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Thanks for this! I was just going back over the set and I had the same question.

I'd watch a Glorfindel slays a balrog movie or Feanor and the kinslaying but I don't really think Gollum is that interesting of a character to spend time on. Even Tolkien just uses one sentence on the hunt for him. I don't like Gollum's talking, I don't like the precious meme. I just want the interesting bits of the franchise.

My main issue with the show is that it really doesn’t have the Silmarillion content that covers this period of time, because as you said they don’t have the rights to those stories. That lack of source material then begs the question why would you make a show about a story you don’t have the rights to. I feel like they could have made another interpretation of LOTR or several other things that weren’t covered already and could have been straight conjecture. If they were going to make something about this particular time period though maybe they should have bought the rights to those stories so they could be done correctly.

"I looked everywhere for the creature Gollum. But the enemy found him first" So he did actually look. Maybe the enemy found him first but he found him second. It still could fit

There’s a scene at the start where Golum is being tortured in Mordor and reveals Baggins shire I suspect that could be in the film/maybe they suspect Bilbos ring is the one ring and want to find golum first before he spouts it in Mordor

I think if they make a "whodunit" it could work. I'm thinking a Conan Doyle approach, with Gandalf playing Sherlock (the thinker) and Aragorn being Watson (the doer), with Gollum being more or less a MacGuffin. Sauron would be a shadowy Moriarty lurking in the background.

Have him in my Aragorn the Uniter deck. With so many ways to give haste he’s is usually a win-con for me if he’s in my hand.

Your off center

Really? It hasn’t been power crept by outlaws of thunder junction? I know mtg does that very fast

Unrelated but I would honestly love a slower paced LOTR reboot/series that's much more faithful to the books

Here. - We can glean a little more about the hunt for Gollum from Appendix B, "The Tale of Years". 2944: Gollum leaves the Mountains and begins his search for the 'thief' of the Ring. 2951: Sauron declares himself openly... Gollum turns towards Mordor... Elrond reveals to 'Estel' his true name and ancestry, and delivers to him the shards of Narsil. Arwen, newly returned from Lórien, meets Aragorn in the woods of Imladris. Aragorn goes out into the Wild. 2977: Bain son of Bard becomes king of Dale. 2980: About this time Gollum reaches the confines of Mordor and becomes acquainted with Shelob. - 3001: The guard on the Shire is doubled. Gandalf seeks for news of Gollum and calls on the help of Aragorn. 3007: Brand son of Bain becomes king in Dale. Death of Gilraen, Aragorn's mother. 3009: Gandalf and Aragorn renew their hunt for Gollum at intervals during the next eight years, searching in the vales of Anduin, Mirkwood, and Rhovanion to the confines of Mordor. At some time during these years Gollum himself ventured into Mordor, and was captured by Sauron. 3017: Gollum is released from Mordor. He is taken by Aragorn in the Dead Marshes, and brought to Thranduil in Mirkwood. If the film is going to conform to the continuity of the Peter Jackson films then the above timeline would likely be significantly compressed, with the bulk of it taking place in just a few, short years (at most). FOTR-EE gives the year of Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday as 3000 (Third Age), with the Council of Elrond seemingly taking place on 25 October, 3001. This also means that the Quest of Erebor took place in the year 2940 instead of 2941, and places Aragorn's year of birth at either 2914 or 2915 (depending on whether he was 87 or 88 when the Ring was unmade).

There is so much it can show as far as all the things that were going on during the 500 years of hun having the ring. His story can be a backdrop that falls away naturally on its own and leads into things like War Of The Rohirim and rise and fall of a Angmar etc.

A pretty good overview! I'm assuming you're starting off broad and narrowing in later? I'm hopin' your channel picks up subscribers so it's worth your time! I like it!

I disagree on the 'pale' and 'dark' discussion. To me, they actually seem like a simple contradiction in Tolkien's writing. The only way I could reconcile them is to try and claim that he was RELATIVELY so, to the describing person - but would Gandalf use a descriptive term to Frodo that wouldn't be within Frodo's own knowledge and conception? Seems really odd to me. 'Gray', like 'pale' seems impossible to me as a description with someone as dark-skinned as in the Magic cards. I think that the biggest consideration is that Tolkien's own background, as a white man in England, writing based upon early medieval Anglo-Norse mythology is such that he probably would called out fairly clearly if major characters were so dark-skinned. Does that matter in a depiction? I dunno - but I am also unsure if a clear contradiction would matter to any greater extent; just as Shakespeare gets reimagined to other eras, it's not unreasonable to take artistic license for whatever reasons.

I dunno... it sounds like you're trying real hard to justify a bad show. I mean... if ya like it that's fine. But your calls for 'wait and see' don't hold much water after already having a season. If you'd said that before season 1 I would have completely agreed. I was excited and argued with friends who said it was a dumpster fire before they'd even seen it... and even after I, to be blunt, sounded kinda like you did as I couldn't admit how horrific it was for a while. Disappointed and clawing for scraps. But then reality sunk in and...

I'm going to be 100% honest. (Hear me out... ) When I first saw the art, and all the while of using the cards, I had a strong distaste for their choice. You're first five minutes told me why. I didn't really consider it, but I suppose it was almost completely because he wasn't depicted as literal Viggo Mortensen. You are completely correct. My entire conceptualization of Aragorn had been in the context of his depiction in Peter Jackson's movies. I remember, even in my first reading of the books, they were already tainted by early depictions and trailers of the movies before I had even seen the movies. I'm going to re-read the trilogy later this summer, and see what I can do to re-imagine him in a differing light. I think. in hindsight, their choice to depict him this way was almost completely an attempt to escape the Comparison to Viggo. I had initially thought it to be an attempt to pander and court controversy to either drum up conversation and discussion, or even just to try to attract new bodies into the game... I thought that Hasbro and Wizards assumed "We already have the Magic nerds... Were gonna get the LotR nerds just because it says "Sauron" on a card.... Let's try to attract some people who are only here because 'Black Aragorn' got printed." Now... While I do not fully discount the probability that it factored in in some small amount.... I think the majority of the issue they were facing was avoiding the comparison. They wanted to drive home a novel image and interpretation of his character and give their onw depiction something that makes it stand out. That said... It still feels bad. I am, in this moment, much less hostile to the change given the context that your video has added. That said... If we all knew it was so simple and easy to just hand-wave Aragorn's race... You wouldn't be making this video and I wouldn't be writing this comment. The fact that you have to make this video to seemingly justify the possibility is proof that it's kind of absurd. Don't you think?

So I think the difficulty with the MTG depictions here isn't per se that it's hard to believe that Aragorn could be black; it's that it's hard to believe that (a) Aragorn could be black *consistently with* (b) Elrond and Arwen being white. For that to be true, Aragorn would need to have very little genetically in common with Elros and the original Númenóreans more generally--and in that case, why should he be any longer-lived than the men of Gondor? To be clear, I certainly don't think there'd be a lore problem if Elrond and Arwen WERE black. While their Edain forebears were certainly white, I don't remember anything specifying that Thingol or Melian (and therefore Lúthien) were; and since the MTG Galadriel is dark-skinned herself, so too could have been Indis, Finarfin, Fingolfin, Turgon, and Idril. So maybe the moral is: it's cool that MTG is going for diverse representation here, but it would be much cooler if they were fully consistent about it! (edit: and when I originally posted this comment, it had slipped my mind that of course Arwen is Galadriel's granddaughter! While this doesn't bear on Aragorn's depiction, it does make it all the weirder that she's so pale!)

I can't remember where I read it, and it might be a secondary source, but I distinctly remember that Tolkien had described either Aragorn in particular or Numenoreans in general as looking like southern Europeans - think Spain, Greece, and particularly Italy. This is probably from some apocryphal source such as a letter or something, not published canon.

As a "Black man", i stand back and watch all of you and shake my head. You are all being very cringe about a social constuct. Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as race. If that social constuct is needed to maintain your vision of Aragon, then it begs many questions. Perhaps they should have made him Asian, or look like some cro-magnon to match.

Robert Aramayo will be dual cast as Elrond and a younger Boromir / Sean Bean. I just hope, although it's probably inevitable, that the Jacksons will avoid adding an unnecessary love story.

I believe that that controversy came from the harmful idea that the inclusion of black people in media is only done for profit or to satisfy some agenda. People throw a huge fuss when black people are depicted in any type of fiction, especially fantasy.

Unfinished Tales has an amazing chapter called the “Hunt for the Ring” that tells so much about this.

I don't really care what arbitrary skin colour Tolkien imagined for his characters. It is a work of fiction and re-imagenings as well as artistic freedom from artists while depicting said fiction is one of the corner stones of fantasy art as a genre. I have only ever seen one type of argument why Aragorn shouldn't be black in MTG's enterpritation of Middle Earth, and that's the type of argument I hope your content moderation takes care of.

Re. Unfinished tales ‘

Mic grima wirmtoungue in parallel universe s niiicccce

Don't screw it up like the Hobbit.

This should go without saying, but The Lord of The Rings is a western fantasy. It can be assumed all the characters are white unless otherwise described differently. I mean for example if a book took place in an African inspired fantasy world, it would go without saying all the characters would be black unless otherwise stated right? Tolkien wasn't worried about describing the race of characters, but that's because Middle-Earth is basically just Europe, so almost all of the characters in the book would obviously be white. If all your characters are white, then why take the time to describe something that can be easily surmised. You wouldn't describe a character by talking about how they have 2 eyes, 2 legs and 2 arms, you only describe aspects that make them unique from other characters. If any character was black like an African, I have no doubt Tolkien would make sure to describe that, because well he did that with the Easterlings. He took the time to describe what their race looks like, because it was different and unique compared to the main characters.

Im all for well integrated diversity, but I cringe every time I see my black aragorn cards.

If Sir Ian McKellen reprises his role, all he would be required to do is sit on a chair and talk a few lines (e.g to Aragorn in the prancing pony in bree or sitting on a chair and asking gollum a few questions. We saw this done with Sir Christopher Lee in the hobbit trilogy. I can definitely see him being capable of doing that. As for Viggo, he has aged well for 65 (looks great in the dead don’t hurt) I think using minimal deaging/ makeup would be sufficient. I truly believe all the fans would be accepting of a slightly older looking Aragorn, because to the average viewer Viggo IS Aragorn, and I don’t believe his performance can be replicated by another actor to a level that would be accepted by all fans.

At this point Middle-Earth should get a reboot IF Warner Bros. is rebooting the greatest series ever written with a new TV Show. Just reboot everything if you’re going to reboot the best film series. To be fair, Middle-Earth is probably the second best franchise.

Said this about Rings of Power: I think that modern intellectual property would rather make these characters diverse retroactively to be more palatable to broad audiences than exploring the actual ethnic conflicts of Tolkien's setting.

There are very much valid reasons to depict Aragorn as black: if a black british person wants to depict Aragorn as black to feel more related to him, that would be fine, Tolkien was making a british cultural epic, so it would support his purpose, not erode it. That is quite clearly not what was happening in this case. The unified depictions in the art prove that they were a corporate mandate, not an artistic inspiration.

I love both versions of him! People can hate.

I think the most important argument for Aragorn's skin colour (or of every character, for that matter) is Tolkien's sense od aesthetics. He wrote those characters specifically to satisfy some kind of aesthetic, that's also the reason why Hobbits look anachronistic in relation to Middle Earth's setting. Tolkien would have never written a black character as the king of Gondor if that didn't carry a deeper meaning: given that Isildur's lineage should probably be white because geography and stuff, Aragorn would be white, too; if Aragorn was black that would imply some ancestor went on a journey out of Middle Earth for some reason and would not be just a matter of mixing things up because that could happen in reality. Tolkien just didn't work like that. I don't see any problem in Aragorn being black in itself, it's just he wouldn't fit the aesthetics, and I think they are VERY fundamental, especially for an author like Tolkien. I might have written in a broken English, I apologise in advance.

What I would say is that Tolkien probably would have been cool with people depicting Aragorn as black, Ralph Bakshi is kicking himself for not thinking of it, and skin like ivory could describe a texture or sheen rather than a color although this is unlikely.

Months ago I was thinking about how a "Scouring of the Shire" film might work for fans of the Peter Jackson movies - most of whom have never read ROTK. In the movies the hobbits come home to a Shire that has obviously never been touched by the war. It seems that the only way a Scouring film could work is by not trying to pretend there isn't a discrepancy. Embrace it. Have Galadriel / Cate Blanchett explain in a beginning narration that "The story may have come to you incomplete. But the Hobbits deserve to have their story told." Maybe over footage from Frodo's "Mirror of Galadriel" vision. So yeah I agree that a Hunt for Gollum movie will have to similarly abandon some of the original trilogy timeline. But if the movie is good, telling an interesting smaller story without trying to pad out a new trilogy like the bloated Hobbit films, fans will love it.

You've omitted some facts from outside the LotR books (like the Silmarillion) where Tolkien specifically describes Numenoreans as fair-skinned on numerous occasions. LotR and the Hobbit specifically leaves a lot out to focus on story and setting whereas the Silmarillion delves into the meat and potatoes - the finer details - of his works. The appendices in this universe are paramount to understanding it. I would recommend revisiting this video after delving into the larger legendarium. I'd suggest starting with the Silmarillion. A warning, however; it is quite thick reading. I am sure that will not be an issue for a librarian such as yourself though. (EDIT: I see you've already read it. I've listed the chapter below for you to reread) From the Silmarillion: the chapter titled “Of the Voyage of Earendil and the War of Wrath.” Elros (who men descend from - specifically Numenoreans) decided to be man instead of elf, whereas his brother Elrond decided to be elf. We already know from descriptions Elros and Elrond originally were both fair-skinned elves. All Numenoreans descend from Elros. This is part of the reason that Numenoreans live much longer than other races of Men - they are in part, elven. Without this context, your conclusions are only partially informed. The details it provides even give us the indications of what type of Europeans Tolkien was basing the story on. There is enough to rule out Italian, Spanish or Greek. Most of the descriptions are Germanic and Scandinavian as is the folklore surrounding them (i.e. elves and dwarves). Now I do believe that the specifics of Aragorn were purposely left vague on purpose as we as readers want to all idealize ourselves as Aragorn. Too many specific details on his description doesn't allow us, the reader, to become the most virtuous character in the story. It is in that spirit that his race is completely irrelevant. He is supposed to be all of us, in a sense. Tolkien doesn't want to break that immersion by making a character so narrow most of us cannot embody him. I mean I'm glad that you dug into this, but the answer is fairly obvious as Tolkien was writing a British modern folklore (his words) and was based on the British history of Angles and Saxons settling the British Isles (also his words). We have to keep in mind the era in which Tolkien wrote in Britain was quite homogeneous - there wasn't much diversity. I do not think he chose to omit any particular races, just that it was not a reality of his time, era, or location. Changing historic media for modern sensibilities is a disservice to the author, the source material and history itself. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past, or the successes, if we do not accurately depict them? I think the particular issue that many MTG and LotR fans have in this is that the source material was wielded in a culture war-type fashion by WotC specifically to trigger traditionalists and conservatives who hold Tolkien's works as the pinnacle of High-Fantasy. I say this as a liberal myself, please note. I would use the card "Aragorn, the Uniter" as a prime example. Note the skin color of the other Gondorians (Numenorean descendants) following Aragorn in the card art. It would have been easier to simply represent them as they've always been represented either in Peter Jackson's films or the weekend cartoons of the 70s and 80s. We have to keep in mind many of WotC employees are very deeply activist and feel compelled to agitate what they perceive as "white supremacy" wherever they see it. It was a very intentional "stick in the eye" to a group that is predominately young white males. WotC knew would the characters they chose to represent as black would anger them the most, as they are the most heroic and idyllic. WotC was well aware the 50+ years of perception that has formed around these characters. It's unfortunate as I hate other peoples works being weaponized as ideology in either direction by the people who didn't create the work. We need to honor the authors original vision. The source material needs to be respected. We are currently seeing this as well in Star Wars with George Lucas very openly speaking out about Disney not honoring his vision. Tolkien would not have wanted any of this discussion.

This may be incredibly pedantic, but "was Aragorn Black?" is a terrible question. Aragorn is a fictional character. The real question that *might* be interesting is "did Tolkien intend for Aragorn to be Black?" and that question has nothing to do with MtG because their question is "did WoTC intend for Aragorn to be Black?" and the obvious answer is "yes." Which, btw, is covered, so I know you agree with my pedantry.

The reason depicting Aragorn as a black man is so controversial is, like you said, his previous representation as a white man, but not even that is really that important. We had a lot of examples of previously established characters being changed significantly throughout the history, however, this sort of backlash over race changes is very recent, and exclusive to western productions. The actual reason behind the controversy is because representation of minorities was addopted by western political parties, usually the ones more aligned to the left, and by changing the race of a white character to not be white you are in effect demonstrating that you care about representation of minorities, and you are likely to be aligned politically to the political parties that preach these values. The same happens if any politically charged topic is addressed in a piece of media, including immigration, religion, racism, poverty, etc... People that dislike those parties for whatever reason, and it tends to be around half of the population, would then see these displays as a sign of allegiance to the opposition, and generate annoyance. It gives the impression that the piece of media is being coopted into being a piece of propaganda for messages you do not necessarily agree, and diverting it from it's original intent. This makes it hard for people who enjoy that media to share and associate with it, due to the perception of being associated with those political parties as well. However if a Japanese or Korean creator does exactly the same thing, this is usually not even noticed by the audience as significant or relevant, because there isn't any pattern of political pandering coming from those regions, so the perception of threat is non existant. In the case of the MTG cards, this came after years and years of constant political signaling and pandering, so it is quite natural to see this race change as part of a broader effort to pander and signal virtue. It is just seen as impossible that the MTG creators just happen to think that Aragorn would be best depicted as black out of nowhere, and that political influence had no role to play in that decision. However, the person being annoyed is not necessarily aware of the reason behind the annoyance, and is usually unable to trace the annoyance back to it's source. That is why they instead try to retroactively rationalize, claming that Aragorn was depicted as white, or that this is violating the source material somehow, which might in fact be true, but is usually not the actual reason why you are annoyed. In the case of Aragorn, the fact that an european author didn't felt any need to delve into the character racial traits heavily indicates that the character was intended to be of a similar ethnicity then the author was accustomed to seeying. The same can be assumed for authors of any ethnicity, especially in older periods of time where multi racial cities were quite rare. This pattern can be found on nearly all pieces of literature in history. A lot of attention is given to the person's race when it is out of the ordinary for the author's region, but close to no attention is given when the character is the same race as the author. Interpreting lack of attention given to a race as being a wildcard where anything can be inserted seems overal disingenuous, as any person attempting to genuinely represent what the original author intended would consider it to be extremely more likely for the author to have a person of the same race in mind, compared to the alternative. The fact that a person can go through the writings and make a stong effort to not violate any specific clear mention just feels like diverging as far as you can get away with, instead of attempting to make a faithful depiction.

"Rangers of the North". People that dwell in Northern climates tend towards white skin.

Grey eyes. As far as I know, there are no black people with grey eyes. Unless they are of mixed race.

Still takes place over years through.

Ah yes. Let’s take a mythology made to be Englands and make the characters African and African American skinned. I don’t see any possible reason why that wouldn’t make sense. I can’t tell if this video is sarcasm but Aragon was not black. When a darker skin character does show up in LOTR such as the men from the south and those on the Elephants (idk how to spell the name of them) they are described with darker skin. Aragon is also from the far north. I think it’s obvious that Danithor reminded pippin of Aragon in his overall appearance including his skin. Plus the line of stewards were related to the old kings. Arguing Aragon was black is like arguing that King Arthur was black because we don’t actually have any descriptions of his skin color from the original legends

I was also more irritated by the race swap than I expected. I think there are multiple reasons. 1) Aragon is probably the most self identification figure in LotR. If figures have different race/gender/sexual orientation than yourself than it distances it. And the audience of LotR was always white and male and hetero. So Aragon was "taken away" from them. That's different than having a diverse line up from the start . This explains also why nobody was upset about the rohirim. 2) LotR is western fantasy. It looks and feels like a fairy tale of northern Europe. And it is based on it. So a "ranger" like figure from the woods is expected to be white. 3) I'm for diversity and thinking about this for the LotR is a good idea in principle. But making American black seems forced. It's PC on the nose. 4) having ab African/American Black figure brings it's own cultural background. 5) I'm no Tolkien expert, but as I understood, Aragon is a descendent of this human civilisation of this sunken city. So Tolkien referenced Atlantis/Greek culture. So Aragon shouldn't be white!!! He should be dark skinned European. Somehow like in the old Bakshie animated Movie. And this would also be way more representative since Europeans and middle eastern, south Americans could look like that. There would have been a better solution to be more diverse and more source accurate. And this is frustrating. There is more to diversity than having a black token/tolkien. (Yes, this is a Southpark reference)

Character. Tolkien gives this description of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: lean, dark, tall, with "a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes." In The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, he was said to be often grim and sad, with unexpected moments of levity.

This was the first Tolkien (inspired) book I read, in 1990 when I was 8; still today the images are how I imagine the world of Tolkien.

I am a historian and a natural scientist, and in my opinion you forgot two very important facts: Tolkien's world building and his interest in natural science and history. 1. Tolkien clearly said that the North-west of Middle-earth represents Europe and that Rhun is Asia and the Hot Countries south of Harad is Africa. He also wrote that the Shire has the latitude of Oxford, Minas Tirith the latitude of Florence in Italy and Pelagir in southern Gondor the latitude of Troy. 2. Tolkien changed the original myth about the creation of the sun from the last fruit of Laurelin and decided that the sun existed from the very beginning of time and that the story about the fruit of Laurelin was just a "mannish myth". Christopher Tolkien wrote that his father believed this change to be an "inevitable necessity", because he considered the old myth as too primitive. Tolkien wrote: "You cannot do this anymore" (Morgoth's Ring, "Myths transformed). Important about this change is the fact that the sun is the _only_ reason why Humans have different skin colours at all. 3. Tolkien also fundamentally extended his old timeline from 1 Valian Year = 10 Years of the Sun to 1 Valian Year = 144 Years of the sun. Which means that according to the new timeline about 60,000 years had passed between the awakening of Elves _and_ Men and the death of the Two Trees. Why did he do this? To adapt his chronology to the scientific knowledge of his time and to give Men and Elves more time for a natural evolution and sundering. Tolkien attempted this most severe change despite the great problems the new timeline created for the history of the Elves (e.g. the age of Finwe, Elwe and Ingwe). He wrote that the 60,000 years were „adequate, if not scientifically long enough". Which means that he was aware that in reality evolution needed more time than 60,000 years, but that this change was all he could do to adapt the history of Elves and Men to the rules of evolutionary biology. Despite the many chronological problems he cared so much about scientific accuracy that he put an unbelievable amount of work into these changes. (The Nature of Middle-earth, chapter "The awakening of the Quendi"). So, we know three things: 1. The North-west of Middle-earth represents Europe, Rhun is Asia, the Hot Countries are Africa. 2. The sun existed from the beginning of time and 3. Elves and Men existed about 60,000 years before the two trees died. Skin colour has scientific reasons, not ideological reasons. The first humans had no clothes, no houses and no cars to move around. They were exposed to the hot African sun all of the time. A dark skin colour was the perfect protection against the strong UV radiation at this latitude, the strongest UV radiation we have on our planet. Strong UV radiation not only burns the skin, it also destroys vital Vitamin B. Lack of Vitamin B can cause serious illness, disabled offspring and death. Without the dark skin the first humans would not have survived. But….when humans finally came to Europe, the dark skin very fast became a severe disadvantage, because of the lack of sunlight in the North. Humans need to absorb Vitamin D from the sun, and a light skin colour can much better absorb Vitamin D than a dark skin, especially when you have to cover your skin because of the much colder climate. A lack of Vitamin D also causes illness, disabled offspring and death. And that is the reason - the only reason - why Europeans are white and why humans have different skin colours. Long story short: We know how much Tolkien cared about scientific accuracy and an realistic world building. And we have a precise description of the geography of Middle-earth in relation to our world, especially to the different latitudes. As Anor, Eriador, Rohan and Gondor are part of Europe and people had neither cars, nor planes, trains or ferries to migrate in great numbers it is only logical to assume that 99% of the people - with the exception of some Marco Polo style adventurers and tradesmen - were white. For simple scientific reasons. 1% doubt is left. Maybe Melian was black :) Or a close ancestor of Aragorn was one of the Marco-Polo-style adventurers and tradesmen from the South. That's possible. But the scientific estimate says that he was a white guy.

I hope will released new movie LOTR the king aragon and princess live together in gondor and have many kids. Cant wait, so excited❤️‍🔥🤩

There is something I noticed when I recently rewatched Fellowship and when gollum reveals the location of the ring, you can see the tower of Barad-Dûr isnt complete, it was still in construction. So either 17 years did went through during the film or it was just a nice reference for the ones who readed the books

Nobody needs this movie