I dunno... it's just... too obvious? I won't be upset or anything if that is the case, as canonically it makes the most sense beyond Blue Wizard, but it would just be such an uninteresting choice.

 

Honestly, 6/10. Love Morfydd Clark. Love some of the CG (TREES!). But well, my problems really start coming after that.

Spoiler

I hate flipping off swords and bouncing around like a bunny on speed for fights. Do better Amazon. The dialogue is clunky, I mean really, 'Elf lords only'? and a lot of it feels super duper forced. Also the CG varies from the heights of the trees to the simple badness of attempting to sail into the West and with this budget that is just totally unacceptable. It all feels too generic right now and that is the ultimate sin in my eyes. I'll give ep.2 a watch and come back after that but thus far, it doesn't feel like Tolkien for me.

 

My bet on the stranger is

Spoiler

being Gandalf.

it’s not really super lore friendly, but makes most sense to me.

Option I would adore the most though

Spoiler

Tom Bombadil

 

Fuck no, I fucking hate him.

 

Do you hateadil-o him?

Don't think there is much chance of it though. He was in Arda since the creation.

 

Why do you hate good ol' Bombadillo?
By water, wood and hill, by the reed and willow,
By fire, sun and moon, harken now and hear us!
Come, Tom Bombadil, for our need is near us!

 

Blue Wizard Blue Wizard Blue Wizaaaaaaaaaard.

 

Seems a bit of a stretch?

 

It's not going to be a Blue Wizard. It's either Sauron or Gandalf because it's the only revelation of the mystery that will be worth the build up to an average person.

 

Yeah I lean towards Gandalf as well.

I wonder if Cirdan will still get the narya ring and then bequeath it to Gandalf as canon or if they'll bypass Cirdan altogether and go to gandalf being involved more in the forging.

 

Probably will give it to Gandalf and I wouldn't be surprised if Vilya went to Elrond. It skips in between people, but it makes for a better scene in this series when Celebrimbor will gift them to three main characters to help them fight Sauron.

 

Cirdan is confirmed for next season

 

I think they are going to go with teasing the Stranger as Sauron and then the reveal is he is someone else.

Overall, absolutely loved both episodes. I had 0 expectations. Hated what Amazon did to the Wheel of Time and was so amazed how these two episodes were I was literally shaking during them.

Cant wait for more.

 

Loved everything, absolutely everything, with one exception. The background CGI in the elven kingdom scenes is absolutely atrocious, I haven't seen such a glaring case of green screen since Black Widow, didn't think it was possible with a budget this massive to push out made for TV effects. Khazad-Dum looked amazing in comparison and the human and Harfoot scenes are all practical with the exception of the horizon and that is easily fixed.

The dwarves are fantastic, the rough manners and grouchy behaviour contrasts beautifully with their majestic kingdom, I want to see more of their setting and some callbacks to Moria from the films. Is that blue-white glowy thing in the box meant to be a Silmaril? Could it really be anything else? Durin and Disa are great, love their chemistry.

The Harfoots are just great, it really is a travelling mini-shire, eveything about them exudes a laid-back comfyness and easy-going life. Nori is just the best, adventurous Hobbits are best Hobbits. Poppy is great sidekick material.

I agree the prologue was way too thin but to do it proper justice it'd have to be AT LEAST a full episode, hopefully they'll sprinkle some more background lore throughout the season but I feel like they missed their greatest shot and with only 8 episodes that's probably all we're gonna get.

The animosity between the descendants of Morgoth's human followers and the elves is great as well as the tiny easter eggs hidden in the village, like the mural of an eagle eating a man, Dark Lord propaganda is A+. I can't wait to see the Cult of Morgoth growing in power in Numenor until it explodes into a theocratic hellscape with daily human sacrifices that'd make the Aztecs look like Mormons.

Orc looked proper scary, and what's been revealed in the trailers sets a damn high bar for practical make-up effects.

The Stranger keeps jumping back and forth between friend and foe, I love that teasing! He had moments reminiscent of Gandalf when angered, the arrival in the form of a falling fiery star from the sky is positively Luciferian, the speaking to fire-flies was another Gandalf moment until he basically sucked their life out of them. I hope they keep teasing that throughout the season and leave the reveal to the final episode or as a cliff-hanger for season 2.

The elven scenes are tarnished by the weak background effects and wonky lighting that takes me straight out of it but the actors are all killing it, especially Morfydd and Robert, you can see hints of the persons they are gonna be in a couple of thousand years. Charles as Celebrimbor is gonna be central to the plot of show so I hope the give him plenty of great material to work with, the forging of the rings is probably gonna be one of the most anticipated episodes of this show.

 

Lotr has the best memes.

Going by Ben Walker's words, most of the Lindon sets were practical, which would be why the skyline looks a little fake in comparison

Pretty sure it was mithril

 

I watched the first two episodes, and I've had some time to think about them, and to look at some of the discussions around them.

First of all, my general thoughts are that the showrunners have made an honest and well-intentioned effort to adhere to the feel of Tolkien, even despite the simple fact that modern media expectations don't really match up with it all that well. The sets are impressive, the CGI is lovely even though it's obvious that the sheer amount of CGI left them a little short of time (and the artists in question probably a lot short of sleep). There's a definite and obvious disconnect between some of the sets and the background CGI in some scenes that could probably have been improved with more time.

The dialogue is... a decent attempt at Tolkien-like. It has to tread a line between Tolkien-ish, and actually workable dialogue in a mainstream TV show, and just about manages it. It has bits which feel a little clumsy, or like shallow simulacra of what Tolkien might have written, but the feel is there, and the effort was made.

This might sound negative, but honestly, I think they've done as good a job as the Jackson movies did, perhaps even better. Jackson had much more Tolkien content and dialogue to draw from.

So, in general, I am happy with what we've seen so far.

That's not to say that there aren't aspects which require quite a lot of charitable interpretation to make work, however.

Probably the most glaring, for me, is the way the journey West is portrayed. I do not like the fact that Gil-Galad seems to be able to use it as a reward, and I really do not like the fact that Galadriel opted to jump off into the sea, thousands of miles from land, when she changed her mind.

However, if we disregard the issues of Galadriel's possible banishment from Valinor by the Valar (a ban which Gil-Galad would surely not have the authority to lift), I can maybe see how this can fit. It seems clear to me that there is some level of power struggle going on between Gil-Galad and Galadriel, and by the character expressions and reactions, it seems like Gil-Galad's 'gift' is really a banishment in all but name. He and his lords want to be able to focus their efforts on building a peacetime nation while Galadriel, and any who may be loyal to her, stand in the way of this desire. Giving her the 'honour' of fucking off to Valinor probably seemed like a nice way to get rid of her as a potential rival, while also maybe bringing any supporters she might have over to him by default.

Then there's the issue of the ban itself. Its nature, and if it even exists in any real sense (or if it is simply self-imposed by Galadriel) is an open question, and one with many different answers depending on which era of Tolkien's writing you subscribe to. In his earlier writings she was a leader of the Noldor, and not forgiven at the end of the First Age, but in his later writings she became gradually more opposed to Feanor, to the point of actively fighting against the Feanorians at Alqualonde. In those later writings, any 'ban' is imposed only by her own pride and ambition.

If we go with the self-imposed ban, then Rings of Power doesn't really fall afoul of much of the associated metaphysical canon. It can even be used as a re-justification for Galadriel's later 'test'. On the other hand, if that is the case, then she 'failed' this time which suggests that her choice here may indeed have some important role in bringing Sauron into his strength once more.

I still find it hard to accept her simply jumping into the sea, however. Couldn't she have turned it down, been denied reinforcements by an insulted Gil-Galad, then blagged a boat to take her north instead only to be wrecked by the sea serpent? Almost everything could have been kept the same, without her doing something so stupid as jumping into the ocean.

Next is the Stranger. I'm really on the fence about him. The way I see it, he can be Sauron, or he can be some other Maia (whether Gandalf or a Blue Wizard). My issue is, that they've gone hard on making him look sinister. Cold fire (specifically noted by Galadriel earlier as a sign of evil), and killing the fireflies after using them to make the constellation are pretty cut-and-dried signs of not being a great dude.

Now, if he's Sauron, we have to ask why he's so useless. As Sauron is his own boss, why would he choose to drop out of the sky in a fireball seen across the entire continent, to then wander around for a while in rags, seemingly unable to speak the local language? To be honest, it being any other Maiar presents very similar questions. Why on earth would the Valar just fucking yeet one of their servants into Middle-earth like that?

Really, the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me is that he's Sauron, and that he either was seriously diminished during Morgoth's defeat, and that this will be the very beginning of his true bodily return, or he is playing a long game, and setting up a strong backstory for himself so that when he eventually makes his way to Lindon or Eregion, he has some clout. If this is the case, I fully expect him to present himself as an emissary of the Valar.

But if he does prove to be Sauron, I feel like it'll seem pretty obvious (though given the number of other theories flying around, maybe it's not so obvious). If he's not Sauron, then the showrunners are pulling some pretty bullshit moves to make us think he might be. They've set up literally one Sauron connection so far (evil makes the fires burn cold) and then linked it to The Stranger. If that is meant to be purely coincidental, then I'm not going to be happy at the blatant manipulation of the audience.

Dunno who this Halbrand guy is. Seems like a bit of a dick. Theo too. Wonder if they're related.

The final thing I'll say is that I'm actually generally okay with Galadriel's characterisation (outside of the jumping into the ocean author fiat). What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that These events are ~5000 years before the War of the Ring. If we use Tolkien's entirely egregious age conversion maths, Galadriel during Rings of Power is 35 in Elf-Years, when she would be 72 in Elf-years by the time of the War of the Ring. During that time her knowledge and wisdom should continue to grow gradually, so she is necessarily less wise and less knowledgeable during Rings of Power than she is during the Lord of the Rings.

She has a gift of insight, yes, but what she does with that insight as a younger Elf might not always be for the best.

All of this is to say that there's nothing so far that jumps out to me as bad (well, apart from the jumping out of the boat thing which I can only really excuse by imagining that it is in some way divinely inspired). There are a few things which may turn out to annoy me if they're not handled intelligently but for the time being, I'm still willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.

 

Re ban of the Valar, sailing west etc. I think one simply has to accept that this is an AU not the pure canon universe and that the different dynamics of sailing west are one of the changes that have been made. There's no way to reconcile it with the text and I don't think the makers of the show intend us to even try to reconcile it with the text, because 100% faithfulness to the text is not their guiding principle.

 

Wife went on a LOTR binge after the two episodes and it definitely made the scene in Return of the King where Galadriel and Frodo head off to the west hit much harder.

I think perhaps the response should be is that as much as they want to keep to the lore, this series will mesh/jive much better with the movies than the books.

Which honestly raises the question of...if it maintains high quality, do I just start my future kids with the tv show and then lead into the Hobbit/LOTR trilogy.

 

Hmm. There is a very notable lack of mentions of Valar (apart from Morgoth). As far as I can remember, the only mention of them so far has been in Finrod's battle cry: "Valaron kalanen!"

Perhaps this is indicative of a decision to paint the Valar as much more distant than they were in the First Age, with their concrete actions either being glossed over or ignored, and their areas of authority being either reduced or assigned to secular authorities.

On the other hand, maybe you could argue that Elves may choose to travel West as they will, but that members of the army are not free to do so and that Galadriel and her group are meant to be a symbolic gesture to all the other Elves who have spent decades or centuries in the army that their 'conscription' is at an end. At the same time, Gil-Galad takes the opportunity to offer an 'honourable discharge' to a particular thorn in his side.

I'm not sure which I prefer, to be honest.

 

I suspect their reasoning was more as follows:

1. By giving the power to Gil-galad and enabling it to be used as a form of disguised banishment, you set the scene for a more interesting Galadriel vs. Gil-galad dynamic.

2. By making the journey west literally, physically blocked, and not just banned by the law of the Valar, you simplify the exposition burden regarding Numenor and their inability to sail west.

3. Watchers of the PJ movies are already familiar with the idea of being granted permission to journey west as a form of reward doled out to rare individuals (i.e. Frodo), so you work with the assumptions of the average viewer rather than having to change them.