P&CE Discussion of Tolkien, LOTR, Silmarillion, and Amazon’s Expensive Commercial Attempt at Fanfic

I watched the fifth episode, and I liked it better than the first four. No hobbits or dark wizards. The only storylines were things that were outlined in Tolkien's writings, with some fleshing out to give individual characters something to do. Celebrimbor being tempted into worse and worse decisions - I liked how Annatar appealed to his vanity by bringing up his grandpa in the previous episode - "you know, everyone says you're just a pale imitation of Feanor, but you can really show everyone if you make these rings." The smarmy son of Pharazon being a dick to the Faithful in Numenor - he's a good bad guy, I'm looking forward to seeing him drown and/or get stabbed by Elendil.

I am wondering about the pace of the season - sometimes, it seems like they're advancing towards the end of the Second Age at breakneck speed - it looks like Eregion is about to get wiped out within the next episode or two - and then they have some stupid interlude with hobbits wandering around. It just kills the pacing.

 

Bombadil is too dour, not at all how Tolkien describes him. He should be more annoyingly sing songy.

 

yes. but he was supposed to enslave the elves using them as happened with Men but they were hidden from him.

 

Casting Sir Alex Ferguson as King Durin was a bit on the nose IMO

 

I've always maintained this was a theme of Tolkien - the high races all mess up due to various failings

I like the way the elves and dwarves are portrayed as powerful but quite fallible, or even vain and arrogant in the case of Celebrimbor and Gil-galad

 

So in general I like the Anatar storyline but i do as usual find the scripting a bit baffling.

We just had Sauron trick Celebrimbor, Galadriel etc in one guise, then it's repeated in a new form, and this was just after he tricked the orc lord - like we get it - he can take any form

Like wouldn't it just have been tighter for him to trick Celebrimbor once in the Anatar form? (Which I think is how Tolkien wrote it).

Often it feels intentionally obtuse

I like the sea of Rhun quest - though getting rid of the hobbits would be good. This stuff feels more like proper D&D style campaigning to me.

The dwarves as comic relief remains dumb - i don't get why all the adaptions do this

I kind of wish they'd develop the numenor storyline more - as that seems like a chance to do something new compared to the Sauron stuff

 

I'm in episode 7. Spoiler, kind of - Elrond kisses Galadriel. Dude, that's your future mother in law. But now I'm wondering at what point Galadriel married Celeborn - I think the summary at the end of the Silmarillion says Celeborn came from Doriath, Thingol and Melian's realm in the First Age, so they should already be together. And at what point did they have Celebrian, who became Elrond's wife and Arwen's mother? And then in looking at the summaries of the Second and Third Ages at the back of the Silmarillion - where was Galadriel at the time of the Last Alliance? Gil-galad and Elendil were besieging Sauron in Mordor, with Isildur, Cirdan and Elrond all present, but Galadriel wasn't there? Anyways, back to the show, it's moving better with fewer hobbits over the last few episodes.

 

For people with Bluesky, there's a series of cartoons behind this link which sum up the Rings of Power series. I found them entertaining.

https://bsky.app/profile/davekellett.bsky.social/post/3l5juayshif2m

 

No kidding. I don't see how anyone could read how the book depicts Bombadil and then come up with that character we saw.

 

This is your chance to start a 12 part epic substack on this niche!

I will read it!

 

yeah foundation was … bad

 

So finally looped back to this and Ep4 was surprisingly .... good?

I like that mostly the elven leaders are portrayed as arrogant, bumbling, floppy haired elitists. This is how I always understood them to be in the books. Like the High Men, they fail for these kinds of reasons. Galadriel works much better in this season as the hot head who sees more clearly. And Elrond as a naive dork who has to wise up, but is right about one thing.

And finally the Gandalf story has some movement. I really do not like the amnesia trope - one of the dumbest tv tropes than can be used. And now it feels like we have to do the master/apprentice thing with Tom in the Yoda role. Sigh. But at least stuff is happening and I don't mind Tom at all as i always disliked him in the books anyway. Like he is a fine idea, but for some reason Tolkien decided to make him wildly powerful, then had to rely on <reasons> for why he would be written out of the action

Also the narrative arcs have settled down to much more D&D style adventuring and much less high level campaign stuff. This show is not GoT! So it works much better to have action because much of the dialogue and intrigue is Fail-tier. Especially any episode without the dwarves is a big win.

Hoping it continues in this direction because with all that budget, i would much rather it is sunk into fights with wights and wizards than <checks notes> Durin being mad with his dad

 

I'll repeat. Bombadil is horribly written in ROP. His character is nearly the opposite of how Tolkien describes him. It's like the ROP writers never read any of the Bombadil stuff.

 

Don't like the character in the book? I see this string of words you've put together, but I don't understand them.

 

I think a lot of stuff in Tolkien's background and especially his love of Norse mythology make Tom understandable. Tom is absolutely purposeful and is not a throw away even if at some level the purpose is to be enigmatic. My take---and Tolkien has vacillated on this, giving contradictory answers in different letters---is that Tom represents nature itself, enduring regardless of the machinations of mortals and immortals.