Rings of Power: Tolkien's Shambling Skinsuit

j00t said:

merry and pippen lose their swords from weathertop in the movies.

and again the entire meaning is different. the scene makes it about eowyn saying "i am no man." yes, merry is there and he helps, but there was a reason why "no man" could kill the witch king and it's because he couldn't be really be harmed (at least not permanently) until the barrow blade SPECIFICALLY breaks that enchantment. tolkien made a point to say that it wasn't eowyn or merry that hurt him, but the blade itself.

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This is an extreme nitpick.

If they added Barrowdens, what would you cut out to compensate for it?

Chris said:

This is an extreme nitpick.

If they added Barrowdens, what would you cut out to compensate for it?

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They at least could have handled it better. Why would Aragorn even have them? Why would he carry them all the way to Weathertop instead of handing them to the hobbits at Bree? Why couldn't Elrond or Galadriel have had them? Why make a point of vaguely including them in the movie but then NOT have Merry get his back?

i mean, i absolutely understand that storytelling in a movie is very different than storytelling in a book and you can't have a 1:1 translation between the two. and like i said, fellowship is my favorite movie of the three.

it's just that there are things that are missing and/or done differently that don't REALLY change fellowship much at all, but have a big difference in the other two movies. there are changes in how certain characters behave and/or relate to aragorn that FEEL like it's not really that big of a deal, but make pretty significant changes once you look at the whole. there were no other rangers in fellowship, so they weren't there to aid aragorn in helm's deep. on the surface that doesn't feel like a big deal but there was a whole cadre of rangers that were secretly moving against sauron's forces and when they get wiped out it puts the legacy of the dunedain all on aragorn's shoulders and helps the audience understand WHY aragorn is the way he is. it's not just his heritage, which makes him the rightful king, it's things like losing all his kin that help him understand sacrifice and the weight of honor that make him THE RIGHT king.

i mean, let's also mention that in the books, aragorn never hemmed and hawed about his destiny. he accepted his fate as the true king some 60 years prior to the events of the books.

again, i understand you have to make changes in order to set the right pacing, just that while a lot of these changes seem minor and even make sense in some lights, they fundamentally altar the intent of tolkien's work. aragorn and the elves NEVER doubted their work against sauron even if they doubted the outcome and the message that you do the right thing because it's right, not because it's easy, gets somewhat muddled.

Gavinmad said:

They at least could have handled it better. Why would Aragorn even have them? Why would he carry them all the way to Weathertop instead of handing them to the hobbits at Bree? Why couldn't Elrond or Galadriel have had them? Why make a point of vaguely including them in the movie but then NOT have Merry get his back?

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because the meaning of those swords are completely different, and PJ didn't understand the nuances of what tolkien meant by it.

in the movie, they swords aren't special, it's that the hobbits are introduced to real danger on weathertop. aragorn represents danger, but also the ability to work against threats. the swords are just swords but are given at that moment because a} aragorn's wisdom that you can't be a pacifist and hide from your troubles (what the hobbits have done successfully up until this point) and b) power can be used to hurt or defend, it's not one thing or the other by itself, it's who wields it.

this isn't a bad lesson, it's definitely in keeping with tolkien's views on things... but he definitely meant more. and while you may not care about some random blacksmiths that died millenia ago, tolkien did. a HUGE part of his vision was how interconnected things are.

Gavinmad said:

They at least could have handled it better. Why would Aragorn even have them? Why would he carry them all the way to Weathertop instead of handing them to the hobbits at Bree? Why couldn't Elrond or Galadriel have had them? Why make a point of vaguely including them in the movie but then NOT have Merry get his back?

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Absolutley it would have been slightly better done that way.

The movie was made by people, they made mistakes. It's not big enough to be bothered about 20 years later.

That was more entertaining...

The Irish Balrog.....

Lol Bronwyn is Sauron. We didn't suspect a gender swap!

Bubbles said:

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I am confused about the budget, House of the Dragon seems like it would have a higher CGI budget with all the dragons... I guess they use a lot of real locations enchanced by CGI which saves money and Rings of Power has expensive sets? I don't know...

Chris said:

I am confused about the budget, House of the Dragon seems like it would have a higher CGI budget with all the dragons... I guess they use a lot of real locations enchanced by CGI which saves money and Rings of Power has expensive sets? I don't know...

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saw some bts stuff, said s1 had like 9k vfx shots, more that all 6 movies. they built a ship that can sail. khazad dum apparently has a huge set. all the big people/little people scenes have to shot several times. still don't see where all the money is going. numenor feels small and fake to me.

Chris said:

Here’s A Better Theory About Sauron’s True Identity In ‘The Rings Of Power’

One possible candidate for Sauron is a character nobody has guessed yet, but it makes a lot of sense.

www.forbes.com

Lol Bronwyn is Sauron. We didn't suspect a gender swap!

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I'm a few episodes behind but what happened to the teenager who cut his hand on Sauron's sword?

Or Bronwyn's son who inadvertently fed it with his own blood and it grew some.

Grizzlebeard said:

I'm a few episodes behind but what happened to the teenager who cut his hand on Sauron's sword?

Or Bronwyn's son who inadvertently fed it with his own blood and it grew some.

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Hes alive and kickin. They circled back to that at the end of the most recent episode.

not really much to the story other than
Future seasons of The Rings of Power could jump forward hundreds of years, showrunner Patrick has teased.

seems like that would only make their bad timeline worse

Season five will allegedly end with The Last Alliance, so even if they suddenly started following the actual timeline of the Second Age they would be somewhere around 3250 now (given the state of Numenor), and Sauron loses the ring in 3441, so while not exactly "hundreds" of years, it's still a long time. Seems quite an odd thing to do, though, given that they've already compressed the bejesus out of the timeline to this point.

Goatface said:

saw some bts stuff, said s1 had like 9k vfx shots, more that all 6 movies. they built a ship that can sail. khazad dum apparently has a huge set. all the big people/little people scenes have to shot several times. still don't see where all the money is going. numenor feels small and fake to me.

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they had to rebuild all their sets from New Zealand to the UK. and this covers two seasons. and 250 million for the rights.

Having watched zero of the episodes of this, I put on FotR the other day and noticed in their intro/backstory they show Galadriel being given the ring.

If this show is about Sauron forging them, that sure makes some fuckery of things thematically with miss scowsalot at the helm.