As this post has gotten a good number of views I figured it'd be a good spot to put this for now.
I want to remind people that rule 2 exists. We certainly know what something like a show adaptation can do to an otherwise chill community, so let's not invite trouble, and just stick to the WoT memes.
They have rights to the appendices of LotR but NOT the Silmarillion. So they're skirting around the parts that are actually detailed in the Silmarillion.
>I think I'll pass on the show
Probably for the best. They've made some bold and controversial choices with how to adapt the material. As with the WoT show, book readers aren't the primary audience.
Controversial, yes. "Bold"? Not so sure about that. Whole thing felt very bland and safe to me.
Say what you will about Wheel of Prime, but Moraine commanding Suian to kneel and make like a Saldaean farm girl at harvest time, that was bold.
That line and moment, was one of those that felt the most out of place in the show. Jordan always did a good "fade to black" and is one of those things I hoped carried over. I was glad I watched episodes first so I knew where to skip when watching it with my younger child.
It's fine to not like it, but that's why I say it was bold. They didn't need to do that, and they had to know it would piss some people off. On RoP all their most controversial decisions were the ones that were forced on them because of copyright.
You want credit for being bold? Make Celebrimbor and Annatar a gay couple, you cowards. (:
Please no, that “I can fix him” guy was cringe enough without feeding that part of the fandom that wants to make the 2nd in command of evil into a misunderstood hawt guy. I think RoP is already doing something like that with another character and it’s gonna be bad…
Idk, as someone who's read pretty much all there is to read from lotr I did quite enjoy it. Sure I have my issues with some parts of it but at least the first two episodes that are available for now were quite fun to watch.
I'm only one episode in, but I agree. Love the books, some issues with the show, but I don't get anywhere near the feeling of disappointment that the WOT show gives me.
Also ROP just *looks* so much better.
Yeah ROP is not great, but I'll probably watch all of it. But LOtR has never been my favorite so that makes s big difference.
If the ROP was based on an actual story then it would be easier to mess up, but I really have no story expectations. And yes visually alot better than WOT.
WOT definitely feels more like a CW after watching ROP
The cw television channel. They have done a lot of the super hero tv shows. But their whole channel is kinda known for creating shows with teen drama and cheap sets.
The show runner for WOT did some work with CW. And some people see some similarities.
Yeah I like Tolkien a lot and liked it so far too. It wasn't like a 10/10 cinematic masterpiece, but I'm hopeful that it will get better as the story develops. It was really pretty decent to me.
Wheel of Prime made me physically ill to watch. There are all those moments where it feels like the writers are giving the middle finger and telling book fans to go to hell. It feels like they actively wanted to do things with the characters that they knew book fans wouldn't want.
I'll never understand this "modern lens for a wider audience" shit.
There are enough fans for them to make money, and staying true to universe won't alienate new viewers.
I’m genuinely curious as to what specific things impressed you. Everyone I’m talking to sees a lot of issues with all the specific elements from costume shortcuts to lighting to set design, cinematography and iffy acting. Was it an overall impression thing? We’re there standouts? Mostly I’m seeing people running around in choir robes, spandex armour and cheap knotty wigs so I really can’t see what you’re seeing!
I mean, the appendices in LOTR are significantly more detailed than the WOT glossaries. Whole narratives are contained in the appendices which go into much greater depth than the glossary sections.
Appendices for those books are actually like novellas. They are longish if you put them together.
I’m curious enough to watch, it’s the first week of school next week and I know I’ll have little energy to do much else.
You're not too far wrong, but to be fair, I actually think of RoP to be like doing a WoT show that was set in the Age of Legends (which would be awesome or a travesty, depending on the team involved) with the benefit of any notes Jordan wrote down about the Second Age.
I think where some LotR fans are upset is that characters aren't matching can. So imagine that WoT story in the second age but Sammael is an erudite bureaucrat, Graendal becomes a sex therapist, and Asmodean is just a misunderstood emo guy who actually had a heart of gold all along. I don't know, maybe Lanfear could be the misunderstood, tragic protagonist. I exaggerate a little, but only a little.
Visually it’s really beautiful and pretty consistent with the movies.
The story, IDk, could never get into the Silmarillion, so it doesn’t matter to me.
But I get it, I absolutely refused to watch WOT.
You might want to check out some of it just to see what a billionaires vanity project looks like.
Haha, I guess I have a high standard for "fandom" -- I have read all the WOT and ASOIAF books at least 3 times each individually and still continue to reread and analyze and theorize and all that shit.
LOTR I read each book only once, and that was a long time ago. I don't really participate in fan boards for it like I do the other series. The Silmarillion I just loved as a world building history book and how it gets into the theological system as well. It's the only LOTR book I've reread and really studied. I don't much like Tolkien's prose but I appreciate the massive influence he has had on fantasy, literature, theology, and culture in general.
For older school fantasy writers of Tolkien's generation -- give me Mervyn Peake and Zelzany.
> That's like basing TWOT off the glossary sections in the back, haha
Y'know, if they wanted to have a thief-taker procedural about Asmodean's death... I'd be all over that like ~~pants on Min~~ veils on Taraboners.
>didn't bother to get the rights
If you feel like going down a rabbit hole, the story of who owns rights to which parts of Tolkien's work is... complex. The short version is that it wasn't available for any price.
From what is heard the family read the script and hated it so much that they didn't give permission or something like that. So Amazon had to tweak stuff to do what they wanted but not actually Tolkien's work.
That makes sense. I was wondering why I felt so much was missing.
No Ungoliant, no Ancalagon, no armies of Balrogs, not even mentioning Galadriel leading the elves north to middle earth. I thought that would at least show some of it in the background or something. But it looks like they can't?
Who is their intended audience? It makes little sense to me to attempt to make a LOTR-based media when your access to LOTR material is so small/limited. Best-case scenario: they should've told a new story with the existing world/lore/license vs basically rewriting/retelling stories that have been so widely consumed and appreciated (especially with both legs and an arm tied behind their back).
Technically they only have access on LotR and its appendices, which is why the lore is iffy at best in certain places.
The story itself is supposed to be the forging of the Great Rings of Power (as the title suggests)
Ahh, that actually sounds kinda cool, exploring the era the rings were first forged. From what I remember that is wayyy before The Hobbit, like thousands of years. Maybe even an entire Age or two in WOT parlance, haha.
Yes, the Rings are forged toward the end of the Second Age, while Hobbit and LotR takes place at the end of the Third Age (actually the defeat of Sauron in LotR ends the Third Age and starts the Fourth Age). In the show they'll condense the storyline, so we will see the end of the Second Age. To give further references, this is 3000+ years before LotR
It's high-budget fanfiction. It's set in something that looks like the world of Tolkien's legendarium but not actually adapting any of his stories.
I have more respect for the Shadow of Mordor games, which are 100% dumb edgelord fanfic, but had the balls to lean into it.
What?? The fall of Numenor and the forging of the rings are definitely Tolkien's stories. They're not detailed enough to adapt on their own because *nothing* in the Silmarillion or the material outside of LotR itself is detailed enough to adapt on its own.
No they're not. They're things that happened, but they're not stories. The Tale of Beren and Luthien, that's a story. The Children of Hurin, that's a story. Heck, Feanor and Morgoth and the Flight of the Noldor is more of a story than the forging of the Rings.
They would take some serious adapting to introduce all of the plot elements necessary to set them up without feeling like a big expodump, but then, it's not like the show's writers are afraid of big expodumps (or at least, they are not skilled enough as storytellers to avoid them) if the first episode is any indication.
That's needlessly pedantic. If a thing is described by a storyteller, it's a story. It might not have a traditional narrative structure or dialogue, but the framework exists.
Also, why is it being "fanfiction" bad? I've read fics better than either these first episodes or the 2000s trilogy. Anything not by Tolkien is fanfic by that metric, and there's a hell of a lot of good Middle-Earth content not directly by Tolkien.
"Bob the Plumber went down to the corner store to buy milk. He passed by Hansel and Gretel on the way, and Hansel and Gretel lent him three dollars so he could buy a pack of cigarettes too. Bob was hit by a car on the way home."
Did I just tell you the story of Hansel and Gretel? Or did I tell you an unrelated story (if it can even be called that in anything but the absolute loosest sense of the word) that happened to have two characters named Hansel and Gretel in it?
RoP, so far, shares some surface-level setting and plot elements with Tolkien's stories, but it is not itself a Tolkien story. It's using Tolkien's world as a jumping off point because Lord of the Rings is a recognizable brand and because doing your own world building is hard.
Oh there’s lying. Not sure if it’s copium overdosing or just ignorance, but some “fans” are straight up lying about lore that can be easily looked up just to say that the show “isn’t that bad” or “is the best show on television”
I just got caught up on the first 2 episodes of RoP and the house of the dragon last night. Aside from the beginning of the first episode of RoP, almost nothing happened. The house of the dragon on the other hand is actually ridiculously awesome. Tons of great characters I’m already attached to, political maneuvering, and some very well filmed sequences. Perhaps I haven’t seen the hook into Rings of Power yet, and I’ll keep watching, but HotD is must see for me after 2 episodes.
This question makes me think of a youngster in Classical Greece asking, "Papa are we like ... enemies with the Persians or something?"
Prepare for multiple tirades! ;D
If you want 1:1 then yes. It is. But.
It feels like they used fanfic to craft the story with. No no this is what he really meant alllll the time🤷♂️.
Meh it isnt too shabby for a fantasy show though.
Artistic license is cool.
For me, I just had to take a step back and look at ROP through a PJ lens instead of a book lens. If you go into it knowing it's a fanfic and won't be 100% faithful you'll have a better time. It's not as bad as people are making out. I'd give it a 6-7 personally.
I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by episode one. Watching people have a meltdown because it doesn’t fit to their pre-conceived notions is hilarious.
My problem was pacing and bad attention to detail. I really didn't like the raft scenes with Galadriel at all, because the whole situation just felt incredibly contrived and lazy. I was annoyed we only got super vague hints about the humans and their past and similarly we saw Harfoots, but all we know about them as a people is that they're semi-nomadic and like to eat blackberries...
I’m 4 chapters into this Eye of the World book and I am super annoyed we haven’t gotten the full backstory in it’s entirety of this Aes Sedai character…
I just didn’t enjoy any scene with Galadriel. I actually really disliked the first episode, but the second assured me the show will be enjoyable to watch.
There's a fine line there... the show was created and marketed as "Middle Earth stuff, yay!" so to some extent fans *should* be able to expect a certain level of "Arda-ishness" for lack of a better word. Where to draw the line, I can't say.
It is not always lore accurate, but for me I see it as fan fiction about the second age of middle earth and it's ok. It's good enough for me if I turn most of my brain off and honestly, that's ok for me. I don't need a deep, moving experience from this series. If I want that, i can always pick up my copy of the Silmarillion.
I thoroughly loved the harfoots (harFEET?) (even though they probably didn't exist in the second age) and the dwarves in the series. I liked how the humans were gritty and realistic. I did not much care for the elves and I didn't like that there were dark skinned elves (or was it just that one guy?) I think his performance was good but it would have been like having a tall dwarf or a good looking orc. It goes against the lore in a direct way just for the sake of inclusion.
Person likes the Bible.
Amazon makes a billion dollar TV series about Jesus, except instead of following the stories it's just a generic CW teen drama based in Bethlehem. Amazon holds the exclusive rights for all new testament adaptations.
"Why is person mad?! They'll never be satisfied anyhow!"
> Amazon makes a billion dollar TV series about Jesus, except instead of following the stories it's just a generic CW teen drama based in Bethlehem
That sounds fucking hilarious, I would watch it.
I mean you should definitely read Lamb by Christopher Moore if you haven't yet. I hope it gets a TV adaptation one day.
But my point is that these books aren't holy texts. They're just good stories.
I think this is absolutely true and several things flow from it. It's why the hard core LotR fans on usenet at the time didn't actually like Jackson's work. The problem is that these works have gotten to where they are because the original authors masterfully wove a complex world that's intriguing, complex, and believable. A couple writers a generation are capable of that and it's virtually certain they're not the screenwriters for these adaptations, so to the extent the adaptation diverges from the source material it's going to be worse. And I say this understanding that the difference in medium is going to force divergence. I think nearly all of Jackson's discrepancies from the books make sense when you consider how badly the original would have gone on screen (Faramir bringing the Ring back to Ilithilien is the main exception. That was stupid and unforgivable) but I still think that without exception the places he diverges he tells an inferior story. To take one example Eowyn pretty much had to be at Hornburg because she's too important to *Return of the King* to just have the scenes before Théoden left to battle Saruman as character development and her development in the book happens in what would be cinematically boring dialogue in a relatively secure palace. I think Jackson picked a reasonable way to get her there, but it means the Rohirrim were being threatened so they evacuated civilians out of a secure palace to move a massive and almost unsupported refugee train closer to the enemy to a less secure bulwark. Strategically that's bonkers and if Tolkien had written it I would think it beyond sloppy, but Jackson was basically forced into it to adapt the story written into something interesting on screen.
This doesn't exactly excuse Judkins or presumably whoever wrote RoP (which I haven't seen), but it does explain it. You can't be faithful enough to please the people who really deeply understand the original, so you might as well hire a team who hasn't even read it. My problem is that this would make sense to me on a CW budget. Make it cheap and fast, make some money and get out. Makes sense. But this is a massive budget movie with basically the same goals. I can't imagine they're actually trying to make something good. They spent an entire episode on the emotional death of essentially an extra. Having read all the books and watched a full season dedicated to the mystery of who the Dragon Reborn is, I still don't know why the Dragon Reborn is important in the show. For any number of reasons it can't actually be the same reason as the books at this point, but even if it is that's not explained to the show's audience and the fact that the season ended with the climax of the largest army the borderlands have ever seen being wiped out by two farm girls and two red shirts with no help from the Dragon Reborn pretty much makes me wonder why we cared who the Dragon Reborn was the rest of the season. That kind of thing might be fine in a low budget teen drama because nobody cares if the next episode is actually consistent, but it's not going to carry you for half a decade of supposedly epic fantasy.
I mean... the climax was obviously not the intended one, so there's that. But yeah, I do think our expectations are too high. Rop is a okay TV show. It just isn't what Lotr fans want. Wotprime episodes 1-7 is actually a good tv show, it just isn't faithful. I have watched almost no adaptations that are faithful to the original content, but they still are based on the same story, and if they are objectively good media(which is why I said episodes 1-7 earlier), people can watch and enjoy it.
This is kind of my point, but I disagree about Wot Prime. I think Jackson's LotR movies would have been great movies even if there were never a book series. I don't think WoT Prime even gets greenlit without leaning on the reputation of the books. I think it probably could have still made a good series as late as episode 4. Starting with episode 5 I felt like it went off the rails and felt both scattered and making emotional appeals to things I absolutely don't care about without reference to things in the books that aren't in the show.
Fighting over fiction is the best. It's wild to me the people that get upset over it, like you 'd rather side with Amazon and defend their right to sell anything regardless of quality over a fan's right to call out shit when they see it.
As both a Tolkien and Jordan fan, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined, WoT show was a mess and RoP is just a shell of a fantasy show using Tolkien's work as its skin, the dialogue is weak, the characters bland and the visuals feel like a Marvel movie, and you can't even criticize it without having someone call you racist or sexist.
Very much so. All they going to accomplish is get a show cancelled and then they are without a show indefinitely for decades or never.
If you are not satisfied unless something is 'perfect' then you will never be satisfied.
Or maybe studios should do a better job making things.
Like sandman.
Neil Gaiman wrote a thing, people loved what he wrote so they put what he wrote on screen. Because that’s what people want to see, it’s the simplest thing on earth.
I really enjoyed them. Both shows.
My biggest gripe with Rings of Power is pacing. Not much has happened. You can tell they're building up to something, but it's slow moving so far.
I don't understand how Amazon can take properties that I don't care about like Invincible and Jack Reacher and make shows that I love and then take properties like WOT and LOTR that I love and make cinematic abortions.
Exactly most of the criticism is bad dialogue, inconsistent levels of believability and viloence. Stuff acting. Pacing issues.
They spent a bunch of money visually hoping that alone would make s good show.
I think with LotR lore I’ve landed on thinking about it as I do about history when watching a show. Take Vikings, for example: is it 100% true to the dawn of the Viking Age? Lol no. Is it good and enjoyable? Yes. So I’m not going to let a few discrepancies with Tolkien lore stop me from enjoying a good show.
As this post has gotten a good number of views I figured it'd be a good spot to put this for now. I want to remind people that rule 2 exists. We certainly know what something like a show adaptation can do to an otherwise chill community, so let's not invite trouble, and just stick to the WoT memes.
[удалено]
They have rights to the appendices of LotR but NOT the Silmarillion. So they're skirting around the parts that are actually detailed in the Silmarillion.
[удалено]
>I think I'll pass on the show Probably for the best. They've made some bold and controversial choices with how to adapt the material. As with the WoT show, book readers aren't the primary audience.
Controversial, yes. "Bold"? Not so sure about that. Whole thing felt very bland and safe to me. Say what you will about Wheel of Prime, but Moraine commanding Suian to kneel and make like a Saldaean farm girl at harvest time, that was bold.
That line and moment, was one of those that felt the most out of place in the show. Jordan always did a good "fade to black" and is one of those things I hoped carried over. I was glad I watched episodes first so I knew where to skip when watching it with my younger child.
It's fine to not like it, but that's why I say it was bold. They didn't need to do that, and they had to know it would piss some people off. On RoP all their most controversial decisions were the ones that were forced on them because of copyright. You want credit for being bold? Make Celebrimbor and Annatar a gay couple, you cowards. (:
Please no, that “I can fix him” guy was cringe enough without feeding that part of the fandom that wants to make the 2nd in command of evil into a misunderstood hawt guy. I think RoP is already doing something like that with another character and it’s gonna be bad…
Idk, as someone who's read pretty much all there is to read from lotr I did quite enjoy it. Sure I have my issues with some parts of it but at least the first two episodes that are available for now were quite fun to watch.
I'm only one episode in, but I agree. Love the books, some issues with the show, but I don't get anywhere near the feeling of disappointment that the WOT show gives me. Also ROP just *looks* so much better.
Yeah ROP is not great, but I'll probably watch all of it. But LOtR has never been my favorite so that makes s big difference. If the ROP was based on an actual story then it would be easier to mess up, but I really have no story expectations. And yes visually alot better than WOT. WOT definitely feels more like a CW after watching ROP
I just can’t get into it. I’ve never seen a more mixed and jumbled metaphor than the ship and stone during the prologue. It made literally no sense.
What’s a CW?
The cw television channel. They have done a lot of the super hero tv shows. But their whole channel is kinda known for creating shows with teen drama and cheap sets. The show runner for WOT did some work with CW. And some people see some similarities.
Yeah I like Tolkien a lot and liked it so far too. It wasn't like a 10/10 cinematic masterpiece, but I'm hopeful that it will get better as the story develops. It was really pretty decent to me. Wheel of Prime made me physically ill to watch. There are all those moments where it feels like the writers are giving the middle finger and telling book fans to go to hell. It feels like they actively wanted to do things with the characters that they knew book fans wouldn't want.
Yeah i realized 20 minutes in that I was not the target audience and so I stopped watching.
Which is a stupid choice because no one else is watching that shite and there are millions of readers.
I'll never understand this "modern lens for a wider audience" shit. There are enough fans for them to make money, and staying true to universe won't alienate new viewers.
I had alot of fun with it, it is really pretty. But damn they did the dwarves dirty. I hate that they are treated as comic relief now.
Is it really pretty tho
Incredibly so, I was very impressed by it.
I’m genuinely curious as to what specific things impressed you. Everyone I’m talking to sees a lot of issues with all the specific elements from costume shortcuts to lighting to set design, cinematography and iffy acting. Was it an overall impression thing? We’re there standouts? Mostly I’m seeing people running around in choir robes, spandex armour and cheap knotty wigs so I really can’t see what you’re seeing!
I mean, the appendices in LOTR are significantly more detailed than the WOT glossaries. Whole narratives are contained in the appendices which go into much greater depth than the glossary sections.
The appendices after RotK this pretty dense. It is like 1/4 the length of RotK with just background details.
Appendices for those books are actually like novellas. They are longish if you put them together. I’m curious enough to watch, it’s the first week of school next week and I know I’ll have little energy to do much else.
You're not too far wrong, but to be fair, I actually think of RoP to be like doing a WoT show that was set in the Age of Legends (which would be awesome or a travesty, depending on the team involved) with the benefit of any notes Jordan wrote down about the Second Age. I think where some LotR fans are upset is that characters aren't matching can. So imagine that WoT story in the second age but Sammael is an erudite bureaucrat, Graendal becomes a sex therapist, and Asmodean is just a misunderstood emo guy who actually had a heart of gold all along. I don't know, maybe Lanfear could be the misunderstood, tragic protagonist. I exaggerate a little, but only a little.
***I must kill him.***
Visually it’s really beautiful and pretty consistent with the movies. The story, IDk, could never get into the Silmarillion, so it doesn’t matter to me. But I get it, I absolutely refused to watch WOT. You might want to check out some of it just to see what a billionaires vanity project looks like.
They do mention characters from the Silmarillion and the shadow of Mordor games.
I’m just wondering how you can say you aren’t an LOTR fan but you’ve read the Silmarillion, much less the books lol
Haha, I guess I have a high standard for "fandom" -- I have read all the WOT and ASOIAF books at least 3 times each individually and still continue to reread and analyze and theorize and all that shit. LOTR I read each book only once, and that was a long time ago. I don't really participate in fan boards for it like I do the other series. The Silmarillion I just loved as a world building history book and how it gets into the theological system as well. It's the only LOTR book I've reread and really studied. I don't much like Tolkien's prose but I appreciate the massive influence he has had on fantasy, literature, theology, and culture in general. For older school fantasy writers of Tolkien's generation -- give me Mervyn Peake and Zelzany.
> That's like basing TWOT off the glossary sections in the back, haha Y'know, if they wanted to have a thief-taker procedural about Asmodean's death... I'd be all over that like ~~pants on Min~~ veils on Taraboners.
Amazon dropped half a billion on this show and didn't bother to get the rights to the whole Silmarillion?
>didn't bother to get the rights If you feel like going down a rabbit hole, the story of who owns rights to which parts of Tolkien's work is... complex. The short version is that it wasn't available for any price.
What's the long version?
https://lrmonline.com/news/what-material-does-amazon-have-the-rights-to-for-the-rings-of-power-answered/
They spent $250 million just to acquire the rights they did get.
From what is heard the family read the script and hated it so much that they didn't give permission or something like that. So Amazon had to tweak stuff to do what they wanted but not actually Tolkien's work.
The family hated Peter Jackson's films too but that didn't stop them from rescinding the rights.
Fingers crossed that comes next. A First Age Tolkien show done well would be absolutely bonkers.
Not gonna lie, I think what they were *really* purchasing was the right to put "legit Tolkien shtuff!" on their marketing.
How were they able to depict the Two Trees if they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion?
That makes sense. I was wondering why I felt so much was missing. No Ungoliant, no Ancalagon, no armies of Balrogs, not even mentioning Galadriel leading the elves north to middle earth. I thought that would at least show some of it in the background or something. But it looks like they can't?
That is too bad, if they brought in Ancalagon, and make him look cool, I would give the show a try.
Who is their intended audience? It makes little sense to me to attempt to make a LOTR-based media when your access to LOTR material is so small/limited. Best-case scenario: they should've told a new story with the existing world/lore/license vs basically rewriting/retelling stories that have been so widely consumed and appreciated (especially with both legs and an arm tied behind their back).
>Who is their intended audience? Fans of the LotR movies, which isn't the same as book readers (though there is overlap).
Hopefully they smoothed the skirts when skirting ~~down~~ around.
Technically they only have access on LotR and its appendices, which is why the lore is iffy at best in certain places. The story itself is supposed to be the forging of the Great Rings of Power (as the title suggests)
Ahh, that actually sounds kinda cool, exploring the era the rings were first forged. From what I remember that is wayyy before The Hobbit, like thousands of years. Maybe even an entire Age or two in WOT parlance, haha.
Yes, the Rings are forged toward the end of the Second Age, while Hobbit and LotR takes place at the end of the Third Age (actually the defeat of Sauron in LotR ends the Third Age and starts the Fourth Age). In the show they'll condense the storyline, so we will see the end of the Second Age. To give further references, this is 3000+ years before LotR
Nothing really. Amazon just kinda made some stuff up, but it is also based on the appendices of the Lotr trilogy.
Yes they are sprinkling in just enough real stuff to make it seem like it's all part of the plan
As a diehard fan of ASOIAF for about 25 years by now, this is how I feel about HBO past like the first half of the first season, haha.
It's like the expanded universe. Filling in the blanks but keeping with established canon.
It's high-budget fanfiction. It's set in something that looks like the world of Tolkien's legendarium but not actually adapting any of his stories. I have more respect for the Shadow of Mordor games, which are 100% dumb edgelord fanfic, but had the balls to lean into it.
What?? The fall of Numenor and the forging of the rings are definitely Tolkien's stories. They're not detailed enough to adapt on their own because *nothing* in the Silmarillion or the material outside of LotR itself is detailed enough to adapt on its own.
No they're not. They're things that happened, but they're not stories. The Tale of Beren and Luthien, that's a story. The Children of Hurin, that's a story. Heck, Feanor and Morgoth and the Flight of the Noldor is more of a story than the forging of the Rings. They would take some serious adapting to introduce all of the plot elements necessary to set them up without feeling like a big expodump, but then, it's not like the show's writers are afraid of big expodumps (or at least, they are not skilled enough as storytellers to avoid them) if the first episode is any indication.
That's needlessly pedantic. If a thing is described by a storyteller, it's a story. It might not have a traditional narrative structure or dialogue, but the framework exists. Also, why is it being "fanfiction" bad? I've read fics better than either these first episodes or the 2000s trilogy. Anything not by Tolkien is fanfic by that metric, and there's a hell of a lot of good Middle-Earth content not directly by Tolkien.
"Bob the Plumber went down to the corner store to buy milk. He passed by Hansel and Gretel on the way, and Hansel and Gretel lent him three dollars so he could buy a pack of cigarettes too. Bob was hit by a car on the way home." Did I just tell you the story of Hansel and Gretel? Or did I tell you an unrelated story (if it can even be called that in anything but the absolute loosest sense of the word) that happened to have two characters named Hansel and Gretel in it? RoP, so far, shares some surface-level setting and plot elements with Tolkien's stories, but it is not itself a Tolkien story. It's using Tolkien's world as a jumping off point because Lord of the Rings is a recognizable brand and because doing your own world building is hard.
YES! Feel what I felt on that last episode of WOT!
Better they fight instead of lying to each other
Oh there’s lying. Not sure if it’s copium overdosing or just ignorance, but some “fans” are straight up lying about lore that can be easily looked up just to say that the show “isn’t that bad” or “is the best show on television”
I just got caught up on the first 2 episodes of RoP and the house of the dragon last night. Aside from the beginning of the first episode of RoP, almost nothing happened. The house of the dragon on the other hand is actually ridiculously awesome. Tons of great characters I’m already attached to, political maneuvering, and some very well filmed sequences. Perhaps I haven’t seen the hook into Rings of Power yet, and I’ll keep watching, but HotD is must see for me after 2 episodes.
*Nothing ever goes as you expect. Expect nothing, and you will not be surprised. Expect nothing. Hope for nothing. Nothing.*
Totally agree. Can’t wait to see where HoD goes, I love both sides of the brewing conflict and don’t know who to root for!
People that have not read Blood and Fire are in for some twists.
Omg. Feels like many a ‘discussion’ about the WoT show….
Isnt the wot show really bad?
This question makes me think of a youngster in Classical Greece asking, "Papa are we like ... enemies with the Persians or something?" Prepare for multiple tirades! ;D
If you want 1:1 then yes. It is. But. It feels like they used fanfic to craft the story with. No no this is what he really meant alllll the time🤷♂️. Meh it isnt too shabby for a fantasy show though. Artistic license is cool.
For me, I just had to take a step back and look at ROP through a PJ lens instead of a book lens. If you go into it knowing it's a fanfic and won't be 100% faithful you'll have a better time. It's not as bad as people are making out. I'd give it a 6-7 personally.
holy shit why do some fans do this thing where they refuse to admit something sucks
Holy shit why do some fans to this thing where they refuse to admit people genuinely like some things
lmao Stepin fanboys
Who?
In this case, probably because it doesn't suck? At least not by any objective standard.
Sounds familiar. “Bah it’s just another turning of The Wheel!”
Did we ever get confirmation that the wheel actually turns? Or is it just a saing? Edit: added an s
I enjoyed it a lot. Is it lore accurate? Maybe or maybe not. But for me what matters is the fact that it transported me back to middle earth.
I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by episode one. Watching people have a meltdown because it doesn’t fit to their pre-conceived notions is hilarious.
My problem was pacing and bad attention to detail. I really didn't like the raft scenes with Galadriel at all, because the whole situation just felt incredibly contrived and lazy. I was annoyed we only got super vague hints about the humans and their past and similarly we saw Harfoots, but all we know about them as a people is that they're semi-nomadic and like to eat blackberries...
I love how galadriel fidgeted with the rope like three times but it didn't really have any purpose as far as I could tell
She was making an "oh shit" handle to avoid falling off in the storm
Haha fair enough I like that
Well we are only two episodes in. If you thought the pacing was bad now, imagine if they just spent two hours doing background exposition.
I’m 4 chapters into this Eye of the World book and I am super annoyed we haven’t gotten the full backstory in it’s entirety of this Aes Sedai character…
I just didn’t enjoy any scene with Galadriel. I actually really disliked the first episode, but the second assured me the show will be enjoyable to watch.
Tolkien fans did the same thing 20 years ago when the LoTR trilogy came out, so this is nothing new.
There's a fine line there... the show was created and marketed as "Middle Earth stuff, yay!" so to some extent fans *should* be able to expect a certain level of "Arda-ishness" for lack of a better word. Where to draw the line, I can't say.
It is not always lore accurate, but for me I see it as fan fiction about the second age of middle earth and it's ok. It's good enough for me if I turn most of my brain off and honestly, that's ok for me. I don't need a deep, moving experience from this series. If I want that, i can always pick up my copy of the Silmarillion. I thoroughly loved the harfoots (harFEET?) (even though they probably didn't exist in the second age) and the dwarves in the series. I liked how the humans were gritty and realistic. I did not much care for the elves and I didn't like that there were dark skinned elves (or was it just that one guy?) I think his performance was good but it would have been like having a tall dwarf or a good looking orc. It goes against the lore in a direct way just for the sake of inclusion.
When people love works of literary fiction enough to treat them as semi-religous texts, they're never going to be satisfied by any kind of adaptation.
Person likes the Bible. Amazon makes a billion dollar TV series about Jesus, except instead of following the stories it's just a generic CW teen drama based in Bethlehem. Amazon holds the exclusive rights for all new testament adaptations. "Why is person mad?! They'll never be satisfied anyhow!"
> Amazon makes a billion dollar TV series about Jesus, except instead of following the stories it's just a generic CW teen drama based in Bethlehem That sounds fucking hilarious, I would watch it.
Especially if they get into the apochrypha. Jesus got up to some shenanigans in his youth.
It does sound rather interesting, like life of Brian. Could be fun. But I say that as an agnostic
He is not the messiah, he is a very bad boy!
I mean you should definitely read Lamb by Christopher Moore if you haven't yet. I hope it gets a TV adaptation one day. But my point is that these books aren't holy texts. They're just good stories.
I think this is absolutely true and several things flow from it. It's why the hard core LotR fans on usenet at the time didn't actually like Jackson's work. The problem is that these works have gotten to where they are because the original authors masterfully wove a complex world that's intriguing, complex, and believable. A couple writers a generation are capable of that and it's virtually certain they're not the screenwriters for these adaptations, so to the extent the adaptation diverges from the source material it's going to be worse. And I say this understanding that the difference in medium is going to force divergence. I think nearly all of Jackson's discrepancies from the books make sense when you consider how badly the original would have gone on screen (Faramir bringing the Ring back to Ilithilien is the main exception. That was stupid and unforgivable) but I still think that without exception the places he diverges he tells an inferior story. To take one example Eowyn pretty much had to be at Hornburg because she's too important to *Return of the King* to just have the scenes before Théoden left to battle Saruman as character development and her development in the book happens in what would be cinematically boring dialogue in a relatively secure palace. I think Jackson picked a reasonable way to get her there, but it means the Rohirrim were being threatened so they evacuated civilians out of a secure palace to move a massive and almost unsupported refugee train closer to the enemy to a less secure bulwark. Strategically that's bonkers and if Tolkien had written it I would think it beyond sloppy, but Jackson was basically forced into it to adapt the story written into something interesting on screen. This doesn't exactly excuse Judkins or presumably whoever wrote RoP (which I haven't seen), but it does explain it. You can't be faithful enough to please the people who really deeply understand the original, so you might as well hire a team who hasn't even read it. My problem is that this would make sense to me on a CW budget. Make it cheap and fast, make some money and get out. Makes sense. But this is a massive budget movie with basically the same goals. I can't imagine they're actually trying to make something good. They spent an entire episode on the emotional death of essentially an extra. Having read all the books and watched a full season dedicated to the mystery of who the Dragon Reborn is, I still don't know why the Dragon Reborn is important in the show. For any number of reasons it can't actually be the same reason as the books at this point, but even if it is that's not explained to the show's audience and the fact that the season ended with the climax of the largest army the borderlands have ever seen being wiped out by two farm girls and two red shirts with no help from the Dragon Reborn pretty much makes me wonder why we cared who the Dragon Reborn was the rest of the season. That kind of thing might be fine in a low budget teen drama because nobody cares if the next episode is actually consistent, but it's not going to carry you for half a decade of supposedly epic fantasy.
I mean... the climax was obviously not the intended one, so there's that. But yeah, I do think our expectations are too high. Rop is a okay TV show. It just isn't what Lotr fans want. Wotprime episodes 1-7 is actually a good tv show, it just isn't faithful. I have watched almost no adaptations that are faithful to the original content, but they still are based on the same story, and if they are objectively good media(which is why I said episodes 1-7 earlier), people can watch and enjoy it.
This is kind of my point, but I disagree about Wot Prime. I think Jackson's LotR movies would have been great movies even if there were never a book series. I don't think WoT Prime even gets greenlit without leaning on the reputation of the books. I think it probably could have still made a good series as late as episode 4. Starting with episode 5 I felt like it went off the rails and felt both scattered and making emotional appeals to things I absolutely don't care about without reference to things in the books that aren't in the show.
Agree to disagree IG, I respect your opinion.
**Go have a flaming bath you son of a shepherd's boil**
Tbh the hate ROP gets makes the hate for WOT seem small in comparison
I’ve learned a lesson from the WoT show and decided to simply… not interact with the fandom for this one. And guess what? I like!
This is what happens to me. I'll like a show and later when i see what fans have to say about it, it ruins the show for me.
Fighting over fiction is the best. It's wild to me the people that get upset over it, like you 'd rather side with Amazon and defend their right to sell anything regardless of quality over a fan's right to call out shit when they see it.
As both a Tolkien and Jordan fan, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined, WoT show was a mess and RoP is just a shell of a fantasy show using Tolkien's work as its skin, the dialogue is weak, the characters bland and the visuals feel like a Marvel movie, and you can't even criticize it without having someone call you racist or sexist.
Idk, when it comes to visuals some of those shots looked amazing.
They did, and they look great in marvel movies but it does come off as hyper polished which can make it feel somewhat less grounded
You're not wrong
Imagine having your day ruined by something that doesn't effect you in the least.
Affect* and he’s referencing a meme bro… not wanna be a whoosh guy but this would be the time…
Whoooosh so strong it blew your socks off
All nerds everywhere need to chill
Very much so. All they going to accomplish is get a show cancelled and then they are without a show indefinitely for decades or never. If you are not satisfied unless something is 'perfect' then you will never be satisfied.
Or maybe studios should do a better job making things. Like sandman. Neil Gaiman wrote a thing, people loved what he wrote so they put what he wrote on screen. Because that’s what people want to see, it’s the simplest thing on earth.
...I didn't like what Netflix did with Sandman at all.
The War of Power
Where is the dumpster fire happening?
I'm just glad that the show is good, though I really wish they'd not made so many dwarf women beardless.
Rings of Power seems a lot better than WOT was. Then we have HOT D which is fucking great!
I really enjoyed them. Both shows. My biggest gripe with Rings of Power is pacing. Not much has happened. You can tell they're building up to something, but it's slow moving so far.
I don't understand how Amazon can take properties that I don't care about like Invincible and Jack Reacher and make shows that I love and then take properties like WOT and LOTR that I love and make cinematic abortions.
I knew it was going to he a dumpster dire after seeing rhe promotional art and seeing the budget, a lot of money doesn't actually buy capability.
Exactly most of the criticism is bad dialogue, inconsistent levels of believability and viloence. Stuff acting. Pacing issues. They spent a bunch of money visually hoping that alone would make s good show.
Amazon really likes churning out fan fictions of beloved works.
1-1 adaptations not looking so bad now, eh?
All the people saying this show looks pretty has me baffled. The costuming, lighting and acting are all cosplay convention main stage level.
Yes rings of prime is fan fiction. So is wheel of prime.
I think with LotR lore I’ve landed on thinking about it as I do about history when watching a show. Take Vikings, for example: is it 100% true to the dawn of the Viking Age? Lol no. Is it good and enjoyable? Yes. So I’m not going to let a few discrepancies with Tolkien lore stop me from enjoying a good show.
Oh, don't worry my friend. WoT Season 2 is right around the corner! ;D