. On top of being bad fantasy :)
I agree with most of your points, and Tolkien himself stated that his primary drive for writing LOTR was to give life and history to his languages. But he also wrote the essay "On Fairy-Stories" and very clearly speaks about Fantasy (with some redefining). He may not have liked the way it was used by his contemporaries. But I think it's okay to call him a Fantasy author
It's a television programme, the very thing that the old adage "show don't tell" was meant for. If you hide things your audience won't be happy. If you show everything your audience won't be happy. I think you need to distinguish between writing and screenwriting, but that's only my personal opinion. You are correct, of course.
@@MrRosebeing a film can "show not tell" in many ways. Acting is am incredibly subtle art, or should be. Rewatch Boromirs death, when Legolas and Gimli arrive. Not a word is spoken, no explanation of grief, no words of comfort, confusion, or explanation. They stand, silent. Aragon makes a small comment, and then the film moves on. And yet it is one of the most potent, emotion filled and subtle character interactions of cinema. That's how films and T.V. can "show not tell".
@@TheEarlofBronze1 Yup ! And as you say, he was using the word in a very different way than what we've been, since, labelling as a very codified genre (Conan, Elric, D&D, etc.). For a very long time now, "fantasy" has come to designate something he defintely didn't recognize himself into
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” ― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature Cheers.
Another reason why it's not fantasy, is that it's so ádapted for modern audiences', that it's basically showing you life as we know it, but wearing different clothes and in a location we've not seen before. It's spoonfeeding modern issues, under the guise of fantasy.
This. It's exactly this. And with our society changing so rapidly, Rings of Power will have an obsolete and hopefully even unrecognisable society/culture in a generation or two. Meanwhile, the Lord of the Rings is timeless, and could still be recounted thousands of years from now.
Game of Thrones had a very diverse cast, and Rings of Power could have had one that works. But for that, they would have had to show us Rhûn as a Middle-Eastern country and the Southlands as one predominantly inhabited by darker-skinned people. No issue with that. The thought that an isolated tribal society like the fake Hobbits in RoP would manage to stay diverse over generations, is absolutely laughable. Even if you start out with a diverse population, within a few generations, they'd all look alike in skin tone. What they ended up with, is a world that looks the same everywhere, with no distinguishable features.
what contradicts this statement about the ¨ modern audience¨ is the fact it has always bin for the modern audience. since the first lord of the rings play on the novel, to the movies its all at some point bin made for the modern audience. the books were written almost a 100 years ago. the problem isnt the modern audience since that same audience wants authenticity with the mix of mystery and removal from your dayli life. everything that Amazone didnt provide. modern audience is one of the dumber takes meant to be an excuse for idiots. if you gonna talk about the modern audience, than you also need to explain who is the modern audience. the show was an attempt on a cash grab with the least amount of effort by narcissistic people.
In a way, that can also be fantasy as you describe it. In fact, there is a lot of fantasy that is set in our modern world or set in a futuristic version of us, but set a long time ago... Of course, the main issue as he mentions is that RoP lacks the imagination to set it apart from that, which is the issue.
The most potent fantasy, is that generated by the reader's own mind. Tolkien understood this well from telling stories to his own children - what child has not been afraid of the monster under the bed or what happens in the wardrobe. Tolkien imbued his world with an historical and fantastical 3d quality into which the reader's mind could expand. But that was build around a practical everyday framework, fantasy really has to have that practical grounding, or it does not work - those monsters have to appear to be part of everyday. The problem with ROP is that that it is so clunking, as if designed on a spreadsheet by accountants. Despite the money spent on it, it still looks cheap and unimaginative as if they cannot expand beyond being a poor copy of the Jackson template (one I was not that keen on). I could go on - enough.
A counterpoint to your last bit: if Tolkien wanted Numenor and Valinor to be a mystery then he probably wouldn't have described them himself in great detail in his books. There are maps of Numenor drawn by his hand, and a big chunk of The Silmarillion takes place in Valinor at the peak of its glory. Those were very much physical places, though for the characters in The Lord of the Rings they are almost mythical (a benefit to having your story span two giant continents and many thousands of years, something Amazon writers don't get because they have to compress everything for convenience). To me personally the question is more whether those places are possible to film in a satisfactory way, and so if they SHOULD be filmed. Rivendell and Lorien feel a bit like glimpses into a different universe in Peter Jackson's films (as they should), but they are supposed to be but a shadow of what Valinor under the light of the Two Trees was. Having a yellow filter and some generic pretty CGI in the background doesn't do it justice, so showing it doesn't achieve much beyond ruining the mystery.
I felt they did a decent enough job with Valinor ironically because they did the exact thing the video accuses them of not doing eg mostly leaving it to the imagination. Sure they show the trees and some children playing but thats it really.
Well said. It's funny, to me it might have been okay to settle for the CGI if the rest of it had been given any heart -- for me, the actors and their costuming are what killed it. Everyone elvish gives off weird, emotionally sterile religious vibes, and the sets and people of Numenor remind me of the way I've felt while watching low-budget historical films from the 60s 😅
Here's my question though: if we should not be showing things like Numenor at its prime or Valinor (Undying Lands) or the Two Trees in a Middle Earth show that's aimed to expand on and explore the background stories of either the Second Age or the First Age because it might "tear down the mysteries that are better off if left untouched", how do we make an on-screen adaptation of those stories (especially if you want cover relatively the majority of its history)? There are major events and objects that you simply can't circumvent when you try to adapt a particular story (like if you want to tell a story on the rise and falls of Sauron during the Second Age, you can't avoid showing his relationship with Numenor), and if you address them too briefly, it just leaves too many key information gaps to fill. Unless the argument here is that stories of the First Age and Second Age should never and can't ever be adapted because it will always ruin the myths, I don't see how one can make these adaptations without lifting the curtains for these shrouded past stories.
You missed the part where he mentioned that RoP does not create any new myths. It is only exposing what we heard from LOTR without itself having it's own myths. Perhaps if there were references in RoP on things or places prior the the first age, it would the stand up on its own feet in terms of fantasy
The issue is simple and twofold : Simple Version : Amazon created this show for money, not out of passion. Longer version : 1) The rights that Amazon acquired don't actually allow for RoP to craft a story directly adapted from the LoTR. They acquired TV rights to LoTR and The Hobbit so they can only use the Hobbit/Trilogy/Appendices and to the best of my understanding, nothing from The SIlmarillion, etc. So they are tiptoeing around actual events that may have allowed for a more true adaptation. 2) With the constraints they have, they would have needed Peter Jackson++ level of desire and passion to craft a good-to-great story. It's not to say it was an impossible task but they were definitely starting from below 0 and basically are constantly having to check with the Tolkien-estate about what they can and cannot do. I read somewhere that they got the go-ahead on certain items/references outside of the main trilogy/Hobbit + appendices. A passionate group of writers/directors could have made it work, to be sure, but I think they lack that. And I am sure there's a ton of problems from Amazon executives forcing decisions here and there. Not trying to give them a pass, they botched the job, but just want to point out that this very likely was always going to fail because it's a cash grab and not a passion project.
I mean, readers/watchers do want *some* explanations. We don't want mystery boxes. Creators need to carefully choose what to explain and what to leave for the imagination. Maybe we need the feeling that the world is coherent, and there are answers to be found. Maybe we need a sense of trust in the author. We trust that Tolkien could easily tell us more about the nameless things, were he so inclined. I think we need the questions to *matter* before we get the answer. Nobody cares about how Han Solo got his name or his dice. But Gollum's backstory is very relevant for our understanding of him, the ring, and Frodo's situation.
@@hawkname1234 Not sure what you're going for. I very much doubt that this video was made in bad faith. And I really really doubt there was any kind of organized campaign. RoP is the new thing so many people are talking about it now. Sure it may look organized if many are coming to the same conclusion. Or the show really is bad, and lots of people recognize that.
This isn’t related to the topic of this video at all, but I was really struck by how bad the sound design is in some of the episodes. There’s one scene where two guys are talking in the middle of a busy fishing village, and there conversation is the ONLY audio. We see people moving around in the background, but aside from their talking, there is zero noise. It’s jarring and bad, we should be getting noise from the many things happening in the background. There’s another scene where some highway robbers are chopping down trees to build a fire, and the sound effect of the ax hitting the trunk is so quiet, it feels almost comical. The sound design is so ridiculously low key that it’s distracting. I contrast the tree scene in RoP with the “Back on the Menu” scene in Two Towers, where the sound effects of the Orcs chopping up trunks sounds really crisp, and works perfectly with the pacing and flow of the scene.
Imagine if Robert Frost wrote a sequel to his classic poetic masterpiece "The Road Not Taken" called "Oh By the Way, Here's What Was Down the Other Road."
One of the best takes on RoP I've seen. A while back I had the same thought about the pitfalls of "demythologizing" the history of middle-earth. I tried explaining it to my friends, but I couldn't articulate it properly. You've described it bang on in this video. Awesome work!
To paraphrase Voltaire, "If you want to bore someone, tell them everything". Numenor has the same problem as Atlantis: no feasible reality could match the grandeur of the myth. You can't film the Silmarillion because TV characters behaving in that mythic mode would quickly become tedious, but to make them more human would collapse the magic. The whole project was misguided from the start. I also think that needing to explain everything rather than leaving it to imagination (as in Gandalf's "nameless things" speech) is partly down to an internet age in which fans can more easily discuss things. I believe that if he were writing LOTR now, Tolkien would have left out those vague allusions because they make no real sense and would have been challenged (how can those things be older than Sauron without being Ainur themselves?). Which would have been our loss, because that passage is one of the most world-expanding in the whole story.
They do make sense and authors regularly carried out correspondance with other authors about their books about questions just like that, the internet being around wouldn’t have changed that
@@roarbertbearatheon8565 Not sure if this is what you mean, but Tolkien's letters show he quite often thought of the reason behind something only after a reader asked about it, which shows he didn't always think everything through before he wrote it. Nor, probably, was he expecting readers to ask about such things (he frequently expressed surprise that they should take such an interest). I doubt many writers today, who know they can be contacted easily by email or social media, would leave anything to chance like that, especially when fans can chat about possible plot holes. As for making sense, how could the "nameless things" Gandalf talks about be older than Sauron, if he has been around since before the world was made?
"You can't film the Silmarillion because TV characters behaving in that mythic mode would quickly become tedious, but to make them more human would collapse the magic." I disagree. Silmarillion evles were much more human. They were no some kind of fading overworldy mythic beings. They were much more like characters of "Game of thrones": with inner strife and intrigues.
I think you may be undervaluing the power of execution as well. You demonstrate their lackluster execution when you point out their depiction and execution of the nameless thing. Yes, absolutely there should be some mystery left within the world, but you can satisfyingly pull the curtain back as well...but they are not doing that. Minas Tirith was 1000x the spectacle of Numinor, because it was built up and executed well. But the executions in the Rings of Power are just consistently really really really bad or at least lackluster. And the only thing worse than revealing a mystery is slaying a mystery by revealing it to be something lame.
Good point. As someone who hasn't read LOTR in a long time, I didn't even realize the worm had any sort of relevance. I just thought it was a random plot point that could've been left out with no relation to the text.
@@Ryan_heyhonestly, I think that's probably still the case. The writers said, "We need something to happen here. Oh hey, remember that random monster that tried to kill Frodo? Let's make up a weird new monster." ...Actually they probably just thought of the Princess Bride and made a worm of unusual size.
I disagree with your point that Númenor should be left unshown. In theory, you are right, RoP adapts LotR (as it only has the rights to it), which does not feature Númenor in detail. However, Tolkien's other works, most notably The Silmarillion, does. Tolkien intended to provide a more detailed version of Númenor, even if he didn't manage to publish it in his lifetime. In an ideal world, where the showmakers would have the rights to The Silmarillion, you would be completely wrong: showing Númenor on the screen would be no larger sin than showing Gondor or the Shire. Whether it was the right choice to do so with only a few poems and the LotR appendices is up for debate. One thing is certain, you cannot adapt the Second Age without Númenor.
This is such a solid insight! While I watch this show and enjoy some aspects, I have to mentally separate it from the LOTR movies and books because it is simply not even close to the same genre or quality. Those films feel transcendent to me while this show just feels……like a show. What stood out to me the most was how mysterious, ethereal, and regal the elves are in the films, even though Legolas is sometimes goofy. In RoP, they just feel like humans with pointy ears, which I think has to do with the way it’s written, directed, and produced.
Exactly. Of course it won't be as well regarded as the original Trilogy but maybe, if they take the right criticism to heart, it can be better regarded, in time, than the Hobbit trilogy which largely sought to do the same thing as the show: to expand the universe. If they focus on tangible things like the fall of Numenor and *how* Sauron used the rings to corrupt, it could be largely an interesting take on Tolkien's work. If they go the route of 'who were the Nazgul' or 'actually Sauron was with cahoots with the nameless things' or whatever route it very well could go... much less so. Let the myth come to life, and let the mystery remain a mystery.
There should be because it's art and some of us want to enjoy it. For those of you who only want to intensely hate it, I don't know why you keep hanging around.
@@AnnoyingCritic-is7rp He wanted it Published. The problem is that the Silm is not a singular narrative: it is more like The Bible, a compliation of different narratives spanning a long period.
@@englishlady9797 It would make a terrible work of modern dramatic fiction. It's nearly all passive, in the third person. There's little dialogue. It's a great reference but you can't really use it as a basis for modern fiction.
@@hawkname1234 I think it's a question of literary criticism. So you say that this should not be done because it violates this rule of literary criticism more film criticism. What we personally may or may not like is not relevant It's how we can articulate criticism.
I really enjoy your analyses, but I think this is a gray (grey) area: a spectrum between explaining everything and an endless series of unexplained images and experiences. Tolkien himself often goes back to explain and unpack mysterious events or things just glimpsed. The Lord of the Rings itself is an explanation and deeper dive into that funny magic ring in the Hobbit. The appendices wallow in explanatory detail. The trick, I think, is that as you explain (or fill in gaps or backstory or what happened after), you provide additional richness and depth to stimulate imagination and curiosity (and to make multiple viewings more enjoyable).
But I think your explanation actually defeats the grey area. After Hobbit, LotR vastly expanded the number and depth of the world's mysteries. RoP simply goes back to known mysteries, elaborates on them, and adds nothing else new. Imagine if LotR started in the Shire, they went to the Misty Mountains, and found a lava pit in the mountain to drop the ring into. Nothing about that fallen kingdom to the south, Rohan or Gondor, Moria or Mordor. Questions were answered and more were brought forth.
Great video. It's amazing how one line (yours about the nameless things underground) can stick with us for so long. I haven't read the books in decades but still remember the line about Sam seeing a star above the clouds... "For there was light and high beauty forever beyond its (evil/darkness) reach."
@@eran3161 Yep. It's a masterpiece, but not because of the monster, and that's why you can show it. And even then the mutations are rarely showed like it should be.
While I can agree with most of what he laid out. Nothing he mentioned disqualifies RoP from being a Fantasy, so his central thesis was just essentially ‘clickbait’. You can be fantasy and answer questions, even ones that may not need an answer. I’m really enjoying Rings of Power. I see it is an adaptation, not “the definitive version”. It’s Amazon playing around in the IP and telling an entertaining story. Is it perfect? No. Is it enjoyable? I think so. I’ve always liked the “unreliable narrator” take on people who do remakes or prequels. It’s one persons vision - but the only TRUE definitive version comes from the creator, who has been dead longer than I’ve been alive.
Although the point of the video that fantasy is empowered by the mysterious, the unexplained and by better fuel for imagination is great to keep in mind, it's a very poor base to claim RoP is not fantasy. It's basically a _No true Scotsman_ applied to genre analysis; "X is not good enough for my idealized idea of Y, therefore I'll change the definition of Y for a more narrow version that purposely excludes X." Fantasy _should_ invite imagination, but some fantasy is just bad at it. But it's still fantasy.
there are hundreds of thousands of badly written, poorly defined fantasy books. that doesn't make them not fantasy. He could just say its bad fantasy and leave it at that.
@@Zectifin Ah but you see the internet ragebait can only continue if you make ever more extreme claims in regards to the latest target of said ragebait.
Based on this argument, the Silmarillion isn't fantasy either. It explains most if not all the mysteries and fables hinted at in the Hobbit and the LotR trilogy. I think the RoP isn't a very good story for the reasons cited, but I can't say it's not fantasy.
Bravo. I am a psychotherapist who has studied the psychological dimensions of myth and stories for decades. Thank you! I fear your important perspective is quickly getting lost. Keep up the good work!
I don't think the pulling-back of curtains is strictly a sin. We get a decent idea of Nûmenor and parts of Valinor from Tolkien's other writings anyway. But if you are going to do that, you must do it at least as well as the movies (or, given their budget, hopefully better), and needless to say they have broadly failed at this. Turning myth into "Meh!" is definitely a sin, unless mayhaps there are goats involved.
Problems is they don't add enough behind it. After you pull back one curtain there should be more curtains. Instead here, they pulled back the curtain and its a rock wall. LotR, coming from The Hobbit, pulled back several curtains and added countless more to such a degree it became the classic it is.
Perhaps it's not your intention, but you've sold me on skipping the rest of RoP. I watched season one but didn't take much from it -- but you make great points that they might be taking something from us and Tolkein's own vision. I'm fine with missing that.
Season 2 is great. But you should skip it, with all these other weak-minded people for whom it is (for some reason!) important to evangelize that this show has sinned against the Creator (though they cannot specify the reason without contradicting Tolkien's words and actions, it seems).
@@hawkname1234 Please re-define your standards for "great" because you couldn't be any further off for using that word to describe Season 2. It hasn't sinned against Tolkien? Two words: *orc family* But please, tell me how in the *HELL* do you find this show enjoyable if you like the Lord of the Rings? The problem is this show doesn't have characters. It has plot devices with dialogue. Nobody in this show is a character outside of Durin and maybe Elrond. Everyone else is literally a shell of nothingness that simply acts the same way for 9 hours of content and gets told by the plot what to do.
The Art Of Overthinking. As you briefly pointed out, there’s an amazing oil painting for nearly every moment “left to imagination”. The narrative is just another one of those oil paintings and it’s there to give context to the montage of oil paintings you’re about to look at, almost like what happens in your brain when reading the source material. The show is doing exactly what you’re saying, it’s literally “Hey I have a bunch of money, let me show you what I imagined all this stuff to be like” and that’s the fun of it. It’s not the best interpretation of his work, but neither are a lot of those oil paintings (lol). However, like most of those oil paintings, it’s still fun to look at, and further more I wouldn’t refrain from calling them “fantasy” art just because it depicts a scene that should be “left to imagination.”
I like your commentary on the characters speaking about unknowable things. This is very true. And it adds to the lore when we hear them talk about things in their world which sometimes, we never get to see. It's kind of the same way we should never see the face of Master Chief. Some things are best left a mystery or legend.
What you didnn't do, at any point, is explain what fantasy is or isn't. I do sense your point, because there are a couple of books that I think capture the "magic" (my word) like 'The Last Unicorn'. I actually think you have it entirely backwrds. It's not the mystery that makes fantasy. . It's the deatils: the world building and the getting to actually truly feel you know something that is different. Indeed it does require that contrast of the mysterious, but that is not the core of fantasy.
The vid wasn't done in bad faith and it gets close an answer. The world building makes fantasy---yes, But you don't reveal all you know in your story. You say enough so the reader senses the vast amount that you are not saying. The writers of this show are simply filling in Tolkien's gaps without adding anything new beneath their answers. Their answers are almost always bad---that's what makes it bad fantasy. But its the fact that there is nothing new added beneath the surface that makes it not fantasy at all.
Just sayin’: The word ‘Mediterranean’ means “middle Earth”. 200,000 years ago our world was populated by multiple humanoid species: Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisova, Homo floresiensis (the so-called Hobbits), Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, Homo sapiens. Tolkien’s world of many humanoid species kinda did exist.
@@lucasmuniz5263 I think we'll have to agree to disagree. In many ancient cultures, the word for "land" and "the earth" were the same word; Latin is one example: terra can mean both "land" and "earth". No matter where an ancient culture was located though, they often referred to their territory as "the middle" of the world. For example in Norse mythology, Midgard was the "middle enclosure"; in ancient China, Zhōngguó (中國) meant "the middle kingdom". No matter where a people lived, they called their part of the world "the middle". Certainly "mediterraneus" can be translated as "inland" (especially once the people of Rome were more educated about the larger world), but mediterraneus can also be translated as "the middle of the earth" -- the latter being more closely aligned with how people who lived in that era probably perceived themselves within the larger world. For them, the Mediterranean was the middle of the Earth, literally. This is off topic somewhat, but it's a similar concept: ancient civilizations also often referred to their own people via their word for "people", because foreigners weren't "people". If you & I were living thousands of years ago in an ancient civilization, we would refer to ourselves as "the people" who live "in the middle", and everybody else was a non-person who lived somewhere outside the middle. There are exceptions to this in various parts of the world obviously, but it was a commonplace conception in ancient cultures: you and I are "people" who live in "the middle".
Haha I delayed watching this until I could finish the season. I felt guilty because I really want to support this channel. Looks like this vid did just fine without me. 😂
One of the driving forces of a reader's interest for Lord of the Rings is the fact that many mysteries will be eternally unexplained. Any explanation died along with Tolkien himself. We'll never know Tolkien's final answer for where Orcs go when they die, because Tolkien never satisfactorily explained it. The mystery will remain, and so will the reader's interest in the question. I agree that Rings of Power does more harm than good answering those "unexplainable" questions. It feels insincere because it doesn't come from the author, and boring because the mystery is gone.
theres a rule of thumb in a good story. show and dont tell. the adapation has everything to talk about, but nothing to show. Tolkien never intended to answer everything nor does the audience want it either. problems here were priorities. such as explaining mithril which is, well who asked? or godamn bombadil whom first of, the worst type of character you really could involve in a show regardless how you made him out to be unless it would particular targed for dumb kids. cus thats tommy boy was made for. theres hell alot of the tolkien world you could adapt to, could work with but no. examples the easterlings a story about them without the need to know of their origins cus not everything needs an origin thats the problem.
If you consider the Silmarillion to be canon and a reliable in-universe source, the Orcs would go to Mandos after death. Does not change anything though since Mandos is just as unreachable and mysterious.
@@spacejunk2186 Silmarillion IS canon by definition. it isnt a consideration. it is perhaps yours only. Mandos is the afterlife. its neither hell or heaven. it is where all creation eventually end up in. this is based on tolkiens own writings and his own personal statement.
Unexplained mysteries are the "driving forces of a reader's interest for Lord of the Rings" for absolutely zero people. There's no reason to believe such a ridiculous claim.
You don't make a case that Rings of Power isn't fantasy. You do make a case that it's bad fantasy. I'm sure you're right about that. But it's still fantasy.
It might be more apt to say Rings of Power does not invite fantasy, so while it has the necessary elements, it fails at what is one of fantasy’s most fundamental goals - drawing us into its world. Yes, if you want to be literal, it still technically fits the genre, but meaningfully, it misses the mark.
I would say leaving things to the imagination is a hallmark of good storytelling, not just fantasy. All genres do it. For example in sci-fi, how technology works is often not explained in detail, and doing so can complicate things. Or in horror it would be strange to go in to detail about the backstory of every terrible creature. It is the function of fiction itself to leave interperetation to the reader.
I think you’re missing some of the point. The Rings of Power is an adaptation of Tolkien’s writings about the Second Age. The source texts are fundamentally different in tone, style and theme from The Lord of the Rings, which is a novel. Have you read The Silmarillion? Or any of the Histories of Middle Earth as published and edited by Christopher Tolkien? What The Rings of Power is doing is providing a narrative context to crucial events of the Second Age. Where Tolkien is vague or obtuse, the show runners must imagine what is meant to the best of their ability. Any cinematic adaptation of these events is going to run into this issue. I think that’s what makes the show feel very lovingly rendered in my opinion, and a genuine interpretation of Tolkien’s works. I think that this very pretext is what makes the Rings of Power so fascinating and immersive. It is truly an adaptation, and a chance to be shown a vision of the second age, for which no traditional narrative was ever written. In this way The Rings of Power is not unlike Clash of the Titans, the Voyage of Sinbad, Troy, or Mulan. Because of the original text’s mythological, historical and omniscient perspective in imagining an entire history, a cinematic adaptation requires an imagined context to tableaux and stage the story for an audience in this manner. Of course you don’t have to like the choices that are made. It’s interesting to me that so much of the comparison to Peter Jackson’s trilogy (3 of my favorite films of all time) revolve around those movies being a nearly 1 to 1 adaptation, which it obviously was not. But now people are saying that Jackson’s trilogy was better because it was more vague and suggestive in its references to the Middle Earth of the source material? I think this casting of Rings of Power as a contemporary sort of Marvelesque “this is how this happened” show is a bit disingenuous. If you are familiar with the source material you can see many choices that were made that are thoughtful and intentional in their subtlety. The architecture of Numenor being rooted in Byzantine and Persian references, suggesting an older world than the Italianate Minas Tirith in Jackson’s trilogy. The care in Arondir’s styling as opposed to the Elves of Lindon. How Sauron is envisioned to have risen to status as Annatar, after having deceived the Men of the East is particularly imaginative and interesting. These are all things that hadn’t yet been envisioned, even by Tolkien himself, and I find the show to be doing a more than adequate job.
I get what you mean, but I slightly disagree around 5:35. I don't mind showing ancient mysteries or lore revealed, just as long as they're either entertaining or actually fit along with the story/worldbuilding. Yes modern shows use ancient mystery as pointless empoison, but that's more of a recent problem. I've seen plenty of fanwork and fanart for years that show and depict Middle-Earth pre third age and some are just as good as the Jackson Trilogy.
By the way when a monster shows up and one guy just managed to kill it on his own, it makes you wonder how that creature is still alive in a world filled with guys with swords and bows. The Archer who kills boromir is an even fight for aragorn, after all.
In his book Which Lie Did I Tell?, William Goldman talks about the need for mystery, and not just in fantasy -- he cites both The Ghost & the Darkness and Shane: "The village is in trouble, [Shane] rides in, saves it, rides out. For that very great western [...] it is crucial that we know nothing about the guy. Ever."
Nice analysis! My issue with Rings of Power, is there's no good or evil. Moral ambiguity. It's like a damn soap opera. Orcs can be decent people, and vice-versa. It's not a story about good and evil. It's a soap opera. Interesting, yet pointless.
Great summation of why Rings of Power is such a disaster. Speaking of SOLO, we didn't need an entire film to justify the mistake confusing a parsec as a unit of time instead of distance in A New Hope. Writers screw up sometimes. We were willing to let it go as something particular to a galaxy far far aways, but, no, they just couldn't let it go.
It can also be taken that Han Solo as a character, a swindler, lied. or got his braggadocio mixed up trying to impress his clients like a sleazy used car salesmans. But then making an entire movie to 'clarify' what a lie was, is actually worse in a way.
The very approach of explaining everything is anti-fantasy I expected you to quote his "On fairy stories" essay, because he didn't just writte the Quintessential Fantasy story, he also wrote a textbook for it. The notion of "recovery" (recovering the fresh perspective you have when you discover something for the first time, like a child) is pretty relevant here The member berries aren't "recovery" at all
@@incog.nyto. They are far more sci fi than they are fantasy...they are good old reliable pop fun, and I like them...but very little captures a sense of grandeur and wonder...even if Kaladin is fighting in the clouds in the middle of a mega storm for example. It's more hype than wonder.
@@incog.nyto. Why have you decided to equate the point made in the video that I followed, which doesn't talk about magic systems at all, about that subject only ? You're totally off topic The magic system is just one part of the world building, anyway, which itself is only one part of the story (the other two other ur-areas being character and plot; I guess) Plenty of room for mystery beyond that, though, in the case of sanderson's, he doesn't truly use it
@@incog.nyto. No, but feel free to think so If that's such a common and cliché comeback, it's precisely because it's such an effective method for pretending you've got a point/are winning the argument, lol
Ooh, hard disagree. Leaving a thing unknown is the easiest thing in the world and doesn’t even relate to fantasy. The briefcase in pulp fiction. I don’t think it’s an inherent positive, after all, think about the infamous mystery boxes of the sequel Star Wars trilogy. And one of the great things about the lord of the rings is how rich the world feels because the author knew everything about it. But I do understand the criticism of over explaining and agree with that.
Its not simply "leaving it unknown" you need to still have it exist and be relevant in the world. When the party travels south from Rivendell they briefly pass through a Kingdom's remains that everyone forgets. Leaving it fully unknown would be to simply not bring it up. This is before they even get to Moria. The book gives a few hints about the Kingdom, began with an H, I can't recall at this time, and then moves on. There's a balance that needs to apply.
It's probably good enough that the author understands and deeply feels the 'mysteries' -- the contents of the current mystery boxes aren't understood by their authors and often are just empty . . . .
You've perfectly summed up perfectly what's been vaguely bouncing around my mind recently. The over-explanation and harping upon details that these prequels and shows bank on erases the magic that lay the groundwork for a lush vast world. It's the same of our world, it carried more mystery and inspired dreams of exploration when we heard only whispers of distant lands and strange peoples. Now we can see everything on google earth. Maybe I'll start referring to these shows as "Google Earth Fantasy". lol
In a similar vein, I'd argue that what makes Elden Ring so interesting and captivating to so many people is the mystery of the setting and deep lore hidden in the game's writing. People love receiving some answers, but they also love to try to parse answers themselves. It fosters community engagement and conversation. When you find a small snippet of writing or come across an interesting piece of architecture, it makes you wonder about the history of this fantastical land.
I think it's important that mystery exists in fantasy but building your story around it often falls flat. If the goal of a story boils down to "what is even going on?" then the eventual revelation probably just ends with the reaction "o, okay, I guess that makes sense." For all the unexplained elements in Tolkien's stories and all strange things they come across on their adventures, the ultimate goal is really straightforward, that grounds the story a lot.
The most mysterious city I've ever had in fiction is from a small German Let's Player more than 10 years ago. He had a Let's Play in Minecraft world where he already build some stuff before starting that world. And then he always hinted at the city Emlomaar which is in another part of the world. He even had a seven part series called "the journey to Emlomaar", where he walked along the road to that city. To me this takes up the same space as Atlantis does for other people. For some reason seeing the very crude Minecraft beta city that consists of a few houses didn't spoil it to me.
I feel the same about the Star Wars prequels. Like in the original the force was this mysterious thing that we only ever really got small glimpses of. Every episode there was something new the force could do. Like we can only begin to imagine what was possible in the days of the old republic. And then when we get the prequels they don't really do anything with the force that wasn't already in the movies, they just do the same 4 or 5 things with greater frequency and skill. Like the Force is literally the power to do anything so long as you believe you can, and the best anyone can think of in a whole culture devoted to Force use is to throw stuff around and fail at swindling auto mechanics.
Ironically enough, sometimes "tell, don't show" is the rule to follow. I think Tolkien reflected on this regarding Tom Bombadil, saying something in the vein of "even in best stories, some things need to remain unexplained"
@@turnipsociety706 Not really. In modern times it has been given a name, but you find as a rule across storytelling and writing from well before the 50s. Answering to the OP: not really. Bombadil isn't a perfect example of how at times you tell things and at others you show then. "Showing" is about portraying something through its features and actions, it's not just the opposite of telling. And guess what's the big thing about Bombadil in LOTR? We are shown his actions (saving the hobbits) and, even more on point, we are shown his refusal of the Ring at a conceptual level. That's pure Show don't Tell. We aren't told about Bombadil mysterious and incomprehensible nature, we are literally shown him refusing the One Ring, something that even Gandalf was afraid of being corrupted by. People like Gandalf, Galadriel and Faramir are shown and offered the ring, they are tempted by its power, but are resilient to its persuasion. Bombadil straight up doesn't give a fuck. If that's not showing his mysterious nature I don't know what it is lmao
I'm surprised because, as someone that despises the post-LOTR adaptations of the Legendarium, I came to watch with the expectation that I would agree with you, and I unequivocally do not. Tolkien had precisely zero qualms in exploring the minutiae of the world that he created, even with retconning it and de-reconning it (as in the case of Galadriel's exile in Middle-Earth); Gandalf's refusal to elaborate on the hidden things of the deep earth were contextual to himself and its place within the narrative of the Lord of the Rings, not to Tolkien's reticence to speaking about, and even embodying, the nameless and ineffable. Tom Bombadil is the very essence of that willingness. The Rings of Powers is not fantasy because it lacks mystery, any more than it IS fantasy for having dwarves, elves, halflings, and wizards. It is not fantasy for the same reason that any satire is not of the genre or work that it lampoons: it does not RESPECT that which is apes. It mimes for no other reason than to share in the financial rewards that the goodwill for original generates. It is this same mean-spiritedness as the lesser son of greater sires that made The Hobbit trilogy so lacklustre.
I recently rewatched Lord of the Rings, and the single biggest takeaway from those movies was how much emotion and empathy it made you feel for the characters. The evocative music, and poetic yet universal dialogue, the masterful cinematography that captured the inner world of the characters. Every scene made me FEEL something. They say that art is supposed to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, and I've seen those movies achieve both. The orcs and Shelob made people feel terrified and disgusted. The Fellowship made people feel comradery and love. Gollum and even Denethor in the extended version made you feel both anger and pity. Rings of Power is what happens when you strip all that away. I don't feel a single shred of love.
generally agree but I have one problem: I think showing Numenor is not a mistake. while yes, its myth is important to the sons of Gondor, it is evenmore important for characters like Isildur and Elendil without showing its grandeur the eventual loss of their home doesn't have the impact it needs to tell their stories completely I'd argue that we didn't need to see the petty squabbles of the people of Numenor, sure, but its splendor and impressive architecture and the grandiosity that goes with it not just in visuals but in meaning to the characters is vitaly important in my opinion
Numenor was supposed to be a lot beyond petty sqabbling of middle managers and modern type of politicians. That's exactly what is missing. Numenor is missing. The people are missing. Any sense of their unique identiy is missing....everything is missing except that 1 semi-cool statue. And even that is smaller and more pathetic than any of the ones in the original LOTR. Everything about this show is petty, narrow-sighted and sad.
Partially accurate. I like seeing valinor and numenor and wouldn’t mind seeing more of the latter. What I don’t like is the lack of a coherent plot, the modern film school tricks like the mysteries, the poor dialog, the way the characters behave that doesn’t make any sense, the jumping around, and space-time contraction, the utter ordinariness of the elves, the lack of exploration of the death themes in Tolkien, the feeling that there’s a FVRR editor hurrying to put together an episode that the director and writers haven’t adequately explained. In this series, we have uncovered all the hidden magic of making cinematic entertainment that we aren’t meant to see because the entire production staff doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing. In good series, the techniques and writing are seamlessly united so that the viewer can suspend their imaginations. In ROP, only a 7 year old would find this series interesting because it’s how children play. The game is made up as you go along, the physics of the world are changeable, do-overs are possible, nobody cares if somebody gets stabbed and gets back up two minutes later, and plots are fungible depending on who shows up. That’s what ROP feels like. The target audience is playing make believe and it doesn’t have to always make sense. It’s like Amazon’s head of their entertainment unit is one of those talentless people who schmoozes his/her way to the position and takes a lot of advice from the marketing department. Tolkien lands in his lap, he’s never read it but sees LoTR $$$ but *this* time, he wants something totally different that no Peter Jackson would ever do. In fact, doing a Peter Jacksonesque series wouldn’t break new ground. Let’s put together a team of newbies who will write a completely new series based on a sketch but add all of the features of a successful series that the data analytics guy say find are the principle components in their projection of latent structure models. 🙄
Awesome! The RUclips algorithm is crap nine times out of ten, but it's all worth it when stuff like this comes up. Really nice pacing, presentation, length, and conciseness. I've been getting a bit tired of art-tubers making 45 minute essays out of simple ideas. Look forward to seeing new stuff!
I really wanted to like Rings of Power and hoped season 2 might turn things around, but this show is just a massive disappointment. It's clear that the creators of this show have nothing to say. You can tell that the writers are trying to mimic the tone of Peter Jackson's films, often recycling lines and descriptions from the original trilogy, but it all falls flat because this story in ROP is completely meaningless. It's like drafting a grocery list in iambic pentameter and calling it Shakespeare.
What you said about how it only wants to mimic Peter Jackson's film trilogy hits the nail on the head. It's not only cynical how it reduces something as grand as Middle-earth into being something mundane, it's also lazy on Amazon's part. It exists as a cynical money making machine rather than anything that feels genuine passion for Tolkien and his source material.
it is the line recycling I find especially egregious, like the writers of RoP are tapping their noses at each other and thinking how clever they are. Yes, thank you, I know Gandalf said that line in Moria originally.
@@adde27 Except he DIDN'T. It was Peter Jackson who moved a lot of the lines around and gave them to different characters. If you only know the movies, then you don't recognize the many references to the literature that they are putting in this story. Your knowledge is shallow. Way to shallow to justify your misplaced confidence.
@@hawkname1234 am I not referencing the movie(s) when I mention this particular line? Is the PJ trilogy not the main topic started by OP here? Also, the line "follow your nose" isn't in the book: in that, it was how Gandalf didn't like the "feel" and "foul air" of two of the ways. In the movie, it was "follow your nose". Your reading comprehension is shit, mate. If my knowledge is shallow, then I dread to think what yours is.
@@hawkname1234 Anytime a story is adapted from one medium (literature) to another (movie/tv), creative decisions are made about what to change, add, or take away. In my opinion, Peter Jackson took creative liberties in his adaptation of LOTR which resulted in a really compelling story and a beautiful cinematic experience. If you are saying that you like the storytelling in ROP or that you find it to be a more faithful adaptation somehow, then you are entitled to your opinion. However, I would like someone to explain to me what story ROP is trying to tell, because so far, almost two whole seasons in, I have no clue what this story is trying to say or why it is being told.
I feel like the main takeaway from this video is that a good writer needs to hold back their own ideas for the sake of the reader. It’s important to only give information that is directly relevant to the plot and themes. A good writer knows to respect the joy of the mystery of their own creation, even if they themselves know the answers to the mysteries. When I was playing the expansion for Elden Ring, I was first disappointed that all my questions about the story were not only left unanswered, but I left the game with twice the questions about the story. I now understand that it’s the mystery is what makes it special. I’m glad I don’t have all the answers and I can talk with fellow fans online about possible theories and we can grow the community.
I totally agree with you. Tolkien tells us a lot about the history of Middle Earth, but still it's only just enough to whet our appetites. The chapter "The Shadow of the Past", where Gandalf explains to Frodo about how the Ring came to him, is one of my favorite chapters, because he alludes to so much of the ancient history that has to be put aside in pursuit of the main thread. It should be a stumbling block to readers -- a long chapter of just explication -- but instead, while it answers the main question, it also opens up many tantalizing threads that power the imagination. Just a couple of other examples: The stories of Tom Bombadil and his memories of the fair woman who wore the brooch that they find amongst the hoard of the Barrow Wight, and Legolas' words about the lament of the tumbled stones in the ruins of Eriador for their builders. PJ could not have included all of this, but he gave us those tantalizing hints visually in the landscape that the Fellowship walked through -- crumbling megalithic walls, pieces of statuary overgrown with weeds, the golden cinematographic effect of the light of Lothlorien. The RoP show runners did none of this -- we see distant CGI panning shots of Eregion, but very few close up views of King Gil-galad's fair city. The landscape that the characters move through is devoid of wonder, beautiful in many shots, but no hints of that weight of history. PJ gave us a sense of being present in a time far removed from our own -- watching LoTR you feel the awe and wonder of Middle Earth. Watching RoP, you feel nothing.
Where I am coming from: I read LOTR three times before I was 12yo in the late 1970s. My favourite Tolkien book is The Silmarillion. I was a first generation fan of the BBC Radio Play, and have listened to it more than a hundred times. Personally I am a big fan of Tolkien’s deep time universe. I’ve always found it more interesting than LOTR. I liked the LOTR movies, but I was not interested in the Hobbit and only just recently watched them. I think the combat scenes were stretched beyond credibility to tick all the boxes concerning the deaths of main characters. Several points about The Rings of power. As a story in its own right is of a very high quality. The acting is good. The dialogue is good. The dramatisation and character development is good. Compared to Harry potter it is a consistently better production. Compared to Game of Thrones, Tolkien’s universe makes a lot more sense, and that inherent strength has rubbed off on this production. So far I have found the production more engaging than much of the Lord of the Rings Movies. The BIG deal in All the Tolkien movies is the commitment not to build a pastiche of historic real world cultures. The Elves are not Romans, The Dwarves may have a strong hint of Scots/Irish about them, but their architecture is unique. Given the precedent that the Movies set for Dwarves, the female Dwarves are right on target. About the multiculturalism and the feminism: I DON”T CARE. I don’t care. I DON”T CARE, and anyone who is but hurt about it, is a pathetic white supremacist and a wannabe incel. Tolkien’s work is saturated with the clash of cultures and the environmental destruction of industrialisation, and Tolkien is extremely woke about the plight of aboriginal people dispossessed and marginalised by colonial powers. I am EXTREMELY impressed by the energy The Rings of power put into creating an Orc culture that is not two dimensional. Wow. The idea of fallen elves is awesome and entirely consistent with what little Tolkien had to say on their origins. The Idea that Sauron had to work and suffer to build his kingdom is very cool. I love how Gandalf had to build his consciousness and personality from scratch after entering Middle Earth, and I love his resemblance to Jim Henson, of Dark Crystal and Muppets fame. As for the political twists concerning the Three rings, they are intriguing. The depth of character given to Elrond is worthy of the character of his father in the first age. About the 2nd age time line liberties taken by The Rings of power production in general: I DON’T GIVE A SHIT because Tolkien never fleshed out the second age. AND AND AND. If it is good enough for Shakespeare in his historic plays, it is good enough for anyone else. Drop Mike. End of argument. GROW THE FUCK UP! You all sound like car fanatics bitching about the rivet spacing on a facsimile racing Jaguar. Nothing that Amazon can do, can ‘destroy’ Tolkien’s legacy. This is both hysterical nonsense and cynical clickbate bullshit. You are all free to ignore the new material. Trying to burn down The Rings of power on line is pathetic. You all sound like little wannabe Saurons, and that is just sick.
If you think this dogshit of a show has any redeeming qualities at all then probably your mind has already went nuts with your advanced age. Also do you really think that accusing people of being White supremacists for wanting an accurate depiction of Middle-earth races is a good argument?
Btw you have never read any of Tolkien, you have only ever watched the movies. If you had read LOTR you would have known that the Dwarves are a blender of Norse and Jewish cultures. The Scottish thing is from the movies.
No. It doesn't kill the fun. It creates the fun. You are 100% exactly wrong. Not least because Tolkien LITERALLY CLAIMED TO BE EXPLAINING MYTHS & MYSTERIOUS PLACES.
@@Ragitsu idk what your point is. Tolkien wanted to fully explore his world. The Silmarillion was something Tolkien wanted to publish. Do you mean it's challenging to read? If so, that's your own problem lol
Hang on, if “nameless things” (paraphrasing) describes fantasy, then surely Star Wars & George “this grain of sand has a name & backstory” Lucas doesn’t qualify either?
I gotta be honest. I enjoy Rings of Power, for all its faults, and yes I am indeed a lifelong Tolkien fan, who read each and every book and letter, even Farmer Giles of Ham! Identifying RoP's faults does not prevent me from enjoying it for what it is. I was prepared to hate this video, because I find much of the criticism the show's endured to be pedantic and shallow; but this is an original angle I had not considered, and in the end, I am forced to agree with you. You make good points about how RoP seeks to answer many questions that need not be answered, and that the encounter with the Nameless Thing, for example, waters down the concept of them and the fear that this nameless name can invoke. This helps me think about how I approach fantasy in my own creative writing pursuits, and for that, you've earned yourself a subscriber. :)
Rings of power feels like everyone are just are cosplaying instead of living in this world... I don't see elves who looks and acts as elves, I don't see the dwarfs who acts like dwarfs... Our modern problems are displayed in that movies, without consideration what every Country, Region, City, Person have totally different problems (and how they handle them) from each other...
Part of that is PJ was notorious for doing upwards of 10 takes for scenes, to get the perfect delivery of every line. I feel like RoP does fewer than 3 takes for most scenes, so it feels at times like a live production that's being put on by those actors for the first time.
1. What "modern problem" do you think the show "displays"? I am guessing the Numenor politics stuff? I mean sure but thats a fairly minor part of the show. 2. Tolkien tackled modern politics himself. His environmentalism is extremely prevalent throughout all his writing. His less pleasant beliefs as well if a lot more subtly.
So I'm really intrigued by your take here, and I find it compelling, and I disagree with it to some extent. If that's a rather chaotic reaction, I've just watched this and am sorting through several contradictory reactions. I love the concept of textual ruins that Dr. Michael Drout refers to when talking about Tolkien's work, those references we never get resolutions to, Tom Bombadil, the towers on the hills in the Lone Lands, the Glittering Caves, and lots of other ones. To the extent that these do contribute both to the wonder of LotR and that they also provide a wonderful feeling of reality to the whole world, I agree that RoP is unsubtle and often making strange choices to sort of collapse the wave, to bring quantum physics into it. But at the same time, it is clear that Tolkien meant for his readers to receive answers to many questions. The poem Aragorn chants to the hobbits on Weathertop refers of course to one of the "great tales" that he worked on at whiles through his fifty-plus-year career of writing in Middle-earth. Before the publication of the Silmarillion, this was a textual ruin, a beautiful tale fragment. After the publication of the Silmarillion, and especially after the publication of the History of Middle-earth, the Beren and Luthien story has acquired much greater depth without (to me) losing any of its wonder and reality-conferring power. Aragorn's recitation, or Bilbo's Earendil poem still enchant, even though as someone who devours all things Tolkien I can get my hands on, I have answers to many questions that a reader in 1955 would not have had. It's clear that JRRT intended for these answers to see the light of day, given his long battles with Allen and Unwin to publish some form of his first age material, and how much material is crammed into the LotR appendices. So I don't agree that the mere provision of answers robs the original work of some of its wonder and power to enthrall. I do agree that some of the choices made in RoP are . . . regrettable, despite the fascinating commentary of Dr. Corey Olsen and the Rings and Realms series. (Disclosure, I work at Signum University and know Corey, and his flavor of analysis for RoP is absolutely on brand.) I too share the sad conviction that hobbit history will be rewritten to make Nori at least the mother of Marcho and Blancho, if not their animating spirit. Brandyfoots will become Oldbucks then brandybucks. Still, I kind of love what they're doing with the dwarves. The singing and the dichotomy between power with the mountain and power over the mountain from King Durin's ring is fascinating, and congruentI think with how Tolkien would look at such power. All of which is to say, this piece really provoked some excellent reflection for me, which i reward in the small way of liking/subscribing, even though we might disagree on some points. Very well done.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I see you have a deep knowledge of the subject, so I'm glad I was able to spark some interesting. To be honest, I'm also slightly conflicted about my take in this video. There obviously is a balance between showing and not showing in any type of storytelling, and I can't claim to know what Tolkien intended. The only thing I feel very strongly about is that the Nameless Things would almost certainly been intended to be left in the dark. Others in the comments have pointed out that Valinor and Numenor were probably intended otherwise - to have been known and imagined in more detail, and with greater certainty. I think I'm coming at it more as a casual LOTR fan, whose perception of THAT story is improved by those places being more remote/imagined. I've never read the Silmarillion, so I should give that a try and then maybe re-evaulate my argument. Might do that for a future video. I'm currently working on a review of RoP Season 2 in which I talk about what I like about the show, so I hope you'll stick around for that video, which might also interest you. Thanks for watching, and for subbing. :)
So this is one of those "things can only be classified as things if they meet my personal quality standard"? Next thing you're gonna say Justin Bieber isn't music because he creates it to gain money
Is it such a strange, personal standard to expect Fantasy to be fantastical? ROP is mundane modern identity politics with pointy ears. The characters behave like humans, the problems are human, the locations are human, the whole plot has no reason to exist in Tolkien's lore, it could just as well have been any other generic setting
@@junkfire4554 I find it strange that you say that, given that LOTR and other great fantasy novels have characters that behave like humans, very human problems, and locations that you can actually pinpoint the human civilisations they were inspired from. You could set those same stories in any other setting whilst keeping the core, and you would still have something great. ROP was never about identity politics. What are you insinuating?
@@omnipenne9101 humans can behave like humans sure, and so can hobbits and dwarves given their similarity but giving a 3000+ year old intelligent being the emotional and social maturity of a pubescent child is what i mean by mundane. Galadriel stomps her feet and yells to get her way, but it doesn't work out, shocker. You're telling me in her thousands of years she is just now learning basic social skills? No, sry, bad writing. Identity politics is all over ROP, it's in the implausible ethnic diversity of the explicitly xenophobic, insular race of Harfoots. It's the fact that in season 1 you had "woman good/right, man bad/wrong" in 3 separate story lines: Galadriel was right about Sauron returning but was ignored by male leadership, the village woman was right about the orcs returning but the men in the village didn't believe her, the Harfoot girl was right about helping Gandalf, but the tribe's culture said no to the outsider. There was a direct allusion to the race politics of MAGA 2020 Trump USA: bigoted white village boys to the black elf "sure we oppressed you, but that's in the past, when are you people gonna get over it and leave us alone" (obvious 2020 right wing sentiment about black oppression in the USA). black elf: "we have to stick around and be vigilant now to make sure you don't do the same thing again" (obvious left wing sentiment in the USA 2020). Could not be more on the nose. On Numinor they had a border politics story beat ripped straight out of southpark: an elf enters the island and a "build that wall, they're gonna take our jobs" mob forms with a Trumplike populist figure. All this could've been brushed aside if the story and dialogue were any good, but nope, it's a dumpsterfire. I'm all for diversity and inclusion but just randomly scrambling races and genders is such a naive and half assed way to go about it, especially when they never stfu about "fixing" Tolkien's lore with it in their interviews. The whole production reeks of contempt for the source material.
Please post your "nameless things" theories below:
Things from the discord of melkor, things like Ungoliant, the watcher in the water, eldritch horrors.
10000 bezoses
Sounds like Tolkien was going a bit Lovecraftian
I'm guessing it's an allegory of hell. A place with creatures that are not fathomable. Like trying to explain an acid/shroom/DMT-trip. They are simply not describable by words.
Lovecraft is often proposed as an influence for the "existential horror" in the Moria chapters. To my mind a more likely influence is William Hope Hodgson, a British writer who published some fantasy novels before WW1, and whom Lovecraft admired. Watchers, squid-monsters, the "apocalyptic log" i.e. Book of Mazarbul -- all are in Hodgson.
Reminds me of a great Tolkien quote:
"Part of the attraction of [The Lord of the Rings] is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background : an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."
it could have been that though....with an imaginative team, instead of the current soul-sucking one. Amazon's soul -sucking team is the problem. Not the concept or the source material.
Yeah, that last part sums it up pretty well. There virtually is no new unattainable vista they revealed.
I don't think Tolkien was agreeing with that as much as he was simply stating it as a fact that he realized. Even the end of the quote tells you that he did want to go there. But knew that he would need a new facade in the distance to view if he did. I think it's more of a regretful statement than one that agrees with the sentiment. Which is why I particularly loathe the concept myself; we're not looking at substance. We're looking at a movie set of a row of houses with less than nothing in them, there is no 'in', it is just a front-facing facade and the back is bare beams and nails. Like some kind of knock-off disneyland attraction.
While I do admit that it would come off as boring exposition if it were fully detailed when you're looking back in time at it from the perspective of another story. I disagree that seeing it in its own story makes it boring exposition. No, I think the problem with Rings of Power is that it is just bad and an obvious cash grab. Personally, I care not for the cheap thrill seeking of undiscovered mystery. I much prefer intricately defined substance to "Woooh... try to guess what it looked like or what it's purpose was! Woooooh!"
I believe Christopher Tolkien had the same concern when publishing The Silmarillion: some fans wanted to explore the distant past, while others preferred to leave it as an undefined mythos. Even so, The Silmarillion (the book, as published) takes place partly in Valinor and Numenor, but it still leaves much to the imagination.
Any movie or series adaptation of a book has the problem of what to show and what to leave unshown, and readers are always going to differ in how much they prefer. I think Peter Jackson got too caught up in his own visualizations, though in many ways I think he did a good job in the LOTR movies (but not in a certain follow-up trilogy). I lost interest in the Rings of Power early on, as it seemed like an effort to cash in on a popular franchise and rewrite it in a Hollywood-typical manner.
"...unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed" is the key part, though. You can reveal and explore anything; as long as you are creative enough to not only provide compelling answers, but also open more questions.
A good example of Tolkiens restraint in story telling is with the Nazgul. We are told that they were once kings, sorcerers and warriors of old but we know nothing about their mortal life other than that. All we know is that these were once great men who made and shaped the world around them but now they are slaves to Sauron. They are almost pitiable in how they have been robed of all their agency, achievements and even their names to become half dead creatures serving Sauron.
It would be tempting to give each of the nine Ringwraiths their own backstory because it is an intriguing idea. Many adapted tie ins have tried to give the Nazgul more depth but it always undercuts the point that Tolkien originally made with them, that evil is dehumanizing and something to be pitied.
For me it’s similar to why the Star Wars prequels failed. Trying to humanize and give Vader a backstory was a fool errand doomed to fail. It’s the same with the Wrath’s.
I wasn't a fan of the Nazgul's appearance in the Hobbit for exactly that reason. They looked like a boss rush from a PS2 game.
We do at least know one identity of the Nazgul, that being a sorceror or king of Rhun
@@chrissmith7669 Dude, Vader was humanized from roughly the end of The Empire Strikes Back...
Ha !.....look for a future episode to introduce us to Fred Gool Nas, who started his existence as a beloved school janitor.....
I am genuinely annoyed that we haven't yet met Gandalf's mother and father, and watched him be raised from an infant to the hero. I really wanted to watch his struggles in high-school, and how he dealt with snarky teenage mean wizard girls, and frumpy grumpy wizard teachers. Maybe this should be the next spinoff - " Middle-Earth Valley High"
I can't wait for Gandalf's first kiss. I want it to be the girl that they clearly wrote the story around, but it'll end up being some one-off side character that the internet glomed onto and forced into the regular cast with an online petition.
And it all happens in a few weeks timeframe. Because that's how it works in RoP
That's just Harry Potter
THE MONKEYS PAW CURLS A FINGER
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 no they will imply he's gay and have homo romantic adventures with his best pal only to finally having him fall in love with some random generically beautiful girl
What I think I learned is: Fantasy isn't just what the writer fantasizes, it's also about the writer making the reader fantasize.
That's a good distinction, one that modern writers fail to make almost without exception.
That just describes what good and what bad fantasy is.
But this is not exclusive to the fantasy genre. Any story can leave spaces for the reader to fill with their imagination.
@@agriosbr but it is essential for fantasy
@@khatack It really isn't, which is my one nitpick with this video. It's essential in TOLKIEN's fantasy, not the genre of fantasy. Tolkien doesn't have a monopoly on fantasy, contrary to popular belief apparently :D
The show is absolutely fantasy, perhaps one could say that it's more of the 'modern' style of fantasy like George R.R. Martyn's style of darker and harder fantasy, where things are somewhat more definitively described and there's less poetry and allusion. But it is without a doubt fantasy.
When I came home today I parked my car and got out. I suddenly heard something from the storage container about 10 meters away from me, just barely audible. I froze and listened intently. I'll mention here that I live in a forest, so there were no streetlights, just darkness.
After maybe 50 seconds standing still, the noise repeated, my heart nearly stopped, it then repeated again just a second later more strongly.
The darkness was so impenetrable that I couldn't see the storage unit door except the faintest outline of where it was.
This is a true story, it just happened, and this plays into exactly what you described in this video. I'm standing there, frozen in terror, but when you think about what the possible explanations could be, none of them are quite as terrible as not having any idea at all what made the door rattle.
Was probably a squirrel or a racoon, but it could have been a literal zombie sasquatch demon. Yeah you never know and that is some scary shit.
@@Maj0rFloaterYou didn't let it remain a mystery. Smh
I love love love that you show such a perfect example and stay true by not telling us what it is. You have more integrity than Amazon 😅
Must've been the wind.
@@Maj0rFloater OMG, are you Jeff Bezos?
"Turns it from Poetry to meaningless exposition" is such a good summary of why shows like this are awful.
For the record, he said "mediocre" exposition 😉 6:23
It's the one phrase that stuck with me also.
No. It's not. That phrase doesn't mean anything. It's another bullshit way to tap into the popular backlash against a show and get some clicks without specifying what about it is not good.
@@hawkname1234 Why do you think it doesn't mean anything? The information contained in the sentence is very clear and straight forward: where there was poetry (artfully applied language) in the original, there's just a badly written, uninspired exposition dialog instead. There's nothing meaningless and bullshitty in it as far as I can tell.
@@hawkname1234 Oh look, the 'modern audience' just showed up.
@@hawkname1234 Of course it means something. If you have an actual counterargument, put at least some effort into articulating it. If you're just gonna derail legitiamte criticism, then go away.
They lost me at "Galadriel jumps from a ship in the middle of the ocean and randomly meets shipwrecked Sauron on a raft"
They lost me at the stupid snow troll haha
@@brendancross8793 What's stupid about a snow troll? Tolkien mentioned them in his writing. If you don't like it, go watch something else.
@@hawkname1234 There's pretty much to not like in rop don't try to defend it
@@hawkname1234white knight for Amazon spotted 😂
@@hawkname1234 How silly the battle was and how all these elves die but tiny Galadriel just girlbosses it.
The Nameless Things concept reminds me of my favorite scene in Andor (Season 1) *spoiler alert* where Bix Caleen is tortured by being made to listen the recorded trauma-inducing death cries of an alien race. The Imperial interrogator, Dr. Gorst, first gives a chilling explanation to Bix of what she's about to hear before a pair of headphones are placed on her. Bix's brow tightens and her breath quickens before she begins to scream in agony, but the audience can't hear what she is hearing -- we are left entirely to our imaginations. Genius.
great example, i found that scene to be quite terrifying and it's one of the many reasons i think andor is an anomaly in current star wars media
Andor stands head and shoulders above, well, everything in the sci-fi/fantasy genre
From the sound of it, it might be based on the Norris & Bittaker tape, an actual recording two serial killers had of one of their killings. The CIA uses it as part of their training to desensitize their recruits, and no full version of the audio exists for public access - just the thought of it fills you with dread and morbid curiosity of what it sounds like.
@@SwitchbackCh I'd guess it was inspired by a scene in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Herzog is filmed listening in horror to a recording of Treadwell's death, but Herzog does not use any of the audio in the documentary. (This wouldn't be the only time Herzog would pointedly refrain from ripping a veil off a mystery, of course.)
Absolutely! Even if they tried to show us, it wouldn't live up to expectation. The mystery is part of why I watch LoTR over and over
This reminds me about this video essay about cthulhu in video games, & how it concluded that "If you're giving him a HP bar you're doing it wrong"
I get this argument, but on Cthulhu case, he's a public domain character, so he has more chances of having a good adaptation than lord of the rings prequels (the ones that can be adapted), as they have to abide by the studio that paid for it's rights.
When I read LotR for the first time, I watched the trailer for Fellowship while I was only a few chapters in. The two moments I remember most clearly were "one does not simply walk into Mordor" (because of the meme) and a fleeting glimpse of a Nazgul. It was just a blur of black cloak on horseback, no clear figure or face, but somehow, it struck terror into my heart. From then on, when I read the book, when the Nazgul appeared or were even just mentioned, even now as I write this, I actually shivered.
When I saw the movies last year, I remember the pure, all consuming dread and fear I felt when I first saw them charging from their stronghold--faceless, immovable, compassionless, and relentless. They weren't people who could be reasoned with or understood or undermined, outfought or outwitted. They were a force of nature, a seemingly unstoppable force. There was no clear way the little hobbits would escape them, and for much of the series, the best they can do is hide from them or scare them off for a time. For the rest of the series, every time the Nazgul appeared, by some instinct, I shrank back as far back into my seat as I could.
While I agree with your assessment, I would also like to point out that many of these things, such as the backstory of Numenor, Valinor, etc, were described in detail by Tolkien in the Silmarillion and other works. So many of these things are actually explained by Tolkien and not left as a mystery. However, the show does seem to dumb down these things and makes them seem much less fantastical.
But, for me, that is exactly why I liked Silmarrillion less than most of Tolkien's other work. Too 'explainatory'.
@@DreadX10 it definitely does feel like a history book in some parts. But really it’s a collections of short stories, rather than a proper narrative novel. Some of the stories are better than others, in my opinion.
The silmarilion uses such poetic language and is so vague it feels more like reading Homer’s take on Troy than a history book on Troy and that makes all the difference. It feels more like a book of collected legends that would exist in an elven library than a scholarly collection of facts. Even though it’s written like “and then this happened” you’re like ok so what does it even mean to sing something into being.
@@Jeremy-d7i agreed. It’s like reading a collection of myths.
Tolkien never intended The Silmarilion to be published. The published work we have today was put together by his son from a collections of notes and hand written stories. JRRT had almost 20 years after LOTR to do this himself but he never did. He intended the backstory to remain a mystery.
you didn't conclude with "and that is why Rings of Power isn't a fantasy", you left it to our imaginations.
It’s in the bloody title
@@spnhm34nope. It’s not fantasy… it all in your head…
@@spnhm34 It's a joke. If you understood the video, you'd get it...
@@gomezthechimp1116 I'm curious, what makes you think he didn't get it?
No he didnt't. Maybe you missed the title. Here I'll quote it for you: "Rings Of Power Isn't Fantasy"
RoP seems intent on reducing whatever grand themes are in Tolkien's novels down into something more relatable, to make them more "reflective of our world". This only has the effect of stripping them of what makes them magical and wonderous, leaving only what is mundane and boring.
the thing is. it doesnt even reflect the real world either. in fact every book thats written whatever fiction it has always a resemble of the real world. this is why it makes it compelling. a good story has always a good reflection in parts of reality. problem here is that the show is made by people who cant produce a story, incert, lazy writing brimmed with narcissism and sitcom drama. the once single houswives watches.
@@dendrien are you a bot? I have seen you post this multiple times now, to people who are critical of the show.
@@A-Mor-Graal dendrien's point is completely valid though. If something isn't relevant it becomes trivial, and Lord of the Rings and it's lore is relevant, at least for me, because it it focuses on the weaknesses, tempations and corruptions of power. Tolkien did this by refining and reworking already existing myths. However, if the story isn't told in a way that focuses on the greater themes, it becomes inert, stale and ultimately irrelevant.
What's worse: a kindergarten level parody of our world
@@A-Mor-Graal Well of course you have to make it believable in some way, even if it's fiction, in order to immerse the audience. And therefore you must include some real world elements. But a good author is still able to transport them out of this world and into another. The writers of this series are obviously not good authors.
This sounds like a good answer in general, but I'm not sure it applies to Tolkien. His Silmarillion and appendices do go into some detail, and with e.g. the biography of Aldarion we do have a reasonably detailed short-story taking place in Numenor. Maybe it's about striking the right balance; when Tolkien's narrative leads us into Tirion or Numenor, it just leaves other things mysterious, like Valmar or the early kingdom of Elros. If Tolkien answers questions, he poses new ones. RoP only answers questions.
I think it still applies. People keep saying Silmarillion as a counterpoint, but its also one of the lesser beloved books out of the big ones, if we count LotR as one, and Hobbit as the other. The book that does too much explaining was less loved, relatively.
@@Pangora2 Thank you. There's a reason why _The Silmarillion_ has a reputation as a tough(er) read.
The Silmarillion wasn't finished and didn't meet (and probably never could meet) Tolkien's standards for a published work.
My biggest issue with it is the fact that even if the producers didn’t have access to the parts of Tolkien’s writing that they are going from they still thought it was a good idea. They didn’t have access to books like the Silmarinion which cover this part in the history, since the people in charge of Tolkien’s works wouldn’t give it to them, they still have access to the lord of the rings books (since Peter Jackson got to use it for his movies) but they barley mention anything about this time period except for a tiny bit in the end of the 3rd book.
You make a perfectly valid point in saying that The Rings of Power leaves very little to the imagination : it’s a problem that extends, today, to pop culture and IP entertainment as a whole. And I find it cool that you mention the “nameless things” : the greatest parts indeed lie in the details (and the way we fill the gaps ourselves).
But I think your arguments are weakened by two things :
- You give no definition or context for fantasy as a genre, so you establish no solid ground to explain why something is fantasy or not. You just stick to “fantasy = leaving things to the imagination”. And although it’s certainly a part of it (or at least some of its subgenres, others are way more “concrete”), it’s certainly not what defines it. Leaving things to the imagination is a quality for any creation in any genre, especially horror, thrillers, romance, mysteries, etc., etc.
- Tolkien didn’t consider himself a fantasy writer. He rejected the label, which was very closely connected to pulp magazines and authors like Robert Howard. Tolkien considered himself a historian or an archivist of Middle Earth : his aim was to create mythology, not fantasy. The mythology, he thought, England didn’t have. So to say, he created LOTR as a scholar, not a poet : creating very specific and precise knowledge about Middle Earth and its myths was more important than encouraging people to come up with their own lore (hence the never ending volume of literature that keeps coming up based on what he left behind). Of course, as you said, he left certain things to the imagination sometimes, and there certainly was a poet somewhere inside him (you don’t create Beren & Luthien without the soul of a poet). But that certainly wasn’t “the” thing that defined his approach of what Middle Earth is.
I get that it’s difficult to be seen on youtube, and that a title like “Rings of Power isn’t fantasy” is perhaps more likely to catch attention. But I’m sure you can have titles that catch attention without being so far-fetched. Rings of Power, as you said, doesn't really care about Tolkien's real approach : it's just interested in awkwardly compressing its lore into a D&D-friendly shape. Rings of Power is fantasy, and that's precisely the problem. On top of being bad fantasy :)
I agree with most of your points, and Tolkien himself stated that his primary drive for writing LOTR was to give life and history to his languages.
But he also wrote the essay "On Fairy-Stories" and very clearly speaks about Fantasy (with some redefining).
He may not have liked the way it was used by his contemporaries. But I think it's okay to call him a Fantasy author
It's a television programme, the very thing that the old adage "show don't tell" was meant for. If you hide things your audience won't be happy. If you show everything your audience won't be happy.
I think you need to distinguish between writing and screenwriting, but that's only my personal opinion. You are correct, of course.
@@MrRosebeing a film can "show not tell" in many ways. Acting is am incredibly subtle art, or should be. Rewatch Boromirs death, when Legolas and Gimli arrive. Not a word is spoken, no explanation of grief, no words of comfort, confusion, or explanation. They stand, silent. Aragon makes a small comment, and then the film moves on.
And yet it is one of the most potent, emotion filled and subtle character interactions of cinema.
That's how films and T.V. can "show not tell".
@@MrRosebeing I also immediately realized I missread your post. My apologies. XD I thought you were saying tv has to "tell" the audience.
@@TheEarlofBronze1 Yup ! And as you say, he was using the word in a very different way than what we've been, since, labelling as a very codified genre (Conan, Elric, D&D, etc.). For a very long time now, "fantasy" has come to designate something he defintely didn't recognize himself into
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Cheers.
I guess Lovecraft didn't know any black people.
He feared them
@@Zhohan- he basicly didnt, dude wouldnt leave his house cause he was petrified of almost everything.
@@Zhohan- I think he was friends with one, actually. One of those, "YOU'RE one of the good ones" guy.
Lovecraft did a total 360 on any misguided views later in life, he notes how he deeply regretted ever thinking that way.
Another reason why it's not fantasy, is that it's so ádapted for modern audiences', that it's basically showing you life as we know it, but wearing different clothes and in a location we've not seen before. It's spoonfeeding modern issues, under the guise of fantasy.
This. It's exactly this. And with our society changing so rapidly, Rings of Power will have an obsolete and hopefully even unrecognisable society/culture in a generation or two. Meanwhile, the Lord of the Rings is timeless, and could still be recounted thousands of years from now.
Game of Thrones had a very diverse cast, and Rings of Power could have had one that works. But for that, they would have had to show us Rhûn as a Middle-Eastern country and the Southlands as one predominantly inhabited by darker-skinned people. No issue with that. The thought that an isolated tribal society like the fake Hobbits in RoP would manage to stay diverse over generations, is absolutely laughable. Even if you start out with a diverse population, within a few generations, they'd all look alike in skin tone. What they ended up with, is a world that looks the same everywhere, with no distinguishable features.
@@hansimaier01 Agreed, GoT handles diversity in a way that makes sense geographically in the world. RoP just checks the box.
what contradicts this statement about the ¨ modern audience¨ is the fact it has always bin for the modern audience. since the first lord of the rings play on the novel, to the movies its all at some point bin made for the modern audience. the books were written almost a 100 years ago. the problem isnt the modern audience since that same audience wants authenticity with the mix of mystery and removal from your dayli life. everything that Amazone didnt provide. modern audience is one of the dumber takes meant to be an excuse for idiots. if you gonna talk about the modern audience, than you also need to explain who is the modern audience. the show was an attempt on a cash grab with the least amount of effort by narcissistic people.
In a way, that can also be fantasy as you describe it. In fact, there is a lot of fantasy that is set in our modern world or set in a futuristic version of us, but set a long time ago...
Of course, the main issue as he mentions is that RoP lacks the imagination to set it apart from that, which is the issue.
0:32 "There might be some light spoilers for season 2" - Pffft! Can't imagine you spoiling it any more than it already is.
The most potent fantasy, is that generated by the reader's own mind. Tolkien understood this well from telling stories to his own children - what child has not been afraid of the monster under the bed or what happens in the wardrobe. Tolkien imbued his world with an historical and fantastical 3d quality into which the reader's mind could expand. But that was build around a practical everyday framework, fantasy really has to have that practical grounding, or it does not work - those monsters have to appear to be part of everyday. The problem with ROP is that that it is so clunking, as if designed on a spreadsheet by accountants. Despite the money spent on it, it still looks cheap and unimaginative as if they cannot expand beyond being a poor copy of the Jackson template (one I was not that keen on). I could go on - enough.
A counterpoint to your last bit: if Tolkien wanted Numenor and Valinor to be a mystery then he probably wouldn't have described them himself in great detail in his books. There are maps of Numenor drawn by his hand, and a big chunk of The Silmarillion takes place in Valinor at the peak of its glory. Those were very much physical places, though for the characters in The Lord of the Rings they are almost mythical (a benefit to having your story span two giant continents and many thousands of years, something Amazon writers don't get because they have to compress everything for convenience).
To me personally the question is more whether those places are possible to film in a satisfactory way, and so if they SHOULD be filmed. Rivendell and Lorien feel a bit like glimpses into a different universe in Peter Jackson's films (as they should), but they are supposed to be but a shadow of what Valinor under the light of the Two Trees was. Having a yellow filter and some generic pretty CGI in the background doesn't do it justice, so showing it doesn't achieve much beyond ruining the mystery.
The idea people have that LotR is the definitive tale of Arda and everything else is unnecessary backstory is baffling to me
This person knows what they are talking about.
Not only in The Silmarillion but even an entire dedicated book The Fall of Númenor.
I felt they did a decent enough job with Valinor ironically because they did the exact thing the video accuses them of not doing eg mostly leaving it to the imagination. Sure they show the trees and some children playing but thats it really.
Well said. It's funny, to me it might have been okay to settle for the CGI if the rest of it had been given any heart -- for me, the actors and their costuming are what killed it. Everyone elvish gives off weird, emotionally sterile religious vibes, and the sets and people of Numenor remind me of the way I've felt while watching low-budget historical films from the 60s 😅
Here's my question though: if we should not be showing things like Numenor at its prime or Valinor (Undying Lands) or the Two Trees in a Middle Earth show that's aimed to expand on and explore the background stories of either the Second Age or the First Age because it might "tear down the mysteries that are better off if left untouched", how do we make an on-screen adaptation of those stories (especially if you want cover relatively the majority of its history)? There are major events and objects that you simply can't circumvent when you try to adapt a particular story (like if you want to tell a story on the rise and falls of Sauron during the Second Age, you can't avoid showing his relationship with Numenor), and if you address them too briefly, it just leaves too many key information gaps to fill.
Unless the argument here is that stories of the First Age and Second Age should never and can't ever be adapted because it will always ruin the myths, I don't see how one can make these adaptations without lifting the curtains for these shrouded past stories.
You missed the part where he mentioned that RoP does not create any new myths. It is only exposing what we heard from LOTR without itself having it's own myths. Perhaps if there were references in RoP on things or places prior the the first age, it would the stand up on its own feet in terms of fantasy
The issue is simple and twofold : Simple Version : Amazon created this show for money, not out of passion.
Longer version : 1) The rights that Amazon acquired don't actually allow for RoP to craft a story directly adapted from the LoTR. They acquired TV rights to LoTR and The Hobbit so they can only use the Hobbit/Trilogy/Appendices and to the best of my understanding, nothing from The SIlmarillion, etc. So they are tiptoeing around actual events that may have allowed for a more true adaptation. 2) With the constraints they have, they would have needed Peter Jackson++ level of desire and passion to craft a good-to-great story.
It's not to say it was an impossible task but they were definitely starting from below 0 and basically are constantly having to check with the Tolkien-estate about what they can and cannot do. I read somewhere that they got the go-ahead on certain items/references outside of the main trilogy/Hobbit + appendices. A passionate group of writers/directors could have made it work, to be sure, but I think they lack that. And I am sure there's a ton of problems from Amazon executives forcing decisions here and there. Not trying to give them a pass, they botched the job, but just want to point out that this very likely was always going to fail because it's a cash grab and not a passion project.
As a fake-documentary with mythic inspired animation in an exotic and archaic style
@@602mucca2 why wouldn't they just pay for Silmarillion? Cost too much?
@@ryhmorhazthe estate doesn’t want to sell it.
I mean, readers/watchers do want *some* explanations. We don't want mystery boxes. Creators need to carefully choose what to explain and what to leave for the imagination. Maybe we need the feeling that the world is coherent, and there are answers to be found. Maybe we need a sense of trust in the author. We trust that Tolkien could easily tell us more about the nameless things, were he so inclined.
I think we need the questions to *matter* before we get the answer. Nobody cares about how Han Solo got his name or his dice. But Gollum's backstory is very relevant for our understanding of him, the ring, and Frodo's situation.
You are taking the author seriously, it what was very much a bad-faith essay to tap into organized campaigns against the show.
@@hawkname1234 Not sure what you're going for. I very much doubt that this video was made in bad faith. And I really really doubt there was any kind of organized campaign. RoP is the new thing so many people are talking about it now. Sure it may look organized if many are coming to the same conclusion. Or the show really is bad, and lots of people recognize that.
@@hawkname1234 Its weird you people cant grasp the fact that maybe the show is just bad. There is no organization campaigning on bashing this show.
This isn’t related to the topic of this video at all, but I was really struck by how bad the sound design is in some of the episodes. There’s one scene where two guys are talking in the middle of a busy fishing village, and there conversation is the ONLY audio. We see people moving around in the background, but aside from their talking, there is zero noise. It’s jarring and bad, we should be getting noise from the many things happening in the background. There’s another scene where some highway robbers are chopping down trees to build a fire, and the sound effect of the ax hitting the trunk is so quiet, it feels almost comical. The sound design is so ridiculously low key that it’s distracting. I contrast the tree scene in RoP with the “Back on the Menu” scene in Two Towers, where the sound effects of the Orcs chopping up trunks sounds really crisp, and works perfectly with the pacing and flow of the scene.
Imagine if Robert Frost wrote a sequel to his classic poetic masterpiece "The Road Not Taken" called "Oh By the Way, Here's What Was Down the Other Road."
One of the best takes on RoP I've seen. A while back I had the same thought about the pitfalls of "demythologizing" the history of middle-earth. I tried explaining it to my friends, but I couldn't articulate it properly. You've described it bang on in this video. Awesome work!
To paraphrase Voltaire, "If you want to bore someone, tell them everything".
Numenor has the same problem as Atlantis: no feasible reality could match the grandeur of the myth. You can't film the Silmarillion because TV characters behaving in that mythic mode would quickly become tedious, but to make them more human would collapse the magic. The whole project was misguided from the start.
I also think that needing to explain everything rather than leaving it to imagination (as in Gandalf's "nameless things" speech) is partly down to an internet age in which fans can more easily discuss things. I believe that if he were writing LOTR now, Tolkien would have left out those vague allusions because they make no real sense and would have been challenged (how can those things be older than Sauron without being Ainur themselves?). Which would have been our loss, because that passage is one of the most world-expanding in the whole story.
They do make sense and authors regularly carried out correspondance with other authors about their books about questions just like that, the internet being around wouldn’t have changed that
@@roarbertbearatheon8565 Not sure if this is what you mean, but Tolkien's letters show he quite often thought of the reason behind something only after a reader asked about it, which shows he didn't always think everything through before he wrote it. Nor, probably, was he expecting readers to ask about such things (he frequently expressed surprise that they should take such an interest). I doubt many writers today, who know they can be contacted easily by email or social media, would leave anything to chance like that, especially when fans can chat about possible plot holes.
As for making sense, how could the "nameless things" Gandalf talks about be older than Sauron, if he has been around since before the world was made?
@@bryanwigmore7224 I highly doubt Tolkien only thought about details in his story after someone asked a question about it
@@roarbertbearatheon8565 Have you read his letters?
"You can't film the Silmarillion because TV characters behaving in that mythic mode would quickly become tedious, but to make them more human would collapse the magic."
I disagree. Silmarillion evles were much more human. They were no some kind of fading overworldy mythic beings. They were much more like characters of "Game of thrones": with inner strife and intrigues.
I think you may be undervaluing the power of execution as well. You demonstrate their lackluster execution when you point out their depiction and execution of the nameless thing. Yes, absolutely there should be some mystery left within the world, but you can satisfyingly pull the curtain back as well...but they are not doing that. Minas Tirith was 1000x the spectacle of Numinor, because it was built up and executed well. But the executions in the Rings of Power are just consistently really really really bad or at least lackluster. And the only thing worse than revealing a mystery is slaying a mystery by revealing it to be something lame.
Good point. As someone who hasn't read LOTR in a long time, I didn't even realize the worm had any sort of relevance. I just thought it was a random plot point that could've been left out with no relation to the text.
@@Ryan_heyhonestly, I think that's probably still the case. The writers said, "We need something to happen here. Oh hey, remember that random monster that tried to kill Frodo? Let's make up a weird new monster." ...Actually they probably just thought of the Princess Bride and made a worm of unusual size.
I disagree with your point that Númenor should be left unshown. In theory, you are right, RoP adapts LotR (as it only has the rights to it), which does not feature Númenor in detail. However, Tolkien's other works, most notably The Silmarillion, does. Tolkien intended to provide a more detailed version of Númenor, even if he didn't manage to publish it in his lifetime. In an ideal world, where the showmakers would have the rights to The Silmarillion, you would be completely wrong: showing Númenor on the screen would be no larger sin than showing Gondor or the Shire. Whether it was the right choice to do so with only a few poems and the LotR appendices is up for debate. One thing is certain, you cannot adapt the Second Age without Númenor.
This is such a solid insight! While I watch this show and enjoy some aspects, I have to mentally separate it from the LOTR movies and books because it is simply not even close to the same genre or quality. Those films feel transcendent to me while this show just feels……like a show. What stood out to me the most was how mysterious, ethereal, and regal the elves are in the films, even though Legolas is sometimes goofy. In RoP, they just feel like humans with pointy ears, which I think has to do with the way it’s written, directed, and produced.
Exactly. Of course it won't be as well regarded as the original Trilogy but maybe, if they take the right criticism to heart, it can be better regarded, in time, than the Hobbit trilogy which largely sought to do the same thing as the show: to expand the universe. If they focus on tangible things like the fall of Numenor and *how* Sauron used the rings to corrupt, it could be largely an interesting take on Tolkien's work. If they go the route of 'who were the Nazgul' or 'actually Sauron was with cahoots with the nameless things' or whatever route it very well could go... much less so. Let the myth come to life, and let the mystery remain a mystery.
6:47 this begs the question of whether there should be a 2nd age adaptation in the first place.
Tolkien did not publish the Similarian. So maybe not. On the other hand I think the children of hurin could work.
There should be because it's art and some of us want to enjoy it.
For those of you who only want to intensely hate it, I don't know why you keep hanging around.
@@AnnoyingCritic-is7rp He wanted it Published. The problem is that the Silm is not a singular narrative: it is more like The Bible, a compliation of different narratives spanning a long period.
@@englishlady9797
It would make a terrible work of modern dramatic fiction. It's nearly all passive, in the third person. There's little dialogue.
It's a great reference but you can't really use it as a basis for modern fiction.
@@hawkname1234
I think it's a question of literary criticism. So you say that this should not be done because it violates this rule of literary criticism more film criticism. What we personally may or may not like is not relevant It's how we can articulate criticism.
I really enjoy your analyses, but I think this is a gray (grey) area: a spectrum between explaining everything and an endless series of unexplained images and experiences. Tolkien himself often goes back to explain and unpack mysterious events or things just glimpsed. The Lord of the Rings itself is an explanation and deeper dive into that funny magic ring in the Hobbit. The appendices wallow in explanatory detail.
The trick, I think, is that as you explain (or fill in gaps or backstory or what happened after), you provide additional richness and depth to stimulate imagination and curiosity (and to make multiple viewings more enjoyable).
Exactly. Tolkien loved going back and explaining more things and adding detail.
But I think your explanation actually defeats the grey area. After Hobbit, LotR vastly expanded the number and depth of the world's mysteries. RoP simply goes back to known mysteries, elaborates on them, and adds nothing else new.
Imagine if LotR started in the Shire, they went to the Misty Mountains, and found a lava pit in the mountain to drop the ring into. Nothing about that fallen kingdom to the south, Rohan or Gondor, Moria or Mordor. Questions were answered and more were brought forth.
@0:53 is a true work of art man i appreciate you for making that scene 😂
Great video. It's amazing how one line (yours about the nameless things underground) can stick with us for so long. I haven't read the books in decades but still remember the line about Sam seeing a star above the clouds... "For there was light and high beauty forever beyond its (evil/darkness) reach."
First rule of a good writer: never show the monster. Because if you show the monster it will stop frightening you.
Have you seen "The Thing"?
@@eran3161 Yep. It's a masterpiece, but not because of the monster, and that's why you can show it. And even then the mutations are rarely showed like it should be.
@@eran3161 "The Thing" is scariest when the viewer is wondering "Who?".
bro 3:08 wtf you earned my sub with that image :)))
same same same
@@roryasrorri701 Yep. Came to ost the same thing. Genuinely made me lol 😂
same
great sense of humor
sealed the deal for me too
Who's that?
While I can agree with most of what he laid out. Nothing he mentioned disqualifies RoP from being a Fantasy, so his central thesis was just essentially ‘clickbait’. You can be fantasy and answer questions, even ones that may not need an answer.
I’m really enjoying Rings of Power. I see it is an adaptation, not “the definitive version”. It’s Amazon playing around in the IP and telling an entertaining story. Is it perfect? No. Is it enjoyable? I think so.
I’ve always liked the “unreliable narrator” take on people who do remakes or prequels. It’s one persons vision - but the only TRUE definitive version comes from the creator, who has been dead longer than I’ve been alive.
Although the point of the video that fantasy is empowered by the mysterious, the unexplained and by better fuel for imagination is great to keep in mind, it's a very poor base to claim RoP is not fantasy. It's basically a _No true Scotsman_ applied to genre analysis; "X is not good enough for my idealized idea of Y, therefore I'll change the definition of Y for a more narrow version that purposely excludes X." Fantasy _should_ invite imagination, but some fantasy is just bad at it. But it's still fantasy.
there are hundreds of thousands of badly written, poorly defined fantasy books. that doesn't make them not fantasy. He could just say its bad fantasy and leave it at that.
@@Zectifin my point exactly.
But that would not generate lots of views and youtube money from disgruntled lotr fans.
THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!
@@RealCodreX Yea, I wanted to say that too but seemed a bit more agressive 😅. This title seems certainly more clickbaity.
@@Zectifin Ah but you see the internet ragebait can only continue if you make ever more extreme claims in regards to the latest target of said ragebait.
Based on this argument, the Silmarillion isn't fantasy either. It explains most if not all the mysteries and fables hinted at in the Hobbit and the LotR trilogy. I think the RoP isn't a very good story for the reasons cited, but I can't say it's not fantasy.
Bravo. I am a psychotherapist who has studied the psychological dimensions of myth and stories for decades. Thank you! I fear your important perspective is quickly getting lost. Keep up the good work!
I don't think the pulling-back of curtains is strictly a sin. We get a decent idea of Nûmenor and parts of Valinor from Tolkien's other writings anyway. But if you are going to do that, you must do it at least as well as the movies (or, given their budget, hopefully better), and needless to say they have broadly failed at this. Turning myth into "Meh!" is definitely a sin, unless mayhaps there are goats involved.
Problems is they don't add enough behind it. After you pull back one curtain there should be more curtains. Instead here, they pulled back the curtain and its a rock wall. LotR, coming from The Hobbit, pulled back several curtains and added countless more to such a degree it became the classic it is.
@@Pangora2 What an awesome perspective to counter all the "NO! You CAN show everything!" responses to the video.
Perhaps it's not your intention, but you've sold me on skipping the rest of RoP. I watched season one but didn't take much from it -- but you make great points that they might be taking something from us and Tolkein's own vision. I'm fine with missing that.
That's absolutely right. It's far from enjoyable and it's not worth wasting time on.
Welcome to Sanctuary, weary traveler. RoP can't hurt you here.
I gave season 2 a chance out of blind hope, which was almost immediately crushed. I'm glad to know that you won't make my mistake...
Season 2 is great. But you should skip it, with all these other weak-minded people for whom it is (for some reason!) important to evangelize that this show has sinned against the Creator (though they cannot specify the reason without contradicting Tolkien's words and actions, it seems).
@@hawkname1234 Please re-define your standards for "great" because you couldn't be any further off for using that word to describe Season 2.
It hasn't sinned against Tolkien? Two words: *orc family*
But please, tell me how in the *HELL* do you find this show enjoyable if you like the Lord of the Rings? The problem is this show doesn't have characters. It has plot devices with dialogue.
Nobody in this show is a character outside of Durin and maybe Elrond. Everyone else is literally a shell of nothingness that simply acts the same way for 9 hours of content and gets told by the plot what to do.
3:50 If you don't think a movie can leave things up to the imagination, you haven't watched a truly good horror movie.
So true, nothing ruins a horror movie more then revealing the monster. All the magic is instantly lost
That's how I felt about Barbarian, interest wss lost once they showed the "threat"
The Art Of Overthinking. As you briefly pointed out, there’s an amazing oil painting for nearly every moment “left to imagination”. The narrative is just another one of those oil paintings and it’s there to give context to the montage of oil paintings you’re about to look at, almost like what happens in your brain when reading the source material. The show is doing exactly what you’re saying, it’s literally “Hey I have a bunch of money, let me show you what I imagined all this stuff to be like” and that’s the fun of it. It’s not the best interpretation of his work, but neither are a lot of those oil paintings (lol). However, like most of those oil paintings, it’s still fun to look at, and further more I wouldn’t refrain from calling them “fantasy” art just because it depicts a scene that should be “left to imagination.”
"All about answering questions, qu-" my brain was so triggered, well-played, sir, lol
I like your commentary on the characters speaking about unknowable things.
This is very true. And it adds to the lore when we hear them talk about things in their world which sometimes, we never get to see.
It's kind of the same way we should never see the face of Master Chief.
Some things are best left a mystery or legend.
What you didnn't do, at any point, is explain what fantasy is or isn't. I do sense your point, because there are a couple of books that I think capture the "magic" (my word) like 'The Last Unicorn'. I actually think you have it entirely backwrds. It's not the mystery that makes fantasy. . It's the deatils: the world building and the getting to actually truly feel you know something that is different. Indeed it does require that contrast of the mysterious, but that is not the core of fantasy.
That's a pretty good indication that this video essay was done **entirely in bad faith**.
The vid wasn't done in bad faith and it gets close an answer. The world building makes fantasy---yes, But you don't reveal all you know in your story. You say enough so the reader senses the vast amount that you are not saying. The writers of this show are simply filling in Tolkien's gaps without adding anything new beneath their answers. Their answers are almost always bad---that's what makes it bad fantasy. But its the fact that there is nothing new added beneath the surface that makes it not fantasy at all.
@@hawkname1234I don't think the whole thing is, but the title is most definitely inaccurate and lazy clickbait
*has orc welfare*
Now This is Fantasy!
Just sayin’: The word ‘Mediterranean’ means “middle Earth”. 200,000 years ago our world was populated by multiple humanoid species: Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisova, Homo floresiensis (the so-called Hobbits), Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, Homo sapiens. Tolkien’s world of many humanoid species kinda did exist.
But what makes it fantasy is that there are magical powers and people. I assume the Neanderthals did not have any magic rings or cloaks.
@@Klee99zeno …that we know of!
Mediterranean doesn’t mean Middle-Earth, it comes from Latin “mar mediterraneus” which means inland sea
@@lucasmuniz5263 I think we'll have to agree to disagree. In many ancient cultures, the word for "land" and "the earth" were the same word; Latin is one example: terra can mean both "land" and "earth". No matter where an ancient culture was located though, they often referred to their territory as "the middle" of the world. For example in Norse mythology, Midgard was the "middle enclosure"; in ancient China, Zhōngguó (中國) meant "the middle kingdom". No matter where a people lived, they called their part of the world "the middle".
Certainly "mediterraneus" can be translated as "inland" (especially once the people of Rome were more educated about the larger world), but mediterraneus can also be translated as "the middle of the earth" -- the latter being more closely aligned with how people who lived in that era probably perceived themselves within the larger world. For them, the Mediterranean was the middle of the Earth, literally.
This is off topic somewhat, but it's a similar concept: ancient civilizations also often referred to their own people via their word for "people", because foreigners weren't "people". If you & I were living thousands of years ago in an ancient civilization, we would refer to ourselves as "the people" who live "in the middle", and everybody else was a non-person who lived somewhere outside the middle. There are exceptions to this in various parts of the world obviously, but it was a commonplace conception in ancient cultures: you and I are "people" who live in "the middle".
Haha I delayed watching this until I could finish the season. I felt guilty because I really want to support this channel. Looks like this vid did just fine without me. 😂
One of the driving forces of a reader's interest for Lord of the Rings is the fact that many mysteries will be eternally unexplained. Any explanation died along with Tolkien himself.
We'll never know Tolkien's final answer for where Orcs go when they die, because Tolkien never satisfactorily explained it. The mystery will remain, and so will the reader's interest in the question.
I agree that Rings of Power does more harm than good answering those "unexplainable" questions. It feels insincere because it doesn't come from the author, and boring because the mystery is gone.
theres a rule of thumb in a good story. show and dont tell. the adapation has everything to talk about, but nothing to show. Tolkien never intended to answer everything nor does the audience want it either. problems here were priorities. such as explaining mithril which is, well who asked? or godamn bombadil whom first of, the worst type of character you really could involve in a show regardless how you made him out to be unless it would particular targed for dumb kids. cus thats tommy boy was made for. theres hell alot of the tolkien world you could adapt to, could work with but no. examples the easterlings a story about them without the need to know of their origins cus not everything needs an origin thats the problem.
We also don't know what happened to the hobbits at the end of the story; they just sailed off into the sunset, gone forever.
If you consider the Silmarillion to be canon and a reliable in-universe source, the Orcs would go to Mandos after death.
Does not change anything though since Mandos is just as unreachable and mysterious.
@@spacejunk2186 Silmarillion IS canon by definition. it isnt a consideration. it is perhaps yours only. Mandos is the afterlife. its neither hell or heaven. it is where all creation eventually end up in. this is based on tolkiens own writings and his own personal statement.
Unexplained mysteries are the "driving forces of a reader's interest for Lord of the Rings" for absolutely zero people. There's no reason to believe such a ridiculous claim.
You don't make a case that Rings of Power isn't fantasy. You do make a case that it's bad fantasy. I'm sure you're right about that. But it's still fantasy.
He actually made a very compelling case. I'm sorry that you are unable to see that.
It might be more apt to say Rings of Power does not invite fantasy, so while it has the necessary elements, it fails at what is one of fantasy’s most fundamental goals - drawing us into its world. Yes, if you want to be literal, it still technically fits the genre, but meaningfully, it misses the mark.
@@James_BeeI am sorey that you fail to understand that RoP, no matter how much you dislike it, is not reality. It is fiction! And fantasy at that!!
Nope
you are correct
I would say leaving things to the imagination is a hallmark of good storytelling, not just fantasy. All genres do it. For example in sci-fi, how technology works is often not explained in detail, and doing so can complicate things. Or in horror it would be strange to go in to detail about the backstory of every terrible creature. It is the function of fiction itself to leave interperetation to the reader.
I was expecting that this video title was more clickbait than content, but totally agreed with the conclusion.
You just explained something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around for ages
I think it's also because there is a pervasive hubris among a lot of modernists that THEY can do everything better than people in the past did things.
I think you’re missing some of the point. The Rings of Power is an adaptation of Tolkien’s writings about the Second Age. The source texts are fundamentally different in tone, style and theme from The Lord of the Rings, which is a novel. Have you read The Silmarillion? Or any of the Histories of Middle Earth as published and edited by Christopher Tolkien? What The Rings of Power is doing is providing a narrative context to crucial events of the Second Age. Where Tolkien is vague or obtuse, the show runners must imagine what is meant to the best of their ability. Any cinematic adaptation of these events is going to run into this issue. I think that’s what makes the show feel very lovingly rendered in my opinion, and a genuine interpretation of Tolkien’s works. I think that this very pretext is what makes the Rings of Power so fascinating and immersive. It is truly an adaptation, and a chance to be shown a vision of the second age, for which no traditional narrative was ever written. In this way The Rings of Power is not unlike Clash of the Titans, the Voyage of Sinbad, Troy, or Mulan. Because of the original text’s mythological, historical and omniscient perspective in imagining an entire history, a cinematic adaptation requires an imagined context to tableaux and stage the story for an audience in this manner.
Of course you don’t have to like the choices that are made. It’s interesting to me that so much of the comparison to Peter Jackson’s trilogy (3 of my favorite films of all time) revolve around those movies being a nearly 1 to 1 adaptation, which it obviously was not. But now people are saying that Jackson’s trilogy was better because it was more vague and suggestive in its references to the Middle Earth of the source material? I think this casting of Rings of Power as a contemporary sort of Marvelesque “this is how this happened” show is a bit disingenuous. If you are familiar with the source material you can see many choices that were made that are thoughtful and intentional in their subtlety. The architecture of Numenor being rooted in Byzantine and Persian references, suggesting an older world than the Italianate Minas Tirith in Jackson’s trilogy. The care in Arondir’s styling as opposed to the Elves of Lindon. How Sauron is envisioned to have risen to status as Annatar, after having deceived the Men of the East is particularly imaginative and interesting. These are all things that hadn’t yet been envisioned, even by Tolkien himself, and I find the show to be doing a more than adequate job.
My thoughts exactly, it's crazy to me how many people online seem to have a misapprehension of what the show fundamentally is.
Thank you for this, oh my gosh that was so well put.
3:00 thanks for the footage of you stopping to contemplate 😂
Articulate, concise, interesting, fun. Well done! Easiest sub. Thanks algorithm
I get what you mean, but I slightly disagree around 5:35. I don't mind showing ancient mysteries or lore revealed, just as long as they're either entertaining or actually fit along with the story/worldbuilding. Yes modern shows use ancient mystery as pointless empoison, but that's more of a recent problem. I've seen plenty of fanwork and fanart for years that show and depict Middle-Earth pre third age and some are just as good as the Jackson Trilogy.
By the way when a monster shows up and one guy just managed to kill it on his own, it makes you wonder how that creature is still alive in a world filled with guys with swords and bows. The Archer who kills boromir is an even fight for aragorn, after all.
In fairness to Boromir and Aragorn, Uruk Hai are basically super soldiers compared to standard orcs. Something that Saruman was quite proud of.
In his book Which Lie Did I Tell?, William Goldman talks about the need for mystery, and not just in fantasy -- he cites both The Ghost & the Darkness and Shane: "The village is in trouble, [Shane] rides in, saves it, rides out. For that very great western [...] it is crucial that we know nothing about the guy. Ever."
Damn… actual good vid criticising rings of powers major weaknesses… I’m impressed
This was super interesting, I've never thought of fantasy as "what you hide in what you reveal", but it feels accurate
Nice analysis! My issue with Rings of Power, is there's no good or evil. Moral ambiguity. It's like a damn soap opera. Orcs can be decent people, and vice-versa. It's not a story about good and evil. It's a soap opera. Interesting, yet pointless.
Great summation of why Rings of Power is such a disaster. Speaking of SOLO, we didn't need an entire film to justify the mistake confusing a parsec as a unit of time instead of distance in A New Hope. Writers screw up sometimes. We were willing to let it go as something particular to a galaxy far far aways, but, no, they just couldn't let it go.
It can also be taken that Han Solo as a character, a swindler, lied. or got his braggadocio mixed up trying to impress his clients like a sleazy used car salesmans. But then making an entire movie to 'clarify' what a lie was, is actually worse in a way.
@@Pangora2 Precisely.
The very approach of explaining everything is anti-fantasy
I expected you to quote his "On fairy stories" essay, because he didn't just writte the Quintessential Fantasy story, he also wrote a textbook for it. The notion of "recovery" (recovering the fresh perspective you have when you discover something for the first time, like a child) is pretty relevant here
The member berries aren't "recovery" at all
So, all of Brandon Sanderson's novels where he goes into detail to explain how every magic system works like it's a video game?
@@incog.nyto. They are far more sci fi than they are fantasy...they are good old reliable pop fun, and I like them...but very little captures a sense of grandeur and wonder...even if Kaladin is fighting in the clouds in the middle of a mega storm for example. It's more hype than wonder.
@@incog.nyto. Why have you decided to equate the point made in the video that I followed, which doesn't talk about magic systems at all, about that subject only ?
You're totally off topic
The magic system is just one part of the world building, anyway, which itself is only one part of the story (the other two other ur-areas being character and plot; I guess) Plenty of room for mystery beyond that, though, in the case of sanderson's, he doesn't truly use it
@@Baamthe25th i struck a sensitive chord, did I?
@@incog.nyto. No, but feel free to think so
If that's such a common and cliché comeback, it's precisely because it's such an effective method for pretending you've got a point/are winning the argument, lol
Ooh, hard disagree. Leaving a thing unknown is the easiest thing in the world and doesn’t even relate to fantasy. The briefcase in pulp fiction.
I don’t think it’s an inherent positive, after all, think about the infamous mystery boxes of the sequel Star Wars trilogy.
And one of the great things about the lord of the rings is how rich the world feels because the author knew everything about it.
But I do understand the criticism of over explaining and agree with that.
Its not simply "leaving it unknown" you need to still have it exist and be relevant in the world. When the party travels south from Rivendell they briefly pass through a Kingdom's remains that everyone forgets. Leaving it fully unknown would be to simply not bring it up. This is before they even get to Moria. The book gives a few hints about the Kingdom, began with an H, I can't recall at this time, and then moves on. There's a balance that needs to apply.
It's probably good enough that the author understands and deeply feels the 'mysteries' -- the contents of the current mystery boxes aren't understood by their authors and often are just empty . . . .
You've perfectly summed up perfectly what's been vaguely bouncing around my mind recently. The over-explanation and harping upon details that these prequels and shows bank on erases the magic that lay the groundwork for a lush vast world. It's the same of our world, it carried more mystery and inspired dreams of exploration when we heard only whispers of distant lands and strange peoples. Now we can see everything on google earth. Maybe I'll start referring to these shows as "Google Earth Fantasy". lol
In a similar vein, I'd argue that what makes Elden Ring so interesting and captivating to so many people is the mystery of the setting and deep lore hidden in the game's writing. People love receiving some answers, but they also love to try to parse answers themselves. It fosters community engagement and conversation. When you find a small snippet of writing or come across an interesting piece of architecture, it makes you wonder about the history of this fantastical land.
5:30 This was a major drawback of 343's Halo games.
The Forerunners were a mystery, and once the mystery was explained it stopped being interesting.
At least you're not promoting the "Forerunners are humans" stuff.
I think it's important that mystery exists in fantasy but building your story around it often falls flat. If the goal of a story boils down to "what is even going on?" then the eventual revelation probably just ends with the reaction "o, okay, I guess that makes sense."
For all the unexplained elements in Tolkien's stories and all strange things they come across on their adventures, the ultimate goal is really straightforward, that grounds the story a lot.
@projectr9999 stuff? You mean the original lore?
@@projectr9999humans are forerunners. Rejecting that fundamental bedrock of the story was why 343 drifted into oblivion
Gandalf got Shadowfax in Edoras. It is explained in the books. Really fumbled the ending there ngl
I don't think the writers of RoP care about details like that unfortunately.
The most mysterious city I've ever had in fiction is from a small German Let's Player more than 10 years ago. He had a Let's Play in Minecraft world where he already build some stuff before starting that world. And then he always hinted at the city Emlomaar which is in another part of the world. He even had a seven part series called "the journey to Emlomaar", where he walked along the road to that city. To me this takes up the same space as Atlantis does for other people. For some reason seeing the very crude Minecraft beta city that consists of a few houses didn't spoil it to me.
I feel the same about the Star Wars prequels. Like in the original the force was this mysterious thing that we only ever really got small glimpses of. Every episode there was something new the force could do. Like we can only begin to imagine what was possible in the days of the old republic. And then when we get the prequels they don't really do anything with the force that wasn't already in the movies, they just do the same 4 or 5 things with greater frequency and skill. Like the Force is literally the power to do anything so long as you believe you can, and the best anyone can think of in a whole culture devoted to Force use is to throw stuff around and fail at swindling auto mechanics.
5:05 The middle earth equivalent of learning how Han Solo got his name is actually learning how Gandalf got his name.
"It's a gand!" 🙄
@@NudlemanJones They also said, "Grand Elf"!
Ironically enough, sometimes "tell, don't show" is the rule to follow.
I think Tolkien reflected on this regarding Tom Bombadil, saying something in the vein of "even in best stories, some things need to remain unexplained"
Tolkien does not follow "show don't tell". It's a very modern concept
@@turnipsociety706 Not really. In modern times it has been given a name, but you find as a rule across storytelling and writing from well before the 50s.
Answering to the OP: not really. Bombadil isn't a perfect example of how at times you tell things and at others you show then.
"Showing" is about portraying something through its features and actions, it's not just the opposite of telling.
And guess what's the big thing about Bombadil in LOTR? We are shown his actions (saving the hobbits) and, even more on point, we are shown his refusal of the Ring at a conceptual level.
That's pure Show don't Tell. We aren't told about Bombadil mysterious and incomprehensible nature, we are literally shown him refusing the One Ring, something that even Gandalf was afraid of being corrupted by. People like Gandalf, Galadriel and Faramir are shown and offered the ring, they are tempted by its power, but are resilient to its persuasion.
Bombadil straight up doesn't give a fuck.
If that's not showing his mysterious nature I don't know what it is lmao
I'm surprised because, as someone that despises the post-LOTR adaptations of the Legendarium, I came to watch with the expectation that I would agree with you, and I unequivocally do not. Tolkien had precisely zero qualms in exploring the minutiae of the world that he created, even with retconning it and de-reconning it (as in the case of Galadriel's exile in Middle-Earth); Gandalf's refusal to elaborate on the hidden things of the deep earth were contextual to himself and its place within the narrative of the Lord of the Rings, not to Tolkien's reticence to speaking about, and even embodying, the nameless and ineffable. Tom Bombadil is the very essence of that willingness.
The Rings of Powers is not fantasy because it lacks mystery, any more than it IS fantasy for having dwarves, elves, halflings, and wizards. It is not fantasy for the same reason that any satire is not of the genre or work that it lampoons: it does not RESPECT that which is apes. It mimes for no other reason than to share in the financial rewards that the goodwill for original generates. It is this same mean-spiritedness as the lesser son of greater sires that made The Hobbit trilogy so lacklustre.
You really did capture one coherent theme in this video! Great job.
I recently rewatched Lord of the Rings, and the single biggest takeaway from those movies was how much emotion and empathy it made you feel for the characters. The evocative music, and poetic yet universal dialogue, the masterful cinematography that captured the inner world of the characters. Every scene made me FEEL something. They say that art is supposed to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, and I've seen those movies achieve both. The orcs and Shelob made people feel terrified and disgusted. The Fellowship made people feel comradery and love. Gollum and even Denethor in the extended version made you feel both anger and pity.
Rings of Power is what happens when you strip all that away. I don't feel a single shred of love.
@3:00 That almost sounds Lovecraftian
Was just about to say that!
No idiotic politics, no culture wars - just the art of storytelling. Great vid, def subbing.
generally agree but I have one problem:
I think showing Numenor is not a mistake. while yes, its myth is important to the sons of Gondor, it is evenmore important for characters like Isildur and Elendil
without showing its grandeur the eventual loss of their home doesn't have the impact it needs to tell their stories completely
I'd argue that we didn't need to see the petty squabbles of the people of Numenor, sure, but its splendor and impressive architecture and the grandiosity that goes with it not just in visuals but in meaning to the characters is vitaly important in my opinion
Numenor was supposed to be a lot beyond petty sqabbling of middle managers and modern type of politicians. That's exactly what is missing. Numenor is missing. The people are missing. Any sense of their unique identiy is missing....everything is missing except that 1 semi-cool statue. And even that is smaller and more pathetic than any of the ones in the original LOTR. Everything about this show is petty, narrow-sighted and sad.
Partially accurate. I like seeing valinor and numenor and wouldn’t mind seeing more of the latter. What I don’t like is the lack of a coherent plot, the modern film school tricks like the mysteries, the poor dialog, the way the characters behave that doesn’t make any sense, the jumping around, and space-time contraction, the utter ordinariness of the elves, the lack of exploration of the death themes in Tolkien, the feeling that there’s a FVRR editor hurrying to put together an episode that the director and writers haven’t adequately explained. In this series, we have uncovered all the hidden magic of making cinematic entertainment that we aren’t meant to see because the entire production staff doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing. In good series, the techniques and writing are seamlessly united so that the viewer can suspend their imaginations. In ROP, only a 7 year old would find this series interesting because it’s how children play. The game is made up as you go along, the physics of the world are changeable, do-overs are possible, nobody cares if somebody gets stabbed and gets back up two minutes later, and plots are fungible depending on who shows up.
That’s what ROP feels like. The target audience is playing make believe and it doesn’t have to always make sense.
It’s like Amazon’s head of their entertainment unit is one of those talentless people who schmoozes his/her way to the position and takes a lot of advice from the marketing department. Tolkien lands in his lap, he’s never read it but sees LoTR $$$ but *this* time, he wants something totally different that no Peter Jackson would ever do. In fact, doing a Peter Jacksonesque series wouldn’t break new ground. Let’s put together a team of newbies who will write a completely new series based on a sketch but add all of the features of a successful series that the data analytics guy say find are the principle components in their projection of latent structure models.
🙄
Awesome! The RUclips algorithm is crap nine times out of ten, but it's all worth it when stuff like this comes up. Really nice pacing, presentation, length, and conciseness. I've been getting a bit tired of art-tubers making 45 minute essays out of simple ideas. Look forward to seeing new stuff!
That's why I love reading Lovecraft. He leaves the horrors to your imagination.
In science, creativity starts with questions.
I really wanted to like Rings of Power and hoped season 2 might turn things around, but this show is just a massive disappointment. It's clear that the creators of this show have nothing to say. You can tell that the writers are trying to mimic the tone of Peter Jackson's films, often recycling lines and descriptions from the original trilogy, but it all falls flat because this story in ROP is completely meaningless. It's like drafting a grocery list in iambic pentameter and calling it Shakespeare.
What you said about how it only wants to mimic Peter Jackson's film trilogy hits the nail on the head. It's not only cynical how it reduces something as grand as Middle-earth into being something mundane, it's also lazy on Amazon's part. It exists as a cynical money making machine rather than anything that feels genuine passion for Tolkien and his source material.
it is the line recycling I find especially egregious, like the writers of RoP are tapping their noses at each other and thinking how clever they are. Yes, thank you, I know Gandalf said that line in Moria originally.
@@adde27 Except he DIDN'T. It was Peter Jackson who moved a lot of the lines around and gave them to different characters. If you only know the movies, then you don't recognize the many references to the literature that they are putting in this story.
Your knowledge is shallow. Way to shallow to justify your misplaced confidence.
@@hawkname1234 am I not referencing the movie(s) when I mention this particular line? Is the PJ trilogy not the main topic started by OP here? Also, the line "follow your nose" isn't in the book: in that, it was how Gandalf didn't like the "feel" and "foul air" of two of the ways. In the movie, it was "follow your nose".
Your reading comprehension is shit, mate. If my knowledge is shallow, then I dread to think what yours is.
@@hawkname1234 Anytime a story is adapted from one medium (literature) to another (movie/tv), creative decisions are made about what to change, add, or take away. In my opinion, Peter Jackson took creative liberties in his adaptation of LOTR which resulted in a really compelling story and a beautiful cinematic experience.
If you are saying that you like the storytelling in ROP or that you find it to be a more faithful adaptation somehow, then you are entitled to your opinion. However, I would like someone to explain to me what story ROP is trying to tell, because so far, almost two whole seasons in, I have no clue what this story is trying to say or why it is being told.
I feel like the main takeaway from this video is that a good writer needs to hold back their own ideas for the sake of the reader. It’s important to only give information that is directly relevant to the plot and themes. A good writer knows to respect the joy of the mystery of their own creation, even if they themselves know the answers to the mysteries. When I was playing the expansion for Elden Ring, I was first disappointed that all my questions about the story were not only left unanswered, but I left the game with twice the questions about the story. I now understand that it’s the mystery is what makes it special. I’m glad I don’t have all the answers and I can talk with fellow fans online about possible theories and we can grow the community.
Isn't that _Dark Souls_ in a nutshell? Just enough mystery to grease the wheels in our heads?
I totally agree with you. Tolkien tells us a lot about the history of Middle Earth, but still it's only just enough to whet our appetites. The chapter "The Shadow of the Past", where Gandalf explains to Frodo about how the Ring came to him, is one of my favorite chapters, because he alludes to so much of the ancient history that has to be put aside in pursuit of the main thread. It should be a stumbling block to readers -- a long chapter of just explication -- but instead, while it answers the main question, it also opens up many tantalizing threads that power the imagination. Just a couple of other examples: The stories of Tom Bombadil and his memories of the fair woman who wore the brooch that they find amongst the hoard of the Barrow Wight, and Legolas' words about the lament of the tumbled stones in the ruins of Eriador for their builders.
PJ could not have included all of this, but he gave us those tantalizing hints visually in the landscape that the Fellowship walked through -- crumbling megalithic walls, pieces of statuary overgrown with weeds, the golden cinematographic effect of the light of Lothlorien. The RoP show runners did none of this -- we see distant CGI panning shots of Eregion, but very few close up views of King Gil-galad's fair city. The landscape that the characters move through is devoid of wonder, beautiful in many shots, but no hints of that weight of history. PJ gave us a sense of being present in a time far removed from our own -- watching LoTR you feel the awe and wonder of Middle Earth. Watching RoP, you feel nothing.
Talking about how production design in the movies accurately represents Tolkiens writing while showing gondorians in plate armor is certainly a choice
Where I am coming from: I read LOTR three times before I was 12yo in the late 1970s. My favourite Tolkien book is The Silmarillion. I was a first generation fan of the BBC Radio Play, and have listened to it more than a hundred times.
Personally I am a big fan of Tolkien’s deep time universe. I’ve always found it more interesting than LOTR.
I liked the LOTR movies, but I was not interested in the Hobbit and only just recently watched them. I think the combat scenes were stretched beyond credibility to tick all the boxes concerning the deaths of main characters.
Several points about The Rings of power.
As a story in its own right is of a very high quality. The acting is good. The dialogue is good. The dramatisation and character development is good. Compared to Harry potter it is a consistently better production.
Compared to Game of Thrones, Tolkien’s universe makes a lot more sense, and that inherent strength has rubbed off on this production. So far I have found the production more engaging than much of the Lord of the Rings Movies. The BIG deal in All the Tolkien movies is the commitment not to build a pastiche of historic real world cultures. The Elves are not Romans, The Dwarves may have a strong hint of Scots/Irish about them, but their architecture is unique.
Given the precedent that the Movies set for Dwarves, the female Dwarves are right on target.
About the multiculturalism and the feminism: I DON”T CARE. I don’t care. I DON”T CARE, and anyone who is but hurt about it, is a pathetic white supremacist and a wannabe incel. Tolkien’s work is saturated with the clash of cultures and the environmental destruction of industrialisation, and Tolkien is extremely woke about the plight of aboriginal people dispossessed and marginalised by colonial powers.
I am EXTREMELY impressed by the energy The Rings of power put into creating an Orc culture that is not two dimensional. Wow. The idea of fallen elves is awesome and entirely consistent with what little Tolkien had to say on their origins. The Idea that Sauron had to work and suffer to build his kingdom is very cool.
I love how Gandalf had to build his consciousness and personality from scratch after entering Middle Earth, and I love his resemblance to Jim Henson, of Dark Crystal and Muppets fame.
As for the political twists concerning the Three rings, they are intriguing. The depth of character given to Elrond is worthy of the character of his father in the first age.
About the 2nd age time line liberties taken by The Rings of power production in general: I DON’T GIVE A SHIT because Tolkien never fleshed out the second age. AND AND AND. If it is good enough for Shakespeare in his historic plays, it is good enough for anyone else. Drop Mike. End of argument. GROW THE FUCK UP! You all sound like car fanatics bitching about the rivet spacing on a facsimile racing Jaguar.
Nothing that Amazon can do, can ‘destroy’ Tolkien’s legacy. This is both hysterical nonsense and cynical clickbate bullshit. You are all free to ignore the new material. Trying to burn down The Rings of power on line is pathetic. You all sound like little wannabe Saurons, and that is just sick.
If you think this dogshit of a show has any redeeming qualities at all then probably your mind has already went nuts with your advanced age. Also do you really think that accusing people of being White supremacists for wanting an accurate depiction of Middle-earth races is a good argument?
Btw you have never read any of Tolkien, you have only ever watched the movies. If you had read LOTR you would have known that the Dwarves are a blender of Norse and Jewish cultures. The Scottish thing is from the movies.
In other words you're just butt hurt no one likes this garbage show and you just made up a word salad to make yourself sound smart.
You nailed it. Explaining myths & mysterious place and beings kills the fun of exploring the depths of our imagination though Tolkiens lenses.
No. It doesn't kill the fun. It creates the fun. You are 100% exactly wrong. Not least because Tolkien LITERALLY CLAIMED TO BE EXPLAINING MYTHS & MYSTERIOUS PLACES.
Imagine saying this when the silmarillion exists lol
@@otherperson Did you watch the video?
@@otherperson You mean one of the toughest reads in all of Middle-Earth fiction?
@@Ragitsu idk what your point is. Tolkien wanted to fully explore his world. The Silmarillion was something Tolkien wanted to publish. Do you mean it's challenging to read? If so, that's your own problem lol
Hang on, if “nameless things” (paraphrasing) describes fantasy, then surely Star Wars & George “this grain of sand has a name & backstory” Lucas doesn’t qualify either?
I gotta be honest. I enjoy Rings of Power, for all its faults, and yes I am indeed a lifelong Tolkien fan, who read each and every book and letter, even Farmer Giles of Ham! Identifying RoP's faults does not prevent me from enjoying it for what it is.
I was prepared to hate this video, because I find much of the criticism the show's endured to be pedantic and shallow; but this is an original angle I had not considered, and in the end, I am forced to agree with you. You make good points about how RoP seeks to answer many questions that need not be answered, and that the encounter with the Nameless Thing, for example, waters down the concept of them and the fear that this nameless name can invoke.
This helps me think about how I approach fantasy in my own creative writing pursuits, and for that, you've earned yourself a subscriber. :)
It's a bit like the GoT fans that want to see Ashai or Old Valyria. It would defeat their purpose.
People really say anything they want on this website and call it true. "Rings of Powers isn't fantasy." Yes it is. It is indeed a fantasy show.
Rings of power feels like everyone are just are cosplaying instead of living in this world... I don't see elves who looks and acts as elves, I don't see the dwarfs who acts like dwarfs...
Our modern problems are displayed in that movies, without consideration what every Country, Region, City, Person have totally different problems (and how they handle them) from each other...
Part of that is PJ was notorious for doing upwards of 10 takes for scenes, to get the perfect delivery of every line. I feel like RoP does fewer than 3 takes for most scenes, so it feels at times like a live production that's being put on by those actors for the first time.
1. What "modern problem" do you think the show "displays"? I am guessing the Numenor politics stuff? I mean sure but thats a fairly minor part of the show.
2. Tolkien tackled modern politics himself. His environmentalism is extremely prevalent throughout all his writing. His less pleasant beliefs as well if a lot more subtly.
"When you fill every dark corner with light, you see how small the space actually is."
- Me (just now)
So I'm really intrigued by your take here, and I find it compelling, and I disagree with it to some extent. If that's a rather chaotic reaction, I've just watched this and am sorting through several contradictory reactions.
I love the concept of textual ruins that Dr. Michael Drout refers to when talking about Tolkien's work, those references we never get resolutions to, Tom Bombadil, the towers on the hills in the Lone Lands, the Glittering Caves, and lots of other ones. To the extent that these do contribute both to the wonder of LotR and that they also provide a wonderful feeling of reality to the whole world, I agree that RoP is unsubtle and often making strange choices to sort of collapse the wave, to bring quantum physics into it.
But at the same time, it is clear that Tolkien meant for his readers to receive answers to many questions. The poem Aragorn chants to the hobbits on Weathertop refers of course to one of the "great tales" that he worked on at whiles through his fifty-plus-year career of writing in Middle-earth. Before the publication of the Silmarillion, this was a textual ruin, a beautiful tale fragment. After the publication of the Silmarillion, and especially after the publication of the History of Middle-earth, the Beren and Luthien story has acquired much greater depth without (to me) losing any of its wonder and reality-conferring power. Aragorn's recitation, or Bilbo's Earendil poem still enchant, even though as someone who devours all things Tolkien I can get my hands on, I have answers to many questions that a reader in 1955 would not have had.
It's clear that JRRT intended for these answers to see the light of day, given his long battles with Allen and Unwin to publish some form of his first age material, and how much material is crammed into the LotR appendices.
So I don't agree that the mere provision of answers robs the original work of some of its wonder and power to enthrall. I do agree that some of the choices made in RoP are . . . regrettable, despite the fascinating commentary of Dr. Corey Olsen and the Rings and Realms series. (Disclosure, I work at Signum University and know Corey, and his flavor of analysis for RoP is absolutely on brand.) I too share the sad conviction that hobbit history will be rewritten to make Nori at least the mother of Marcho and Blancho, if not their animating spirit. Brandyfoots will become Oldbucks then brandybucks.
Still, I kind of love what they're doing with the dwarves. The singing and the dichotomy between power with the mountain and power over the mountain from King Durin's ring is fascinating, and congruentI think with how Tolkien would look at such power.
All of which is to say, this piece really provoked some excellent reflection for me, which i reward in the small way of liking/subscribing, even though we might disagree on some points. Very well done.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I see you have a deep knowledge of the subject, so I'm glad I was able to spark some interesting. To be honest, I'm also slightly conflicted about my take in this video. There obviously is a balance between showing and not showing in any type of storytelling, and I can't claim to know what Tolkien intended. The only thing I feel very strongly about is that the Nameless Things would almost certainly been intended to be left in the dark. Others in the comments have pointed out that Valinor and Numenor were probably intended otherwise - to have been known and imagined in more detail, and with greater certainty. I think I'm coming at it more as a casual LOTR fan, whose perception of THAT story is improved by those places being more remote/imagined. I've never read the Silmarillion, so I should give that a try and then maybe re-evaulate my argument. Might do that for a future video. I'm currently working on a review of RoP Season 2 in which I talk about what I like about the show, so I hope you'll stick around for that video, which might also interest you. Thanks for watching, and for subbing. :)
So this is one of those "things can only be classified as things if they meet my personal quality standard"?
Next thing you're gonna say Justin Bieber isn't music because he creates it to gain money
Is it such a strange, personal standard to expect Fantasy to be fantastical? ROP is mundane modern identity politics with pointy ears. The characters behave like humans, the problems are human, the locations are human, the whole plot has no reason to exist in Tolkien's lore, it could just as well have been any other generic setting
@@junkfire4554 I find it strange that you say that, given that LOTR and other great fantasy novels have characters that behave like humans, very human problems, and locations that you can actually pinpoint the human civilisations they were inspired from. You could set those same stories in any other setting whilst keeping the core, and you would still have something great.
ROP was never about identity politics. What are you insinuating?
@@omnipenne9101 humans can behave like humans sure, and so can hobbits and dwarves given their similarity but giving a 3000+ year old intelligent being the emotional and social maturity of a pubescent child is what i mean by mundane. Galadriel stomps her feet and yells to get her way, but it doesn't work out, shocker. You're telling me in her thousands of years she is just now learning basic social skills? No, sry, bad writing.
Identity politics is all over ROP, it's in the implausible ethnic diversity of the explicitly xenophobic, insular race of Harfoots. It's the fact that in season 1 you had "woman good/right, man bad/wrong" in 3 separate story lines: Galadriel was right about Sauron returning but was ignored by male leadership, the village woman was right about the orcs returning but the men in the village didn't believe her, the Harfoot girl was right about helping Gandalf, but the tribe's culture said no to the outsider.
There was a direct allusion to the race politics of MAGA 2020 Trump USA:
bigoted white village boys to the black elf "sure we oppressed you, but that's in the past, when are you people gonna get over it and leave us alone" (obvious 2020 right wing sentiment about black oppression in the USA). black elf: "we have to stick around and be vigilant now to make sure you don't do the same thing again" (obvious left wing sentiment in the USA 2020). Could not be more on the nose.
On Numinor they had a border politics story beat ripped straight out of southpark: an elf enters the island and a "build that wall, they're gonna take our jobs" mob forms with a Trumplike populist figure.
All this could've been brushed aside if the story and dialogue were any good, but nope, it's a dumpsterfire. I'm all for diversity and inclusion but just randomly scrambling races and genders is such a naive and half assed way to go about it, especially when they never stfu about "fixing" Tolkien's lore with it in their interviews. The whole production reeks of contempt for the source material.