Rings of Power: Tolkien's Shambling Skinsuit

The show has its faults for sure, but if you take a step back, it was a pretty good watch. Things I would have done different for sure, but the finale was good.

I realize most of the clowns in this thread will push back on this but, the Harfoot were good, and the black Female dwarf was not the cringey wokefest I was expected, and was actually really well done. I wish they handled Galadriel differently, and I am not a big fan of Halbrand.

All in all, this was decent. There were absolute things I did not like, so I'm not saying this is Breaking Bad or The Wire in level of writing, but its a very, very high production Tolkein(ish) series that I did look forward to each week.

So I guess the 7 and 9 rings are not even going to exist in this show, unless Sauron is going to do it himself? Odd since the closing of the show was a song about the 7,9,3 & 1 rings.

Falstaff said:

Is this lore all in a book somewhere? Is it the Silmarillion? I can’t read that without a cheat sheet but I’ll give it another try.

This show did a good enough job of leaving me wanting more.

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it's sort of spread out through a bunch of stuff. a lot of it is in the silmarillion, but a huge chunk of it is from tolkien's personal writings that his son released after he died. he would talk about a bunch of ideas he had (most of it was stuff that he was just musing over, so he'd phrase it like "I think what happened was" or "I'd like to believe that") in letters that he wrote and his son chris basically spent his life collecting and organizing. so some of the stuff that's in the silmarillion, which is considered canon, is stuff that tolkien later on in life had second or third thoughts on. the creation of the orcs is one, for example. initially he said they were elves and morgoth corrupted them in order to have an army on par with the elves. so orcs are never anything but evil. but later on he was conflicted about the idea of an entire race of creatures who's alignment (for lack of a better term) was already decided for them. he never officially retconned anything, but he had a lot of notes in margins and letters where he talked about how, after years and years of thought, he admits not liking things that he wrote. but if you look up chris tolkien you can find stuff on middle earth that he published after his father died in order to help people better understand some of the more obscure lore

sakkath said:

So I guess the 7 and 9 rings are not even going to exist in this show, unless Sauron is going to do it himself? Odd since the closing of the show was a song about the 7,9,3 & 1 rings.

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the 3 dudes Gandalf nuked were some kind of wraith. Possible/likely they are ring wraiths and the show will just go with Sauron made the other rings prior.

I also wasn’t totally clear on if celebrimbor had already made some rings before Galadriel got back or not. It was unclear how long she was knocked out for.

reavor said:

So I guess with that ”folliw your nose” comment its confirmed the wizard is gandalf

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i like the idea that it's saruman, a pre-asshole saruman, though he was always a bit too high on himself... but one of the sorcerer chicks says "he's not sauron, he's the other!" and gandalf wasn't the leader of the istari. he's also a lot more aggressive than gandalf really ever was, even as the white. but who knows if that's intentional or not... if it's gandalf, i get the feeling that they'll explain it as he gets more of his memory back and gets himself put together, he understands that subtlety is a better option... but even as a maiar, pre-gandalf (Olorin) was pretty chill. pre-Saruman (curomo) was always a chad, basically. even if you lose your memory you still generally have the same or similar personality...

but these writers are awful so it's gandalf

ShakyJake said:

What exactly did the rings "do" to the wearers?

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it's not really super clear, but the elven rings give mastery over water, fire and air (gandalf's ring is fire, galadriel's ring is water and elrond's ring is air... though i may have those last two mixed up). they also, from what i understand, everything that you can do, with the rings you can do them better, significantly so. galadriel very often used her ring to spy on sauron mentally and he was unable to even notice she was doing it, though it was a massive strain on her. actually, i could be wrong that sauron didn't know she was doing it, but either way he was unable to stop her from doing it as well as unable to find her at all. so it was SORT of like a palantir in that regard. they also helped the elves maintain their own lands. after the one ring is destroyed, all the rings became inert basically, and rivendell and lothlorien started to fall apart and decay pretty rapidly. the elves weren't meant to stick around middle-earth for so long but a lot of them chose to stick around in order to be a bulwark against sauron. the rings helped those areas (and the elves within those lands) stay long past their expiration date.

the 9 rings for humans gave them significantly extended lifespans (could have been all the rings did that?) as well as basically extremely good luck for lack of a better description. things just worked out for the people wearing them.

the dwarven rings are... it's really hard to tell what exactly they did because there's barely anything written about them other than the rings didn't work right on them. also, initially sauron wanted all the rings to go to elves, but celebrimbor righteously screwed that plan up. so i think it's assumed that they would all have the same effect (besides the 3 elven rings), but either way the 7 dwarven rings absolutely didn't work right, specifically because dwarves fundamentally different than most every other creature.

illuvatar (basically the christian God) made the races of arda (the planet middle earth is on). aule (the smith valar... hmm, okay without getting too nerdy, [too late] illuvatar made 14 valar, who are like gods, small g, and each one of them embodied a specific trait of illuvatar. aule embodied illuvatar's craftsmanship and desire to create things) wanted to create a race too and made dwarves, but he did it without talking to illuvatar about it. so illuvatar confronted him and aule was like, whoops sorry dad, and went to smash them (they weren't "alive" yet) but illuvatar was like, no no it's fine, i'll give them the flame imperishable (basically souls) and adopt them as one of my children, they'll be good kids, but just understand that because you did all this without talking to me first, there will be times when they are at odds with the world around them (specifically elves, but that's a different topic).

SO. it's never actually made clear but i THINK because of that little line of dialogue, when the dwarves get the rings they just sort of... screw off and each clan (7 clans, it's assumed the head of the clan each got a ring, but... well there's conflicting issues with that... but again a different topic) became extreme isolationists. they became super paranoid and just stuck to their own mountains and dug and amassed treasure. the hoard that smaug collected was one or several of the dwarven hoards.

tldr:

outside of the 3 elven rings, the rings gave the wearers long life, good luck and enhanced the wearer's natural abilities... possibly more, but i don't think it's ever said specifically what they do

Hoss said:

So the 7 and 9 were made before the 3 with Sauron's help? I didn't get that from the show but I was wondering about them and it would make sense, so i'll accept it.

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yeah, sauron and celebrimbor worked together to make 16 rings (they were all meant initially for the elves) but at some point during that process, celebrimbor started to become distrustful of sauron, so like a 100 years or so later celebrimbor made the 3 rings separately and in secret. he gave them different powers but still used the same techniques so they were lacking sauron's <cursed> effect but still were ultimately linked to the one ring.

but yeah this show is AWFUL with the timeline. they have compressed SO MUCH and dragged stuff from all over the place, so you'd be forgiven for not getting something like that

Ya I think that the dwarves rings are confusing, but ultimately all the 16 rings are basically the same and it is the wearers who are different.

the elves also aren’t really fading in any physical way, they won’t die or anything if they stay in middle earth. It’s more that the power of the 3 rings made them feel more at home.

Season 1 just would have been a lot better with more focused development. If they spent the entire time on the elves and numenor and cut all the shit with the hobbits and in the south lands it would have been better. Galadriel got better as time went on with more character building and really they could have reached that point in episode 2 instead of 7 if the show wasn’t stuff with pointless side characters.

j00t said:

yeah, the first... oh... 1000 years or so of the second age not much happens. or rather, stuff happened but tolkien didn't document most of it. the next 2000+ years of the second age this show has compressed into just a few months.

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Probably less, Galadriel rode from Mordor > Eregion in 6 days.....

how do you film this and think "oh yeah, this is great"



six hours of disa singing LAWD DEM RANGZ, DEM RANGZ OF POWA woulda been more entertaining and cheaper than this shit show



didn't the last episode end with Galadriel saying "I will ride to the elven capital and bring aid to kill all the orcs!" and then spends the next 2 months not mentioning it at all to anyone i guess.

Showrunner JD Payne "When Sauron shows up, it might be in a way that people don't expect."

Everyone during episode one "Halbrand is Sauron."

Warrik said:

The show has its faults for sure, but if you take a step back, it was a pretty good watch. Things I would have done different for sure, but the finale was good.

I realize most of the clowns in this thread will push back on this but, the Harfoot were good, and the black Female dwarf was not the cringey wokefest I was expected, and was actually really well done. I wish they handled Galadriel differently, and I am not a big fan of Halbrand.

All in all, this was decent. There were absolute things I did not like, so I'm not saying this is Breaking Bad or The Wire in level of writing, but its a very, very high production Tolkein(ish) series that I did look forward to each week.

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Pretty much the way I feel. Solid 6 or 7 out of 10. I've got my complaints about the writing/lore but it never crossed the line to unwatchable for me. And the fucking visuals are frankly off the charts good. They really made Middle Earth come alive with the visuals. I see some awards in the future for those, for sure. Overall, I was interested enough to watch every Friday, which is more than I can say for most of the shit on TV these days.

Deathwing said:

Guys, you ruined their mystery box

This is the same reason Into Darkness sucked. Everyone knew Bendysnatch Cumberbunds was playing Khan.







Fuck JJ Abrams. Hack fraud.

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ha. oh man...i forgot all about that nonsens... "Are you playing Khan?" "No, absolutely not."

and then in the movie he's all "My name... (pause for overly dramatic reveal) Khan!"

NONE of those people have ANY idea who khan is or why this should be some dramatic reveal. kirk should have been like, "Who?"

Arden said:

Pretty much the way I feel. Solid 6 or 7 out of 10. I've got my complaints about the writing/lore but it never crossed the line to unwatchable for me. And the fucking visuals are frankly off the charts good. They really made Middle Earth come alive with the visuals. I see some awards in the future for those, for sure. Overall, I was interested enough to watch every Friday, which is more than I can say for most of the shit on TV these days.

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with the exception of a few specific scenes, like the reveal of Eregion in the first episode... and the slow motion shots showing the fallout of the war of wrath... i wasn't really impressed with the visuals. especially the design decisions for pretty much everything. the stuff at khazad dum is fine but the dwarf armor is silly (beard armor means they can't turn their necks at all).

i just found myself thinking, you did JUST enough research to look at armor, but not enough to understand how pieces fit together. and pj's stuff, each culture had design decisions that made sense. horses were extremely important to the people of rohan and you can see that in their armor, their clothing, their decorations. and it is NEVER explained, but you see it and it makes sense. same with gondor, same with any of the elves.

galadriel's plate armor looks right from a glance, but on closer inspection it's basically not functional at all, with random bits of bunched up chainmail in the joins which means limited flexibility at best, getting yourself killed at worst. numenorian armor has scale mail, but... only sort of. and why? they are like pseudo roman but don't use roman armor... okay, fine... they have horses on their sword pummels but they live on an island and don't have any other horse iconography... i just can't find any through line in their stuff, none of it actually makes any sense.

This show wasn't that bad.