Lord of the Rings: The Series

Discussion in 'Media Central' started by We Are Borg, Dec 18, 2018.

  1. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    In all honesty I am not bothering with any remake of LOTR. It is a waste of time since the peter jackson ones are awesome. It is not like the miniseries came to cover the problem of not having a decent adaptation of the source material. You really are not beating the movie versions with a miniseries.

    OTOH this is a great dogwhistle to find racist Incels in the geek community. Just mention black people in LOTR and the racists will out themselves as loud and fast as possible. They will run each other over to be the first and loudest to complain about wokism.

    If I was hiring tech geeks I would have a undercover person in the waiting room just to small talk about this. You could eliminate so many racists from the running. Even just for evaluating friends or some idiot at a convention this is useful.

    It is not like this is cannon or even meaningful to the LOTR plot. There are racist messages in the LOTR plot that are important to it. The old roleplaying message against racism is often the interaction of the multiple races in a party. There is no real black or white racism unless you are speaking of drow, who I do not think came from LOTR. One of the messages of LOTR was that all the races of middle earth came together to destroy the ring and fight mordor. If you think there was no black people who would have fought for that then you are a racist.

    I was getting a bit tired of dog whistling for racists with Star Wars.
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  2. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    Like I was saying, this dogwhistle brings the racists to the yard. Who let the dogs out, woof woof woof woof!
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  3. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  4. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Getting a message that the video is blocked from my country (the USA), just fyi.

    If it's the final trailer for the Rings of Power, I have to say that looks MUCH better than the teaser trailers, showing a lot of action and epic in scope. And finally showing something of the story.

    Centered on Battle Galadriel, with Isildur, probably Elendil, Elrond, Durin IV and some hobbits as the other characters. Season 2 is already greenlight.

    And the picture they released of Celebrimbor was poorly done. Seeing him in the trailer he definitely looks more elvish, less like a tall frumpy hobbit. :D

    I'm excited for this one now.

  5. Dan Leach

    Dan Leach Climbing Staff Member Moderator

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  6. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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  7. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    I fully expect them to look great (not surprising considering the massive budget) and be well-acted, but as with any other series it comes down to the quality of the scripts, regardless of whether they are true to the "spirit" of Tolkien (whatever that means). Two episodes isn't enough to be sure either way.
  8. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    DenOfGeek seems to like it.

    I also wasn't aware one of the black actors in it that has FF flipping his wig is Sir Lenny Henry, AKA Theophilus P. Wildebeeste AKA Delbert Wilkins AKA That Bloke Who Was In A Gaiman Adaptation Well Before American Gods or Sandman.
  9. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    First episode is released tomorrow, is it not? I'm hearing that they cover a lot of the first age - I'm really looking forward to seeing how they've done that.
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  10. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    They also cover a lot of territory, what with all the walking around and doing nothing.
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  11. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    You mean Gareth Blackstock, legendary proprietor of Le Château Anglais? :chris:
  12. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    I haven't seen it yet, but can anyone confirm if the band of hobbits/elves/trolls/humans made it from Point A to Point B?

    The suspense is killing me!
  13. The Original Faceman

    The Original Faceman Lasagna Artist

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    Next season.
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  14. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Seen the first, enjoyed the hell out of it.
  15. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Finished ep 2. Excellent writing, incredible production values, a very good cast. This is great storytelling.
  16. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  17. Rimjob Bob

    Rimjob Bob Sue Collini always gets the weenie

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    The hobbits aren't anywhere as charming as they were in the Peter Jackson films.

    Otherwise, so far so good.

    Any guesses to the identity of The Stranger / Meteor Man? I say it's Sauron.

    In the books, Sauron poses as Annatar to seduce the elves and perform the ringcraft with them. In order for this ruse to be believable, to both the characters and the audience, he will have had to transform himself and lose his memory temporarily, creating the impression that he could be a good guy with wisdom from the heavens or wherever.
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2022
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  18. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    They're not hobbits.
  19. Rimjob Bob

    Rimjob Bob Sue Collini always gets the weenie

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    [​IMG]

    ThEy'Re NoT hObBiTs.
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  20. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    I thought it was a good start overall. They're certainly not sticking to the letter of the lore but they haven't made too many egregious changes either. As long as Meteor Man isn't Gandalf or what the dwarves have found isn't a Silmaril, I'll probably be happy on that front - which is about the same as the Peter Jackson movies.

    Other observations:

    • The visuals are excellent, as everyone is saying.
    • You can see how thin the material on the first age that they have to work with is. They have the rights to the LoTR book and Appendices, but can't touch the Silmarillion - where most of that stuff is. So the prologue about Morgoth and Valinor lacks some detail - but they still made it work.
    • There's a lack of forced humour, which really would irritate me. The portrayal of the dwarves really benefits from being "taken seriously".
    • It's okay having Galadriel as a warrior I suppose, but I'm not sure that she should be the plucky underdog that they seem to be setting her up as.
    • I'm guessing that Meteor Man might be Sauron, or he might be a blue wizard.
    • The dwarves possibly have Mithril, and then will dig too deep looking for more - awakening the Balrog.
    • A lot will depend on the quality of writing going forward. We see all the time shows which are excellent at setup and not so much at the follow-through.
    • They could and should extend this over multiple seasons, covering hundreds or thousands of years. But they probably won't, and we'll see the Tolkien timeline compressed significantly, which will be a shame.
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  21. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    They have definitely greenlight 2 seasons, and the arc is set for 5. Production for season 2 should be starting now in New Zealand. Only 8 eps in season 1 though, which doesn't seem like much considering the scope of the story and the multiple narratives going forward.

    I tend to agree Meteor Man is Sauron, though they are trying to make it look like Gandalf. Pretty sure a couple of times he flexes you can hear black speech in the background, the fires at his entrance were cold, a sign of evil per Galadriel, and his power kills natural things when used. The runes he uses looks like the one Gandalf uses in the Hobbit, but that could easily be a shared written language of the Maia.

    Plus the orcs in the tunnel in Southland had drawn a picture of the Meteor and the Man falling from it, and the same branched rune that Meteor Man initially writes when the Harfoot asks where he comes from.

    Of course, that's an example of why the show's writing is so well done to this point. That could represent the Orcs are looking for their master, perhaps even tunneling toward him. We don't know how close the Harfoots are to the Southland. Or it could mean that they were told of the coming of a wizard and are trying to get to him to kill him.

    I like all the arcs, but the one that intrigues me the most is the former Morgoth worshippers in Southland and Arondir. Perhaps because I have some idea of what most of the others mean due to the lore, but this one could go a lot of different ways.
  22. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    I'm mostly finding the debate about the racial casting tedious by now. However I did have a couple of points made to me which I thought were cogent.

    Firstly, the diversity here seems to mostly involve the addition of black people. We don't have Asians or Arabs or any of the other tribes of humanity represented. That seems like a problem if the point of this is inclusivity.

    Secondly, and I think more pointedly, while making some effort to address racial disparities it could be argued that the show leans very heavily into cultural stereotypes to portray its various people's, particularly in terms of accent. Irish accents for the dirty traveller Harfoot people. Scottish accents for the angry drunkards, the dwarves. Yorkshire accents for the ignorant farming folk. And posh Etonian accents for the civilised Elves. Orcs will probably be Cockney. RoP is certainly not alone in using this kind of shorthand (Jackson's movies did so too) but it certainly seems to reflect some ingrained prejudices that the audience and/or the show-runners have.

    Looking forward to the third episode though. I'm hoping we'll see Numenor in this one.
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  23. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    I was curious as to where 'the Southland' was as it wasn't 100% clear from the map they are using, but I'm pretty sure I figured it out.

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  24. We Are Borg

    We Are Borg Republican Democrat

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    30 minutes into the first episode and we turned it off, and decided to rewatch some Ted Lasso episodes on Apple TV instead.

    Not engaging in the least; the main characters are unlikeable and the music score is extremely off-putting. At least the production values are good and it looks pretty.

    Despite my constant ribbing of LOTR, from what I've seen so far this series doesn't even come close to the cinematic universe that Peter Jackson created. Seems audiences in general also aren't too thrilled with the series.
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  25. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Peter Jackson peaked with Meet the Feebles, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
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  26. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    I've changed my mind. Meteor Man isn't Sauron. He's one of the Istari, but it's hard to tell which one. Could be Gandalf, though honestly I'd prefer it if it was Saruman or one of the Blue Wizards. Watching Saruman's original presence in Middle Earth before his corruption could be very interesting. He was the foremost of the Wizards and later the leader of the White Council.

    So far I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
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  27. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  28. Zor Prime

    Zor Prime .

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    I’m enjoying the show so far, of course it isn’t exactly sticking with the source material (the Jackson movies didn’t either) but the broad strokes seem spot on.

    The Numenoreans will launch an attack on Sauron and ‘capture’ him but then bring him back as a captive where he will begin poisoning their minds against the Valar.

    I think Meteor Man is Gandalf and this would explain his fondness and familiarity with Hobbits. But he didn’t arrive by boat to the Grey Havens and get his Ring from Cirdan yet. Maybe he will accompany the Hobbits to the area that will eventually become Hobbiton and continue on from there to the Grey Havens and regain his memory as Gandalf.

    Of course the Rings haven’t even been forged yet. I suspect Celebrimbor will meet a disguised Sauron at some point. And the Dwarves will dig too deep into the mines and awaken the Balrog.

    Interestingly all of the seemingly disparate plotlines involve or will involve Sauron at some point.

    I could totally see how this show would seem boring as hell to anyone who wasn’t interested in Tolkien lore.
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  29. StarMan

    StarMan Fresh Meat

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    I wasn't interested in Tolkien lore before the movies - have seen them from start to finish more times than I care to count.

    ROP is boring because of the writing is abysmal.
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  30. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Put me down as "enjoying it but it could go either way". I wasn't impressed by the about-turn the Numenoreans just made. Shoddy writing there. The characters shouldn't just behave as the plot demands. It should be the other way around.

    Adar was cool, though. I bet he's the father of the Orcs.