Amazon’s LOTR Rings of Power

[PrplChilPill]

9 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

You understand your link agrees with my characterization entirely?

The Tolkien Gateway uses "The Nature of Middle-Earth" as it's source, but you'll notice it won't give a page or passage number because it doesn't say "Women Dwarves have Beards". The essay/letter written was giving more description of certain characters.

The phrase was like, "X Numorean King had a beard, Y Gondorian Knight had a mustache, "All the Male Dwarves have Beards obviously", Z Elven Prince did not have a Beard"

The Nature of Middle-Earth was a series of essays and letters from Tolkien put together by Carl Hostetter. It isn't even considered to be one of the official Histories of Middle Earth and was only published last year.

But you know what is official?

War of the Jewels

no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame... For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike...

and 

Appendix A:

They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart.

 

Ok. I don't actually care, and I can't fathom why anyone does. You win.

[Xenos]

29 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

Nobody finds it problematic in and of itself. The problem is that it's symptomatic of a lack of attention to detail and disrespect for the lore.

Considering what Amazon did to the WoT universe, there's a of legitimate concern that there's a lot of smoke indicating that. 

This is a different team than the one who did WOT. And I don’t know if having some elves have short hair, for example, is necessarily a sign of lack of attention. To say it’s disrespectful to the lore is also very extreme. Right now it feels like incredible nitpicking and ranks below previous nerd wars such as not having Tom Bombardil or the Scouring in the LOTR movies. 

Edited February 28, 2022 by Xenos

[AlexGreen#20]

24 minutes ago, Xenos said:

This is a different team than the one who did WOT. And I don’t know if having some elves have short hair, for example, is necessarily a sign of lack of attention. To say it’s disrespectful to the lore is also very extreme. Right now it feels like incredible nitpicking and ranks below previous nerd wars such as not having Tom Bombardil or the Scouring in the LOTR movies. 

It's the same studio and Wayne Yip is heavily involved in producing both. Try again.

And again, you can always diminish these concerns as much as you want because they're small things, but these small things add up to a universe that is unrecognizable. 

[Xenos]

1 minute ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

It's the same studio and Wayne Yip is heavily involved in producing both. Try again.

And again, you can always diminish these concerns as much as you want because they're small things, but these small things add up to a universe that is unrecognizable. 

At the end of the day, it has to have consistently good characters and a good story. That’s it. If you don’t have those two things, then you will ultimately kill something like WOT’s first season. That’s the problem. Not creative choices like having Moiraine kill those 20 Trollocs instead of Tam in WOT, which honestly made me roll my eyes when you brought it up in the other thread.

It’s why PJ’s LOTR worked despite creative differences from the book versus the terrible choices he did for The Hobbit movies. 

[AlexGreen#20]

1 hour ago, Xenos said:

At the end of the day, it has to have consistently good characters and a good story. That’s it. If you don’t have those two things, then you will ultimately kill something like WOT’s first season. That’s the problem. Not creative choices like having Moiraine kill those 20 Trollocs instead of Tam in WOT, which honestly made me roll my eyes when you brought it up in the other thread.

It’s why PJ’s LOTR worked despite creative differences from the book versus the terrible choices he did for The Hobbit movies. 

Moraine killing Trollocs rather than Tam would be a defensible decision, if it wasn't part of an established pattern of getting rid of all the most important moments that the men characters have and either getting rid of them or giving them to the women characters. 

And then you wonder why all the men characters suck. 

[Ray Reed]

I'm not sure why some peeps in the thread can't grapple with the idea that some of us viewers really don't like overused CGI

Feels like a weird thing to vehemently defend seeing as it's entirely a subjective taste thing. If people don't like overdone CGI then they don't like overdone CGI, you're not going to convince them out of it

Huge LOTR fan but like a lot of you I'm nervous based on that trailer (yes, part of it is because of the CGI...and that's ok, lol, that's a legitimate concern for some people)

Edited March 1, 2022 by Ray Reed

[SMashMouthMike]

Wasn’t the sim aril lion and other Tolkien writings that were not the hobbit or the Lotr books just collections of facts and world building without much characterization? If so, pencil me down as one in the skeptical category. 

[Xenos]

2 hours ago, Ray Reed said:

I'm not sure why some peeps in the thread can't grapple with the idea that some of us viewers really don't like overused CGI

Feels like a weird thing to vehemently defend seeing as it's entirely a subjective taste thing. If people don't like overdone CGI then they don't like overdone CGI, you're not going to convince them out of it

Huge LOTR fan but like a lot of you I'm nervous based on that trailer (yes, part of it is because of the CGI...and that's ok, lol, that's a legitimate concern for some people)

What I’m trying to say is that a show like this is going to have a lot of CGI. It’s just how it is these days. But if the characters and storyline is good, then you’re not going to care as much. Obviously, the way it’s shot will also have a big impact on whether you notice if the CGI is bad or not, or even if you notice it at all. I liked Mad Max much more than the Star Wars prequel, even though the former used much more CGI than the prequels.

[Xenos]

2 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Wasn’t the sim aril lion and other Tolkien writings that were not the hobbit or the Lotr books just collections of facts and world building without much characterization? If so, pencil me down as one in the skeptical category. 

This show doesn’t have the rights to the Silmarillion. Everything is based on materials in the appendices, LOTR itself, and the Hobbit. It’s both a good and bad thing. Good in the fact that they’re not as beholden to a straight adaptation like Jackson had to do for The Hobbit and LOTR. There’s more freedom. Bad because too broad a stroke could really mess things up as well.

[SMashMouthMike]

34 minutes ago, Xenos said:

This show doesn’t have the rights to the Silmarillion. Everything is based on materials in the appendices, LOTR itself, and the Hobbit. It’s both a good and bad thing. Good in the fact that they’re not as beholden to a straight adaptation like Jackson had to do for The Hobbit and LOTR. There’s more freedom. Bad because too broad a stroke could really mess things up as well.

I’m still skeptical, maybe more so that they don’t have the silmarillion. The ending is known. The elves imo aren’t that interesting. And a f-ton of character work and writing needs to be done and fleshed out. We’ll see I guess. Sauron’s casting will have to be superb. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[Xenos]

31 minutes ago, SMashMouthMike said:

I’m still skeptical, maybe more so that they don’t have the silmarillion. The ending is known. The elves imo aren’t that interesting. And a f-ton of character work and writing needs to be done and fleshed out. We’ll see I guess. Sauron’s casting will have to be superb. 

Yeah, the elves being uninteresting as characters is actually one of my main concerns. As well as the possible attempt to make them more interesting. They’re just too perfect. You can get away with that in LOTR because you’re grounded with the other races like the Hobbits. Maybe we’ll actually spend more time with the dwarves and humans, especially the Numenoreans. 

[SMashMouthMike]

18 minutes ago, Xenos said:

Yeah, the elves being uninteresting as characters is actually one of my main concerns. As well as the possible attempt to make them more interesting. They’re just too perfect. You can get away with that in LOTR because you’re grounded with the other races like the Hobbits. Maybe we’ll actually spend more time with the dwarves and humans, especially the Numenoreans. 

Right. I didn’t even consider ‘the making the Elves more interesting” conundrum. Gonna depend on Sauron and men I think. 

[Xenos]

4 minutes ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Right. I didn’t even consider ‘the making the Elves more interesting” conundrum. Gonna depend on Sauron and men I think. 

I posted this in the last page but here’s a Q&A with the showrunners. We’ll see I guess.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power/amp

[AlexGreen#20]

5 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Wasn’t the sim aril lion and other Tolkien writings that were not the hobbit or the Lotr books just collections of facts and world building without much characterization? If so, pencil me down as one in the skeptical category. 

It's not even the Silmarillion. It's "Unfinished Tales" and the history of the second age. 

This is the equivalent of buying George RR Martin's notes for a prequel series. 

[SMashMouthMike]

2 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

It's not even the Silmarillion. It's "Unfinished Tales" and the history of the second age. 

This is the equivalent of buying George RR Martin's notes for a prequel series. 

It’s going to be hard to get this right. But, hopefully they got the right people and enough time. We’ll see I guess. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by SMashMouthMike