Thinking of the next episode being "the Rings of Power Does not Understand Corruption" followed by episodes on Elrond and Celebrimbor and I might wrap up the series there, having said my part.
Thank you for doing these videos. It really helps put a voice to why those who love Tolkien cannot stand this show. It can be hard to explain when you're still fairly new to the legrndarium and don't have even half the details memorized. It is so very much wonderful information....Tolkien really was one of the greatest writers of all time.
Was never meant to be based on the books entirely. The problem is that you guys are too stupid to understand this is a TV show snd not the books which is two completly different stuff. Stop crying.
The three Elven rings were, if I remember correctly, forged last and completely untouched by Sauron. This show undermines that completely. No thought went into these changes.
Also, only Nenya - the Ring of Adamant, which Galadriel has in the 3rd age - has mithril in the band. Narya and Vilya (originally Gil-Galad's) are gold, so... not really alloying mithril into all 3.
Forging the Elven rings straight away also turns all of the Hobbit and early chapters of Lord of the Rings into a massive plot hole. The elves were supposed to practice creating rings of power, producing a number of 'lesser rings' as they honed their skills. Gandalf passes off the ring that Bilbo finds as a lesser ring because it appears not to harm Bilbo, which is why he allows him to keep it in the first place. With this change, the only rings that would exist are either the Elven rings, the 16 for dwarves and men (now made directly by Sauron instead of the elves under Annatar's direction), and the one ring. He would immediately know that the ring Bilbo found was evil, and address the issue decades earlier instead of just letting Bilbo hang out keeping it
The answer here is NONE for the simple reason that this show should not be considered as "CANON". There is far to much difference compared to the original tale for it to ever be considered as a part of Tolkien lore.
@@Ma55ey What word or meaning of my reply is linked in any way to racism ? When there is an adaptation where the major plot point of Sauron dupping the elf passing himself as "an envoy of the Valar" is totally changed, there is no way I would called it a "CANON" adaptation. The choices of the director about the color of the actor is something I can personally accept or even like if the adaptation is good.
I'd point out that the Dwarves who "delved too greedily and too deep" did so under Durin IV, who bore one of the Seven rings. They were initially made - under Sauron's influence - to allow the bearer to be controlled by Sauron, using the One Ring. But the effect they had on the Dwarves was quite different - the Dwarf kings who bore them became rich beyond measure, and had their greed intensified. So, while it was not Sauron's original intent, the Ring Durin III recieved from Celebrimbor at least indirectly destroyed both Khazad Dum and Erebor in the 3rd age.
@@gandalf8216 No, Celembrimbor gave Durin III one of the Seven (presumably when he sallied out of the Hollin gate to engage Sauron's forces and allow the survivors of the destruction of Eregion to escape). All of the Kings of Durin's folk who follow him will wear it, until Sauron, under the guiseof the Necromancer, captures Thráin IIin Mirkwood, and takes the Ring from him in Dol Guldur.
Exactly. The Rings were forged in SA 1600, but the balrog wouldn’t be awakened until TA 1980, nearly four thousand years later. It’s an egregious perversion of Tolkien’s timeline.
@@MorbidGames666, Tolkien wrote, edited, and re-wrote his Middle-earth mythology over many years of his life. I strongly suspect that, yes, he did deliberately write it that way, whether he planned it beforehand or thought of it afterward and edited it in later.
Depending on how you count the Years of the Trees, Galadriel would be about 5100 years old at the time this show is set. Her daughter Celebrían would be about 3600 years old at this time. There is no reason for Galadriel to act as childish as she does in the show.
@@ancaplanaoriginal5303 Depends on how you calculate the length of time during the Years of the Trees. I went with the interpretation of 9.5 solar years for every 1 year of the Trees. That would make Galadriel 5100 solar years old during Ar-Pharazôn's time.
@@LordEsel88 Either way we're talking a minimum of 5000 years old and very possibly older, depending on the calculation. That's more than enough time for someone to mature and lose their youthful edge. Also, her she had a husband who was also very much alive at this time. The only reason she's this childish is she's a stand in for the writing and production team. Also, she didn't need a sword, she drove off the Necromancer and laid waste to Dol Guldur without one. Sad that they don't understand the character, because she was wonderful the way that she was.
I’ve been trying to think of a way to sum up what exactly is wrong with how rings of power was created, and this is the best illustration I can think of. Imagine in your hometown there’s a restaurant that you love. The food is made from scratch, the atmosphere is warm and inviting, the building it’s in has character and history, you know all of it by heart and you go there at least once a week. Then you move away for work and you miss it like crazy. You tell all your friends how amazing it is but your words don’t do it justice. One day someone tells you that they’re opening a 2nd location where you live and you get excited. You’re first in line when they open and it LOOKS the same. The building, the menus, everything is just like the restaurant you remember. You sit down, and order your favorite dish, and instead of a carefully crafted meal from fresh ingredients the waiter brings you a slice of reheated gas station pizza. Your voice your displeasure, and immediately are shouted down by everyone else in the restaurant. What do you mean this isn’t the same restaurant? Why do you hate the restaurant staff? Just be happy and enjoy it for what it is! Is the food still edible? Yes. Are some people enjoying it? Yes. Is it a faithful reflection of the restaurant that you knew and loved growing up? Absolutely not. The people who built the restaurant only wanted the recognition, the name, and the attraction of the original without doing any of the hard work that made the original so special. Tolkien spent his life‘s work crafting Lord of the Rings; he shaped it, molded it, poured his heart and soul into it and it became something well loved and appreciated because that work was reflected in his finished books. LOTR is a delicious homemade dinner while ROP is a slice of reheated pizza. Is it still watchable? Yes. Do some people enjoy it? Yes. Is it reverent to the work and world crafted by Tolkien? Absolutely not.
Well we can't be bogged down with little details like that. After all, there are no girl bosses involved in the forging of the rings (and in the actual stories written by Tolkien Galadriel was instantly suspicious of Annatar and refused him entry into Lorien). Good lord this junk is terrible.
@@pittland44 Galadriel was not in Lothlorien when Annatar came to Lindon and Eregion; she and Celeborn were in Eregion. Galadriel and her daughter Celebrian moved to the East side of the Misty Mountains some time between the arrival of Annatar in the 1200s and ~1400 SA, then rejoined Celeborn in Rivendell/Imladris after the war of Sauron and the Elves that led to the destruction of Eregion (~1700 SA). They only moved back East to what would become known as Lothlorien much later in the Third Age, around the time the Balrog was awoken (~1980 TA)
I think the ethnicity issue is a thing. Amazon could have had a lot of Diversity in the show, instead they went the Tokenisation route. In putting black characters where it doesn’t make sense. All of the Southlanders could have been people of Colour, but then Amazon were too scared to make them the bad guys BUT could have done something clever, positive and powerful in regard to their race messaging, with the people (suspected of being evil and in league with Sauron) proving they were good, regardless of their ancestry. Proving a stereotype wrong. But no, let’s just make Token Elves/Dwarves/Hobbits.
There are literally canon reasons for the Haradrim siding with Sauron. The Numenoreans in their later years under Ar-Pharazon engaged in brutal colonization against the Southern cultures, and those people then had no reason to distinguish between the surviving Faithful and the people who oppressed them so of course they sided with Sauron, who would have played on that completely justified rage (gee, what real world situations could have possibly been explored there? 🧐)
They had to make a good chunk of the cast diverse, so it makes sense they did that, but the thing is, they could’ve easily made the people who aren’t shown with faces diverse, people who you can hardly notice diverse, etc
All they needed to do was make Haradrim characters! The lore of the world of Tolkien already has dark skinned people with distinct feel and Second Age setting would be ideal to introduce them, due to Numenorean 'white' colonialism, one of those colonies on the shores of Harad, like Umbar could have been important plot relevant location (after all it was there that Ar-Pharazon landed with his army to subdue Sauron!) and nobody would bat an eye if Ismael Cruz Cordova played a young Haradrim warrior, Cynthia Addai his girlfriend, Lenny Henry his old father and tribal chief,..Sophia Nomvete some village witch or something (showing that mortals can learn sorcery from the Enemy through which he can gain greater grip on them through temptations of power, or something), and have these interact in thei subplot with the Numenoreans good or bad showing complexity and nuance that Tolkien's critics always denied him in their ridiculousness.
Reducing Sauron’s input in the crafting of the Rings to, "hey, have you tried an alloy?" was beyond ridiculous. But further, it misses the point that the Elves had no need for Sauron to teach them how to forge rings. What Sauron taught them was how to craft rings _of power._
Teaching them how to mix a special alloy, possible only through magic, could have explained how Sauron had influenced the rings during the forging process without Celebrimbor noticing it. Like you need to sing specific songs during the mixing of the alloy and later during the forging. If they then forge together and Celebrimbor sings the magic into the rings while forging while Sauron handels the fire and dripping some of his blood into the coals and humming his own magic unnoticed into the fire and the rings. That way he directly influenced the rings he and Celebrimbor made together while the use of his special alloy creates the connection between the three elven rings and his masterring. Furthermore if the show had been about the forging of the rings for the humans and the dwarfs and the friendship between Sauron and Celebrimbor (a fake, one-sided friendship) and how they distribute the rings to the two races it could have gone way better in my opinion. Like, they gift these rings to the humans as a thanks for their contributions during the war against Malakor and to the dwarfs in an effort to better the relationship between them and the elves, not knowing how poisoned these gifts really are. Galadryel then becomes suspicious about the ring bearers and sets out to investigate them with her special magic of seeing into the heart of people (the magic she is shown to possess in the movies). We then see how these rings turn good people into shadows of themselves and ultimately into Saurons slaves. With the last scene being Galadryel discovering who Sauron really is but being to late to stop the forging of the last three elven rings, but taking one of them for save keeping. I digress but what i wanted to say is, that the alloy thing could have been handled way better in the show. Like so many other things could have been handled better in the show. I am sorry for the bad English and the misspelling of the names since i only watched the movies and English is not my native language I am sure I made a lot of mistakes.
@@nicholaswulf4563 Your only "flaw" is that the Rings were ALL intended for the Elves (except the One of course) and were only given to the other races after the Elves realized Sauron's evil plan and stopped using them. Plus it is the method/process of making them (which is used by Celebrimbor to make the Three as well even though Sauron does not even touch them) which makes them subject to the One. The blood idea while seeming like a good idea at first pass wouldn't work because of Sauron's lack of direct involvement with the Three.
@@chriss3276 reasonable criticism, thank you. The blood part as well as the secret humming during the making of the ring should only be done during the making of the 16 rings of power. While originally indented to be gifted to the greatest elven lords, it wouod be decided by the elves that they should be gifted to the humans and dwarfs as a means to improve their relationship with each other. (as I said I only saw the movies so if the rings should originally be used by the elves until the master ring was forged and the elves discarded them out of caution and they ended up in the hands of the humans and dwarfs then that is my misunderstanding. In the movies it was said that the rings were given to man and dwarf) The last three rings are then done solely by Celebrimbor as Sauron is send as the bringer of gifts to the humans and dwarfs (much to his irritation) The way to make the alloy would then be the only connection between the three rings and the master ring of Sauron, explaining the weakend link between them. At least that's how I would explain it. Then again I am not a writer.
@@nicholaswulf4563 There is the further issue that the Three were forged in secret by Celebrimbor without Sauron’s knowledge. Here, Sauron was present.
Not only does this show shit on Tolkien lore, it is also just incompetently made. There is pointless dicking around for the first 5 episodes, making you think its going to be a slow burn (nothing wrong with that), only to suddenly realize 7 episodes in, that the titular "Rings of Power" have not been made or even set-up yet, at all. They then, like a 10 year old rushing their homework on the last day, breeze through the creation of the rings in half an episode, because the other half need to be spent on harfoots saying goodbye to one another... WHY?!! The entire structure makes no sense at all. Did they do no story-boarding? Was this written in a single afternoon on a napkin by a highschool-student drama-club? I cannot comprehend how this ... thing was given a billion dollar budget. An incomprehensible waste of money.
Getting critics bogged down by the race argument was always the creators attempt to deflect any critisism. Initially this was the case, with most swallowing hook line and sinker, however the piss poor writing and story telling have both destroyed that trap utterly
No, no it wasn't the intent. Yes, they'll gladly use it to deflect criticism. But the primary reason is ideological and there is a huge push to deliberately make movies more "diverse".
@@Ruairoquai I'm honestly thinking that both reasons might be accurate to a degree. I think they do "diversify" the cast for ideological reasons (as they say a story must reflect "the world as we see it"), but Hollywood has also discovered that you can use your "diverse" cast as human shields to deflect criticism from what are objectively bad movies and television. At this point they don't have good reason to make 90% of the changes they make (many of which are cosmetic and solely for the filmmakers vanity) so they have to deflect by attacking the audience. The problem is that it works on one front, the mainstream access Hollywood media is more than willing to swallow this narrative and regurgitate it back onto the general public, while it absolutely doesn't work with fans, as shown by declining box office returns of franchises that were not only once profitable, but vibrant with strong, loyal fanbases. So they're "winning" what they think is the battle, by attacking fans, many of whom are voicing entirely legitimate complaints about the work in question, while losing the war by driving off the very audience they needed in the first place. This is why we find Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who and others in such bad shape.
@@pittland44, I am not sure what is going on there. I am absolutely for more diversity - but it cannot be done by simply inserting randomly non-caucasian actors and actresses into a movie or a show although it doesn't make any sense. That's not progressive and inclusive but just lazy! It was perfectly ok with the Numenorians and the Southlanders, and since Arondir was the only black elf, it was ok as well. He could have some Haradrim ancestors. We know that elves and humans can have healthy children together. But such a union is very rare, and therefore black elves should be very rare, too. It's too bad, though, that Arondir's ancestry is never discussed. There could have been a very interesting backstory, which could have made this slightly boring character much more interesting. Ok, but while I really liked Disa, black dwarves don't really make sense, since they live underground, and it's highly unlikely that there have been unions with any Haradrim. As to the tiny population of the harfoots: yes, black harfoots are fine - but it only works well, if ALL harfoots are dark-skinned. They live such an isolated and secretive life that a rainbow-coloured population of harfoots doesn't make any sense at all! For me it would have been perfectly fine if all harfoots would have been dark-skinned! That said, the real problems of ROP have nothing whatsoever to do with the diverse cast or strong women. The writing and plotting was absolutely terrible, and I also disliked the artificial look of the show. And the look of the male elves with their salon-coiffed hair styles was as nagging as pebbles in a shoe. I really hated it. And while Tolkien never explicitly wrote that all male elves have long hair, there are many paragraphs in Tolkien's writings which imply a flowing hair style, and he himself drew a picture of a male elf with long hair! The show-runners tried to tell us that short-haired male elves are canonical - but that's simply not true! I have no idea who thought that male elves with modern blow-dry hair styles are a great idea! Did they try to cater to a younger audience, or does it have anything to do with the cliché that men with long hair are hippies?? Ok, I disgressed. I really hated that the show-runners used the diverse cast for accusing critical viewers of being patently evil and racist. That is terrible, but unfortunately it seemed to work in the early days. But the professional reviewers have woken up by now and call their Bluff.
Yeah at least three of the Nazgul were great Numenorean lords and they were given their rings in the Second Age in the prime of the Numenorean race :) which later generations in Third Age dwindled in size as well as their longevity (in process known as Waning of the Dunedain). Also one may add that Tolkien wrote in a letter about the Numenoreans: "They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves - but they remained mortal, even though rewarded by a triple, or more than triple, span of years. Their reward is their undoing - or the means of their temptation.” The Numenoreans received the most blessings and gifts making them 'enhanced' humans basically :). Tallest of all mankind, as well with each generation on their isle becoming more attractive looking etc.
They did it for a reason tbh, they could of made a vaguely middle earth girl power series for much cheaper and without however much money buying the rights was worth. Makes me wonder if they intentionally made this show bad just because Tolkien is old and would of been a bad person in the bad old world
But they did want Tolkien fans to form their core viewership - they wanted the cachet that the "Tolkien" and "Lord of the Rings" brands bring among fantasy fans generally. So they tried to just thrown in a few references and pretend...
In regards to forging the rings, when you said why didn’t Halbrand teach him to infuse magic all I thought was “yes, that’s what I thought!” Why say mix the metals? Of course they’d do that. The difference with these rings is magic.
They clearly have had their agendas when making this. They have made choices to go away from the source material. That is infuriating. But what is even more infuriating is that in the small details that is easy to get according to Tolkien and still do their agenda, they have totally messed up. To me that shows what a casual readers the showrunners are, not taking the time to get things right but just invent their own stuff.
They didn’t mess these things up on accident - they’re doing it on purpose. They want to make a mockery of Tolkien and his work, and everything he represented. The levels to which they’ve mucked this up, there can be other explanation!
They wanted to 'subvert expectations', Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy style. More accurately, they wanted to remake Middle-Earth to their own personal tastes, the same way Disney originally tried to do with George Lucas's version of Star Wars . In both cases, the fans walked.
It's a TV show and not the books. It was never meant to be 100% accurate (same goes for the movies yet you guys dont cry about that) You guys are too stupid to understand that it's two different things. You should be happy there is a show that is related to lotr yet you cry and shit on it like crazy. You want to kill the only thing we have right now... Just shut up and let others enjoy the show. Hardcore book fans are just the worst kind of people.
@@pressf4896 There's a perfectly rational explanation. They approached this from the perspective of "we want to make a show based on a property with lots of brand recognition", not "we want to adapt a work of literature". They didn't give the lore or consistency any thought for the same reason Michael Bay didn't give a thought to lore or consistency when he made the Transformers movies. License something most people have heard of but most people haven't actually read, stuff it full of mystery boxes to keep the rubes interested, release to streaming. Pat self on back. Viewed from that perspective, the hostile reaction to fans complaining about casting choices makes sense. "Why are you complaining about the race of the people we cast in our mindless cash-grab show? You must be RACIST." They're looking at us like we're complaining about casting a Chinese actor in Fast and the Furious XIV or something.
And to be clear the Peter Jackson films made choices to go away from the source material, practically any screen adaptation has to, some of them are genuinely, I think, improvements on Tolkein's work. Like having Eomer banished instead of imprisoned means that it's a known character (at least from the reader/audiences' point of view), rather than some nobody (sorry Erkenbrand), that comes to save the people of Rohan at Helms Deep. It's far more impactful. Others, like the omission of Tom Bombadil are understandable time savers, while the fact that the only part of the scouring of the shire that we get is a glimpse of orcs in Bywater that Frodo has in Lorien, is practically a crime against humanity. But they were all done for either filming practicalities, or storytelling reasons, to improve the experience of the audience, not for... Whatever the random reason is that they've changed the story to what it is in RoP.
The people making this crap likely considered Tolkiens work "problematic" as they do with Jacksons films. This is their way to put their woke spin on it. Total shit will not be rewatching.
And Galadriel being the best at everything ever. My favourite bit was when she backhanded swung a sword while upside down on a horse and basically made an Orc explode! And where exactly was Celeborn during all of this? Or Celebrian? Ah well… I’ll just read the books and be content in never watching this show at all ever. Except for hilarious reviews of course
@@nathantudor5763 he’s sitting at home hoping his bestest ever wife brings him a toy from her ear spoils after she fucks Sauron…I mean halbrand. This shows so stupid.
@@nathantudor5763 Is she though? Half of elves dislike her, her diplomatic skills are unimpressive at best, she fails most spectacularly in her quest to kill Sauron, Halbrand(!) has to save her bacon several times and Adar succeeds even when she brings an army upon his head. Celeborn was mentioned to be missing, Celebrian is a fair concern. Still, ROP could have been so much more...
Peter Jackson doesn't share Tolkien's worldview either, but at the very least, he kept Tolkien's intact as much as possible. A few of the changes that were a bit controversial (such as Faramir's temptation by the Ring) were even actually done to better convey Tolkien's themes given that they couldn't include a lot of the details from the additional lore, letters, notes, etc.
Bravo and we also invite thee to Join us for our counter ROP series. Mae G'ovannen! Now the evidence is clear, and none can deny that "ROP" is not of Tolkien. Take heart for our EXSURGE TOLKIEN that makes robustly clear the heresy of Tolkien's Canon displayed out of the showrunner's mouths and hearts. They probably know nothing of Tolkien's masterpiece, as evident from their interview in the Vanity Fair Article. For "they who proclaim to loveth Tolkien, yet understandeth, not his world view can neither hope to create a new film, show, or series of his secondary world." "Auta i lóme!" and" Aurë entuluva!"
I think they do understand the source material. They just don't care. They had a fantasy script that fit the profit metrics of the year, and decided to slap Lord of the Rings on it for marketing.
To understand Tolkien, you need to not only understand but share his values, the ones he infused in his stories. These people do not have that moral compass.
Didn't they "part way" with actual Tolkien lore scholars. That points to that they do not care about the lore but also that they do not understand it either because they lack people who actually are familiar with the lore.
They look like a cheap version of the infinity stones. With the colors, I think that's what the show runners where trying to invoke, as they seem to copy things from everywhere else.
One thing that bothered me was the fact that the rings were supposed to enhance the wearers' innate magic and imbue the land they ruled in a kind of protective bubble, but the show has not once shown any elf to possess even a hint of magic, soft or otherwise. They just seem like arrogant humans with pointy ears and nothing more.
From when I watched the first episode I realized how shallow and simple the writing and characters were in this show. The writing is very lazy and unintelligent. They made Galadriel a warrior princess, Elron simple, Gandalf can’t even speak etc. And there is no effort to create a complex story. I knew it was going to be bad but this is far worst than my wildest dreams.
The method of making magic rings is intentionally left vague in the source text, so on screen you need to simply communicate that at some point in the forging process something magical is happening, and not explain further. As Tolkien says about magic, it is simply the common name for things we don't understand.
@@doltBmB i read fine. They didnt communicate anything about magic being used or even hint at it, youre right about that. They just made the rings power the product mithril + magic valinorian gold/silver. So dumb.
@@gokaury Like it was said many times before, the show was made to make Bezos more money. They don't care if it's good or bad, only about the name of the IP and how much cash it will get into their pockets. Amazon should have stayed as a packaging business, nuff said.
As a counter point, Disa sounded pretty greedy when she was telling Durin to mine all the mithral because it was theirs so they could rule all the mountains.
Oh, they understand plenty. 'Know your enemy', and all that. If you hated the works, culture and ideas of Tolkien, and you get the rights to make a tv series 'losely based on something Tolkien barely wrote', but you wanted to make a series that portrayed Tokien's good guys as bad guys, bad guys as good guys and make it so horrendous that no one who saw the series would willingly read the books... how would you go about making that series, hmm? Exactly. There is incompetence and there is malicious feigned incompetence aimed to destroy.
The problem is that you guys are comparing it to the books too much. This is a TV show and not the books. It was never really meant to be. Let others enjoy the show.
@@DevilWolf000 if it wasn't meant to be TLOTR then it wouldn't have been called TLOTR: ROP. Perhaps it's YOUR side who should just let us enjoy TLOTR, instead of massacring the lore like that. It's not like TLOTR fans came to a different fandom to attack the fans, but a different fandom DID come to TLOTR to attack us fans.
@@mikem9001 Nobody said you have to come here and cry all day and be extremly stupid. Just fk off. Butt hurt idiots. You really want to kill the only thing we have that is related to Lotr? Just how fucking sad are you... and you call yourselfes fans? disguisting
A lot of people liked the spectacle of the fire mountain blowing up but that scene completely fails for me. It’s obviously meant to evoke the climax of the Two Towers when the Ents destroy Saruman’s dam. But the Ents storming Isengard was the culmination of Saruman’s destruction and corruption of the natural world, and the Ents finally going to war after untold abuse. Adar didn’t need some weird sword key if the water was already waiting at the top of a mountain, he really just needed some orcs and some pickaxes to break the dam.
thank you for these videos. watching ROP is like the scene in Clockwork Orange, but watching your stuff fills me and reminds me again of the love for Tolkien's writings.
On the forging scene, the whole point is making an alloy but the look of the ingots and rungs makes it look like they went through all that and still failed
There is another problem, the entire point of making the rings makes no sense. The show says that Mithril is eradicating the taint of evil and thus elves remain immortal (which makes no sense) ... first they say they want to make a crown, as if Gil Galad wearing it somehow cures all the elves under his reign (which makes no sense) ... but then it becomes two rings... and lastly three. So the three who wear the rings are cured and can stay immortal ... and all the other elves just wither and die unless they go west? ... again, none of this makes sense, and I am talking only about what _the show itself_ makes a point to tell us.
I recall the numenorians hatred/ jealousy of the elves is related to their waining lifespan. Their lifespan use to be hundreds of years and was getting shorter with each generation.
@@Ruairoquai So they die of old age, fight wars that they as isolationists keep getting pulled into by the elves, becomes ever more envious and greedy that they die sooner which becomes a vicious circle accelerating their demise? Damn, tolken writing hits deep.
8:15 A good point. House of the Dragons focuses on one family and one main narrative, which will be the main conflict throughout the show. Setting that up now means more plots in further season. Rings of power only needed about two, Numenor and Khazad Dum. Then the Numenor plot should have moved to Mordor.
Even happened in the LotR movies, first movie is all about Frodo and the start of the journey, it's not until the two towers that you start jumping into different perspectives that you already know how they started, this show just throws everything to you right away and you end up not caring about anything
Even if the directors or showrunners didn't read the material or understand or CARE about the material, the very least the showrunners and directors could've done to show respect to the story is meticulously craft it with a lot of detail in the production of it. Just like how the reason so many of us love Tolkien is because his attention to detail. That's the reason we love the P Jackson movies too is because he's a director who pays attention to the details: the sets, the miniatures and mock ups they made for the sets and made multiple of them in different scales, the armor is crafted so well with great design leads by Alan Lee and I bet amazing blacksmiths and weapon craftsmen, the casting, you can tell the races just by the cast, the elves look like elves, the men men, and the hobbits are these cheery folk, even the extras that don't say anything fit in so well--all that casting of thousands of people was done so well, and the filming and editing and synergy of cgi within it. That's why I loved PJ trilogy. Even if you take out LOTR from his movies it's still a well made movie. THIS.....ROP is devoid of any care anywhere in its production. I mean the cgi is okay and i guess i commemorate the artists for that, but have you seen whats kids can do today??? I bet theres high schoolers who can make pretty shots of mordor and elf cities and numenor. Where'd the money go?!? It just feels like the creators con'd themselves into this position but don't even give a damn about the power of film-making or storytelling.. they just want the money. I can see it when they pose for magazine covers in there fancy outfits. Payne and Mckay I hope this show of yours gets cancelled, even though i know it wont. I wish it could because it's not doing any good for the future of film-making with your cheap mystery box fueled plot lines. They're lowering the standards of an already dwindling art form!! AHHH! sorry i had to vent.....
Amazon did the same thing with the Wheel of Time and got very important details simply wrong and a few things so out of order I'm not sure how they'll fix it without skipping entire books. Reading the source material requires more than just glancing at it.
"The show both takes forever, and rushes it". I literally said that in a comment on another video last night. I said "it feels like too much happens in each season and too little happens in each episode." It was funny to me that they take the dagger of silver and gold and melt it with the mythril and then it produced rings that were clearly different colors. I was like WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT, How will they control the metal ratio now xD Though I guess if you ignore them coming out a clearly different color then ultimately its just jewellery so even if its not a strong alloy its probably fine.
Awful isn't it? Terrible. lazy writing, treating the viewers like children who haven't finished learning how to read-or even tie their collective shoe laces. Truly ghastly.
TV shows normally film things well before being released, so my wife and I have independently concluded and agreed with each other that maybe since Episode 6 and most likely at least Episode 8 were edited and composited out of material which was not meant to be the end of Season 1; that is to say, we believe Episode 6 was rushed a little bit, and that Season 1 was supposed to conclude with the final moments of Episode 7, spread over 2 episodes. Episode 8 has a distinct feeling of not just being rushed, but also being incoherent. There is a tonne of stuff that feels forced in, and... well... nothing about the Southlands, not even of Bronwyn and Arondir, which is especially odd. Numenor is just barely touched upon for less than 2 minutes, and the same is true of Elendil and Miriel. There is an endless goodbye with the Harfoots, and a pointlessly-long fight with the 3 witches, but that's it, really. And let's not get into the cascade of events and revelations for Sauron that (all of us with a brain) anticipated they would do, no matter how dumb.
Not understanding is one thing, but this is active contempt. This isn't LOTR, but Amazon's own fantasy series with the names from LOTR's taped over it.
It’s also heavily implied that Galadriel reignite Mairon/Sauron desires to bring order to middle earth. Gah, the amount a stupid in this show is feat to behold.
There’s a perfectly good timeline in the appendices. Tolkien did all the work. Messing with it makes effect precede cause and results in a mess. Add overall cluelessness and you get RoP.
Bob on for the multiculturalism, the hobbits should either be all Greek/Mediterranean looking (like in the law description, olive skin, curly hair, a bit work shy) or if you want black hobbits then all black hobbits as they are in a rural setting , same with a singular black elf , where is the other people from his clan/tribal setting. Yeah have a multicultural thing in the big cities due to them being trade hubs and there would be loads of merchants from other places in the world trying to make a profit from selling exotic stuff.
They have said season 2 will have a canonical story, presumably in an attempt to drag people back in. But what saying that does is imply that they knew that season 1 was not going to be canonical, but still went ahead and told everyone it would be the definitive LOTR story of our age. This is what happens when, instead of looking at what was there and building a story around it, you look at what is *not* there and base the story on that.
It's so frustrating which makes it not only unwatchable, but makes me wonder about Amazon in general. There was so much they could have done correctly, yet chose not to. Galadriel is one of the most powerful beings of ME. She can read minds, including Sauron's, but here is depicted as a selfish, self centered teenager. Worst of all, this depiction doesn't empower women, it makes them look ridiculous.
Tacking the forging of the rings onto the end of the season finale is perfect for this show. It truly does show where their priorities lie... if they have any.
The Wheel of Time did largely the same thing. This small pretty isolated little village looked like diverse New York city. Not only does this not make sense(as people could could easily tell people from the village by how they look in the books), but it ruins the opportunity to show the bigger cities as being more diverse than this little backwater village. You miss out on the culture shock of the people from this little village exposed to the wider world. But yes, the super diverse population everywhere makes it hard to explain how difficult it is to move around the world and then why the cultures from this areas are so different from each other. It cheapens everything. I really would've liked to have seen them even make up a whole plot line and characters in Harad. Setting up characters there and showing the conflict between them and the men of Numenor as they come into contact with each other would be really interesting and make the Numenoreans a much more nuanced and grey area people.
Another change is that Halbrand once again demonstrates knowledge he shouldn’t have. If Celebrimbor doesn’t know about making alloys then one of the lesser men definitely shouldn’t. It makes sense when it was Sauron posing as Annatar, another Maia sent from the West to help him. After all it’s reasonable to assume the Lords of the West might have greater knowledge they’ve yet to share.
Problem with the TV show in a nutshell for me is the lack of scale. The world-building is shockingly poor - it all feels paper thin. It’s like bad fan fiction, written by someone who isn’t a fan.
The forging scene was so goofily wrong- as you said about the gold and silver from Galadriel’s dagger, and they also didn’t remove the blade from it either, so that steel went into the mix, too. I don’t recall exactly, but it looked like there were gems on it as well. F it, throw them in, too! The show was baffling with it’s awful changes and depiction of the world, I was shaking my head in disbelief far too many times. I felt like an old man shaking his fist at modernity, or the guy and his kid in the Simpsons lemon tree episode- “Shake harder, boy!” Good analysis of a shitty show-
Amazon didn't understand the source material AND they didn't even care . Unfortunately for them, they didn't understand the fans, either, but the fans had figured THEM out AGES back.
Amazon keeps telling you they wanted to subvert the fans expectations,but I don't think they realize subvert is defined as "undermine the power and authority of", which sounds like giving the fans a big middle finger to me about any criticisms they would have when their expectations are whole heartedly let down. It's as if 'subverting expectations', is just the modern screenwriters "it's just a prank bro" that they use to pardon themselves of any accountability for lack of effort in original or meaningful storytelling. Further they have continuously insulted the fans who have spent much of their lives being fans of the properties and who without their long term devotion to Tolkien's original works, amazon would not be even trying to make money off of the show's popularity. As well Amazon's emphasis they've put on diversity and making a middle earth that "reflects our modern society" is problematic for multiple reasons. One it implies that Tolkien's original works didn't explore race relations in interesting, complex, or realistic ways which isn't the case and ignores that Sauron capitalizing on distrust between the races is why numenor sinks in the source material of the story their adapting to begin with. Tolkien pays attention to how people are surprised at how much they have in common when they get to know each other, for example the hobbits and men of Rohan share words due to a forgotten neighboring of each other and is a point of ease of introduction between the two groups. One of the mains theme's of both the hobbit and the Lord of The Rings is people of different races overcoming their preconceived notions of each other and achieving something they could not without the strengths they uniquely bring to the group. Much of gimli and legolas arc is directly about the awkwardness of their races' past relations and overcoming it through their 'odd' friendship. I think even peter jackson's adaptation captures it very well, Legolas threatens to kill eomer for threatening gimli but then there's also the scene at helm's deep where legolas asks gimli if he should describe what's happening or if he should find him a box. It reminds me of myself and one of my best friend's, for context I'm white and he's native american, we've known each other for around 20 years, met on the first day of kindergarten, walked together at graduation and then he moved in with my mom and I afterwards as well in addition to working multiple jobs together over the years. We've obviously had each other's back in multiple situations over the years scaling from relatively unimportant to life defining events and he's as good as blood to me, but don't think we don't poke fun at what our races did to each other, he jokes about scalping me quite often for one and I remember I asked if he would like a blanket when he was moving in since his room was cold or if it was still 'culturally insensitive' for him. The second reason the emphasis is problematic is the manner in which they chosen to handle it, as someone else pointed out(who i can sadly not remember currently, it might even have been another of your videos) so far it seems that they are afraid to allow minority actors for the most part to portray evil characters and instead have relegated them to only being allowed to be heroic in nature, the game of thrones approach of portraying complexity amongst each of these clearly visually distinct and homogeneous ethnic groups, is in my opinion far more believing, engaging, and educative of actual race relations and issues not talked about by society. Daenerys is a female who is underestimated for being "just a teenage girl" at first but was viewed as a strong adversary later, and a threat to westeros' status quo due to the large following she is attracting in essos, she also captured a large following and was also revered by the fans as well. But it's noteworthy the qualities that defined her as a strong character wasn't that she was a woman who was fighting w/ every single person and resorting to violence constantly, but often displayed a wish for mercy and to find a diplomatic non violent solution at first, she frees the unsullied, she frees the people of Slaver's bay, she attempts to teach the dothraki the importance of compassion. There's nothing stopping her subjects from moving and relocating to other realms, she doesn't have a north korea style approach where you can't move away under penalty of death, they simply are choosing to follow her because she is the "breaker of chains" who is benevolent, put isn't afraid to dish out punishment to those who would wish to use everyone else as pawns. Daenerys is still not perfect she makes mistakes, learns valuable lessons through trial and error, has to heed advice from those older and younger than herself because "no man is an island". It's why Season 8 was so hated for this sudden departure from her character, she stopped listening to her advisors, made mistakes she already learned lessons, seems to suddenly be more concerned with taking her throne over saving humanity to guide after from it, and then proceeded to give no quarter to a city of essentially hostages out of nowhere w/ little foreshadowing. Was it artificial and forced, perhaps, but at least they subverted everyone's expectations and that was the goal right?
i think Amazon and the producers of this show really only wanted the Lord of the Rings name on the cover and thats it. They just wanted easy access to an already established, popular and beloved franchise so they could inject it with their toxic political messages and agendas. They couldn't careless about the source material.
3:20 Not that it really matters, but didn't the book state Aragorn was the tallest of the Fellowship or did I dream it? Cause I feel like I'm the only one to remember it that way
On the metallurgy note, I was dumbfounded when they said that Finrods daggar was made of pure silver and gold from Valinor....unless they are saying that something made in Valinor inherently changes it's properties, silver & gold are two of the softest metals around (if not the softest, but I'm no expert) - no one would ever make a functional weapon out of them because it would be immediately destroyed the first time you tried to use it!!! Never mind using it to climb ice sheets!! Historically any weapons found that were silver/gold were ceremonial only because you couldn't actually use them for anything else. Just couldn't. No. Everything about this show is wretched, awful and wrong.
The softest would be one of the metals low down on the periodic table, elements like sodium for example can be sliced with a butter knife with ease. That said, they're a long way below metals like even bronze!
The "They took our jobs!" episode was definitely the worst one until the last 2. I couldn't believe they were really going to use this as justification to show Numenoreans were xenophobic. Like 1 elf and a dude who wanted to smith got dragged out of the sea. They got done so dirty.
As Sun Tzu noted: Time and space are fundamental to any endeavour, and as you say very early on in your analysis, the writers display no understanding of either. It's as if the showrunners were given a precis of the second age by a 12 year-old trying to speed read for the first time, and then summarised by a heavy drug user just before passing out from a sleepless 5-days of over indulgence. They then added some copy and paste requirements and handed it to team of mental patients with word processors with predictive text. Then filmed it without reading the resulting script.
Thinking of the next episode being "the Rings of Power Does not Understand Corruption" followed by episodes on Elrond and Celebrimbor and I might wrap up the series there, having said my part.
Until season 2..
Where we will get Rings of Power still doesn´t understand...
Because i SERIOUSLY doubt the show will improve much between seasons..
you're a sucker, because you keep watching the show and talking about it instead of ignoring it.
Thank you for doing these videos. It really helps put a voice to why those who love Tolkien cannot stand this show. It can be hard to explain when you're still fairly new to the legrndarium and don't have even half the details memorized. It is so very much wonderful information....Tolkien really was one of the greatest writers of all time.
To understand the source material, you have to have _read_ it.
"back to the books, back to the books, back to the books"....
@@matwatson7947 they literally turned their backs to the books lmao
Was never meant to be based on the books entirely.
The problem is that you guys are too stupid to understand this is a TV show snd not the books which is two completly different stuff.
Stop crying.
"Who has time for that?" -The showrunners
@@matwatson7947 I’d like to know *which* books. Certainly not Tolkien’s!
The three Elven rings were, if I remember correctly, forged last and completely untouched by Sauron. This show undermines that completely. No thought went into these changes.
There is a whole plot around the forging of the rings. The showrunners threw that away.
Yeah, you right, celebrimbor made the three elven ring without sauron presence
Indeed, without Sauron’s knowledge, but with his ring-lore, which is why even their power was diminished by the the destruction of the One Ring.
Also, only Nenya - the Ring of Adamant, which Galadriel has in the 3rd age - has mithril in the band. Narya and Vilya (originally Gil-Galad's) are gold, so... not really alloying mithril into all 3.
I'm pretty sure they were the first rings to be crafted...
Forging the Elven rings straight away also turns all of the Hobbit and early chapters of Lord of the Rings into a massive plot hole. The elves were supposed to practice creating rings of power, producing a number of 'lesser rings' as they honed their skills. Gandalf passes off the ring that Bilbo finds as a lesser ring because it appears not to harm Bilbo, which is why he allows him to keep it in the first place. With this change, the only rings that would exist are either the Elven rings, the 16 for dwarves and men (now made directly by Sauron instead of the elves under Annatar's direction), and the one ring. He would immediately know that the ring Bilbo found was evil, and address the issue decades earlier instead of just letting Bilbo hang out keeping it
That's true. My biggest question now is how many plot holes has this show created that weren't there before?
The answer here is NONE for the simple reason that this show should not be considered as "CANON". There is far to much difference compared to the original tale for it to ever be considered as a part of Tolkien lore.
@@clementmarchat8419 Amen
@@clementmarchat8419 now thats just Racist.... lol
@@Ma55ey What word or meaning of my reply is linked in any way to racism ?
When there is an adaptation where the major plot point of Sauron dupping the elf passing himself as "an envoy of the Valar" is totally changed, there is no way I would called it a "CANON" adaptation.
The choices of the director about the color of the actor is something I can personally accept or even like if the adaptation is good.
I'd point out that the Dwarves who "delved too greedily and too deep" did so under Durin IV, who bore one of the Seven rings. They were initially made - under Sauron's influence - to allow the bearer to be controlled by Sauron, using the One Ring. But the effect they had on the Dwarves was quite different - the Dwarf kings who bore them became rich beyond measure, and had their greed intensified.
So, while it was not Sauron's original intent, the Ring Durin III recieved from Celebrimbor at least indirectly destroyed both Khazad Dum and Erebor in the 3rd age.
It was Durin V and Durin VI that delved too greedily and deep, and it was Durin V that wore one of the Seven.
@@gandalf8216 No, Celembrimbor gave Durin III one of the Seven (presumably when he sallied out of the Hollin gate to engage Sauron's forces and allow the survivors of the destruction of Eregion to escape). All of the Kings of Durin's folk who follow him will wear it, until Sauron, under the guiseof the Necromancer, captures Thráin IIin Mirkwood, and takes the Ring from him in Dol Guldur.
That's crazy, do you think Tolkien planned something like this before hand or maybe the steps come as you're writting
Exactly. The Rings were forged in SA 1600, but the balrog wouldn’t be awakened until TA 1980, nearly four thousand years later. It’s an egregious perversion of Tolkien’s timeline.
@@MorbidGames666, Tolkien wrote, edited, and re-wrote his Middle-earth mythology over many years of his life. I strongly suspect that, yes, he did deliberately write it that way, whether he planned it beforehand or thought of it afterward and edited it in later.
Depending on how you count the Years of the Trees, Galadriel would be about 5100 years old at the time this show is set. Her daughter Celebrían would be about 3600 years old at this time. There is no reason for Galadriel to act as childish as she does in the show.
more like 20000 years old.
@@ancaplanaoriginal5303 Depends on how you calculate the length of time during the Years of the Trees. I went with the interpretation of 9.5 solar years for every 1 year of the Trees. That would make Galadriel 5100 solar years old during Ar-Pharazôn's time.
That and elves are often portrayed as very patient and wise in Tolkien's works. Not at all like Guyladriel
@@LordEsel88 Either way we're talking a minimum of 5000 years old and very possibly older, depending on the calculation. That's more than enough time for someone to mature and lose their youthful edge. Also, her she had a husband who was also very much alive at this time. The only reason she's this childish is she's a stand in for the writing and production team. Also, she didn't need a sword, she drove off the Necromancer and laid waste to Dol Guldur without one. Sad that they don't understand the character, because she was wonderful the way that she was.
@@LordEsel88 not every year of the trees and year of the first age of the sun was the same length, you need to take this into account.
I’ve been trying to think of a way to sum up what exactly is wrong with how rings of power was created, and this is the best illustration I can think of.
Imagine in your hometown there’s a restaurant that you love. The food is made from scratch, the atmosphere is warm and inviting, the building it’s in has character and history, you know all of it by heart and you go there at least once a week. Then you move away for work and you miss it like crazy. You tell all your friends how amazing it is but your words don’t do it justice. One day someone tells you that they’re opening a 2nd location where you live and you get excited. You’re first in line when they open and it LOOKS the same. The building, the menus, everything is just like the restaurant you remember. You sit down, and order your favorite dish, and instead of a carefully crafted meal from fresh ingredients the waiter brings you a slice of reheated gas station pizza.
Your voice your displeasure, and immediately are shouted down by everyone else in the restaurant. What do you mean this isn’t the same restaurant? Why do you hate the restaurant staff? Just be happy and enjoy it for what it is!
Is the food still edible? Yes. Are some people enjoying it? Yes. Is it a faithful reflection of the restaurant that you knew and loved growing up? Absolutely not. The people who built the restaurant only wanted the recognition, the name, and the attraction of the original without doing any of the hard work that made the original so special.
Tolkien spent his life‘s work crafting Lord of the Rings; he shaped it, molded it, poured his heart and soul into it and it became something well loved and appreciated because that work was reflected in his finished books. LOTR is a delicious homemade dinner while ROP is a slice of reheated pizza. Is it still watchable? Yes. Do some people enjoy it? Yes. Is it reverent to the work and world crafted by Tolkien? Absolutely not.
I couldn't bear it. Watched 3 eps and skipped through the rest. Oversimplified tat, with-as you rightly say-no soul.
Great that a show called The Rings of Power was gracious enough to spend 1/3 of an episode on the making of 3 of the 20 Rings of Power.
Well we can't be bogged down with little details like that. After all, there are no girl bosses involved in the forging of the rings (and in the actual stories written by Tolkien Galadriel was instantly suspicious of Annatar and refused him entry into Lorien). Good lord this junk is terrible.
@@pittland44 Galadriel was not in Lothlorien when Annatar came to Lindon and Eregion; she and Celeborn were in Eregion. Galadriel and her daughter Celebrian moved to the East side of the Misty Mountains some time between the arrival of Annatar in the 1200s and ~1400 SA, then rejoined Celeborn in Rivendell/Imladris after the war of Sauron and the Elves that led to the destruction of Eregion (~1700 SA). They only moved back East to what would become known as Lothlorien much later in the Third Age, around the time the Balrog was awoken (~1980 TA)
And they butchered it at that. If you’re going to get the whole ring plot wrong in a show called Rings of Power, wtf is even the point?
I think the ethnicity issue is a thing. Amazon could have had a lot of Diversity in the show, instead they went the Tokenisation route. In putting black characters where it doesn’t make sense. All of the Southlanders could have been people of Colour, but then Amazon were too scared to make them the bad guys BUT could have done something clever, positive and powerful in regard to their race messaging, with the people (suspected of being evil and in league with Sauron) proving they were good, regardless of their ancestry. Proving a stereotype wrong. But no, let’s just make Token Elves/Dwarves/Hobbits.
There are literally canon reasons for the Haradrim siding with Sauron. The Numenoreans in their later years under Ar-Pharazon engaged in brutal colonization against the Southern cultures, and those people then had no reason to distinguish between the surviving Faithful and the people who oppressed them so of course they sided with Sauron, who would have played on that completely justified rage (gee, what real world situations could have possibly been explored there? 🧐)
They had to make a good chunk of the cast diverse, so it makes sense they did that, but the thing is, they could’ve easily made the people who aren’t shown with faces diverse, people who you can hardly notice diverse, etc
@@jojobookish9529 That's the case for some of them. Others are under the direct rule of Umbar (which was the King's Men's colony)
Southlands are where Southern Italy is; why the hell would they be people of color?. And the only tokens here are white people
All they needed to do was make Haradrim characters! The lore of the world of Tolkien already has dark skinned people with distinct feel and Second Age setting would be ideal to introduce them, due to Numenorean 'white' colonialism, one of those colonies on the shores of Harad, like Umbar could have been important plot relevant location (after all it was there that Ar-Pharazon landed with his army to subdue Sauron!) and nobody would bat an eye if Ismael Cruz Cordova played a young Haradrim warrior, Cynthia Addai his girlfriend, Lenny Henry his old father and tribal chief,..Sophia Nomvete some village witch or something (showing that mortals can learn sorcery from the Enemy through which he can gain greater grip on them through temptations of power, or something), and have these interact in thei subplot with the Numenoreans good or bad showing complexity and nuance that Tolkien's critics always denied him in their ridiculousness.
Reducing Sauron’s input in the crafting of the Rings to, "hey, have you tried an alloy?" was beyond ridiculous. But further, it misses the point that the Elves had no need for Sauron to teach them how to forge rings. What Sauron taught them was how to craft rings _of power._
Teaching them how to mix a special alloy, possible only through magic, could have explained how Sauron had influenced the rings during the forging process without Celebrimbor noticing it.
Like you need to sing specific songs during the mixing of the alloy and later during the forging.
If they then forge together and Celebrimbor sings the magic into the rings while forging while Sauron handels the fire and dripping some of his blood into the coals and humming his own magic unnoticed into the fire and the rings.
That way he directly influenced the rings he and Celebrimbor made together while the use of his special alloy creates the connection between the three elven rings and his masterring.
Furthermore if the show had been about the forging of the rings for the humans and the dwarfs and the friendship between Sauron and Celebrimbor (a fake, one-sided friendship) and how they distribute the rings to the two races it could have gone way better in my opinion.
Like, they gift these rings to the humans as a thanks for their contributions during the war against Malakor and to the dwarfs in an effort to better the relationship between them and the elves, not knowing how poisoned these gifts really are.
Galadryel then becomes suspicious about the ring bearers and sets out to investigate them with her special magic of seeing into the heart of people (the magic she is shown to possess in the movies).
We then see how these rings turn good people into shadows of themselves and ultimately into Saurons slaves. With the last scene being Galadryel discovering who Sauron really is but being to late to stop the forging of the last three elven rings, but taking one of them for save keeping.
I digress but what i wanted to say is, that the alloy thing could have been handled way better in the show. Like so many other things could have been handled better in the show.
I am sorry for the bad English and the misspelling of the names since i only watched the movies and English is not my native language I am sure I made a lot of mistakes.
@@nicholaswulf4563 Your only "flaw" is that the Rings were ALL intended for the Elves (except the One of course) and were only given to the other races after the Elves realized Sauron's evil plan and stopped using them. Plus it is the method/process of making them (which is used by Celebrimbor to make the Three as well even though Sauron does not even touch them) which makes them subject to the One. The blood idea while seeming like a good idea at first pass wouldn't work because of Sauron's lack of direct involvement with the Three.
@@chriss3276 reasonable criticism, thank you.
The blood part as well as the secret humming during the making of the ring should only be done during the making of the 16 rings of power.
While originally indented to be gifted to the greatest elven lords, it wouod be decided by the elves that they should be gifted to the humans and dwarfs as a means to improve their relationship with each other. (as I said I only saw the movies so if the rings should originally be used by the elves until the master ring was forged and the elves discarded them out of caution and they ended up in the hands of the humans and dwarfs then that is my misunderstanding. In the movies it was said that the rings were given to man and dwarf)
The last three rings are then done solely by Celebrimbor as Sauron is send as the bringer of gifts to the humans and dwarfs (much to his irritation)
The way to make the alloy would then be the only connection between the three rings and the master ring of Sauron, explaining the weakend link between them.
At least that's how I would explain it. Then again I am not a writer.
Sauron and Galadriel hang out . " I can fix him" . He's of course the only character who is nice to her.
@@nicholaswulf4563 There is the further issue that the Three were forged in secret by Celebrimbor without Sauron’s knowledge. Here, Sauron was present.
Not only does this show shit on Tolkien lore, it is also just incompetently made. There is pointless dicking around for the first 5 episodes, making you think its going to be a slow burn (nothing wrong with that), only to suddenly realize 7 episodes in, that the titular "Rings of Power" have not been made or even set-up yet, at all. They then, like a 10 year old rushing their homework on the last day, breeze through the creation of the rings in half an episode, because the other half need to be spent on harfoots saying goodbye to one another... WHY?!!
The entire structure makes no sense at all. Did they do no story-boarding? Was this written in a single afternoon on a napkin by a highschool-student drama-club? I cannot comprehend how this ... thing was given a billion dollar budget. An incomprehensible waste of money.
yep, just dreadful, dreadful writing all 'round.
"Rings of Power doesn't understand" will have more episodes than a brazilian soap opera.
Getting critics bogged down by the race argument was always the creators attempt to deflect any critisism.
Initially this was the case, with most swallowing hook line and sinker, however the piss poor writing and story telling have both destroyed that trap utterly
No, no it wasn't the intent. Yes, they'll gladly use it to deflect criticism. But the primary reason is ideological and there is a huge push to deliberately make movies more "diverse".
@@Ruairoquai I'm honestly thinking that both reasons might be accurate to a degree. I think they do "diversify" the cast for ideological reasons (as they say a story must reflect "the world as we see it"), but Hollywood has also discovered that you can use your "diverse" cast as human shields to deflect criticism from what are objectively bad movies and television. At this point they don't have good reason to make 90% of the changes they make (many of which are cosmetic and solely for the filmmakers vanity) so they have to deflect by attacking the audience. The problem is that it works on one front, the mainstream access Hollywood media is more than willing to swallow this narrative and regurgitate it back onto the general public, while it absolutely doesn't work with fans, as shown by declining box office returns of franchises that were not only once profitable, but vibrant with strong, loyal fanbases. So they're "winning" what they think is the battle, by attacking fans, many of whom are voicing entirely legitimate complaints about the work in question, while losing the war by driving off the very audience they needed in the first place. This is why we find Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr. Who and others in such bad shape.
“Oh no, they trapped me into becoming racist”
Djumb fans keep falling for the bait by focusing on the race issue.
@@pittland44, I am not sure what is going on there. I am absolutely for more diversity - but it cannot be done by simply inserting randomly non-caucasian actors and actresses into a movie or a show although it doesn't make any sense. That's not progressive and inclusive but just lazy!
It was perfectly ok with the Numenorians and the Southlanders, and since Arondir was the only black elf, it was ok as well. He could have some Haradrim ancestors. We know that elves and humans can have healthy children together. But such a union is very rare, and therefore black elves should be very rare, too. It's too bad, though, that Arondir's ancestry is never discussed. There could have been a very interesting backstory, which could have made this slightly boring character much more interesting. Ok, but while I really liked Disa, black dwarves don't really make sense, since they live underground, and it's highly unlikely that there have been unions with any Haradrim. As to the tiny population of the harfoots: yes, black harfoots are fine - but it only works well, if ALL harfoots are dark-skinned. They live such an isolated and secretive life that a rainbow-coloured population of harfoots doesn't make any sense at all! For me it would have been perfectly fine if all harfoots would have been dark-skinned!
That said, the real problems of ROP have nothing whatsoever to do with the diverse cast or strong women. The writing and plotting was absolutely terrible, and I also disliked the artificial look of the show. And the look of the male elves with their salon-coiffed hair styles was as nagging as pebbles in a shoe. I really hated it. And while Tolkien never explicitly wrote that all male elves have long hair, there are many paragraphs in Tolkien's writings which imply a flowing hair style, and he himself drew a picture of a male elf with long hair! The show-runners tried to tell us that short-haired male elves are canonical - but that's simply not true! I have no idea who thought that male elves with modern blow-dry hair styles are a great idea! Did they try to cater to a younger audience, or does it have anything to do with the cliché that men with long hair are hippies??
Ok, I disgressed. I really hated that the show-runners used the diverse cast for accusing critical viewers of being patently evil and racist. That is terrible, but unfortunately it seemed to work in the early days. But the professional reviewers have woken up by now and call their Bluff.
Would be thrilled to see a "rings of power doesn't understand Mordor" episode.
You point out the height of Numenorians and I recall that nazguls were higher than Aragorn, so now it makes sense
Some sources, if you dig hard enough, have Elendil at approx 7 foot 10 inches. So yeah. Numenorians could be quite tall
@Malcurius Lamprocia I think the average was 6 4, if I remember correctly elendil was one of the tallest
@@nathantudor5763 I think one of his title was Elendil the tall
@@massPanic22 that is indeed correct 😋
Yeah at least three of the Nazgul were great Numenorean lords and they were given their rings in the Second Age in the prime of the Numenorean race :) which later generations in Third Age dwindled in size as well as their longevity (in process known as Waning of the Dunedain). Also one may add that Tolkien wrote in a letter about the Numenoreans:
"They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves - but they remained mortal, even though rewarded by a triple, or more than triple, span of years. Their reward is their undoing - or the means of their temptation.”
The Numenoreans received the most blessings and gifts making them 'enhanced' humans basically :). Tallest of all mankind, as well with each generation on their isle becoming more attractive looking etc.
Even if they did understand the source material, I doubt it would influence their show. I think they just simply didn't make it for Tolkien fans.
They did it for a reason tbh, they could of made a vaguely middle earth girl power series for much cheaper and without however much money buying the rights was worth.
Makes me wonder if they intentionally made this show bad just because Tolkien is old and would of been a bad person in the bad old world
But they did want Tolkien fans to form their core viewership - they wanted the cachet that the "Tolkien" and "Lord of the Rings" brands bring among fantasy fans generally. So they tried to just thrown in a few references and pretend...
Not like there's only a few of them worldwide, eh?. Phew, dodged that bullet!
If only this show was written with the minimal skill these rings were crafted…
In regards to forging the rings, when you said why didn’t Halbrand teach him to infuse magic all I thought was “yes, that’s what I thought!” Why say mix the metals? Of course they’d do that. The difference with these rings is magic.
They clearly have had their agendas when making this. They have made choices to go away from the source material. That is infuriating. But what is even more infuriating is that in the small details that is easy to get according to Tolkien and still do their agenda, they have totally messed up. To me that shows what a casual readers the showrunners are, not taking the time to get things right but just invent their own stuff.
They didn’t mess these things up on accident - they’re doing it on purpose. They want to make a mockery of Tolkien and his work, and everything he represented. The levels to which they’ve mucked this up, there can be other explanation!
They wanted to 'subvert expectations', Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy style.
More accurately, they wanted to remake Middle-Earth to their own personal tastes, the same way Disney originally tried to do with George Lucas's version of Star Wars .
In both cases, the fans walked.
It's a TV show and not the books.
It was never meant to be 100% accurate (same goes for the movies yet you guys dont cry about that)
You guys are too stupid to understand that it's two different things.
You should be happy there is a show that is related to lotr yet you cry and shit on it like crazy. You want to kill the only thing we have right now...
Just shut up and let others enjoy the show.
Hardcore book fans are just the worst kind of people.
@@pressf4896 There's a perfectly rational explanation. They approached this from the perspective of "we want to make a show based on a property with lots of brand recognition", not "we want to adapt a work of literature". They didn't give the lore or consistency any thought for the same reason Michael Bay didn't give a thought to lore or consistency when he made the Transformers movies. License something most people have heard of but most people haven't actually read, stuff it full of mystery boxes to keep the rubes interested, release to streaming. Pat self on back.
Viewed from that perspective, the hostile reaction to fans complaining about casting choices makes sense. "Why are you complaining about the race of the people we cast in our mindless cash-grab show? You must be RACIST." They're looking at us like we're complaining about casting a Chinese actor in Fast and the Furious XIV or something.
And to be clear the Peter Jackson films made choices to go away from the source material, practically any screen adaptation has to, some of them are genuinely, I think, improvements on Tolkein's work. Like having Eomer banished instead of imprisoned means that it's a known character (at least from the reader/audiences' point of view), rather than some nobody (sorry Erkenbrand), that comes to save the people of Rohan at Helms Deep. It's far more impactful.
Others, like the omission of Tom Bombadil are understandable time savers, while the fact that the only part of the scouring of the shire that we get is a glimpse of orcs in Bywater that Frodo has in Lorien, is practically a crime against humanity.
But they were all done for either filming practicalities, or storytelling reasons, to improve the experience of the audience, not for... Whatever the random reason is that they've changed the story to what it is in RoP.
Now you understand the REAL reason they fired Shippey......now it makes total sense
just so.
The people making this crap likely considered Tolkiens work "problematic" as they do with Jacksons films. This is their way to put their woke spin on it. Total shit will not be rewatching.
The title is Rings of Power but they spend hardly anytime on the rings. Really no set up. Just hand waving.
And Galadriel being the best at everything ever. My favourite bit was when she backhanded swung a sword while upside down on a horse and basically made an Orc explode! And where exactly was Celeborn during all of this? Or Celebrian? Ah well… I’ll just read the books and be content in never watching this show at all ever. Except for hilarious reviews of course
And the rings they did make first were the wrong ones 🤦🏻♂️
@@nathantudor5763 he’s sitting at home hoping his bestest ever wife brings him a toy from her ear spoils after she fucks Sauron…I mean halbrand.
This shows so stupid.
@@nathantudor5763 Is she though? Half of elves dislike her, her diplomatic skills are unimpressive at best, she fails most spectacularly in her quest to kill Sauron, Halbrand(!) has to save her bacon several times and Adar succeeds even when she brings an army upon his head. Celeborn was mentioned to be missing, Celebrian is a fair concern. Still, ROP could have been so much more...
The creators of this show do not share Tolkien's morality and world view. It could never have been good.
Peter Jackson doesn't share Tolkien's worldview either, but at the very least, he kept Tolkien's intact as much as possible. A few of the changes that were a bit controversial (such as Faramir's temptation by the Ring) were even actually done to better convey Tolkien's themes given that they couldn't include a lot of the details from the additional lore, letters, notes, etc.
@@BroadwayRonMexico Peter Jackson demonstrated humility by not inserting his personal values to the show and was rewarded.
@@jcdf2 Indeed
"This show has to reflect the world we live in today" - some drinker from Scotland
P.s. love the serie Macca
I do like Drinker, probably because I'm half Scottish and also a drunk.
"This world has to reflect the world of Los Angeles today"
That's what they actually mean.
@@user-zv2vm8bd8h or San Francisco, or New York.
@@verindictus3639 Yeah.
I think Elendil's 'tactical rock' really adds dynamism to the pose. Maybe Games-Workshop should use tactical rocks more often in their models?
wtf xD
I'm glad I've found your channel. I've been on a Tolkien spree lately after discovering a podcast named after Amon Sûl hosted by an Orthodox Priest
Marvellous 🥱
Just the sort of comment that sparks vigorous conversations.
Bravo and we also invite thee to Join us for our counter ROP series. Mae G'ovannen! Now the evidence is clear, and none can deny that "ROP" is not of Tolkien. Take heart for our EXSURGE TOLKIEN that makes robustly clear the heresy of Tolkien's Canon displayed out of the showrunner's mouths and hearts. They probably know nothing of Tolkien's masterpiece, as evident from their interview in the Vanity Fair Article. For "they who proclaim to loveth Tolkien, yet understandeth, not his world view can neither hope to create a new film, show, or series of his secondary world." "Auta i lóme!" and" Aurë entuluva!"
@@Robert-tl2vg Don't need to be rude. I was just saying that I enjoy his videos and where I'm coming from in my understanding of the Tolkien universe.
Where can I find that podcast?
@@georged.5595 Its on Spotify and I think other streaming services. Its a part of the larger Orthodox Christian non-profit known as Ancient Faith.
sir i almost spat my drink when you caalled it 'maguffthril'
I think they do understand the source material. They just don't care. They had a fantasy script that fit the profit metrics of the year, and decided to slap Lord of the Rings on it for marketing.
To understand Tolkien, you need to not only understand but share his values, the ones he infused in his stories. These people do not have that moral compass.
It is pretty obvious they don't understand it at all. I would say you don't understand it for making such an absurd comment
Didn't they "part way" with actual Tolkien lore scholars. That points to that they do not care about the lore but also that they do not understand it either because they lack people who actually are familiar with the lore.
sure looks like it
Those rings of "POWER" look cheap and nasty, like something that fell out of a Christmas cracker.
They look like a cheap version of the infinity stones. With the colors, I think that's what the show runners where trying to invoke, as they seem to copy things from everywhere else.
I'm pretty sure they just don't give a flying fuck about the source material
At least we got to see Sauron do cool devilish mind tricks.
My first impression of the show has never changed, there's so much going on at once that it cancels itself out and means nothing is happening.
I thought the same-then I saw the shit show that had been made for the equivalent of the national debt of the UK.
One thing that bothered me was the fact that the rings were supposed to enhance the wearers' innate magic and imbue the land they ruled in a kind of protective bubble, but the show has not once shown any elf to possess even a hint of magic, soft or otherwise. They just seem like arrogant humans with pointy ears and nothing more.
Caladriers power was suppose to be in that innate magic and "soft power", and they instead made her as Xenar; elven warrior princess.
From when I watched the first episode I realized how shallow and simple the writing and characters were in this show. The writing is very lazy and unintelligent. They made Galadriel a warrior princess, Elron simple, Gandalf can’t even speak etc. And there is no effort to create a complex story. I knew it was going to be bad but this is far worst than my wildest dreams.
The method of making magic rings is intentionally left vague in the source text, so on screen you need to simply communicate that at some point in the forging process something magical is happening, and not explain further. As Tolkien says about magic, it is simply the common name for things we don't understand.
Alloying metals isnt magic
@@ozma7339 Go back to school and learn to read.
@@doltBmB i read fine. They didnt communicate anything about magic being used or even hint at it, youre right about that. They just made the rings power the product mithril + magic valinorian gold/silver. So dumb.
As a famous chef once said, "it's RAW! Your going to poison everyone! Shut it down!"
Wait - what? Elrond was found as an abandoned orphan by Guyladriel? AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!
Apparently screw Maglor and Maedhros the most epic dudes around.
@@Makkaru112 They are in The Silmarillion, Amazon doesn’t have rights for that.
@@vaclavsoukup7302 they could have said that he was found by relatives of Celebrimbor
@@vaclavsoukup7302 Nor do they have the rights to Annatar the Lord of Gifts. Hench why they have HaLbRaNd. Ugh.
@@gokaury Like it was said many times before, the show was made to make Bezos more money. They don't care if it's good or bad, only about the name of the IP and how much cash it will get into their pockets.
Amazon should have stayed as a packaging business, nuff said.
As a counter point, Disa sounded pretty greedy when she was telling Durin to mine all the mithral because it was theirs so they could rule all the mountains.
she did go full dark lord in that scene! 😁
@@jarnobrofelt1891 seriously! I was like, "Oh snap, Disa is Sauron"
Oh, they understand plenty. 'Know your enemy', and all that. If you hated the works, culture and ideas of Tolkien, and you get the rights to make a tv series 'losely based on something Tolkien barely wrote', but you wanted to make a series that portrayed Tokien's good guys as bad guys, bad guys as good guys and make it so horrendous that no one who saw the series would willingly read the books... how would you go about making that series, hmm? Exactly. There is incompetence and there is malicious feigned incompetence aimed to destroy.
There's clearly an elven barber that only knows how to do a short back and sides.
I just want to know why these rings look like plastic toys from a bubblegum dispenser
Because they are plastic toys from a bubblegum dispenser.
Because that's where they were forged... in this show at least.
They don't want* to understand, they literally don't care
Hope you keep making these, best stuff I’ve seen on this show by far.
The problem is that you guys are comparing it to the books too much.
This is a TV show and not the books. It was never really meant to be. Let others enjoy the show.
@@DevilWolf000 if it wasn't meant to be TLOTR then it wouldn't have been called TLOTR: ROP. Perhaps it's YOUR side who should just let us enjoy TLOTR, instead of massacring the lore like that. It's not like TLOTR fans came to a different fandom to attack the fans, but a different fandom DID come to TLOTR to attack us fans.
@@georged.5595 you arent fans. You are cry babies who are stupid enough to dont get that this is a TV show.
@@DevilWolf000 "Let others enjoy the show." How are they stopping others from enjoying the show? Nobody said you had to read this site.
@@mikem9001 Nobody said you have to come here and cry all day and be extremly stupid. Just fk off. Butt hurt idiots.
You really want to kill the only thing we have that is related to Lotr? Just how fucking sad are you...
and you call yourselfes fans? disguisting
I’m down for as many of these videos as you can make. Always well said.
“McGuff-Thril”😂😂😂😂😂😂
Great Work, thoroughly enjoy your content!
absolutely love this content and those doing similar work....keep going
i just want to point out i dont want to see basketball Americans in anything.
you're very sophisticated. i like how clean you explain things
A lot of people liked the spectacle of the fire mountain blowing up but that scene completely fails for me. It’s obviously meant to evoke the climax of the Two Towers when the Ents destroy Saruman’s dam. But the Ents storming Isengard was the culmination of Saruman’s destruction and corruption of the natural world, and the Ents finally going to war after untold abuse. Adar didn’t need some weird sword key if the water was already waiting at the top of a mountain, he really just needed some orcs and some pickaxes to break the dam.
Yeah, even my mum pointed out that he'd dug a trench for what looked like 100 miles, why couldnt he just dig into the reservoir
The people that have stuck through with the show REALLY aren’t going to like this one… You’re going to have to apologize to both of them.
I was of the opinion that mithril could be worked like silver but was harder than steel
thank you for these videos. watching ROP is like the scene in Clockwork Orange, but watching your stuff fills me and reminds me again of the love for Tolkien's writings.
I've really enjoyed these breakdowns, thanks for doing them.
On the forging scene, the whole point is making an alloy but the look of the ingots and rungs makes it look like they went through all that and still failed
I'm learning so much about Tolkien's work in all these videos. Too bad I can't from the show.
Think of it this way-you are learning how NOT to adapt Tolkien's works. Otherwise you, like me would be as crazed as poor Gollum.
There is another problem, the entire point of making the rings makes no sense. The show says that Mithril is eradicating the taint of evil and thus elves remain immortal (which makes no sense) ... first they say they want to make a crown, as if Gil Galad wearing it somehow cures all the elves under his reign (which makes no sense) ... but then it becomes two rings... and lastly three. So the three who wear the rings are cured and can stay immortal ... and all the other elves just wither and die unless they go west? ... again, none of this makes sense, and I am talking only about what _the show itself_ makes a point to tell us.
It's why I call it Macguffinthril, it's not important how it actually works, it's just important as a plot device.
It does understand. It just despises it and thinks it can do better.
I recall the numenorians hatred/ jealousy of the elves is related to their waining lifespan. Their lifespan use to be hundreds of years and was getting shorter with each generation.
Their lifespan only began to decline after they grew envious of the elves.
@@Ruairoquai So they die of old age, fight wars that they as isolationists keep getting pulled into by the elves, becomes ever more envious and greedy that they die sooner which becomes a vicious circle accelerating their demise? Damn, tolken writing hits deep.
This is a good articulation of the problems that most Tolkien fans understand, but do not always put into words.
8:15 A good point. House of the Dragons focuses on one family and one main narrative, which will be the main conflict throughout the show. Setting that up now means more plots in further season. Rings of power only needed about two, Numenor and Khazad Dum. Then the Numenor plot should have moved to Mordor.
Even happened in the LotR movies, first movie is all about Frodo and the start of the journey, it's not until the two towers that you start jumping into different perspectives that you already know how they started, this show just throws everything to you right away and you end up not caring about anything
GoT handled multiple Story lines pretty well (until season 8) but you need competend writers for that.
Nice video, Eru bless you.
Even if the directors or showrunners didn't read the material or understand or CARE about the material, the very least the showrunners and directors could've done to show respect to the story is meticulously craft it with a lot of detail in the production of it. Just like how the reason so many of us love Tolkien is because his attention to detail. That's the reason we love the P Jackson movies too is because he's a director who pays attention to the details: the sets, the miniatures and mock ups they made for the sets and made multiple of them in different scales, the armor is crafted so well with great design leads by Alan Lee and I bet amazing blacksmiths and weapon craftsmen, the casting, you can tell the races just by the cast, the elves look like elves, the men men, and the hobbits are these cheery folk, even the extras that don't say anything fit in so well--all that casting of thousands of people was done so well, and the filming and editing and synergy of cgi within it. That's why I loved PJ trilogy. Even if you take out LOTR from his movies it's still a well made movie. THIS.....ROP is devoid of any care anywhere in its production. I mean the cgi is okay and i guess i commemorate the artists for that, but have you seen whats kids can do today??? I bet theres high schoolers who can make pretty shots of mordor and elf cities and numenor. Where'd the money go?!? It just feels like the creators con'd themselves into this position but don't even give a damn about the power of film-making or storytelling.. they just want the money. I can see it when they pose for magazine covers in there fancy outfits. Payne and Mckay I hope this show of yours gets cancelled, even though i know it wont. I wish it could because it's not doing any good for the future of film-making with your cheap mystery box fueled plot lines. They're lowering the standards of an already dwindling art form!! AHHH! sorry i had to vent.....
Amazon did the same thing with the Wheel of Time and got very important details simply wrong and a few things so out of order I'm not sure how they'll fix it without skipping entire books. Reading the source material requires more than just glancing at it.
Awe. I didn’t want you to stop the rant. I enjoy learning more about this world.
Lol I need more!!!!
These videos have been very well made and make it easier to show people the problems with the show.
"The show both takes forever, and rushes it". I literally said that in a comment on another video last night. I said "it feels like too much happens in each season and too little happens in each episode."
It was funny to me that they take the dagger of silver and gold and melt it with the mythril and then it produced rings that were clearly different colors. I was like WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT, How will they control the metal ratio now xD Though I guess if you ignore them coming out a clearly different color then ultimately its just jewellery so even if its not a strong alloy its probably fine.
Awful isn't it? Terrible. lazy writing, treating the viewers like children who haven't finished learning how to read-or even tie their collective shoe laces. Truly ghastly.
Amazon literally is the world's largest bookstore yet the Amazon writers choose not to read the actual books 🤣🤣
TV shows normally film things well before being released, so my wife and I have independently concluded and agreed with each other that maybe since Episode 6 and most likely at least Episode 8 were edited and composited out of material which was not meant to be the end of Season 1; that is to say, we believe Episode 6 was rushed a little bit, and that Season 1 was supposed to conclude with the final moments of Episode 7, spread over 2 episodes. Episode 8 has a distinct feeling of not just being rushed, but also being incoherent. There is a tonne of stuff that feels forced in, and... well... nothing about the Southlands, not even of Bronwyn and Arondir, which is especially odd. Numenor is just barely touched upon for less than 2 minutes, and the same is true of Elendil and Miriel. There is an endless goodbye with the Harfoots, and a pointlessly-long fight with the 3 witches, but that's it, really. And let's not get into the cascade of events and revelations for Sauron that (all of us with a brain) anticipated they would do, no matter how dumb.
Not understanding is one thing, but this is active contempt. This isn't LOTR, but Amazon's own fantasy series with the names from LOTR's taped over it.
They also made Sauron “Incelron”
It’s also heavily implied that Galadriel reignite Mairon/Sauron desires to bring order to middle earth. Gah, the amount a stupid in this show is feat to behold.
Another excellent video speaking common sense. Thank you!
There’s a perfectly good timeline in the appendices. Tolkien did all the work. Messing with it makes effect precede cause and results in a mess. Add overall cluelessness and you get RoP.
Bob on for the multiculturalism, the hobbits should either be all Greek/Mediterranean looking (like in the law description, olive skin, curly hair, a bit work shy) or if you want black hobbits then all black hobbits as they are in a rural setting , same with a singular black elf , where is the other people from his clan/tribal setting. Yeah have a multicultural thing in the big cities due to them being trade hubs and there would be loads of merchants from other places in the world trying to make a profit from selling exotic stuff.
They have said season 2 will have a canonical story, presumably in an attempt to drag people back in. But what saying that does is imply that they knew that season 1 was not going to be canonical, but still went ahead and told everyone it would be the definitive LOTR story of our age.
This is what happens when, instead of looking at what was there and building a story around it, you look at what is *not* there and base the story on that.
I translate that as "we're going to destroy Numenor in Season Two".
Or they're just saying that because Amazon told them to mitigate blowback as much as possible.
It's so frustrating which makes it not only unwatchable, but makes me wonder about Amazon in general.
There was so much they could have done correctly, yet chose not to.
Galadriel is one of the most powerful beings of ME. She can read minds, including Sauron's, but here is depicted as a selfish, self centered teenager.
Worst of all, this depiction doesn't empower women, it makes them look ridiculous.
Tacking the forging of the rings onto the end of the season finale is perfect for this show. It truly does show where their priorities lie... if they have any.
Excellent thoughts
The Wheel of Time did largely the same thing. This small pretty isolated little village looked like diverse New York city. Not only does this not make sense(as people could could easily tell people from the village by how they look in the books), but it ruins the opportunity to show the bigger cities as being more diverse than this little backwater village. You miss out on the culture shock of the people from this little village exposed to the wider world. But yes, the super diverse population everywhere makes it hard to explain how difficult it is to move around the world and then why the cultures from this areas are so different from each other. It cheapens everything. I really would've liked to have seen them even make up a whole plot line and characters in Harad. Setting up characters there and showing the conflict between them and the men of Numenor as they come into contact with each other would be really interesting and make the Numenoreans a much more nuanced and grey area people.
Another change is that Halbrand once again demonstrates knowledge he shouldn’t have. If Celebrimbor doesn’t know about making alloys then one of the lesser men definitely shouldn’t.
It makes sense when it was Sauron posing as Annatar, another Maia sent from the West to help him. After all it’s reasonable to assume the Lords of the West might have greater knowledge they’ve yet to share.
Problem with the TV show in a nutshell for me is the lack of scale. The world-building is shockingly poor - it all feels paper thin. It’s like bad fan fiction, written by someone who isn’t a fan.
The forging scene was so goofily wrong- as you said about the gold and silver from Galadriel’s dagger, and they also didn’t remove the blade from it either, so that steel went into the mix, too. I don’t recall exactly, but it looked like there were gems on it as well. F it, throw them in, too! The show was baffling with it’s awful changes and depiction of the world, I was shaking my head in disbelief far too many times. I felt like an old man shaking his fist at modernity, or the guy and his kid in the Simpsons lemon tree episode- “Shake harder, boy!” Good analysis of a shitty show-
I'm sure all those contaminants in there allowed for a really pure cast ingot too, with zero porosity.
@@TheOuterCircle Haha- exactly. 👍🏻
Galadriel is literally so old that she has no great grandparents.
The rings in this look like cheap props. You can even see the production seams running down the side length of them.
Great video.
p.s. You mixed the heights, Aragorn should be taller than Dwayne and Gandalf shorter than both.
Gandalf's hat is the extra height, he should be shorter than Aragorn, and the Rock is leaping into the air.
@@TheOuterCircle lol :) definitely the hat gives him a few more inches ;)
Amazon didn't understand the source material AND they didn't even care .
Unfortunately for them, they didn't understand the fans, either, but the fans had figured THEM out AGES back.
Forget how characters don't look the way described in the book, they can't even get their personalities right!
Amazon keeps telling you they wanted to subvert the fans expectations,but I don't think they realize subvert is defined as "undermine the power and authority of", which sounds like giving the fans a big middle finger to me about any criticisms they would have when their expectations are whole heartedly let down. It's as if 'subverting expectations', is just the modern screenwriters "it's just a prank bro" that they use to pardon themselves of any accountability for lack of effort in original or meaningful storytelling. Further they have continuously insulted the fans who have spent much of their lives being fans of the properties and who without their long term devotion to Tolkien's original works, amazon would not be even trying to make money off of the show's popularity.
As well Amazon's emphasis they've put on diversity and making a middle earth that "reflects our modern society" is problematic for multiple reasons. One it implies that Tolkien's original works didn't explore race relations in interesting, complex, or realistic ways which isn't the case and ignores that Sauron capitalizing on distrust between the races is why numenor sinks in the source material of the story their adapting to begin with. Tolkien pays attention to how people are surprised at how much they have in common when they get to know each other, for example the hobbits and men of Rohan share words due to a forgotten neighboring of each other and is a point of ease of introduction between the two groups. One of the mains theme's of both the hobbit and the Lord of The Rings is people of different races overcoming their preconceived notions of each other and achieving something they could not without the strengths they uniquely bring to the group. Much of gimli and legolas arc is directly about the awkwardness of their races' past relations and overcoming it through their 'odd' friendship. I think even peter jackson's adaptation captures it very well, Legolas threatens to kill eomer for threatening gimli but then there's also the scene at helm's deep where legolas asks gimli if he should describe what's happening or if he should find him a box. It reminds me of myself and one of my best friend's, for context I'm white and he's native american, we've known each other for around 20 years, met on the first day of kindergarten, walked together at graduation and then he moved in with my mom and I afterwards as well in addition to working multiple jobs together over the years. We've obviously had each other's back in multiple situations over the years scaling from relatively unimportant to life defining events and he's as good as blood to me, but don't think we don't poke fun at what our races did to each other, he jokes about scalping me quite often for one and I remember I asked if he would like a blanket when he was moving in since his room was cold or if it was still 'culturally insensitive' for him.
The second reason the emphasis is problematic is the manner in which they chosen to handle it, as someone else pointed out(who i can sadly not remember currently, it might even have been another of your videos) so far it seems that they are afraid to allow minority actors for the most part to portray evil characters and instead have relegated them to only being allowed to be heroic in nature, the game of thrones approach of portraying complexity amongst each of these clearly visually distinct and homogeneous ethnic groups, is in my opinion far more believing, engaging, and educative of actual race relations and issues not talked about by society. Daenerys is a female who is underestimated for being "just a teenage girl" at first but was viewed as a strong adversary later, and a threat to westeros' status quo due to the large following she is attracting in essos, she also captured a large following and was also revered by the fans as well. But it's noteworthy the qualities that defined her as a strong character wasn't that she was a woman who was fighting w/ every single person and resorting to violence constantly, but often displayed a wish for mercy and to find a diplomatic non violent solution at first, she frees the unsullied, she frees the people of Slaver's bay, she attempts to teach the dothraki the importance of compassion. There's nothing stopping her subjects from moving and relocating to other realms, she doesn't have a north korea style approach where you can't move away under penalty of death, they simply are choosing to follow her because she is the "breaker of chains" who is benevolent, put isn't afraid to dish out punishment to those who would wish to use everyone else as pawns. Daenerys is still not perfect she makes mistakes, learns valuable lessons through trial and error, has to heed advice from those older and younger than herself because "no man is an island". It's why Season 8 was so hated for this sudden departure from her character, she stopped listening to her advisors, made mistakes she already learned lessons, seems to suddenly be more concerned with taking her throne over saving humanity to guide after from it, and then proceeded to give no quarter to a city of essentially hostages out of nowhere w/ little foreshadowing. Was it artificial and forced, perhaps, but at least they subverted everyone's expectations and that was the goal right?
I would seriously also like to know which of the actors read the silmarillion and I fear it would be very few...
i think Amazon and the producers of this show really only wanted the Lord of the Rings name on the cover and thats it. They just wanted easy access to an already established, popular and beloved franchise so they could inject it with their toxic political messages and agendas. They couldn't careless about the source material.
They understand it..... but they *reject* it.
Well at least I'm really enjoying your series about the series
3:20 Not that it really matters, but didn't the book state Aragorn was the tallest of the Fellowship or did I dream it? Cause I feel like I'm the only one to remember it that way
It's not that they don't understand the source material. They never read any of the source material.
And they don't care about source material
@@LittleMelianna True.
the rings in this picture look like cheap, plastic toys found in a gumball machine
Yeah, that’s self evident. They took the names and tossed/ ignored the rest.
What a waste.
On the metallurgy note, I was dumbfounded when they said that Finrods daggar was made of pure silver and gold from Valinor....unless they are saying that something made in Valinor inherently changes it's properties, silver & gold are two of the softest metals around (if not the softest, but I'm no expert) - no one would ever make a functional weapon out of them because it would be immediately destroyed the first time you tried to use it!!! Never mind using it to climb ice sheets!! Historically any weapons found that were silver/gold were ceremonial only because you couldn't actually use them for anything else. Just couldn't. No. Everything about this show is wretched, awful and wrong.
The softest would be one of the metals low down on the periodic table, elements like sodium for example can be sliced with a butter knife with ease. That said, they're a long way below metals like even bronze!
The "They took our jobs!" episode was definitely the worst one until the last 2. I couldn't believe they were really going to use this as justification to show Numenoreans were xenophobic. Like 1 elf and a dude who wanted to smith got dragged out of the sea. They got done so dirty.
Dont forget Episode 5 with that stupid silmaril = mithril plot line :/
I'd like to point out how well House of The Dragon presents the passing of time. That show stomps this one in all areas
As Sun Tzu noted: Time and space are fundamental to any endeavour, and as you say very early on in your analysis, the writers display no understanding of either. It's as if the showrunners were given a precis of the second age by a 12 year-old trying to speed read for the first time, and then summarised by a heavy drug user just before passing out from a sleepless 5-days of over indulgence. They then added some copy and paste requirements and handed it to team of mental patients with word processors with predictive text. Then filmed it without reading the resulting script.