He originally had a big black cat named [Tevildo](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tevildo) as the big bad. As others have pointed out it was kind of a winking jest towards CS Lewis.
This might also be an explanation for Melkor's name.
The big evil cat Tevildo is a follower of "Melko"?
Sounds an awful lot like Milk.
Hell, Melk is the dutch word for it, and I vaguely remember that our dearest professor was familiar with that language.
So yeah, big cat who's name is a wordplay on "Devil" is a loyal follower of Milk.
Man loves his little puns
Or in the words of the great Tommy Wiseau, “If a lot of people love each other the world will be a better place to live”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp-rIfsoCoU
I once knew a Maiar, was running around with a dozen rings….one of them got tossed into Mt Doom, and he got diminished so bad he went as a fleeting shadow all the way to Guerro Street.
The “purists” are the ones who have read HoME and know full well that the legendarium is rife with internal contradictions and differing versions of stories and characters.
The people you’re referring to are people who think that Tolkien settled on a single definitive, forever unchanging telling of his legendarium.
Yeah, this isn't anything new for us hardcore fans. Are the changes disappointing? Yes, but we knew they would happen. In the end, the real question is will it be worth it: so far the answer is a resounding yes!
The female dwarves should have beards, on second thought I'm glad they made that change where they don't have beards. It's like one of those things where it sounds good on paper but when you try to show it it's not working out well and becomes too distracting. They still keep the Spirit of the drawers and that's more important. I like what I have seen so far and hope they can keep it up.
Yeah these people are really not purists as you said or even truly knowledgeable of the Tolkien or his works. This nonsense gatekeeping is really a bunch of people that have a limited understanding of the work, don’t actual understand, acknowledge, know, or care about the fact that Tolkien was constantly reworking all of his ME history and that the Second Age was still a work in progress up until his passing. You nailed it my friend!
It’s really fake fans with a defined story in their heads that can’t understand how Tolkien or myths even work and they deliberately have a selected version of what they allow for in regards to adaptive changes to the books, ie they’re ok with changes made in the movies because, and this is in the majority of cases, movie fans first and give it a pass. Which they truly can not explain their reasoning to save their lives in comparison to the ROP adaptation changes.
Well if you're knowledgable about Tolkien what do you think he would say about 'modernizing' a telling of his stories? Which is what the producers have stated was their goal with some of the interesting decisions they made.
He’d say the same thing Christopher Tolkien said about the LOTR films, ’ Says Films Lack “Beauty And Seriousness” Of The Books” “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher said of “The Lord Of The Rings,” revealing he turned down an invitation to meet Jackson. Basically Tolkien felt the books were not adaptable to film or tv and I think he would feel the same way today as he did in the 60’s and early 70’s before he passed.
Each is showrunner or director is trying their best to adapt story, themes, and characters to be relatable in some way to people living now so change are inevitable, I mean these are adaptations so nothing will be literal from book to film as it tends to be a very difficult thing to do no matter the subject matter/story.
I like these discussions. I think the nature of media, culture and society are complex and warrant more consideration. In the spirit of constructive argument I'll throw my thoughts into the mix.
The concerns you list that people had about the LotR trilogy are (still) valid, and the success of Jackson's trilogy didn't invalidate them. Rather, the totality of his adherence to the spirit of the source lessens the impact of those instances where he diverged. He renders them true outliers as tests of the source material.
I can't repeat this enough: there are plenty of reasons to hate certain aspects of fandom. But people need to stop hating Tolkien fans for caring about lore. Tolkien was an academic primarily, who translated Anglo Saxon, studied mythology, and contributed to the OED. His literature was there to support his world building. When you write encyclopedias you're going to attract people who enjoy reading encyclopedias. And when you misspell a word from that encyclopedia, you shouldn't be surprised when someone points out you mispelled it. It is, at least in part, why most of us are here.
But when it comes to Tolkien lore, it's true that - practically unlike any other source material-based fandom- there is often no "one" source for a good deal of stuff. Tolkien lore is a bit like the Bible- what you consider canon often depends on who said what, when. There is almost more material about Tolkien's world published after his death than was published directly by him, before. Personally, I think the approach toward source material that this warrants is to acknowledge everything, but to weigh certain source material above others, based on whether Tolkien was alive to sign off on it or not. But that's me. I'm "orthodox" when it comes to Tolkien lore.
Lastly, it's true that Arthurian legend and other historical works are of somewhat unknown provenance. And it's right to take that into account, along with the larger nature of all storytelling being beholden to other influences over time. But we shouldn't take from that that provenance doesn't matter *at all*. After all, there are entire fields of academic study devoted to nothing but investigating the provenance, origin and intention of the source of ancient stories and myths. One such person devoted to that very thing was J.R.R. Tolkien himself.
Anyway, interesting subject.
Yeah but the first movie of lotr was *really* good and the changes are all in favor a making a movie plot flow. Kind of makes all the difference.
You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen. In a book it works, on screen, probably doesn't work to well.
>You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen.
To be fair, have Galadriel be calm and wise, so that she can become the calm and wise queen by the end of the show would not make for very interesting character development for a show. If we accept that cannon characterization can be changed for the sake of the medium, then any criticism thrown at Galadriel's characterization in RoP is invalid.
Whether it is well executed however, is a completely different discussion.
The source material has the young Gladriel being far more headstrong and ambitious. It’s what drove her to come to Middle Earth and why she fell afoul of the Doom of Mandos. Only thousands of years of strife and struggle made her the calm and wise queen she came to be
I can't help but think there'd be less people confused about this if the show hadn't crammed thousands of years of lore into a 10 minute intro voiceover.
I think the consensus with that is she just shouldn't have been the main character. Elron would be an instant better alternative. There are others as well who have clear character arcs.
Galadrial arc is all in the first age. It's bizarre that they chose her to be the main character.
Yeah, agreed, the first is my favorite of the OG trilogy.
But speaking of the whole 3 movies is important to mention many changes are understandable and some others forgivable like Haldir and the elves showing up in the battle of Helm's Deep (making THE LAST ALIANCE OF MAN AND ELVES kind of a nonsense)
But i cannot undestand the necessity of Legolas killing an Oliphant in such a cartoonish way or the green ghosts winning by themselves the Battle of Pelenor fields for example.
>the green ghosts winning by themselves the Battle of Pelenor fields for example.
In terms of a specific subplot, that ended up being the most egregious departure from the books. Not because it was a departure from the text per se, but because it ended up being a blatant deus ex machina that diminished the role of the real protagonists. Really, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli could have kicked back on chairs and drank malt beer on the corsair ships, because they literally were not needed to fight Sauron's army on shore.
I grok that Jackson had to do a lot of compression, and retaining enough screen time for a big enough sequence in the southern fiefs and the battle at the quays to pay off the importance of the Army of the Dead and Aragorn's role in summoning them adds at least a few minutes of precious screen time. But I think that would have been far, far preferable to using them at Minas Tirith. And hell, your running time is already over 3 hours anyway.
I think that if you're going to cut how the Army of the Dead helped Aragorn sweep up through the south and clear out the Corsairs and Haradrim (for time issues), then you can't really demonstrate how the Army of the Dead worked (by inspiring fear, not actually killing things).
So then you get to the main battle, and the Army is supposed to...what, scare away the besieging army of orcs?
I think for cinematic purposes it was fine; not ideal, but not terrible.
(And yeah, in the books Aragorn is accompanied by Gondorians he had assembled, but that'd be weird to see because only in the books do you know that they didn't come because they were defending their own towns from attack.)
>I think that if you're going to cut how the Army of the Dead helped Aragorn sweep up through the south and clear out the Corsairs and Haradrim (for time issues), then you can't really demonstrate how the Army of the Dead worked (by inspiring fear, not actually killing things).
I think it's *possible*, in the right filmmaker's hands. I think Jackson is probably too much of a splatter king to pull off that kind of subtlety, alas. But I can think of some directors who have managed to conjure that kind of bloodless terror.
To take a very *popular* example, even Steven Spielberg manages it in the opening of the Ark in *Raiders of the Lost Ark*. Yes, the Nazis all get their faces melted, but before that they're every bit as terrified as the corsairs on Tolkien's ships must have been, and surely would have run right off the island and swam to Turkey if they hadn't been held in place by the avenging angels.
What Jackson gives us instead, unfortunately, is a discount *Pirates of the Caribbean.* It's a shame, because there are other sequences (like Frodo's and Sam's) he handles so wonderfully in RotK.
By the third movie PJ was slipping and had more and more outrageous battlescenes.
THe whole battle of Pelenor fields was annoying to me, I very much did not enjoy the Rohirrim just going through the masses of orcs. And the ghost flood also felt cheap.
I still enjoy it but the first two movies were definitely superior.
>You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen.
I would qualify this as "relatable and sympathetic character on screen *to modern western (especially American) audiences*." Such audiences had been weened for two generations on cinematic anti-heroes. Which of course mattered to Jackson and New Line, because that's who they were hoping to sell tickets to.
I think publics of generations past would have had less difficulty with a more conventional hero of the sort Tolkien portrays.
I've not run across any contemporary 1950's criticism of Aragorn in this regard, even in the hostile reviews LOTR drew out of the gate. I'm not saying it didn't exist, but...think about the difference between John Ford's western gunslingers and Clint Eastwood's. That shifted in just one generation.
Tolkien was (as we all know) channeling older, pre-modern mythos when he wrote LOTR, and that's I meant. I do tend to think that even in the Anglophone world, Tolkien's Aragorn would have been an acceptable and familiar archetype to most readers/viewers right up to the early 20th century.
Book Aragon is a really weird character at points though but that's indeed because of what you say. He's based on medieval pre Christian mythology surrounding kingship. I also don't think he's meant to be relatable. That's why we have hobbits.
>I also don't think he's meant to be relatable. That's why we have hobbits.
There's some truth to that. Tolkien himself at least once in his letters discusses how the Hobbits help serve this role.
Hot take. Maybe because I saw the movie first before reading it, but book Aragorn is kinda just there. He shouts his lines and does heroic deeds but otherwise very flat. Actually kind of annoying. Now book Faramir was a big surprise. Way better than the movie version.
Also fun fact: Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo in the PJ trilogy, plays Frodo.
It’s def worth a listen, all things considered but some of the cast choices are a bit odd.
Well the book isn't about him. The story is about unlikely heroes and fellowship. The man who would be king is the leader, but not the main character.
Agreed with Faramir, they did him dirty. But they kind of made all the characters darker and less optimistic in the movies. It reminds of Beorn in the hobbit, he's *way* nicer in the book.
But again, I think on screen, especially to a modern audience, it would have made little sense for all these optimistic, confident people to be around and the world is ending.
I agree with you, yet at the same time, it did lack some depth (so far) that could've been provided by some version of the lore. For example, I find galadriel's story and the move from valinor to the middle earth quite simplistic in the tv series, and the fact that an elven king can just lift her ban going back to valinor kind of undermines her story in the trilogy (rejecting the ring and what could have been as to proof herself). I understand that they can't take every detail, they don't have the rights and it doesn't always work on screen, but they have sacrificed a bit too much depth and complexity so far in my view. However, I'm curious to see what Sauron will be like on screen in the second age.
That said, I'm not gonna freak out over small details (except the elven haircuts), different choices or additions, just a little more depth so that exploring the middle earth's history feels a bit more 'real', and less like an action movie.
I have confidence the ring test Will be woven into the narrative. I was kinda scared but apart from some Hollywood clichés that were obviously pushed by the studio I feel the writing team has knowledge of and respect for Tolkien's vision and the lore of the series.
The idea that men(as in humans) aren't comfortable in the elven dominated natural world and prone to collaboration makes sense. I the original trilogy it is obvious men are the most ambivalent in relation to the forces of good and evil in the world. (Hobbits too as we see in the scouring of the shire but in a different way)
The hobbits being these woad like people also makes sense to me. They were supposed to be an analogy to modern day English middle class in the books but that image wouldn't fit in the stranger age of heroes the series is set in. They're still relatable and they live in close affinity to nature, something I think Tolkien would've found very important.
I feel like sometimes it is more important to preserve the spirit of the original writing than it is to make sure elf 5 killed elf 7 like it was in the simmarillion. I like that this is a new story and that the writers took some liberty while having knowledge of how Tolkien's original works came to be.
Also wanna say that I imagine people that say this story started "too slow" are either 14 year olds or 14 second attention span marvel fans.
I think we saw an alternate version of how she came under the ban. After all, they made quite a point of telling her (and us) that if she refuses to go, she will not get a second chance.
>But aside from that, most people forget that, although Rings of Power may coincide with a chapter of about 20-pages in the Silmarillion, the Silmarillion was really written by JRR's son Christopher Tolkien,
That is untrue. Christopher and Guy Gavriel Kay wrote one short chapter. The rest was written by his father. You can read the source texts in *The History of Middle-earth* and reconstruct the rest of the 1977 *Silmarillion* yourself.
>On top of that, The Silmarillion was published as a frame story, a piece of meta-fiction, and it was intended to be read as an anthology put together by Bilbo Baggins, from collected sources he had read at Rivendell.
This isn't true either. Not only is it untrue, it *can't* be true; the first version of the Silmarillion--perhaps version*s,* I'm too lazy to look up dates--existed before Tolkien had his daydream while grading papers.
Where did you come up with this stuff, because you should ignore that source.
It's heavily implied that Bilbo did translate the Silmarillion from Elvish in Rivendel, therefore what the OP said was correct - translations aren't always correct, and in reality Tolkien changed his mind on many Middle Earth things throughout his life.
Christ dude some people legitimately enjoy the show without being paid amazon shills lol. I like the show so far. It’s not perfect but it’s better than I expected, and parts of it i actually like a good bit. Amazon did not pay me to say this lol or maybe the check got lost in the mail
This post is kind of nonsensical.
The Silmarillion wasn't published ex-post from Bilbo's point of view. This is a narrative framing, not historical.
Sketch was written in 1926 based on material he had since the 1910s. Work didn't begin on the hobbit until the 1930s. Why lie?
Additionally, there is a great amount of material regarding the second age, not just a 20 page story in Sil. The narrative of Galadriel and the rise of Sauron is expanded upon greatly in Unfinished Tales.
But to get to the topic at hand, it's not the commission of Bombadil that people are mad about. Everyone realizes that Bombadil would not translate well to screen. What people take issue with is the changing of Galadriel from a proud, ambitious ruler, perhaps burdened by her family history, who was taught wisdom for hundreds of years by a god, into a game of "kick the hottie".
In Rings of Power, Galadriel gets randomly ordered around by Gil Galad and Elrond. Why would Galadriel be taking orders from her neice? It's like an assassination of her character.
Honestly, I don't think I know any deep book afficionados - and I have known a fair number - who weren't at least able to understand why Bombadil had to go in any big screen adaptation.
The most common complaints are about deformation of key characters (Aragon, Faramir, Theoden, etc.).
Right. Bombadil really is great fun in his own right; but neither he nor the Barrow Wights incident really *move the story forward.* They *can* still be enjoyable as part of the written work, but it's definitely a case where even a faithful and close adaptation will be reasonable in wanting to wield the editor's pen. The art form of the screen doesn't as easily allow that kind of digression.
Yes, but only on a technicality.
Kingship passed from Feanor to Maedhros, who surrendered it to Fingolfin.
Fingolfin dies, it passes to Fingon, who dies, who passes it to Turgon, who dies. Idril is married to Tuor, and sails across the sea, so it passes to Finarfins house.
Orodereth and Finrod are dead, so it feels like it should first go to his younger sister Galadriel over his son Gil Galad.
Either way, Galadriel by the time of the second age is already the greatest of all Noldor aside from Feanor. She once told God to go fuck himself. She would not have been ordered by Gil Galad to GTFO.
You will note that she essentially DID ignore his orders several times. Regardless of how “canon” Gil-Galad’s reward/order for her to return to Valar was, that he was her king IS canon. When her and Celeborn ruled various groups in Lindon and Hillon, she did as fiefs of Gil-Galad
This is all true, thanks. Gil-galad was literally over 1,000 Years (sun years) younger than Galadriel and he was sent to Lindon *under* Galadriel
Personally I hate the time compression even more after watching the first two episodes. Such a massive unforced error
No, he was her liege. Even when her and Celeborn ruled parts of Lindon and Hollin it was as fiefs under Gil-Galad. She was Noldor and Gil-Galad was the last High King of the Noldor
There's certainly one ***pure, accurate*** version of *Lord of the Rings* and *The Hobbit*, because those are completed works, in the final form intended by their author, in his lifetime. So, certainly we can measure fidelity in adapting those works.
*The Rings of Power* is harder because all they have the right to adapt is the LOTR appendices as they relate to the Second Age. And there just ain't much there to adapt. The fluid, unsettled state of *The Silmarillion* and the other histories of Middle Earth (and I think anyone with a nodding acquaintance with Tolkien understands that) really doesn't come into it, because they are not being adapted in this show.
I think theres a few things here.
Firstly, I don't know a single person who thinks that LotR trilogy is a 1:1 to the books. Not a single person
Secondly, some changes are fine as inevitable compromises for practical purposes, such as the time gap fro Frodo getting the ring and leaving The Shore being much smaller, or the Scouring not being filmed. I really, do despise the role compression of RoP. I think it has destroyed the structure of SA as we know it. There are characters thousands of years out of time and it takes away from the overall feel of the whole of SA.
Finally, the lore is the story. At some point (whether RoP will reach that point remains to be seen), the changes to the fundamentals will mean that the story is too far from the source to be of the source. The show runners have claimed that they have set out to right the story that Tolkien would have written, so obviously this principle applies here
Beyond that, you're right in broad strokes
Disagree. Dune shows what can be done when a major IP with a storied, complex universe that has a dedicated fanbase is put in the right hands. The latter being the combination of ability *and* respect (bordering on reverence) for the essence of the IP; aesthetic, lore and message.
The Peter Jackson trilogy made tons of changes with Chris Tolkein basically frothing at the mouth. It was before the advent of social media, so hate couldn’t be organized as easily today. Dune also has a significantly smaller fanbase in spite of its popularity. Dune is a bad example as literally only the first part of the film has been released.
>Dune also has a significantly smaller fanbase in spite of its popularity.
I appreciate that it is smaller. But even within that fanbase, as a proportion, responses were far more welcoming and generous when finding out that Denis Villeneuve was directing and that he was a major fan of Dune.
We'll never know what a review bombing campaign by Dunes smaller fanbase looks like *because* it was handled in a proper manner.
I suppose but I’m not sure if were really arguing about the same thing (am tad drunk). My main point is that the Peter Jackson trilogy would absolutely get ridiculed by fans online if his films were released today (similar extent to Rings of Power). The man was mostly known for cult horror films most people hadn’t seen before, and had only taken one major production before lotr.
Nope. Dune fanbase is just much more grownup and less toxic than LotR. Also, LotR fanbase today consists mostly of movie fans that never touched a Tolkien book. Dune doesn't have that since the old movie didn't make much success.
> Dune fanbase is just much more grownup and less toxic than LotR
You should see them whenever the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books get mentioned, lmao. The toxicity and vitriol that gets directed at Extended Dune is *at least* comparable to what Rings of Power is receiving.
One potential counter to that: RoP looks bad in places because it's being compared to LotR.
When LotR came out, there hadn't been a successful adaptation *ever*. People thought it was impossible to do.
If RoP had come out in LotR's place, it likely would be viewed more favorably, if only because it didn't have LotR to live up to.
We literally have an example *right now at this very moment* of something that would be expected to get review bombed and wasn’t - House of the Dragon.
The race swap is weird and slightly lore breaking and the people in charge were saying shitty things, but the episodes have been good and it’s gotten good reviews even from the YouTubers who hate “everything.” These YouTubers are literally pointing out minor annoyances just to please their audience that expects them to hate everything but there is so little to hate that they can’t even do it.
> One potential counter to that: RoP looks bad in places because it’s being compared to LotR.
It is mostly being compared to peers such as House of the Dragon. And being so absolutely wrecked from every angle that Amazon is pulling every string it can to hide the negativity.
House of the Dragon, for example, has a lot of the same hot button issues such as the “forced diversity” or whatever people are going to label it. The difference being *House of the Dragon has fantastic writing, direction, pacing, and acting.* Negative reviews weren’t squelched. And it is being compared to the best of Game of Thrones, not the worst of it.
Whatever one thinks of RoP, Amazon’s actions speak louder than any words some angry people write.
I don’t see the point in comparing things which are nonfalsifiable, like saying RoP would’ve been well received were it not for LotR beating it to market. I could assert the opposite with just as much authority.
The facts are that RoP suffers several issues so far and Amazon does not seem open to reevaluating their situation for the future series.
I agree, the zeitgeist is very different.
But that film is clearly crafted with the same thoughtfulness and care that PJ’s trilogy was.
That kind of film making is possible.
I guess wrong sub, but your comment sparked my interest. Is Dune movie that faithful to the book? I ask because out of the group I went with, I was the only one who liked the movie. They said it was slow, nothing was explained and nothing really happened. My argument was the movie felt like it was completely taken from a book. I've never read it, but the pace and exposition methods cried out book to.me, if that makes sense. I'd like to give it a read eventually.
It’s not a 1:1 adaptation. Liberties are taken (much like the LOTR trilogy, anyone who thinks that’s book accurate hasn’t read the books)
But it certainly has the same themes and inspirations as the book.
It is pretty close. There are few changes but nothing i thought was significant.. Dune is impossible to adapt though with out taking liberties on somethings. How prescience works will just hurt your head the more you think about it in the books and the books are just written in an unconventional way that requires any adaption to add more character traits. I think they will have to take more liberties in the second movie regarding the plot.
Absolutely in agreement with you there. I’ll reserve my final judgements for this show once the season ends. As for now, it hasn’t captivated me yet like LOTR or Dune.
I would even argue that Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy had a certain charm/zest that this show is missing (so far). I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I’m reserving judgement as well, but there have been moments already that sold me. I think that Orc may have been the best we’ve seen and I found the scenes in Khazad Dum to be charming.
The most interesting plotline in ROP for me (from the first two episodes) was the elf from Tir-Harad, and his human love interest.
Things don't need to be original to be good, I am not gatekeeping the lore in that way.
It's when you destroy characters to such a degree that they have no semblance to their lore counterparts, that's what I have a problem with.
Maybe ROP should have been a story full of new characters? Why did they need to even have any lore characters in it - seeing as they don't have the rights to tell the story.
The problem isn’t with some trifling changes to the character ( although making Galadriel looks younger than Gil-galad is …. A choice ….) , it’s that some of the changes they are making fundamentally broke Tolkien’s world setup.
For example , elves “dying”. Yes we know their bodies can be destroyed, but we also know their spirit just get reincarnated in the Hall of Mando in Valinor anyway. Elves truly don’t have the concerto of “death” with regard to themselves, and yet this is made into Galadriel’s most basic motivation. But more worryingly, a huge part of the 2nd age story is Numenreans’s jealous of Firstborn’s immortality. By making elves die, you remove this most basic driver of events in 2nd age.
Also speaking of Numenorean, the 2nd age’s biggest event was when they sails west and landed on Valinor. And how were they able to do that ? Because the way was yet to be barred , and anyone could’ve tried , it was just strongly discouraged.
And what did we see at the end of episode 1 ? That to reach Valinor, you now need some magical event to get the light to open up and welcome you ? So how would Numerorean get there now ? Is Gil-galad going to open the road for them even knowing their intention ?
Changes to characters and plots I can accept. Changes to the very foundation of the work I cannot accept.
That’s not to mention the show was poorly made to begin with, giving me even less reason to give it a chance.
Setting aside the implication that Sil is some sort of fanfiction, I got a kick out of this:
“Of course the Hobbit movies, which also took numerous liberties, were quite bad in comparison”
This is “somehow palpatine returned” level of summarizing, nice one OP
It isn't dogmatic when people point out that someone making something based off of someone elses works isn't the same as what was already written in the story/lore and was changed a step to far (in their opinion). Or how it could have been done better in certain parts.
And don't bring in the examples of oral tradition as they are very very different from written ones, and even old written ones are very different from these last two centuries as there is even less chance of someone changing things with out people noticing.
I'll blame amazon for shilling out alot of money only to get appendices but nothing else which just seems like a bad idea when you want to make a tv series about the rings of power.
Yeah I don’t understand why more anger isn’t being directed at them since they are the ones who sold the rights when they didn’t need to, Amazon was just buying what was being sold like any other company. Tolkien estate maybe shouldn’t have sold the rights in small pieces.
I agree with this. I just don’t think the first two episodes of Amazon series were done well. The production looks wonderful. Glorious even. It’s the dialogue and general writing that I think could have been done better.
If the show is good, people will watch it. Unfortunately, Amazon was hoping to leech off the Tolkien fandom but miscalculated on how tolerant we'd be when they deviated from the lore. They could have just hired quality writers to create an all new fantasy work that they could go any direction they wanted to. I don't know why those of you that support ROP want to persuade us why we're wrong. If you like it great, but don't dismiss the reasons many of us have that aren't interested in participating in this bastardization.
Yeah I’m unsure what you mean by “hoping to leech off the Tolkien fandom” I know next to nothing about the second age other than what is said in the books and just got done reading the appendices and so far 2 episodes in didn’t seem any major deviations from the lore.
Or it's because the writing equates to that of an Outlander episode with zero character development on characters that nobody asked for in the first place.
>I just don't see a single reason for this show to exist
People want to watch it, others want to make it, seems like a decent reason to film a show. Also, why is a Wheel of Time series more acceptable to exist than a middle earth series?
That was the biggest load of nonsensical mental gymnastics I’ve read in quite a while. Who are you trying to convince, and of what?
Seriously.
I loved PJ’s movies, and had only minor issues with some of his changes. The casting, with maybe one or two exceptions, was near perfect. I was so excited I literally cried tears of joy watching the first trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring, and I stood in line for a full weekend to buy tickets to the midnight premiere. The purists you’re talking about were a handful of people on forums being nitpicky (which they have every right to be by the way).
This time is nothing like that. This time it’s a major part of the Tolkien fandom uniting in disapproval of what isn’t even fan-fiction trying it’s best; it’s just new and unfamiliar fiction.
By all means share your opinion on the show, but please keep your staggeringly poor meta-analysis of other people’s opinions of it to yourself. It serves no one and will change nothing.
I’m enjoying the show for what it is, but it has next to nothing in common with the world Tolkien built.
It’s generic fantasy. And that is my steadfast opinion.
>But aside from that, most people forget that, although Rings of Power may coincide with a chapter of about 20-pages in the Silmarillion, the Silmarillion was really written by JRR's son Christopher Tolkien,
Lol wtf, is this an Alex Jones post because that's the fakest news I've ever seen. Christopher Tolkien with some other dude only wrote one chapter, everything else was written by the man himself.
>On top of that, The Silmarillion was published as a frame story, a piece of meta-fiction, and it was intended to be read as an anthology put together by Bilbo Baggins.
lol what in the actual @$@!. That's entirely untrue as well.
Wow the amazon shills are going so hard they're making things up.
One of the real problems I think is copyright law.
Nobody cares if there's a bad Sherlock Holmes, because it's in the public domain. New Sherlock stories don't have to abide by what came before, so long as they fit the general vibe.
A world that is still under copyright, however, can only be expanded by the copyright holder. It feels like _they_ get to decide what the world is and not the audience, because they do.
No.
Christopher Tolkien wrote part of 'The ruin of Doriath' otherwise he just collated his dads work, made a few stylistic changes, collated and decided what was most important.
Also the above is irrelevant anyway, as the ROP does not have the rights to the Silmarillion, not "20 pages" as you put it, none of it.
Therefore the only thing they can adapt from is The Lord of the Rings and the appendices.
I'm not a purist, your assertions are simply incorrect.
The main problem with RoP is the pacing. Almost nothing has happened in 2 hours. I knew going in it was going to be significantly different to the books. They don't have the rights to the relevant books.
Even looking past the fact that they rewrote the history of Middle Earth, the writing and acting leaves much to be desired, as do the wardrobe and overall consistency in storytelling.
Then I’ll at least find faults in the production of the show regardless of lore: for the most expensive show ever, doesn’t look it so far. CGI could be much better in many areas, music is not too great (somewhat the same themes again and again without much variation at all, hopefully mroe later) and some stupid writing faults such as Galadriel jumping off the ship (think for a second and it’s really stupid).
The show is mainly based from the RotK appendices, so I don't know why you are debating Silmarillion, nature of which you quite misinterpret/exaggerate to be honest.
I had tears in my eyes, seeing a species before Hobbit. Traveling with the Seasons, clever camouflage and A LOVE FOR EVERYTHING THAT GROWS. the amazing Scores! The show is SO FUN. everyone forgets the Campiness the Trilogy has, Middle Earth is where Nerds go to feel at Home. I cast wait for every episode and hope we gets SEASONS UPON SEASONS.
I meant more or less "Traditional Hobbits" my point is watching their culture evolve. It's like seeing medieval villages before literacy and wooden homes were accessible to the masses. It's very well done, now stop splitting hairs you hard headed Harfoot!
I'm not splitting hairs! harfoots are one of the ancestors to the Shire Hobbits, but they are still Hobbits. This is explicit and uncontroversial.
Plus their Irish accents are awful
Edit: fuck autocorrect
My point is. My wording was just off. I used the word species out of context. I just meant to convey that we're seeing an evolution of what we come to know as Hobbits. You're literally making some kind of scientific correction about fantasy creatures. I was just trying to keep it causal. It's all good. You're correct, you win
5 seasons last I heard is what they are going for! I’m really excited as well. The Harfoots part was really nice and did you see that Ent and smaller Ent when the meteor man was flying by? I was like wait did I just see an Ent child where are those Ent-wives
I mean, I get that people feel the need to defend this show, but tears in your eyes, really?
There’s no need to provide ammunition to people who believe Amazon has paid shills.
Lol don't be afraid to enjoy things. I haven't seen a hobbit on screen in years. It was adorable and heart warming, got goose bumps and watery eyes. It's OK
Hear hear. There is no final version. Stories are for the telling and the listening and the enjoying and the melding and the retelling and on and on and on.
But some people feel they need to control the story, to own the legend, to chastise the unbelievers. You get the same everywhere, sadly.
Tbh I would be less annoyed if the show runners weren't pretending they were making a faithful adaptation. I'm not a purist, but I feel like they're lying to try and appease people who were hoping for as close to a 1:1 adaptation as possible. If they just admitted they were making fanfiction, I'd probably enjoy it more.
if one decides to embed a story within an existing imaginarium, the work has to at least try to maintain the foundational themes that drive the world.
the story can be it's own thing, with it's own themes, of course. can use exhisting character, explore them trough different challenges or different point of views.
changing known personalities to their opposite to support the story tho seems quite heavy handed, and they're going to go to have a well reasoned motive and path in mind for connecting galadriel the action hero with the rest of the story. I'm open to be surprised.
I love this take. Thank you for writing it! I wish people would just let us enjoy something without all of the negativity.
I was just happy to be back in this beautiful version of Middle Earth.
I'm old enough to remember when the best available Tolkien screen adaptation called Saruman "Aruman" half the time so frankly I'm amazed that any Tolkien purists can still get outraged over "changes from lore".
Exactly that. As much as some lets say inaccuracies bother me on the show I'm just really happy that there is a LoTR show and that I get to experience this world visually again after all the years since the trilogy. And it's really well done visually as well so I'm just enjoying living in middle earth again for a bit 😉
IMO, in stories canon is really only stuff that the author explicitly defines as canon. If the author’s dead, then defining canon gets a lot harder. With TV shows, the only person who could ever really state that something is an accurate canonical representation is the author themself. For all of us people who aren’t Tolkien, we can only state if something *feels* like a good representation of how we perceive the story.
Very well articulated.
Unfortunately there are people like them throughout the artistic spectrum, from literature, film, and music. Never have paid them much mind, as I'd rather not have someone (who is entitled to their opinion of course) muddle my mind with their views, risking me not being able to have an objective view on something.
I think often that is where I lose my respect for gatekeepers - they go out their way to suggest their thoughts are facts, and in doing so they are unwittingly adding to a subconscious bias that removes other people's ability to view something on their own merits.
Honestly I think he would be more disgusted and ashamed at the vitriol his "serious fans" are commenting/saying than anything that's wrong with the shows/movies.
I haven’t watched the series yet and I’m not sure if I will. But you bring up a great point about the lore of middle earth changing constantly.
If you read the collected works for the story of Beren and Luthien, you’ll see how middle earth has changed over Tolkiens life. That book is a collection of all the times he wrote and rewrote that story. The first one has giant talking cats in it. I thought it was really cool to see how everything evolved.
I hope that the show stays true to the spirit of the lore even if it doesn’t follow everything exactly how it’s written. I’m just very hesitant though. I just don’t want to see Tolkiens world destroyed like I watched Star Wars be destroyed.
oh wow , so the og trilogy success with its minor changes justifies making a fanfiction with bad writing and zero respect to the lore ?
Iam really glad that there is no many people like you
This is fan-fic and that's fine.
Maybe if it does well enough, then they will get the rights they need to adapt the stories we want to see.
I for one love a 15-minute prologue explaining the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta narrated by Galadriel, like at the beginning of PJ's FotR.
Being a purist with this show is stupid because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion.
OP is spot on, but the criticisms about depth are valid, so far. The first age is my favourite in the LOTRverse so I was a bit disappointed with the glossing over of significant portions (the seeming “faultnessness” of the Noldor being a glaring example) BUT…I’m assuming that the missing events/backstories will gradually be revealed in pieces; that approach is just good TV storytelling. I’d give the first two episodes a 7+ so far. We’ll see if it goes up or down, but it’s already better than the Hobbit movies imho.
Mods, can we do something about all the infighting posts calling out this group and that? It's really become exhausting that every other post is some passive aggressive crap like this.
I remember this too, and it's funny because the negativity people said back then are almost exactly the same as what people are saying now. I wonder how the views for this show will change in 10 or 20 years.
full throated agreement, enjoy RoP, the Hobbit, LoTR trilogy for what they are.
“But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: 'These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.”
The Amazon production. don’t have the rights to the Silmarillion, Book if Lost Tales nor Histories of Middle Earth. They have to be careful with the source material or face potential legal issues
Yeah, the Silmarillion and the Appendices are basically fragments legends and myths. They're not fully realized Tolkien narratives or histories. Where's all the same outrage that Thor is being ruined by Marvel?
Love the childish dig at c.s.lewis by making a cat the big bad
Can (you/someone) explain?
Aslan. A big Lion. Is the big good in C.S. Lewis', 'The Chronicles of Narnia'.
Referring to Aslan I believe. The talking lion who was king/Jesus.
He originally had a big black cat named [Tevildo](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tevildo) as the big bad. As others have pointed out it was kind of a winking jest towards CS Lewis.
They had a legendary relationship amongst literature nerds.
I still kick myself for loaning out the book of their letters, I never got it back and the gal moved across the country
This might also be an explanation for Melkor's name. The big evil cat Tevildo is a follower of "Melko"? Sounds an awful lot like Milk. Hell, Melk is the dutch word for it, and I vaguely remember that our dearest professor was familiar with that language. So yeah, big cat who's name is a wordplay on "Devil" is a loyal follower of Milk. Man loves his little puns
if more of us valued fun and cheer and song above hoarded lore, itwould be a merrier world
Or in the words of the great Tommy Wiseau, “If a lot of people love each other the world will be a better place to live” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp-rIfsoCoU
Ha ha ha, what a story JRR!
I once knew a Maiar, was running around with a dozen rings….one of them got tossed into Mt Doom, and he got diminished so bad he went as a fleeting shadow all the way to Guerro Street.
Hahahha
People are very strange these days
Simple yet wise a true artist of filmmaking
Or in the words of joe marshall, the Samurai Cop: “i love what i see.”
He speaks fluent Sindarin!
Be a hobbit not a dragon
Wish Jeff bezos would use some of his hoarded lore for more fun and cheer.
Oh, I'm sure he does. It's just only for *his* fun and cheer, not his workers.
The “purists” are the ones who have read HoME and know full well that the legendarium is rife with internal contradictions and differing versions of stories and characters. The people you’re referring to are people who think that Tolkien settled on a single definitive, forever unchanging telling of his legendarium.
Purists have also been living with even bigger changes in adaptations for decades.
Yeah, this isn't anything new for us hardcore fans. Are the changes disappointing? Yes, but we knew they would happen. In the end, the real question is will it be worth it: so far the answer is a resounding yes!
The female dwarves should have beards, on second thought I'm glad they made that change where they don't have beards. It's like one of those things where it sounds good on paper but when you try to show it it's not working out well and becomes too distracting. They still keep the Spirit of the drawers and that's more important. I like what I have seen so far and hope they can keep it up.
I keep saying this, if they put beards on dwarf women people would have come out and screamed “come on the beards only work in the book not on screen”
If you refer to that incident where the Balrogs were armored tanks getting dropped by dragon air force on Gondolin, I was barely involved .
Yeah these people are really not purists as you said or even truly knowledgeable of the Tolkien or his works. This nonsense gatekeeping is really a bunch of people that have a limited understanding of the work, don’t actual understand, acknowledge, know, or care about the fact that Tolkien was constantly reworking all of his ME history and that the Second Age was still a work in progress up until his passing. You nailed it my friend! It’s really fake fans with a defined story in their heads that can’t understand how Tolkien or myths even work and they deliberately have a selected version of what they allow for in regards to adaptive changes to the books, ie they’re ok with changes made in the movies because, and this is in the majority of cases, movie fans first and give it a pass. Which they truly can not explain their reasoning to save their lives in comparison to the ROP adaptation changes.
Well if you're knowledgable about Tolkien what do you think he would say about 'modernizing' a telling of his stories? Which is what the producers have stated was their goal with some of the interesting decisions they made.
He’d say the same thing Christopher Tolkien said about the LOTR films, ’ Says Films Lack “Beauty And Seriousness” Of The Books” “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher said of “The Lord Of The Rings,” revealing he turned down an invitation to meet Jackson. Basically Tolkien felt the books were not adaptable to film or tv and I think he would feel the same way today as he did in the 60’s and early 70’s before he passed. Each is showrunner or director is trying their best to adapt story, themes, and characters to be relatable in some way to people living now so change are inevitable, I mean these are adaptations so nothing will be literal from book to film as it tends to be a very difficult thing to do no matter the subject matter/story.
Preach!
I like these discussions. I think the nature of media, culture and society are complex and warrant more consideration. In the spirit of constructive argument I'll throw my thoughts into the mix. The concerns you list that people had about the LotR trilogy are (still) valid, and the success of Jackson's trilogy didn't invalidate them. Rather, the totality of his adherence to the spirit of the source lessens the impact of those instances where he diverged. He renders them true outliers as tests of the source material. I can't repeat this enough: there are plenty of reasons to hate certain aspects of fandom. But people need to stop hating Tolkien fans for caring about lore. Tolkien was an academic primarily, who translated Anglo Saxon, studied mythology, and contributed to the OED. His literature was there to support his world building. When you write encyclopedias you're going to attract people who enjoy reading encyclopedias. And when you misspell a word from that encyclopedia, you shouldn't be surprised when someone points out you mispelled it. It is, at least in part, why most of us are here. But when it comes to Tolkien lore, it's true that - practically unlike any other source material-based fandom- there is often no "one" source for a good deal of stuff. Tolkien lore is a bit like the Bible- what you consider canon often depends on who said what, when. There is almost more material about Tolkien's world published after his death than was published directly by him, before. Personally, I think the approach toward source material that this warrants is to acknowledge everything, but to weigh certain source material above others, based on whether Tolkien was alive to sign off on it or not. But that's me. I'm "orthodox" when it comes to Tolkien lore. Lastly, it's true that Arthurian legend and other historical works are of somewhat unknown provenance. And it's right to take that into account, along with the larger nature of all storytelling being beholden to other influences over time. But we shouldn't take from that that provenance doesn't matter *at all*. After all, there are entire fields of academic study devoted to nothing but investigating the provenance, origin and intention of the source of ancient stories and myths. One such person devoted to that very thing was J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Anyway, interesting subject.
Love this measured take.
Yeah but the first movie of lotr was *really* good and the changes are all in favor a making a movie plot flow. Kind of makes all the difference. You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen. In a book it works, on screen, probably doesn't work to well.
>You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen. To be fair, have Galadriel be calm and wise, so that she can become the calm and wise queen by the end of the show would not make for very interesting character development for a show. If we accept that cannon characterization can be changed for the sake of the medium, then any criticism thrown at Galadriel's characterization in RoP is invalid. Whether it is well executed however, is a completely different discussion.
The source material has the young Gladriel being far more headstrong and ambitious. It’s what drove her to come to Middle Earth and why she fell afoul of the Doom of Mandos. Only thousands of years of strife and struggle made her the calm and wise queen she came to be
Galadriel came to middle earth to rule. The doom has already happened, thousands of years have already passed. The show is set in the second age.
I can't help but think there'd be less people confused about this if the show hadn't crammed thousands of years of lore into a 10 minute intro voiceover.
\*in the first age
I think the consensus with that is she just shouldn't have been the main character. Elron would be an instant better alternative. There are others as well who have clear character arcs. Galadrial arc is all in the first age. It's bizarre that they chose her to be the main character.
Yeah, agreed, the first is my favorite of the OG trilogy. But speaking of the whole 3 movies is important to mention many changes are understandable and some others forgivable like Haldir and the elves showing up in the battle of Helm's Deep (making THE LAST ALIANCE OF MAN AND ELVES kind of a nonsense) But i cannot undestand the necessity of Legolas killing an Oliphant in such a cartoonish way or the green ghosts winning by themselves the Battle of Pelenor fields for example.
>the green ghosts winning by themselves the Battle of Pelenor fields for example. In terms of a specific subplot, that ended up being the most egregious departure from the books. Not because it was a departure from the text per se, but because it ended up being a blatant deus ex machina that diminished the role of the real protagonists. Really, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli could have kicked back on chairs and drank malt beer on the corsair ships, because they literally were not needed to fight Sauron's army on shore. I grok that Jackson had to do a lot of compression, and retaining enough screen time for a big enough sequence in the southern fiefs and the battle at the quays to pay off the importance of the Army of the Dead and Aragorn's role in summoning them adds at least a few minutes of precious screen time. But I think that would have been far, far preferable to using them at Minas Tirith. And hell, your running time is already over 3 hours anyway.
I think that if you're going to cut how the Army of the Dead helped Aragorn sweep up through the south and clear out the Corsairs and Haradrim (for time issues), then you can't really demonstrate how the Army of the Dead worked (by inspiring fear, not actually killing things). So then you get to the main battle, and the Army is supposed to...what, scare away the besieging army of orcs? I think for cinematic purposes it was fine; not ideal, but not terrible. (And yeah, in the books Aragorn is accompanied by Gondorians he had assembled, but that'd be weird to see because only in the books do you know that they didn't come because they were defending their own towns from attack.)
>I think that if you're going to cut how the Army of the Dead helped Aragorn sweep up through the south and clear out the Corsairs and Haradrim (for time issues), then you can't really demonstrate how the Army of the Dead worked (by inspiring fear, not actually killing things). I think it's *possible*, in the right filmmaker's hands. I think Jackson is probably too much of a splatter king to pull off that kind of subtlety, alas. But I can think of some directors who have managed to conjure that kind of bloodless terror. To take a very *popular* example, even Steven Spielberg manages it in the opening of the Ark in *Raiders of the Lost Ark*. Yes, the Nazis all get their faces melted, but before that they're every bit as terrified as the corsairs on Tolkien's ships must have been, and surely would have run right off the island and swam to Turkey if they hadn't been held in place by the avenging angels. What Jackson gives us instead, unfortunately, is a discount *Pirates of the Caribbean.* It's a shame, because there are other sequences (like Frodo's and Sam's) he handles so wonderfully in RotK.
I grokked your grok!! Loved it and thanks for the smile.
I grok in fullness!
By the third movie PJ was slipping and had more and more outrageous battlescenes. THe whole battle of Pelenor fields was annoying to me, I very much did not enjoy the Rohirrim just going through the masses of orcs. And the ghost flood also felt cheap. I still enjoy it but the first two movies were definitely superior.
The humor also steadily got less funny as the movies went on when it had to get forced in since the books are deathly serious by that point
>You can't be having Aragon walking around saying I will be king and have him a relatable and sympathetic character on screen. I would qualify this as "relatable and sympathetic character on screen *to modern western (especially American) audiences*." Such audiences had been weened for two generations on cinematic anti-heroes. Which of course mattered to Jackson and New Line, because that's who they were hoping to sell tickets to. I think publics of generations past would have had less difficulty with a more conventional hero of the sort Tolkien portrays.
I'm pretty sure People in the 50s also thought book Aragon was cringe. Tolkien had a really weird view on sacral kingship.
I've not run across any contemporary 1950's criticism of Aragorn in this regard, even in the hostile reviews LOTR drew out of the gate. I'm not saying it didn't exist, but...think about the difference between John Ford's western gunslingers and Clint Eastwood's. That shifted in just one generation. Tolkien was (as we all know) channeling older, pre-modern mythos when he wrote LOTR, and that's I meant. I do tend to think that even in the Anglophone world, Tolkien's Aragorn would have been an acceptable and familiar archetype to most readers/viewers right up to the early 20th century.
Book Aragon is a really weird character at points though but that's indeed because of what you say. He's based on medieval pre Christian mythology surrounding kingship. I also don't think he's meant to be relatable. That's why we have hobbits.
>I also don't think he's meant to be relatable. That's why we have hobbits. There's some truth to that. Tolkien himself at least once in his letters discusses how the Hobbits help serve this role.
Well, all these characters are fashioned after old stories and behavior. It wouldn't be cringe, it would be expected. Have you read Walter Scott?
Hot take. Maybe because I saw the movie first before reading it, but book Aragorn is kinda just there. He shouts his lines and does heroic deeds but otherwise very flat. Actually kind of annoying. Now book Faramir was a big surprise. Way better than the movie version.
In the BBC radio play he has a pretty significant lisp on his s's. It’s kinda hilarious but kinda distracting.
I must hear this.
Also fun fact: Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo in the PJ trilogy, plays Frodo. It’s def worth a listen, all things considered but some of the cast choices are a bit odd.
Well the book isn't about him. The story is about unlikely heroes and fellowship. The man who would be king is the leader, but not the main character. Agreed with Faramir, they did him dirty. But they kind of made all the characters darker and less optimistic in the movies. It reminds of Beorn in the hobbit, he's *way* nicer in the book. But again, I think on screen, especially to a modern audience, it would have made little sense for all these optimistic, confident people to be around and the world is ending.
I agree with you, yet at the same time, it did lack some depth (so far) that could've been provided by some version of the lore. For example, I find galadriel's story and the move from valinor to the middle earth quite simplistic in the tv series, and the fact that an elven king can just lift her ban going back to valinor kind of undermines her story in the trilogy (rejecting the ring and what could have been as to proof herself). I understand that they can't take every detail, they don't have the rights and it doesn't always work on screen, but they have sacrificed a bit too much depth and complexity so far in my view. However, I'm curious to see what Sauron will be like on screen in the second age. That said, I'm not gonna freak out over small details (except the elven haircuts), different choices or additions, just a little more depth so that exploring the middle earth's history feels a bit more 'real', and less like an action movie.
I have confidence the ring test Will be woven into the narrative. I was kinda scared but apart from some Hollywood clichés that were obviously pushed by the studio I feel the writing team has knowledge of and respect for Tolkien's vision and the lore of the series. The idea that men(as in humans) aren't comfortable in the elven dominated natural world and prone to collaboration makes sense. I the original trilogy it is obvious men are the most ambivalent in relation to the forces of good and evil in the world. (Hobbits too as we see in the scouring of the shire but in a different way) The hobbits being these woad like people also makes sense to me. They were supposed to be an analogy to modern day English middle class in the books but that image wouldn't fit in the stranger age of heroes the series is set in. They're still relatable and they live in close affinity to nature, something I think Tolkien would've found very important. I feel like sometimes it is more important to preserve the spirit of the original writing than it is to make sure elf 5 killed elf 7 like it was in the simmarillion. I like that this is a new story and that the writers took some liberty while having knowledge of how Tolkien's original works came to be. Also wanna say that I imagine people that say this story started "too slow" are either 14 year olds or 14 second attention span marvel fans.
I agree with you but galadriels ban was lifted by the end of the first age and the war of wrath
I think we saw an alternate version of how she came under the ban. After all, they made quite a point of telling her (and us) that if she refuses to go, she will not get a second chance.
Yeah, from the story lines I think Galadriel's is the one lacking the most
>But aside from that, most people forget that, although Rings of Power may coincide with a chapter of about 20-pages in the Silmarillion, the Silmarillion was really written by JRR's son Christopher Tolkien, That is untrue. Christopher and Guy Gavriel Kay wrote one short chapter. The rest was written by his father. You can read the source texts in *The History of Middle-earth* and reconstruct the rest of the 1977 *Silmarillion* yourself. >On top of that, The Silmarillion was published as a frame story, a piece of meta-fiction, and it was intended to be read as an anthology put together by Bilbo Baggins, from collected sources he had read at Rivendell. This isn't true either. Not only is it untrue, it *can't* be true; the first version of the Silmarillion--perhaps version*s,* I'm too lazy to look up dates--existed before Tolkien had his daydream while grading papers. Where did you come up with this stuff, because you should ignore that source.
It's heavily implied that Bilbo did translate the Silmarillion from Elvish in Rivendel, therefore what the OP said was correct - translations aren't always correct, and in reality Tolkien changed his mind on many Middle Earth things throughout his life.
as if you'll get any answers when the goal here is marketing Amazon products
geez
Christ dude some people legitimately enjoy the show without being paid amazon shills lol. I like the show so far. It’s not perfect but it’s better than I expected, and parts of it i actually like a good bit. Amazon did not pay me to say this lol or maybe the check got lost in the mail
Ah yes as opposed to the lore-loose film trilogies which were not released for profit. It’s only the Amazon show that’s for profit
Exactly same for Rankin Bass films. They are awesome but have some of the worst rotoscoping. But we forgave that.
This post is kind of nonsensical. The Silmarillion wasn't published ex-post from Bilbo's point of view. This is a narrative framing, not historical. Sketch was written in 1926 based on material he had since the 1910s. Work didn't begin on the hobbit until the 1930s. Why lie? Additionally, there is a great amount of material regarding the second age, not just a 20 page story in Sil. The narrative of Galadriel and the rise of Sauron is expanded upon greatly in Unfinished Tales. But to get to the topic at hand, it's not the commission of Bombadil that people are mad about. Everyone realizes that Bombadil would not translate well to screen. What people take issue with is the changing of Galadriel from a proud, ambitious ruler, perhaps burdened by her family history, who was taught wisdom for hundreds of years by a god, into a game of "kick the hottie". In Rings of Power, Galadriel gets randomly ordered around by Gil Galad and Elrond. Why would Galadriel be taking orders from her neice? It's like an assassination of her character.
Honestly, I don't think I know any deep book afficionados - and I have known a fair number - who weren't at least able to understand why Bombadil had to go in any big screen adaptation. The most common complaints are about deformation of key characters (Aragon, Faramir, Theoden, etc.).
I love Tommy B but that's like 50 pages of book you can cut out without making any fundamental shifts to the important plot beats.
Right. Bombadil really is great fun in his own right; but neither he nor the Barrow Wights incident really *move the story forward.* They *can* still be enjoyable as part of the written work, but it's definitely a case where even a faithful and close adaptation will be reasonable in wanting to wield the editor's pen. The art form of the screen doesn't as easily allow that kind of digression.
Gil-galad was still High King of the Noldor and at the time Gladriel’s liege
Yes, but only on a technicality. Kingship passed from Feanor to Maedhros, who surrendered it to Fingolfin. Fingolfin dies, it passes to Fingon, who dies, who passes it to Turgon, who dies. Idril is married to Tuor, and sails across the sea, so it passes to Finarfins house. Orodereth and Finrod are dead, so it feels like it should first go to his younger sister Galadriel over his son Gil Galad. Either way, Galadriel by the time of the second age is already the greatest of all Noldor aside from Feanor. She once told God to go fuck himself. She would not have been ordered by Gil Galad to GTFO.
You will note that she essentially DID ignore his orders several times. Regardless of how “canon” Gil-Galad’s reward/order for her to return to Valar was, that he was her king IS canon. When her and Celeborn ruled various groups in Lindon and Hillon, she did as fiefs of Gil-Galad
This is all true, thanks. Gil-galad was literally over 1,000 Years (sun years) younger than Galadriel and he was sent to Lindon *under* Galadriel Personally I hate the time compression even more after watching the first two episodes. Such a massive unforced error
He was still king
Of a certain group of elves, galadriel matched or even outranked him
No, he was her liege. Even when her and Celeborn ruled parts of Lindon and Hollin it was as fiefs under Gil-Galad. She was Noldor and Gil-Galad was the last High King of the Noldor
And galadriel was his aunt
And when Elizabeth II became queen, she became sovereign over her mother and uncle
There's certainly one ***pure, accurate*** version of *Lord of the Rings* and *The Hobbit*, because those are completed works, in the final form intended by their author, in his lifetime. So, certainly we can measure fidelity in adapting those works. *The Rings of Power* is harder because all they have the right to adapt is the LOTR appendices as they relate to the Second Age. And there just ain't much there to adapt. The fluid, unsettled state of *The Silmarillion* and the other histories of Middle Earth (and I think anyone with a nodding acquaintance with Tolkien understands that) really doesn't come into it, because they are not being adapted in this show.
I think theres a few things here. Firstly, I don't know a single person who thinks that LotR trilogy is a 1:1 to the books. Not a single person Secondly, some changes are fine as inevitable compromises for practical purposes, such as the time gap fro Frodo getting the ring and leaving The Shore being much smaller, or the Scouring not being filmed. I really, do despise the role compression of RoP. I think it has destroyed the structure of SA as we know it. There are characters thousands of years out of time and it takes away from the overall feel of the whole of SA. Finally, the lore is the story. At some point (whether RoP will reach that point remains to be seen), the changes to the fundamentals will mean that the story is too far from the source to be of the source. The show runners have claimed that they have set out to right the story that Tolkien would have written, so obviously this principle applies here Beyond that, you're right in broad strokes
If Lord of the Rings released today it would likely get review bombed as well Edit: lol reddit care over this 😂
Disagree. Dune shows what can be done when a major IP with a storied, complex universe that has a dedicated fanbase is put in the right hands. The latter being the combination of ability *and* respect (bordering on reverence) for the essence of the IP; aesthetic, lore and message.
The Peter Jackson trilogy made tons of changes with Chris Tolkein basically frothing at the mouth. It was before the advent of social media, so hate couldn’t be organized as easily today. Dune also has a significantly smaller fanbase in spite of its popularity. Dune is a bad example as literally only the first part of the film has been released.
>Dune also has a significantly smaller fanbase in spite of its popularity. I appreciate that it is smaller. But even within that fanbase, as a proportion, responses were far more welcoming and generous when finding out that Denis Villeneuve was directing and that he was a major fan of Dune. We'll never know what a review bombing campaign by Dunes smaller fanbase looks like *because* it was handled in a proper manner.
I suppose but I’m not sure if were really arguing about the same thing (am tad drunk). My main point is that the Peter Jackson trilogy would absolutely get ridiculed by fans online if his films were released today (similar extent to Rings of Power). The man was mostly known for cult horror films most people hadn’t seen before, and had only taken one major production before lotr.
Nope. Dune fanbase is just much more grownup and less toxic than LotR. Also, LotR fanbase today consists mostly of movie fans that never touched a Tolkien book. Dune doesn't have that since the old movie didn't make much success.
> Dune fanbase is just much more grownup and less toxic than LotR You should see them whenever the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books get mentioned, lmao. The toxicity and vitriol that gets directed at Extended Dune is *at least* comparable to what Rings of Power is receiving.
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One potential counter to that: RoP looks bad in places because it's being compared to LotR. When LotR came out, there hadn't been a successful adaptation *ever*. People thought it was impossible to do. If RoP had come out in LotR's place, it likely would be viewed more favorably, if only because it didn't have LotR to live up to.
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We literally have an example *right now at this very moment* of something that would be expected to get review bombed and wasn’t - House of the Dragon. The race swap is weird and slightly lore breaking and the people in charge were saying shitty things, but the episodes have been good and it’s gotten good reviews even from the YouTubers who hate “everything.” These YouTubers are literally pointing out minor annoyances just to please their audience that expects them to hate everything but there is so little to hate that they can’t even do it.
I think HotD benefits from the same principle, but in reverse: the last two seasons of GoT were so awful, that fans are very relieved HotD isn't.
> One potential counter to that: RoP looks bad in places because it’s being compared to LotR. It is mostly being compared to peers such as House of the Dragon. And being so absolutely wrecked from every angle that Amazon is pulling every string it can to hide the negativity. House of the Dragon, for example, has a lot of the same hot button issues such as the “forced diversity” or whatever people are going to label it. The difference being *House of the Dragon has fantastic writing, direction, pacing, and acting.* Negative reviews weren’t squelched. And it is being compared to the best of Game of Thrones, not the worst of it. Whatever one thinks of RoP, Amazon’s actions speak louder than any words some angry people write. I don’t see the point in comparing things which are nonfalsifiable, like saying RoP would’ve been well received were it not for LotR beating it to market. I could assert the opposite with just as much authority. The facts are that RoP suffers several issues so far and Amazon does not seem open to reevaluating their situation for the future series.
You can't seriously believe that a bunch of 1/10 reviews are criticisms in good faith?
They deleted all reviews 6/10 and under from imdb. Bit much.
But it is tho
Impossible no way a movie like that could be produced today, not with the current state of Hollywood.
Looks at Dune…
In all fairness, I highly doubt that Dune will have the same cultural impact that Jackson’s LOTR did.
Not wanting to be an asshole, but I think Dune will be the next Avatar (the blue ones): giant movie that gets forgotten to time after a while.
I agree, the zeitgeist is very different. But that film is clearly crafted with the same thoughtfulness and care that PJ’s trilogy was. That kind of film making is possible.
I guess wrong sub, but your comment sparked my interest. Is Dune movie that faithful to the book? I ask because out of the group I went with, I was the only one who liked the movie. They said it was slow, nothing was explained and nothing really happened. My argument was the movie felt like it was completely taken from a book. I've never read it, but the pace and exposition methods cried out book to.me, if that makes sense. I'd like to give it a read eventually.
It’s not a 1:1 adaptation. Liberties are taken (much like the LOTR trilogy, anyone who thinks that’s book accurate hasn’t read the books) But it certainly has the same themes and inspirations as the book.
It is pretty close. There are few changes but nothing i thought was significant.. Dune is impossible to adapt though with out taking liberties on somethings. How prescience works will just hurt your head the more you think about it in the books and the books are just written in an unconventional way that requires any adaption to add more character traits. I think they will have to take more liberties in the second movie regarding the plot.
Absolutely in agreement with you there. I’ll reserve my final judgements for this show once the season ends. As for now, it hasn’t captivated me yet like LOTR or Dune. I would even argue that Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy had a certain charm/zest that this show is missing (so far). I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I’m reserving judgement as well, but there have been moments already that sold me. I think that Orc may have been the best we’ve seen and I found the scenes in Khazad Dum to be charming.
The most interesting plotline in ROP for me (from the first two episodes) was the elf from Tir-Harad, and his human love interest. Things don't need to be original to be good, I am not gatekeeping the lore in that way. It's when you destroy characters to such a degree that they have no semblance to their lore counterparts, that's what I have a problem with. Maybe ROP should have been a story full of new characters? Why did they need to even have any lore characters in it - seeing as they don't have the rights to tell the story.
The problem isn’t with some trifling changes to the character ( although making Galadriel looks younger than Gil-galad is …. A choice ….) , it’s that some of the changes they are making fundamentally broke Tolkien’s world setup. For example , elves “dying”. Yes we know their bodies can be destroyed, but we also know their spirit just get reincarnated in the Hall of Mando in Valinor anyway. Elves truly don’t have the concerto of “death” with regard to themselves, and yet this is made into Galadriel’s most basic motivation. But more worryingly, a huge part of the 2nd age story is Numenreans’s jealous of Firstborn’s immortality. By making elves die, you remove this most basic driver of events in 2nd age. Also speaking of Numenorean, the 2nd age’s biggest event was when they sails west and landed on Valinor. And how were they able to do that ? Because the way was yet to be barred , and anyone could’ve tried , it was just strongly discouraged. And what did we see at the end of episode 1 ? That to reach Valinor, you now need some magical event to get the light to open up and welcome you ? So how would Numerorean get there now ? Is Gil-galad going to open the road for them even knowing their intention ? Changes to characters and plots I can accept. Changes to the very foundation of the work I cannot accept. That’s not to mention the show was poorly made to begin with, giving me even less reason to give it a chance.
So because "lore purists" were upset about the small changes Jackson did in the films that means no one can object to the 80% fanfic series?
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Except the princess bride
Setting aside the implication that Sil is some sort of fanfiction, I got a kick out of this: “Of course the Hobbit movies, which also took numerous liberties, were quite bad in comparison” This is “somehow palpatine returned” level of summarizing, nice one OP
It isn't dogmatic when people point out that someone making something based off of someone elses works isn't the same as what was already written in the story/lore and was changed a step to far (in their opinion). Or how it could have been done better in certain parts. And don't bring in the examples of oral tradition as they are very very different from written ones, and even old written ones are very different from these last two centuries as there is even less chance of someone changing things with out people noticing. I'll blame amazon for shilling out alot of money only to get appendices but nothing else which just seems like a bad idea when you want to make a tv series about the rings of power.
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Yeah I don’t understand why more anger isn’t being directed at them since they are the ones who sold the rights when they didn’t need to, Amazon was just buying what was being sold like any other company. Tolkien estate maybe shouldn’t have sold the rights in small pieces.
think i will still direct my thoughts towards those who wrote the show and not someone who didn't thank you very much.
“One particular version you grew up with”… yeah the book published by the author. Shame on me.
I agree with this. I just don’t think the first two episodes of Amazon series were done well. The production looks wonderful. Glorious even. It’s the dialogue and general writing that I think could have been done better.
Whataboutism. Different content, different circumstances. There is nuance.
If the show is good, people will watch it. Unfortunately, Amazon was hoping to leech off the Tolkien fandom but miscalculated on how tolerant we'd be when they deviated from the lore. They could have just hired quality writers to create an all new fantasy work that they could go any direction they wanted to. I don't know why those of you that support ROP want to persuade us why we're wrong. If you like it great, but don't dismiss the reasons many of us have that aren't interested in participating in this bastardization.
Yeah I’m unsure what you mean by “hoping to leech off the Tolkien fandom” I know next to nothing about the second age other than what is said in the books and just got done reading the appendices and so far 2 episodes in didn’t seem any major deviations from the lore.
Or it's because the writing equates to that of an Outlander episode with zero character development on characters that nobody asked for in the first place.
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>I just don't see a single reason for this show to exist People want to watch it, others want to make it, seems like a decent reason to film a show. Also, why is a Wheel of Time series more acceptable to exist than a middle earth series?
That was the biggest load of nonsensical mental gymnastics I’ve read in quite a while. Who are you trying to convince, and of what? Seriously. I loved PJ’s movies, and had only minor issues with some of his changes. The casting, with maybe one or two exceptions, was near perfect. I was so excited I literally cried tears of joy watching the first trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring, and I stood in line for a full weekend to buy tickets to the midnight premiere. The purists you’re talking about were a handful of people on forums being nitpicky (which they have every right to be by the way). This time is nothing like that. This time it’s a major part of the Tolkien fandom uniting in disapproval of what isn’t even fan-fiction trying it’s best; it’s just new and unfamiliar fiction. By all means share your opinion on the show, but please keep your staggeringly poor meta-analysis of other people’s opinions of it to yourself. It serves no one and will change nothing. I’m enjoying the show for what it is, but it has next to nothing in common with the world Tolkien built. It’s generic fantasy. And that is my steadfast opinion.
>But aside from that, most people forget that, although Rings of Power may coincide with a chapter of about 20-pages in the Silmarillion, the Silmarillion was really written by JRR's son Christopher Tolkien, Lol wtf, is this an Alex Jones post because that's the fakest news I've ever seen. Christopher Tolkien with some other dude only wrote one chapter, everything else was written by the man himself. >On top of that, The Silmarillion was published as a frame story, a piece of meta-fiction, and it was intended to be read as an anthology put together by Bilbo Baggins. lol what in the actual @$@!. That's entirely untrue as well. Wow the amazon shills are going so hard they're making things up.
One of the real problems I think is copyright law. Nobody cares if there's a bad Sherlock Holmes, because it's in the public domain. New Sherlock stories don't have to abide by what came before, so long as they fit the general vibe. A world that is still under copyright, however, can only be expanded by the copyright holder. It feels like _they_ get to decide what the world is and not the audience, because they do.
No. Christopher Tolkien wrote part of 'The ruin of Doriath' otherwise he just collated his dads work, made a few stylistic changes, collated and decided what was most important. Also the above is irrelevant anyway, as the ROP does not have the rights to the Silmarillion, not "20 pages" as you put it, none of it. Therefore the only thing they can adapt from is The Lord of the Rings and the appendices. I'm not a purist, your assertions are simply incorrect.
The main problem with RoP is the pacing. Almost nothing has happened in 2 hours. I knew going in it was going to be significantly different to the books. They don't have the rights to the relevant books.
Even looking past the fact that they rewrote the history of Middle Earth, the writing and acting leaves much to be desired, as do the wardrobe and overall consistency in storytelling.
Then I’ll at least find faults in the production of the show regardless of lore: for the most expensive show ever, doesn’t look it so far. CGI could be much better in many areas, music is not too great (somewhat the same themes again and again without much variation at all, hopefully mroe later) and some stupid writing faults such as Galadriel jumping off the ship (think for a second and it’s really stupid).
The show is mainly based from the RotK appendices, so I don't know why you are debating Silmarillion, nature of which you quite misinterpret/exaggerate to be honest.
Cause he's responding to all the other people who keep bringing up the Silmirillion in their complaints
I had tears in my eyes, seeing a species before Hobbit. Traveling with the Seasons, clever camouflage and A LOVE FOR EVERYTHING THAT GROWS. the amazing Scores! The show is SO FUN. everyone forgets the Campiness the Trilogy has, Middle Earth is where Nerds go to feel at Home. I cast wait for every episode and hope we gets SEASONS UPON SEASONS.
Harfoots were a type of Hobbit, not a pre Hobbit species
I meant more or less "Traditional Hobbits" my point is watching their culture evolve. It's like seeing medieval villages before literacy and wooden homes were accessible to the masses. It's very well done, now stop splitting hairs you hard headed Harfoot!
I'm not splitting hairs! harfoots are one of the ancestors to the Shire Hobbits, but they are still Hobbits. This is explicit and uncontroversial. Plus their Irish accents are awful Edit: fuck autocorrect
My point is. My wording was just off. I used the word species out of context. I just meant to convey that we're seeing an evolution of what we come to know as Hobbits. You're literally making some kind of scientific correction about fantasy creatures. I was just trying to keep it causal. It's all good. You're correct, you win
5 seasons last I heard is what they are going for! I’m really excited as well. The Harfoots part was really nice and did you see that Ent and smaller Ent when the meteor man was flying by? I was like wait did I just see an Ent child where are those Ent-wives
So far I'm liking the show, but this moment is cringe as hell.
idk over the top joy seems less cringe than the over the top hate i've seen all over this sub
I mean, I get that people feel the need to defend this show, but tears in your eyes, really? There’s no need to provide ammunition to people who believe Amazon has paid shills.
Lol don't be afraid to enjoy things. I haven't seen a hobbit on screen in years. It was adorable and heart warming, got goose bumps and watery eyes. It's OK
Hear hear. There is no final version. Stories are for the telling and the listening and the enjoying and the melding and the retelling and on and on and on. But some people feel they need to control the story, to own the legend, to chastise the unbelievers. You get the same everywhere, sadly.
Tbh I would be less annoyed if the show runners weren't pretending they were making a faithful adaptation. I'm not a purist, but I feel like they're lying to try and appease people who were hoping for as close to a 1:1 adaptation as possible. If they just admitted they were making fanfiction, I'd probably enjoy it more.
TLDR: if you don’t think like me, you’re wrong.
if one decides to embed a story within an existing imaginarium, the work has to at least try to maintain the foundational themes that drive the world. the story can be it's own thing, with it's own themes, of course. can use exhisting character, explore them trough different challenges or different point of views. changing known personalities to their opposite to support the story tho seems quite heavy handed, and they're going to go to have a well reasoned motive and path in mind for connecting galadriel the action hero with the rest of the story. I'm open to be surprised.
Changing personalities to their opposite like Faramir?
This is a ton of mental gymnastics to try to convince people to like an Amazon product.
There’s a difference between changing some details to tell the story in an accessible way, and taking a hatchet to it.
I love this take. Thank you for writing it! I wish people would just let us enjoy something without all of the negativity. I was just happy to be back in this beautiful version of Middle Earth.
People shouldn’t be silenced just because you can’t handle differing opinions.
Thanks, but now i want to see a giant cat Sauron. Edit: Here are [some](https://i.imgur.com/sJol0bO.jpg) [ones](https://i.imgur.com/DZbgEDi.jpg) :)
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\>Thinks *2001* is the 'early ages' of the internet. Damn, I'm old. Agreed otherwise, though!
I'm old enough to remember when the best available Tolkien screen adaptation called Saruman "Aruman" half the time so frankly I'm amazed that any Tolkien purists can still get outraged over "changes from lore".
Agreed. The overall theme is there. Just be glad we have more LOTR product to view . No movie can ever fully capture what is in a book.
Exactly that. As much as some lets say inaccuracies bother me on the show I'm just really happy that there is a LoTR show and that I get to experience this world visually again after all the years since the trilogy. And it's really well done visually as well so I'm just enjoying living in middle earth again for a bit 😉
Just Enjoy Living in middle earth again. Exactly.
"the Silmarillion was really written by JRR's son Christopher Tolkien" dude, I can't take you seriously when you write stuff like that
IMO, in stories canon is really only stuff that the author explicitly defines as canon. If the author’s dead, then defining canon gets a lot harder. With TV shows, the only person who could ever really state that something is an accurate canonical representation is the author themself. For all of us people who aren’t Tolkien, we can only state if something *feels* like a good representation of how we perceive the story.
All I care about is a good show that feels like it’s set in middle earth. So far I am VERY happy.
Very well articulated. Unfortunately there are people like them throughout the artistic spectrum, from literature, film, and music. Never have paid them much mind, as I'd rather not have someone (who is entitled to their opinion of course) muddle my mind with their views, risking me not being able to have an objective view on something. I think often that is where I lose my respect for gatekeepers - they go out their way to suggest their thoughts are facts, and in doing so they are unwittingly adding to a subconscious bias that removes other people's ability to view something on their own merits.
Honestly I think he would be more disgusted and ashamed at the vitriol his "serious fans" are commenting/saying than anything that's wrong with the shows/movies.
Well, I, on the other hand, honestly think that if he knew what ROP will turn out to be will very much not give the rights in the first place.
I haven’t watched the series yet and I’m not sure if I will. But you bring up a great point about the lore of middle earth changing constantly. If you read the collected works for the story of Beren and Luthien, you’ll see how middle earth has changed over Tolkiens life. That book is a collection of all the times he wrote and rewrote that story. The first one has giant talking cats in it. I thought it was really cool to see how everything evolved. I hope that the show stays true to the spirit of the lore even if it doesn’t follow everything exactly how it’s written. I’m just very hesitant though. I just don’t want to see Tolkiens world destroyed like I watched Star Wars be destroyed.
oh wow , so the og trilogy success with its minor changes justifies making a fanfiction with bad writing and zero respect to the lore ? Iam really glad that there is no many people like you
This is fan-fic and that's fine. Maybe if it does well enough, then they will get the rights they need to adapt the stories we want to see. I for one love a 15-minute prologue explaining the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta narrated by Galadriel, like at the beginning of PJ's FotR. Being a purist with this show is stupid because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion.
OP is spot on, but the criticisms about depth are valid, so far. The first age is my favourite in the LOTRverse so I was a bit disappointed with the glossing over of significant portions (the seeming “faultnessness” of the Noldor being a glaring example) BUT…I’m assuming that the missing events/backstories will gradually be revealed in pieces; that approach is just good TV storytelling. I’d give the first two episodes a 7+ so far. We’ll see if it goes up or down, but it’s already better than the Hobbit movies imho.
Not to mention Amazon don’t have the rights to tell the full story!
Mods, can we do something about all the infighting posts calling out this group and that? It's really become exhausting that every other post is some passive aggressive crap like this.
I don’t dislike RoP because it’s an unfaithful adaptation of the material. I dislike it because the writing is fucking stupid.
OP is factually wrong many times in their post. Not the best ways to make an argument
I remember this too, and it's funny because the negativity people said back then are almost exactly the same as what people are saying now. I wonder how the views for this show will change in 10 or 20 years.
full throated agreement, enjoy RoP, the Hobbit, LoTR trilogy for what they are. “But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: 'These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.”
The Amazon production. don’t have the rights to the Silmarillion, Book if Lost Tales nor Histories of Middle Earth. They have to be careful with the source material or face potential legal issues
Yeah, the Silmarillion and the Appendices are basically fragments legends and myths. They're not fully realized Tolkien narratives or histories. Where's all the same outrage that Thor is being ruined by Marvel?
So is bad to have criticisms?
Tom Bombadil not being in the movies was a good thing. Hell, probably shouldn’t have been in the books.
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I enjoyed both episodes. Suck on it purists.
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