The Rings of Power Post-watch Discussion (Spoilers)

Volcano.

{{ Try buckie Elthir. And keep trying until this whole series starts to make sense (this is in fact impossible and will never occur but by then you'll not really care, how do you think Ive survivied 6 episodes of this ) }}

Thanks Petty. Haven't been able to move much since my behorsing, and random words keep jumping through my broken teeth.

For a moment there water-horse-apple-bite I thought I saw a Welsh girl engulfed by a pyro-sarcastic flow.

So I FINALLY got around to watching episode 6 (why it took so long I'll cover in Things That Are Making You Crabbit), and had a realization.

See, when we see the Numenorian ships from the outside, they are each perhaps a bit bigger than your average school bus.  But when we go down below we find bunks, and stables, and workshops and kitchens and storage rooms and gypsy camps and carnivals and whorehouses and....okay maybe not workshops and kitchens, but you get the idea:

Each Numenorian ship is a TARDIS.

This explains why they can make two days travel in a single day, in order to save the day, if you follow me.  Might even explain why these magical horses can magically do a full tilt gallop for like 200 miles, or even why the dratted Numenorians knew WHY they needed to do a 200 mile gallop when just 20 minutes earlier they didn't really know what the hell they were heading to middle earth to do.

It's all the fantastic TARDIS technology.  Explains everything.  Hell, Tolkien should have just sent a Numenorian ship to take the Ring to Mt Doom.  Forget the eagles.

I could laugh at such a joke about a show that was simply silly, or one that I liked. But this mess of a show is so determined to paint itself in its marketing as a proper start-over on Tolkien's world that I find myself despising it. You don't laugh at things you despise. If you're wise you simply leave them behind and forget about them.

I'll stick with Houses of Dragons.

Uh... lol.

Celeborn is dead btw, lol. He went away to war in a suit of armour that "fit him like a clam" and then he was killed.

Nice show. Very cool.

Oh hell, I forgot. Did episode 7 happen?

Indeed it did.

I was reminded of something hilarious: the elves are all "dying" because they need to feel the light of the trees upon them--light that is supposedly trapped in mithril.

But the light of a Silmaril--a secondary rather than tertiary source of the light of the trees--goes overhead every night.
(Or for part of the year anyway. I don't remember if Tolkien's stars properly rotate position throughout the year.)

I wasn't in the mood to watch this, but on telly was an old low rated black and white horror  flick called "Mr Sardonicus" about a man who digs up his father for a lotto ticket and takes on his rictus smile, and after about an hour of that I had reached deep enough self loathing that I could finally face RoP.   The preparation took the sharp edge off the pain, but that's about all I can say about it.

Except that I've plodded through multiple episodes without saying anything, and remarkably neither has anyone else.  It's about time to break the seal.

What in the name of seven hells is Elrond doing with Yoda ears?

In hopes of getting something good out of this, the final episode of this season features a song based on the Rings poem, performed by Fiona Apple. It was written by Bear McCreary, which is unfortunate because though competent I don't think he has the musical imagination of Fiona Apple. She could have brought something as creative as this to it:



But maybe McCreary's work will be good, I hope so.

{{ Is ep 7 the last of this series? Please tell me it is, Ive had it sitting here for the last two days and Im really struggling to push myself to watch it for the sake of a review, so please let it be the last! }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Ah yes, it all makes sense now!

Amarie - you watched it finally? You poor thing.

Petty - no there is one more episode. 8 in this series.

{{ ah bollocks! }}

16 minutes of crabbit, but there's a lot of these around. I just looked at it for the title that's dealt with in the first 15 seconds.

Oh heavens no I haven't watched it. I was just refering to the comments above.

I imagine if I did watch it, I'd need to watch alone. So the room in the barn with a treadmill and a screen would be ideal... all that crabbit might have a healthy outlet.

{{ Well episode 7, everyone who needed to survive the unsurvivable did survive it, causalities amount to one of Isildur's easily forgotten mates and Miriel going blind and getting a new found passion for war.

The whole thing is kind of too ludicrous for further comment as its self evident how stupid this all is.

Anyhow we get back to Harfoots and not Gandalf reaching their grove, which has been devastated by fall out from Mount Doom being switched back on with the sword key and all the fruit is burnt and the trees destroyed. But its ok as not Gandalf can chant and tree hug and begins to cure them, unfortunately this makes a branch fall off and nearly bruise someone so the Harfoots obviously banish him for his crimes and all their bad fortune.

These Harfoots really are a horrible bunch, they talk non stop about how they never leave each other behind, Nori's dad gives a speech all about how they look out for each other and 'stay true to one another' yeah they use that line, whilst in practise they abandon people at the slightest hitch without any attempt to help them, laugh about those they have left behind and who have died under the pretence of remembrance, and in this one Poppy sings a song about a Harfoot whose daughter got turned into a snail that he then caught and not knowing it was her, ate her. Their psychotic!

Anyhow all the trees bloom overnight and produce, ripen and have perfect apples all ready for a morning harvest, and they realise they may have made a mistake sending not Gandalf away. And Lenny Henry, Nori, poppy and her mum decide to go after him, but only after the evil sisterhood of Eminem fans turn up looking for not Gandalf, who given the tree thing might be not Radagast. But either way they don't like the Harfoots telling them to bugger off so do magic and set fire to all the wagons.
And then they just leave . Offscreen sometime, presumably, without saying or doing anything else as when we come back to the Harfoots its next day and the sisterhood is gone (I am beginning to suspect the leader of them will be the Witch-King).
And that's about it for the Harfoots.

On the Elrond/Durin stuff we get stuff that's sort of better, hard to be worse, but I do feel at times that the dwarf stuff must have a different team of writers, its not that's its good, its just that's its notably better than the main story lines in its general competence of dramatic construction- it might be basic but its at least there, something you cant say for the rest, especially the Galadriel/Southlands/Numenor stuff.

The lore is nothing to do with Tolkien, nothing that is going on has anything to do with Tolkien, none of the characters save Elrond are Tolkien's, and this version is not one Tolkien ever wrote. But were this stuff in a Dungeons and Dragons style original fantasy show with Tolkienesque dwarves in it, and a magic mcguffin mineral the actual narrative sort of works. Or at least the portrayal of the friendship between Durin jnr and Elrond, and Durin jnr's and snr does.

Its nothing new or not done before, a contest of will between father and son, King and Heir, over a matter of personal principle and friendship, the father casting out the son and the son deciding perhaps its time to replace the father and make himself King, and they even go so far at to put Disa in the full Lady Macbeth role of goading him on to take direct action against his fathers rule and the promise of even more glories and powers to come if he does.

So I mean its not great  or ground breaking writing, but its more or less competent, it more or less achieves its emotional beats, if it were entirely divorced from Tolkien.
The problem of course lies in the fact it is not its own thing with a magic maguffin, its meant to be Tolkien, with his dwarves, his mithril, his history of Moria. And this, no matter its marginal improvement over the main narrative, is not Tolkien.

With the Numenor stuff, the survivors are spilt up, Isildur is squished under a burning house but he'll be fine, an exploding volcano in the face didn't do much doubt a burning house falling on him will either, but it lets Elendil be moody and weepy about it for the rest of the episode and annoyed at his Queen.

Galadriel gets teamed up with bland boy and tells him ridiculously bland sentiments dressed up as something deep and meaningful, stuff like- no point thinking about stuff you don't know the answer to. You know the really deep stuff only an elf whose seen the light of the Trees and had thousands years life experience could tell you.
And she gives him his sword, she may as well its not like anyone important is in any danger from anything up to and including volcanoes in the face the plot armour is infinite here.

But the weirdest bit is her finally mentioning Celeborn, except she thinks he's long dead having gone to fight Morgoth. So her brother dying sent her on a bloody killing spree across ME in the hunt for Sauron for centuries, but the death of her husband and father of her child (if she exist in this version) only warrants an offhand mention now? And no desire for revenge, she didn't go off avenging then? And worse they give the very personal to Tolkien story of the meeting of Beren and Luthien to a dancing Galadriel and Celeborn.
Apart from it feeling inappropriate to do so when they've shown nothing till now from Galadriel of any thoughts of her husband at all. Its an oddly placed scene, that feel shoehorned in this late in the day, this series has essentially been her story, with the rest all just feeders for it, she is the star of it, and we've had 7 hours of being with her and hearing backstory they've made up for her, and shoving this in now, in this way so offhandedly just seems to make it seem unimportant to her.

Anyhow they all meet up at a Numenoreon camp out the blast zone, where bland boys bland and miraculously healed from her wounds mother is, and the rest of the survivors- and exactly how many villagers are there? half went to join Adar, then a bunch got slaughtered by orcs at the village, then a bunch more got cooked in the volcano, but at the end there seems to be more of them than ever. They must breed faster than midges!
And not Sauron King of the Southlands is so gravely wounded with a gaping wound in his side that 'only elvish medicine can save him', fortunately this being a Numenoreon camp they can easily prepare a stretcher system and arrange a wagon or caravan with a small escort to get such an important wounded figure as their new king to treatment and save his life. If Numenoreon medicine, learned as it was from the elves could not in fact provide it for him themselves.

Nah only kidding, these Numeoreons are shit and know nothing and it doesn't matter anyway, as he's not that bad after all and can get up and walk to his horse, mount it and ride off with Galadriel, gaping wound and all.
Seriously? What the fuck is this? And if the excuse is, well he was really Sauron all along so of course he was fine, then everyone else should have been going 'how the fuck is he doing that then?' and Galadriel should be wondering, 'I just examined him two seconds ago and he was so near death only elf medicine could save him and now he's galloping a horse, that's a bit odd for a mortal man', but no, this stupidity actually just happens.

So Miriel decides to go back to Numenor and raise a huge army that's obviously going to be opposed when she gets there, and Elendil stays with a garrison to search for survivors, ie Isildur as he's the only one with the plot armour on. The survivors decide they are going to Pelargir- which apparently does exist and is, or was a Numenoreon city once? So in this version Numenor already came to ME hundreds of years ago, did all their conquering and colonising, then became total isolationists for some reason and just abandoned everything?

Then my favourite bit of the episode happens.

In the now volcanic and ash covered Southlands the orcs are taking their sunhats off and praise Adar as Ruler of the Southlands, to which he objects, saying its no longer the Southlands, when asked what is was to be called then he doesn't reply, but all the orcs take up the chant- “Adar!Adar!” and it pans up to reveal the volcano and the destroyed land, and the words 'Southland' appear on screen only to dissolve into 'Mordor'?

It may have been the buckie but I fell off my stool laughing at that point. Then the more crabbit thought hit me of wondering which Tolkien would have taken most personal offence at, giving this violent vengeful, hotheaded version of Galadriel his Tinuviel stuff, or this wonderful reveal of the linguistic origins of Mordor. I think its 50/50 myself.

So yes awful, as it has been, it seems determined to be so to the bitter end of this wretched series of un-Tolkien, made up, badly written and constructed bullshit destruction of Tolkien's work. }}

Cripes, thanks for putting up some thoughts Petty. I don't want to even bother and don't plan to finish any reviews for the other episodes. It's not worth it: picking over this tedium.

The origin of "Mordor" is not even explained, except for the implication that 'Adar' is going to name it that. No explanation of what it means, or in which tongue, etc.

{{ The whole Mordor reveal was just so funny to me, it was like theyd got to this point and thought 'how do we tell viewers this is now Mordor? Maybe have Adar reference their new land of shadow and tell his orc mate it sounds better in the Black Speech as Mordor? Nah, I know why dont we just write it on the screen and go for lunch instead?'
As a big reveal its bizarre, first by now everyone surely has worked it out, and if your watching this without watching or knowing anything about Tolkiien the scene makes no sense as in reply to asking what the land should be called all the orcs chant 'Adar' as if in repsonse to the question, but then we get Mordor as the name on screen. Its so unbelievably hopeless, cheap, lazy and pathetic. All there was left to do was laugh at it. }}

I couldn't tolerate 1 minute of those repulsive Harfoot idiots, let alone 8 episodes.

You can see that there was an attempt at some themes, but the criticism is still fair. After all, how significant to the show so far is Galadriel's Stone/Ship, Light/Darkness theme.