Season 2 - 🧝Elves or Numenor?

[Valandil]

Saw an article about this the other day - googled and found this one.

MSN

I don't see it in this article - but the first one I saw mentioned that Season 2 will end with a 2-episode battle (and I previously saw that in another article). How... tiresome! As if... they think that's what Tolkien fans want, or that will make the show better. I don't know... maybe some people in the general audience will think it's cool. But in my present slow re-read of LOTR - I'm now in the middle of The Battle of The Pelennor Fields. Probably the best battle account I've read in all fiction - and a full 10 pages long! It's NOT all about the battles!!!

*sigh* - I suppose I'll watch. I'm not really enjoying it. I'm not really hate-watching. Maybe I'm watching from a misplaced sense of duty? Maybe in hope - faint as it is.

What do you folks think of this article? And of ending Season 2 with a 2-episode battle? And should that be its own thread?

 

[Duguay]

Broadly speaking, I agree with you about the battles, I'm not really enamoured of elongated depictions of action sequences that don't take up much page time. I love the Lord of the Rings movies just fine, however I never watch any of them, or even the major battles within them, in a single day. I may take a week to go through a re-watch of Fellowship or Two Towers. And Helm's Deep? Two or three days I might take to get through, pausing for the day at a scene change.

I am mostly taking The Rings of Power show as something that draws inspiration from the source material, so I take it in stride. As far as the article in question that you post; well it does confirm one frustrating thing about the show that will vocalize, and that is to do with focus.

I think they've had the focus wrong from the get-go. That's the major Achilles' heel. Forgetting that the Hobbits/Halflings/Harfoots are the heart and charm that draws most reader in to The Hobbit and TLotR, and forgetting about the Harfoot characters for two entire episodes, to say nothing about not starting with the Harfoots in the first place. And that there are three plotlines/groups of characters that don't intersect until far too late during the season.

If I were the show runner, I would lock in on that. Get the writers to narrow the focus and get as many of the separated characters together. Or tell the story through the focus of Harfoot scouts trying understand what dangers to avoid while the bulk of their people hide and wait for reports of the safest route and what dangers their scouts tell them to avoid. No episode would be without one or more Harfoot characters, even if we only see them hiding in the shadows and alleys and under tables listening to the Big Folks' mischief. I would direct the writers not to let major characters disappear almost entirely for the last one or two episodes.

Focus is one of the biggest problems I see with the show, and I'm glum to learn that they are still having difficulty with it.

 

[Olorgando]

Forgetting that the Hobbits/Halflings/Harfoots are the heart and charm that draws most reader in to The Hobbit and TLotR, and forgetting about the Harfoot characters for two entire episodes, to say nothing about not starting with the Harfoots in the first place.

That may be - as far as the books go.
In both PJ trilogies, the focus shifted from what are the central characters of the books, Frodo & Sam respectively Bilbo, to the run-of-the-mill, generic heroic side - but not too much heroism either (wimps Aragorn & Faramir). And of course battles, battles, battles.

There is no mention of Hobbits in the Second Age in JRRT's writing. Like there was no mention of Legolas, the Elf-king (not yet named Thranduil) of northern Mirkwood's son, 10-year-old Aragorn in Rivendell, or of Bree, in The Hobbit book. We know the story-external reasons. And it's not difficult, in retrospect, to construe reasons for their absence - despite their, again in retrospect, having "been there".

So yes, Hobbits were "somewhere" during the Second Age. But for the action surrounding the Rings of Power in the Appendices to LotR, they were utterly irrelevant. As were the Istari. One of the very few times I paid any attention to the blather surrounding RoP, I stumbled across an interview (IIRC) with the "showrunners" about why there was a wizard running around in the Second Age. Their answer was (I paraphrase) that they had looked at a lot of fantasy films / TV shows - and they all had at least one wizard!

Very revealing. They're producing a generic fantasy. And from all too many comments I've read, generic crap.
But since this is "generic JRRT", of course one must have Hobbits!
💩💩💩

 

[d4rk3lf]

What do you folks think of this article? And of ending Season 2 with a 2-episode battle?

I think, what I say earlier, somewhere on these pages:
This is the proof, that they don't have a single clue how to make a good series. If you have created season 1 so bad, as it is case with ROP, no battle, no matter how big, and how much money and good CGI you throw in it, will solve the situation.
One of the main components in cinema battles are the characters that audience cares for them... root for them... you need to make audience afraid that someone of beloved characters will die in the battle. That creates tension.
They have not only created characters that audience doesn't care for, their main character Galadriel is very annoying to a majority of audience.

I think they will have no choice, but to cancel the series after season 2.
It's just so, unbelievably bad.

 

[Duguay]

Thank you for your reply to my post @Olorgando. I don't think I mean to claim that my own proposed fix would ever solve all or most of the problems with ROP.

I'm very sorry, though, I'm just not going to get too picky about the show. As I said, I view it as an adaptation that is more along the lines of "inspired by" so I enjoyed the aspects that I felt able to enjoy, which was a fair amount. I'm not a Tolkien purist; and therefore unfortunately unmoved by a laundry list of all that is wrong with it. I'm very sorry, but I just don't want to be a purist about Tolkien's writings.

If I have to hate the show in order to have the right taste in the works of Tolkien, then I don't want to have good taste. I have no idea why I'm fine with the RoP show, and also am able to read through The Silmarillion supplimented by The Children of Hurin and THoMe...if I'm doing it wrong I don't know what to say; I'm still having a nice time.

I stand by my own critique of RoP, the difficulty with focus is a major problem that I see happening with the narrative direction and story editing.

 

[d4rk3lf]

As I said, I view it as an adaptation that is more along the lines of "inspired by" so I enjoyed the aspects that I felt able to enjoy, which was a fair amount. I'm not a Tolkien purist;

It was never about Tolkien and his lore in my case.
The series is simply (very very) bad on it's own, and it would be bad in any universe.
To touch upon Tolkien lore (and if it is respected by series, or not) we first need to have something that resembles series. Something that have structure that works. Something with developed characters. With story. Twists. Nice dialogues.
Unfortunately, ROP doesn't have any of that.

I stand by my own critique of RoP, the difficulty with focus is a major problem that I see happening with the narrative direction and story editing.

Exactly!

 

[Olorgando]

Thank you for your reply to my post @Olorgando. I don't think I mean to claim that my own proposed fix would ever solve all or most of the problems with ROP.

I'm very sorry, though, I'm just not going to get too picky about the show. As I said, I view it as an adaptation that is more along the lines of "inspired by" so I enjoyed the aspects that I felt able to enjoy, which was a fair amount. I'm not a Tolkien purist; and therefore unfortunately unmoved by a laundry list of all that is wrong with it. I'm very sorry, but I just don't want to be a purist about Tolkien's writings.

If I have to hate the show in order to have the right taste in the works of Tolkien, then I don't want to have good taste. I have no idea why I'm fine with the RoP show, and also am able to read through The Silmarillion supplimented by The Children of Hurin and THoMe...if I'm doing it wrong I don't know what to say; I'm still having a nice time.

I stand by my own critique of RoP, the difficulty with focus is a major problem that I see happening with the narrative direction and story editing.

I know people who have not finished reading LotR, my wife is among them (we met over 40 years ago). I've read the German translation I bought for her decades ago at least three times, and it's the most recent re-read of mine.
We don't have very much overlap in our reading, as she prefers fiction, while my reading is overwhelmingly non-fiction. As I've mentioned before, my fascination with JRRT's works is a total anomaly in my "library".
So people having different tastes is no surprise to me, and hasn't been for decades. Much earlier on, people were puzzled about my tastes in music, and I often heard something along the lines of "but if you like {that}, how can you like {that other}???" Well, I could and can.
On a more fundamental level, I have become disgusted with the "moving pictures" industry for well over 20 years. Or perhaps over 40 years, as "Dallas" premiered in German (public!) TV back in 1981 ... 🤢
"Moving pictures" would now include what's shown in cinemas, on (linear) TV, on streaming services, earlier on offline computer games (is there anything of the sort still around?) and later online games. I had the feeling that the industry was in a deep., unimaginative, troll-induced rut.
So I see the "moving pictures" versions of LotR and TH as being PJ's versions, adaptations, with increasing amounts of "creative" additions that were not in the originals - often at the expense at things that were in the originals. RoP seems to have continued this trend (I haven't watched it, I pigheadedly refuse offers from both my cable TV as well as Internet provider to subscribe to their streaming stuff).
So I have no problem about people enjoying other things than I enjoy. And I'm happy if PJ's and Amazon's stuff brings people to actually read the originals (the continued decrease in people reading books is another thing that I, a book-worm who could read before I entered first grade, find utterly puzzling and definitely not a good thing). But there is one point where I take an uncompromising hard line: if people who only know Middle-earth from "moving pictures" believe they understand JRRT's works, my answer is a granite-hard no!

 

[Valandil]

If they made the final battle 15 minutes - or even 10 - maybe they could tell more about BOTH Numenor and the Elves. And develop a character or two...

 

[Halasían]

What do you folks think of this article? And of ending Season 2 with a 2-episode battle? And should that be its own thread?

Like season 1, I'll rate it after I see it once or twice. This reply is likely all the effort I'll put into these 'articles'.
I'm actually more interested in seeing War of the Rohirrim. it got pushed out to December 2024 due to the Writers and the SAG-AFTA strikes, but the historical moment in the legendarium has always interested me.

 

[Valandil]

:
:
. . . But in my present slow re-read of LOTR - I'm now in the middle of The Battle of The Pelennor Fields. Probably the best battle account I've read in all fiction - and a full 10 pages long! It's NOT all about the battles!!!
:
:

Correction - FOURTEEN pages. Just finished it today - starting from just after Merry & Eowyn slew the Witch-King to the end.

 

[Ent]

It's NOT all about the battles!!!

WHAT...??? Tolkien's works are not all about the spectacle and trappings on the surface???
Yay...
Hint: His works aren't even about 'good vs. evil' as so many have written about ad nauseam, and as we read in so many 'books about Tolkien's works.'
They ARE closely related to his faith... one of the more 'primary' roots of his work.
But he goes a step or two deeper as well.
"More at 11".

Sadly, the 'spectacle' of it is all PJ and others can conjure because their focus is the pocketbook. And it's why they don't fear to 'enhance' the spectacle as they see fit. Thus, even the 'epic' of it is missed, much less the deeper layers...the real meaning of it all.

There is a great mass of people who will lap up 2 episodes of battle in RoP. Heaven forbid there would be any more meaning to life than what we see on the veery surface of things. That implies looking and thinking...and we are not trained to do either any more. "Looking" itself takes more work than the common human is willing to invest these days, and "thinking" is nearly beyond the species' capacity.

(Yes, yes, I know.... the change from Ent to Huorn did not serve to sweeten my rather low view of mankind overall.)

 

[Barrow Wight]

If they made the final battle 15 minutes - or even 10 - maybe they could tell more about BOTH Numenor and the Elves. And develop a character or two...

Character development is beyond the writers/show-runners of this series. All of the plot lines, dialogue, and "character development" in Season 1 seem to have come out of a first-year film school class. A very well-funded film school class, of course, but still an amateurish end product.

 

[Ugluk]

Films rarely do battles well.

Tolkien, even though his books are not about the military campaign, are written with an understanding of how armies and campaigns work, presumably from his need understanding of medieval history and his own WWI experience.

An interesting series of blogs about operations, strategy, and tactics in Tolkien here https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ and how the PJ films fail to understand them. Presumably the author would be even more https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ by Amazon....

 

[Starbrow]

Films rarely do battles well.

Tolkien, even though his books are not about the military campaign, are written with an understanding of how armies and campaigns work, presumably from his need understanding of medieval history and his own WWI experience.

An interesting series of blogs about operations, strategy, and tactics in Tolkien here https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ and how the PJ films fail to understand them. Presumably the author would be even more https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ by Amazon....

I enjoyed reading this series.

 

[Ugluk]

I enjoyed reading this series.

They are quite insightful, aren't they?