Comic Con Stuff!

Heyhey! There it is.

No time to watch it all now, but it was an interesting touch to have a flambuoyant violinist. I thought other instruments had solos as well, but not as good a look sticking a bassonist up front I suppose.

Just some thoughts as I watch the panel:

Violin soloists are such drama-queens.
I think one can hear some of that Shore participation in the music, and that influence that McReary was talking about: that his contributions to the score were in part a "homage".

3:00ish to 9:00ish
A nice introduction by Colbert.
He was invited to watch the show early by the showrunners, haha. (But declined.)

8:18 Colbert attempts to address the concern of where this new show might go. "[I had lunch with these guys and] I was struck by their sincerity and love of this world."
Yeah sure you were lol.

9:20ish When Colbert introduces the showrunners, he quotes the now well-known lines from Letter 131 about "other minds and hands", but, of course, leaving off the "Absurd." at the end.  
What strange paints these other hands now wield!

10:00 This is the first time I've heard the showrunners speak. I thought I had read somewhere that their first words on stage were in Elvish. But it is actually "Holy shit!"

11:00 One of them had to take a moment to "acknowledge the awesome". They talk the part.

12:15 Only the showrunner in glasses claims to have read any Tolkien beyond LotR and The Hobbit. (The Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales to be specific.) He does recite some long piece in Elvish. I did not recognize what it was, nor did anyone explain.    One of those things that fans later tell each other about online and then pretends that it had been meaningful in the moment.

14:00 They vaguely answer the question of what the show is about by telling us that this first season focuses on reintroducing the people, lands, and cultures of Middle-earth. They are very different from what we know. Indeed, some of the people are very different.  
But specifically they talk about how the fall of Numenor is in the show, as well as the Last Alliance and Sauron's defeat. Haha, do you think Galadriel will be present for the siege of Barad-dur at the end of Season 5? Will there BE any siege?

17:00 The two showrunners, (and now I begin to wonder why the third, the woman, is even up there with how little she has contributed), name their favourite moments from the 2nd Age. One says the moment when Sauron puts on the one ring and the elves instantly feel their betrayal. Glasses says the factionalization and downfall of Numenor, which is something that is timely and applicable to our times. Somewhat, yes. Though not nearly so direly.

21:00 Hm.. A bigger question from Colbert. Asking how they're dealing with the expectation of Tolkien fans, considering how precious the stories are to so many.
Bit of a dodge here, as the non-glasses answers by saying that no-one can be harder on them than themselves. If they ever met Petty they might change this belief.

23:00 Glasses talking about Harfoots here. Perhaps I am dense, but it seems to me that there is no indication that the Harfoots, who are indeed described as being the first to venture westward beyond the Misty Mountains, why they should be considered a nomadic people. Concerning Hobbits reads:

LotR wrote:"They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in Wilderland...They were the most inclined to settle in one place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and holes."

Surely this speaks to more of a punctuated migration than a full-on gypsy life?

25:00 I like this actually haha. Colbert is kinda calling them out for having a balrog in the trailer. He asks them whether this is an example of their taking events from the Third Age and sticking them into the Second. The answer from not-Glasses implies that we will not see the death of Durin at the hand of a balrog. That will not be in this show.

26:30 Speaking of the size of the sets they built for Numenor, one of them comments that was something like you'd find in D. W. Griffith's work. "But not the racist part!" He has to add so we know that he's pure. These guys are kinda cringey, especially not-glasses.

27:00ish They talk about the casting process, saying that they saw thousands of auditions. The two main questions were, "Will they be good to work with?" and "Do they have Middle-earth in them?"
I guess, "Do they look the part?" was not so much a requirement.

28:00 Ok here's the real stuff. Colbert asks why some elves have short hair in this production.
Not-Glasses: Uhhh, duhhh, not everbody has to uhhh look the same all the time over durrr thousands of years. And that's what Tolkien seemed to be saying too.      

Colbert asks, why hobbits?
Glasses responds idiotically (clearly they did not practice for this) that AAAAACSHUALLLY they're Harfoots and Tolkien didn't say that HAAAARFOOOOTS didn't do anything of note in the Second Age, only that HOOOOBBIIIITs didn't do anything of importance in the Second Age. So we had license.
You have license to bugger off!

The other one knows that this answer is retarded, apparently. And tries to save it by arguing that hobbits are necessary to the themes of Middle-earth, in the role they play as small people amongst the great.

I guess the themes of the Second Age weren't good enough on their own.

There clearly aren't beards on the female dwarves we've seen so far, so this "facial hair" weasel wording they're using to sell the idea that the dwarf-women DO have beards is just that: weaselly. Just tell us that they didn't want to go for full beards and instead gave them wispy sideburns if that's what they did.

More to come.

"I quote them daily with my wife..uh my partner and my children".
God I hate PC crap so much. Just say "wife".

35:00ish The first lineup of the cast come out, and this is pleasant enough at first.
Charles... not Dance, whatever his name is, talks about how the elves of Eregion "do not have peace in their hearts". I am not a loremaster and do not know where this quote comes from, but it makes for an interesting picture. He describes Celebrimbor's searching ambition. I mean, I don't like to paint the elves of Eregion as so much in the wrong here, but we shall see.

39:00 I still say that Will Poulter was a better choice for Elrond.

Durin IV's actor is gregariously likeable. (Makes Richard Armitage look like the worst of sticks in the mud lol).

44:00 The lie comes again, saying that.. Disa I think is the "first ever female dwarf depicted on screen". Qualify it if you must, just stop lying. We saw them in The Hobbit movies.
The audacity of this shit: "The first female dwarf that we have ever seen on any screen." Uhhh NOPE I can get you that in 10 seconds on Youtube.

Much ado is made about this and about how she breastfed a baby during production. I mean this is all well and good: mothers are indispensable and can be very lovely. But what about the character can we talk about that isn't just, "It's a female"? I suppose this is the most significant thing to the audience at hand, or at least the show-runners at hand. Or something.
No mention is made, because it would be very awkward in front of the actress I suppose, of why this queen of the dwarves is so very African. Not exactly an African tradition, Germanic folk-lore about dwarves. Not exactly something you had so much down south.
But no, the gates must be opened to all and we must clap because she is a woman and gave birth.

48:00 New cast members file in to replace the first group. Much talk here about the Harfoots. More strange things said about them, such as their being the ancestors of the hobbits (but are not hobbits themselves?). They are nomads who hide themselves away from the world, and quite merry.
It would have been interesting to see something of the friendliness between Harfoots and dwarves that we hear about in the Prologue. I guess this is all later on from that. Some nods to that old familiarity would be quite pleasant in the show.


51:00 "The Stranger's" actor is talking here, and I can totally believe the idea that he is Gandalf. There's the connection to fire, to the hobbits (nah-ah they're HAAARfoots. STFU!), and hell, he even looks like a young version of Gandalf. The lined face and long hair and beard fit in a simplistic way.

53:16

56:00ish Cordova is the first actor I've noticed who was put on the spot and had no idea how to answer. Colbert asks him, "You're playing a Silvan elf... Nandor or Avari?"
Now this is an interesting question. Cordova's character seems to be busy in a southern region far removed from the Silvan elves of Greenwood and Lothlorien. It could be neat if he were one of the Avari who rejected the Eldar. If the showrunners got to that point, and didn't just need a Legolas stand-in.

57:30 Ah, the rest of the cast. Funny how Elendil the Tall is portrayed by a man of average height.

1:03:45 On to Miriel's actress. "Not much to go on" for the character. Ah but I'm sure the role has been expanded greatly now. oh GOD she's talking about how Miriel was the place she could put her thoughts concerning "everything going on in the world."

NEWSFLASH, there's been stuff going on in the world since the first baby drew breath, and this state of affairs will continue until the last mortal is shaken by the pangs of death. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that you need to make a Tolkien project a vehicle for your thoughts about the state of the world. Typical that the American progressive is thinking along these lines.

1:05:30 Audience Q&A!

1:08:15 Some nervous fellow in a Pokemon shirt asks why Galadriel would be wearing armour that showed the crest of Feanor upon it. Colbert simps for the showrunners instead of letting them answer and has a little back and forth.
Audience: "She would never wear the crest from the house of Feanor."
Colbert: "Says you!"
Audience: "She would wear the crest from the house of Finwe."
Colbert: "Well Feanor is from the house of Finwe. I don't want to get all Silmarillion on you."

No Colbert, please do. This is the place for it for once. These are minor details, but Feanor and Finwe had different heraldic crests.
Finwe's:


Feanor's:




Wouldn't Galadriel be more likely to use the device of her father, Finarfin though?

Of course none of this refers to any of these devices, but rather the symbol we see on the Doors of Durin. The eight-pointed star of Feanor, which can also be seen on Galadriel's armour in this shot:
https://i.servimg.com/u/f84/18/63/11/56/oopsie10.jpg

The producer lady brushes it all aside, saying that the armour is a gift from someone else. "Take that! Ya sweaty nerd!"
That doesn't really answer the question, but whatever. Who knows what oddities will be revealed starting in September!

1:09:45 More of this tripe in the next question from the audience: "With how your show [is ignoring the lore of Tolkien in the service of feminism and racial politics] will your show also be including actors with disabilities [simply to parade them around and show off your purity of spirit]?"
They do have a token hard-of-hearing actor on-board, so the crowd clapped. hahaha

1:10:35

Some people sound so unhealthy in the audience when they ask their questions. Mumbling and breathing heavily. Some of it is nerves, some of it is the masks on their faces, but even so.

"acknowledge the awesome"  

To be fair to Elendil the Tall, you ain't gonna find an 8 foot tall actor.  There's all sorts of tricks used to make short male actors look tall on screen, let's see if they use them.

There were female dwarves in the Hobbit films?

There are multiple here: (1:58, if the link didn't work accurately.)

Is it brief? Yes. Are they unnamed extras? Yes.

Are their female dwarves on screen? YES

I was gonna say "how do you know those are dwarf women?" and then I looked closely.



To my mind, I don't think they'd be out in public like that. It seems like a fairly repressive culture as far as dwarf women go, seeing as there's not mention of a single one of them.

How did I know? Because they're about 4' tall and 2' wide? Odd sizes for humans.

As to whether they would be out and about in Dale, perhaps. Dale is hardly "traveling abroad". They are very clearly feminine though, with only sideburns visible, and this seems quite wrong.

Repressive? To repress is to hold back, restrain, limit from some action. All of which implies that dwarven women wished to act upon the world stage, interact with other peoples, and put their names in the records. I see no reason to act as though dwarven culture must mirror our modern one.

Not just our modern one. Women pop up all through history, despite any attempts to keep them stuffed away out of sight. Funny how unruly they can be. We definitely hear less of them from the cultures that didn't have much use of them except as breeding stock, like the ancient Greeks. Makes me think the dwarves take it to more of an extreme. Unless the biology is so different that women are basically drones, but I don't see that as likely.

Here's something interesting:
Although much ado was made by our fat friend at Comic Con concerning the eight-pointed star on Galadriel's armour. It has been suggested in the amusing "Everything WRONG with The Rings of Power" series on YouTube that this is not in fact Feanor's star. The one we see on the Doors of Durin has lines radiating outward between each point of the star, as seen in this recreation:


Instead, it could be a star representing the House of Finarfin. Finarfin's heraldic device shows something akin to the 8 points of a radiating star, and in the trailers for RoP we have seen this same design on the armour of who we presume to be Galadriel's brother as well as on the armour of some of the elves in the background.

had to hunt and peck for a screen shot of Galadriel's armor-star.



Looks like the star on the moria door, but doesn't line up with any of those crests. not sure why the star of moria is called the star of Feanor based on the crests.

Yes, but it doesn't match the crest you posted above.

Oh right, well look closely at the rays on Feanor's device: there are four large orthogonal rays, four smaller diagonal rays, and a tiny ray in between each larger one.

In that loose reading of it her device is closer to Finarfin, as I think you said.