The Rings of Power - LotR prequel streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Superomegaprime

Wondering bot
Citizen
In the lead-up to its release I was thinking that this could be a world-class flop for Amazon, but so far the quality has been high and consistent.

Why are there so many people thinking that the man with the beard - or the man on the boat - could be Sauron? Didn't they already show us Sauron's physical form in this age in the show? We know who Annatar is, so I'm just confused why I hear so much speculation online.

What I understand about Sauron, he is a shape shifter or has a bunch of alterive forms, thou much later in Tolkien's works, he looses that power, at least that is what I understand but I'm no Tolkien Schoolar!
 

Dake

Well-known member
Citizen
I'm realizing I'm really enjoying not being a "super fan" of Tolkien. I've read LOTR and the Hobbit and seen the Peter Jackson movies and that's it. Consequently, I'm enjoying this show and its world building.
 

Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen
After watching 3 episodes - that's 3 hours, pretty much the length of one LOTR theatrical movie - I can say this is a beautiful-looking show with nowhere near enough plot or character to sustain the pacing of a prestige streaming series. Next episode apparently will have Sauron. It feels like a chore to have to watch it just to see him.
 

Ryougabot

Well-known member
Citizen
rop copy.jpg
 

Thylacine 2000

Well-known member
Citizen
After watching 3 episodes - that's 3 hours, pretty much the length of one LOTR theatrical movie - I can say this is a beautiful-looking show with nowhere near enough plot or character to sustain the pacing of a prestige streaming series. Next episode apparently will have Sauron. It feels like a chore to have to watch it just to see him.
I was wrong - it isn't Sauron, it's "Adar the dark elf." I fastforwarded through half of the episode and it still felt like an hour. I'm done with this and with HOTD too. I just started watching The Wire for the very first time, how refreshing to see a show based on an actual script instead of memberberries.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
I watched ep1-2 and I found it very exciting! Well, more exciting than ep1-2 of House of the Dragon (I actually stopped in the middle of ep2 cuz I found that boring).

Folks found eps1-3 of RoP slow? Well, it did slow down at ep2 cuz they were shuffling the characters. Get to land already, geez!

Soooo I haven't seen ep3 but am guessing that's Gandalf? And the father is a whatever a pre Nazgul is?

Why is that harfoot named Nori? Isn't that the name of one of the dwarves in Bilbo's journey? Ori, Nori and Dori? (Oin, Gloin, Kili, Fili, Balin, Dwalin, Thorin, argh I forgot that last rhyming names).

No Asians that I noticed. Southeast Asians?
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
(I forgot Bifur, Bofur and Bombur)

Saw up to ep5. I actually don't have a character that I prefer to follow.

Galadriel was great at the start but it got all political. I just roll my eyes at the coincidence of her companion. The son who wants to go to war reminds me of the poor son in the third Kingsman movie; he didn't expect war to be so bad.

Elrond and his friend were funny but not exciting.

Nori and not-Gandalf don't have a lot of scenes yet. Why ice magic? Does Saruman do ice magic? I don't even know the timeline.

The dark elf gets the most action (well, he probably wants more action but, well, tensions) but his predicament is going to turn into a siege. I liked it better when he was solo. The hilt is intriguing but I'm not into the bearer.
 

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
People really need to remember that Tolkien didn't publish "The Silmarillion". It was cobbled together by his son after he died for some mixture of "To Make MONEY!" and "Because the fans will appreciate it". Christopher made some of it up to fit things together and I doubt there is much indication of what Tolkien would have discarded and kept if he were actually preparing it for publication himself.

That said, JRR wasn't God. His son can make a book too. I know. But since we aren't talking about real history (where there still is often room for debate!), a story can be told differently and it doesn't make it a lie because it was always a lie. I haven't heard of anything that contradicted the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. And even if it DID, go back a couple sentences. It isn't a prequel to Jackson's movies. It might not even be a prequel to Tolkien's books. They can change whatever premise they want as long as they make a good story.
 

Dake

Well-known member
Citizen
Yep. But you've also got people fighting about changes to random EU books in Star Wars media and Tolkien's been around for way longer.
 

Ultra Magnus13

Active member
Citizen
"Like butter scraped over too much bread" describes this season pretty well. It's certainly not bad, but often needlessly long.
 

Pale Rider

...and Hell followed with him.
Citizen
Even the recent vidoe games with the sexy Shelob looked and felt more like Tolkien (by way of Peter Jackson) to me than this pablum.
 

Cybersnark

Well-known member
Citizen
Yep. But you've also got people fighting about changes to random EU books in Star Wars media and Tolkien's been around for way longer.
Though it's important to realize --especially for us Transformers fans-- that this is the first real "reboot" the LotR franchise has been through.

That's part of why people are losing their minds over the changes to the SACRED CANON of Tolkien's books. We all got this out of our systems back in the 90s, and even the Star Wars fandom has mostly settled down now that we're ten years past the Disneyfication.

Middle-Earth's single authorially-established Canon has been around for almost a century (The Hobbit was first published in 1937), and every adaptation since then has been scored entirely on how well it hews to this gospel. This is the first actual re-imagining that fandom's ever had to face.
 

Dake

Well-known member
Citizen
I suppose, though also this very site still has people arguing about EU SW stuff every time a D+ show adapts, updates, or otherwise changes something so no, that's never going away. 😂
 

Covert Agent Rodimal

Active member
Citizen
I find myself loving this show. The stuff with Nuemenor happening so quickly kinda bugs me, but not that much. Most of the Second Age in the book is this person did this, next person did this, no real details and the second age is super long means you're forced to condence or have nothing happen for the first 8 to 16 episode except one Elf doing something kinda important. On the flip side, the formation of Mordor and the fall of the Isle is important, but get to the forging of the RINGS already!

Out
 

Superomegaprime

Wondering bot
Citizen
Though it's important to realize --especially for us Transformers fans-- that this is the first real "reboot" the LotR franchise has been through.

That's part of why people are losing their minds over the changes to the SACRED CANON of Tolkien's books. We all got this out of our systems back in the 90s, and even the Star Wars fandom has mostly settled down now that we're ten years past the Disneyfication.

Middle-Earth's single authorially-established Canon has been around for almost a century (The Hobbit was first published in 1937), and every adaptation since then has been scored entirely on how well it hews to this gospel. This is the first actual re-imagining that fandom's ever had to face.

A lot of people have deadicated their lives to studying Tolkien's work, after all, it was the man's life's work and its widely seen as the foundation for all modern fanstasy, this series is meant to be based upon the Appendices which effectively is a bunch of extras in the back of Return of the King, but the people in charge, clearly not bothered to actually read them or study what Tolkien wrote and they wrote a bunch of nonsance, such as a sword handle that cannot be destoryed and is the key to a dam that sends water into a moutain and create mount doom, when in the books its Tolkien's verison of the Devil who created it and Mordor using his dark powers, yet, why don't they just use catapults to break the dam instead, then again, why is a tower held together by rope?

When Tolkien started working on the Hobbit and LOTR, he was trying to create a mythos for England, his son held the keys after his death, but when he retired and evenly passed, Tolkien's grandson takes charge of the estate and he has a distaste for his Grandfather & Father's legacies and for them, its all about the money! This series is pretty much Tolkien in name only and has very little to actually do with Tolkien's work, thou Amazon should really be embarrassed by this series, its meant to be the most expensive show ever, but it looks cheep, badly shot in places, the writing is terrible, but then that can be expected as the people in charge, don't have anything to their names of worth note aside from a bunch of stuff that never made it into production!

In my humble view, Amazon made a ton of mistakes with this series, one of those mistakes being going for five seasons before the first one has been made, its much like how Rian Johnson was promised a trilogy of films before the Last Jedi came out to fan backlash over how it treats the hero of the original trilogy, it never should happen, so to reboot Tolkien's work is much like taking Optimus prime and instead of making him the great leader we all know, he made a minor grunt and killed off in the first couple of minutes of the series and have Zarak be the leader of the Autobots while Wheelie leads the Decepticons, Hasbro learned a painful lesson after the original Transformers movie back in 86 which is why Op got revived at the end of season 3 as an attempt to win fans back over and that was before the internet!

Rebooting can work, but not when something is extremely beloved and those in charge do not know or care about it, let alone want to honour what comes before, or been established and show a disrespect for the fandom at large, in some ways, this is a lot like the Last Jedi backlash all over again, but all the name calling and insuilts via their anti-marketing campain, is not going to work very well as the word of mouth, is stronger than the Hollywood hit pieces that been put out, one of those hit pieces label the fandom as "Patnetly evil", besides, JRR Tolkien's work will stand the test of time, unlike this show, it will quickly be forgotten because its a walking disaster, I can't really picture season 2 saving it when the word of mouth is extremely negative and Amazon's approch to try and silence their REAL critics hasn't worked and this show, has been beaten, not only by House of the Dragon but another bad show, in the form of She-Hulk from what I gather!
 

Ryougabot

Well-known member
Citizen
I wonder if Galadriel's arc is to start as an unlike-able, revenge driven, selfish, evil swordmaiden and end as what we see in the Jackson movies. It took episode 7 for her to realize that being ROP Galadriel didn't work out well for anyone.
 

Superomegaprime

Wondering bot
Citizen
I wonder if Galadriel's arc is to start as an unlike-able, revenge driven, selfish, evil swordmaiden and end as what we see in the Jackson movies. It took episode 7 for her to realize that being ROP Galadriel didn't work out well for anyone.

I doult it as the writers don't really seem to have a clue what they are doing outside of trying to copy the Jackson films
 

Ryougabot

Well-known member
Citizen
I doult it as the writers don't really seem to have a clue what they are doing outside of trying to copy the Jackson films
If they could pull that off, that would be amazing writing. The future will reveal...

This show needs something, maybe Mando could show up and save the ratings, he did it before.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Finished it. I kinda expected the finale ep to be bigger but I guess the big moments were enough.

Ep6 had the big action, which was great. Gut twist at the end but yeah, it just opened a dam?

Yay for Nori's side of the story (still would have been way better if they picked a different name). I thought the worst but this isn't house of the dragon.

I didn't care about the sons. If they went away, big deal to me.

I don't get the dwarf king being a bonehead.

What the hex are the gems? Marketability?

Loved seeing Sauron but also, hahaha. I wanna the fanfiction now.

So, are they continuing it? Was is a success?
 


Top Bottom