The Rings of Power Post-watch Discussion (Spoilers)

I think we can blame Orlando Bloom for the blank faced elf look. Never had that before him.

Bloom carried it off though, it didn't look weird, it just differentiated him from emotional humans. It made him look fey.

This Don Lemon bloke is just blank and wooden, it is impossible for him to look fey, he just looks like a sullen dude from the precinct.

Neil Gaiman said he watched the first two episodes and enjoyed them. I'm somewhat flabbergasted, but I found them somewhat entertaining if I forget they are supposed to be based on Tolkien and don't expect too much internal consistency.

{{ Im not surprised, his own Sandman adaptation had race and gender swapped roles and he was full of defence of that, that was his work so thats his perogative, but this is Tolkiens work and Tolkien didnt write gender and race swapped roles (in fact he didnt write anything in Rings of Power!). I am surprised he is defending the poor writing, the exposition laden dialogue, the wooden performances, bland characters and lack of narrative cohesion however. }}

{{ Be subjecting myself to ep 3 tomorrow- review to follow, assuming I dont explode or something }}

I'd already forgotten! I'll be watching tonight, very curious to see if they finally sneak in some of those pesky Tolkien plot elements.

{{Not sure how this is going to go- given that last week my non-Tolkien mate Nagual said of it- 'It's entertaining enough for the most part.'

Well just woke up to a message from him post watching ep 3 reading-

'About 10 mins in and I felt that I should be hitting the STOP button and not look back. By the end of it I felt like I should have listened to my younger self and actually hit STOP. Thus ends my journey in to RoP. It joins Chibbers Who in TV shows I shall not watch because they are shit.'

Not sure what about this one was so much worse than last weeks shit-show but I think my crabbit maybe about to floweth oer! }}

Dont forget the wet wipes then.

The fuck was that?

Unspeakably bad, even if you forget it's supposed to have something to do with Tolkien.  No, I can't.  I've had enough of this shit.  And I thought the third instalment of the Hobbit was bad, I hadn't the faintest clue what fathomless rot is possible.

Unbelievably, every review I've found of episode 3 is positive; it's only the comments that show friction. Best comment I've seen: What are the orcs doing with all this digging? Building another Amazon distribution center.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Not sure how this is going to go- given that last week my non-Tolkien mate Nagual said of it- 'It's entertaining enough for the most part.'

Well just woke up to a message from him post watching ep 3 reading-

'About 10 mins in and I felt that I should be hitting the STOP button and not look back. By the end of it I felt like I should have listened to my younger self and actually hit STOP. Thus ends my journey in to RoP. It joins Chibbers Who in TV shows I shall not watch because they are shit.'

Not sure what about this one was so much worse than last weeks shit-show but I think my crabbit maybe about to floweth oer! }}

Hm, that is very interesting. After two episodes I was still unsure if it was just passable enough with the backdrop of beloved subject matter for many more casual viewers to make it something of a success. There were some clunky parts in the first two episodes, but generally I thought them passable in this perspective. Will have to see if things slowly start to fall apart however. Although, as we know from previous hit series (GOT, cough) people can swallow a lot of codswallop from these franchises before they are prepared to criticize it, never mind walk away entirely.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Im not surprised, his own Sandman adaptation had race and gender swapped roles and he was full of defence of that, that was his work so thats his perogative, but this is Tolkiens work and Tolkien didnt write gender and race swapped roles (in fact he didnt write anything in Rings of Power!). I am surprised he is defending the poor writing, the exposition laden dialogue, the wooden performances, bland characters and lack of narrative cohesion however. }}

Sandman strikes me as a 100x more interesting (aside from the gorgeous attention to detail), but I am only one episode in so far.

"things start slowly to fall apart"

You clearly haven't watched the 3rd episode yet.   Everything still looks great, but the writing goes from bland to WTF like falling off a ledge.  There's nothing slow about it.  I may continue to watch it, but it's the fascination of watching an extended freeway crash.  I'd like to see at least one iconic moment Tolkien alluded to, like the meeting between Celembrimbor and Sauron, but 3 episodes in we haven't gotten ANY of Tolkien's plot points.  It's all made-up twaddle.

{{Blue! I am shortly about to embark on ep 3- just trying to get drunk enough to cope first }}

Recommend a Fyne Ale

https://www.fyneales.com/

them fyne ales do look good. Don't know if they get many exported here, will have to sniff around.

{{ Indeed very Fyne However nothing beats buckie for being shitfaced and Im about to hit play on this probable desecration of all that is Tolkien so I'm going to need to be shitfaced }}

I'll be hunkered down for the upcoming explosion.

{{ Well, episode 3.
That was something that happened, often slowly. In fact this has the most awkward use of slow-mo I think I have ever seen, I particularly enjoyed Galadriel on a horse in slow-mo, someone should have told the director whilst a horses body in motion in slow-mo is a beautiful and graceful thing, its mad wild eyes, tongue lolling out its mouth in a panting half grinning close up slow-mo just looks hilarious and ridiculous at the same time, by the time they'd got to slow-mo Galadriel's face, which  I assume was meant to convey sheer joy and pleasure but instead the effect made her look like a demented devil straining to push out a particularly retentive shit, I was in fits of laughter.

If you were hoping for any Tolkien to emerge after three hours of this made up nonsense you are going to be disappointed because outside of names and places it simply isn't here, not a line, not a word, not an historical fact correct. Its a Tolkien free zone, again, in a Tolkien adaptation. How does this even happen?  

I mean PJ might have missed the mark on far too many occasions, but you can tell he at least was trying to do Tolkien's creation justice and only really went astray when he let his own sensibilities overrun Tolkien's. But here? There is not even an attempt at doing Tolkien's work justice, his characters, his narrative, his world building, none of it. Its all gone.

So what do we have? Well first you have to forget everything Tolkien to watch this as it actively gets in the road of following what's going on as its often in contradiction of it.

Galadriel and Halbrand end up on Numenor- and he's Sauron or the Witch-King, but for now his cover story (at least I hope it is) is to make the viewer think he is basically an early Aragorn, as it turns out after he's arrested for what seemed to be murdering a bunch of Numenoreons in a street fight, that he's really a secret King of the Southlands. Basically he teams up with Galadriel and there's even a hint of some romantic tension between them, I can scarecly believe I am even writing this.
And why are Numenoreons so bland and regular looking, no one is particularly tall many are short in fact, they don't seem that healthy or long lived, they look like any random collection of modern humans from any modern city. But they don't look anything like Numenoreons or convey their stature, physical or in knowledge, in the slightest.

Meanwhile the Harfoots are getting ready for their migration, and Nori's family are screwed and will be left behind because her Dad has broken his ankle. Now when Chief bloke reads out the list of those that have been left behind on previous migrations the causes are all, well sensible- an avalanche, wolf attack, that kind of thing. But they are going to leave Nori's entire family behind because of a broken ankle?There's not one other family has a single excess member that could pull the cart instead of her Dad? Its so weirdly heartless and brutal for absolutely no reason given. Its just- cant pull your wagon? You get left and no no-one else is allowed to help you. How is that like hobbits?
Anyhow the whole Harfoot thing takes up a chunk of the episode, again some in pointless slow-mo, and its a nothing story that could have taken five minutes to tell spun out pointlessly. Nori steals star charts from Chief and gives them to meteor man, who accidentality sets them on fire and then falls about revealing himself to the Harfoots. They all leave on migration and meteor man follows, Nori's family can't get their cart moving, meteor man offers to help, and that's all that happens. Its just heavily padded out with Harfoot life, their festival and stuff meant to all be reminiscent of Bilbo's party, but where that served a narrative purpose this is just padding.

The Numenor stuff takes more explanation as there seems to be a confusing new history to learn. So long ago all the elves were banned from Numenor, but the previous King before the current Queen was pro-elf, so they deposed him and lock him up in a tower where he supposedly remains, whilst the anti-elf lobby with the Queen and Ar-Pharazon at its head took power. But the westlands retain the traditions of liking elves, and Elendil, who is appointed the task of watching over Galadriel while she is there is secretly pro elf, well not very secret as the Queen openly accuses him of being it, but he thinks being pro-elf is bad pr and so tells Isildur and his made up daughter to move with the  times basically. And he his a grumpy talk with Isildur about his career that's as boring as it sounds it would be.
He also takes Galadriel half way across Numenor when he is supposed to be guarding her which is weird, as no-one seems to mind or try to stop them leaving, and goes to a records house that the old king preserved full of old documents, and handily one with eye symbol thing which is a map of Mordor when turned sideways, and Galadriel realises the Southlands are where  Sauron must be.
Also if all this is right in the last days of Numenor with them already centuries after turning from the elves and hating them, whats left for Sauron to do in their Downfall? And if its this late why do they seem to know so little of ME and why do men on ME not know anything about Numenor, there should be whole Numenor colonies and empires by now in ME? When is this meant to be set?!!!
Her bit all ends on her teaming up with exiled King and declaring, having seen the 'Faithful' Numeoreons (who aren't really very faithful at all far as I could see unless you count keeping old records and putting on convenient puppet plays with Galadriel as a character in them) and it all ends on Galadriel declaring she thinks she can raise an army- so looks like she is going to be responsible for the Faithful becoming a thing and standing up to the Queen? I don't know, its all so awful.  

Meanwhile our made elf bloke has been taken captive by orcs. Now are orcs in this version super strong or something, because given what they have shown us elves can do in a fight why are dozens or maybe hundreds of elves prisoners of the orcs? Where did all these elves come from? Did no-one notice they were missing or look for them? If the whole orc thing is being done in secret why is there miles of barren wasteland spewing sulphurous gas everywhere all round their secret underground tunnels? Wouldn't people you know, notice that?
Hero elf is forced to cut down a tree, because that's bad and Tolkien liked trees I suppose. Though they act like no elf would ever cut down a tree and that's it some terrible, painful act for him to do,  despite all elven architecture being mainly wooden that we see and they have ships, made of wood.  
Anyhow elves want out to get help and warn folk, they hatch a plan, fortunately for them the orcs have them working out in the open sunlight away from their protective covers for no reason at all and so a silly people on wires fight ensues, then a fight with a warg and the upshot is everyone bar main elf gets killed and he gets taken to their leader, who we are meant to think is Sauron but before they reveal his face episode ends. Oh and theres a fair bit of gore in this bit, in fact in this episode in general, arms being snapped in two, wargs ripping peoples stomachs- not super gory stuff, but still noticably there.
Kill me.  

Even by non Tolkien episodes this was boring, really boring, the characters remain unengaging to watch, the language an overstuffed attempt to mimic Tolkien but just ends up overly wordy and often feeling largely pointless. Andof course there isnt a shred of Tolkiens DNA anywhere near the thing.
Some of the visuals remain good, the set design that sort of thing, but that's your lot really for anything good to take from it.

I forsee little hope of any Tolkien ever turning up in this, its surely to late already on the path they have set themselves. At this point I completely fail to see what the purpose of this endeavour was. But whatever it was it obviously had nothing to do with a love of Tolkien's works. Its an abomination.     }}

You can see why I couldn't bring myself to do a review. Easier just to say the whole thing is shit and be done with it. Well, some of the landscapes looked nice.

The worst abomination is turning Galadriel into a very nasty cow. Compare her with the first meeting with the real Galadriel in Lothlorien.

Its a horrible travesty to see ROP Galadriel sneering and sniping and standing there in a nightie like some ordinary wench.

{{ Didn't you enjoy her flapping about Numenor in her bare feet just like in the movies, see its exactly the same character! Also seems not a spare pair of shoes nor boots in all of Numenor were to be found! }}

Goodness! I have scrolled past the review, but I have heard many rumblings about this episode 3 by now and expect the worst.

I'm torn between sitting down for a watcheroo and continuing my long-form review of episode 1.