Amph One Thread To Rule Them All: The Rings of Power + The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings Trilogies

Is Saruman going to play a big role in the necromancer plot?

 

Quoted for awesomeness. The linked analysis is quite thorough and insightful.

 

Isn't he already doing so?

 

Nobody knows.


But it is established that Galadriel is the one who...

Spoiler: Spoiler

destroyed Dol Guldor using some awesome Elven magic off-screen during Lord of the Rings... somehow she does by herself to Dol Guldor what we saw the destruction of the One Ring do to Mordor

...so I could see that being pushed up in the timeline to the Hobbit trilogy.



I wonder how they reconcile Gandalf meeting up with Thrain and receiving the key (and I'm pretty sure we saw him fighting an insane Thrain at Dol Guldor during one of the trailers) with the fact that Gandalf only recently learned about the Necromancer at Dol Guldor from Radagast. Or did he already know something was up there, but only when Radagast showed him the morgul blade did he think it could be much more serious?

 

I really hope they can show Saruman's change well, and give Arwen a cameo.

 

Not sure Christopher Lee is suited to much more than sitting about in a chair now, he's not exactly young.

 

Sure, but they young-stunt-performer-CGI'd him as Dooku, why not as Saruman?

 

Wondering this myself. It rather removes Radagast's usefulness in the first film if Gandalf already knew about Dol Guldur (which he is supposed to know in book chronology, but it's warped in the movie) and he knew Greenwood was called Mirkwood before Brownie showed up to warn him.

 

Depends how much he is supposed to exert himself, if it consists of pointing his staff at things in an angry way and falling over like he did in LOTR then I'm sure Lee is mostly suited to that

If he was going to be flipping about Yoda-style and magic-bombing people all over the place I think some CGI impersonating would be in order. But that seems unlikely somehow.

 

There's sure to be a confrontation between the White Council and the Necromancer at Dol Guldur; it happened in canonical chronology, and is too good an opportunity to show off Weta's nifty effects artistry for Jackson to pass up.

So yes, I fully expect Saruman to be magic-bombing... someone. Hopefully he can avoid the temptation to do any Yoda flips, though.

 

I want him to do a handstand, his robe falling to reveal he really is Saruman the white.

 

Tolkien would be so proud.

 

I don't mind that, but I hope they can show how did he turn from the most powerful and noble Istari to the betrayer we saw in LotR trilogy.

 

He heard Helen Slater wasn't cast as Superman's mother and went into a rage.

 

Well, Jackson is already portraying Saruman as suspicious of others' motives and pseudo-skeptical of rational facts. From that basic persona it's but a short leap to his belief that "siding with the Enemy is the only way to save us all" and "we can use the Ring against Sauron and take over his power". In short, he's delusional and ill-tempered by nature.

 

I think that's because he believes only power could make justice and peace, it's a bit like Dooku.

 

By the time of The Hobbit, Saruman has already "changed", if by "changed" we mean that he has become covetous of the Ring and duplicitous in pursuit of this end, though the viewer may not be aware of this. But in the chronology of the books he doesn't become a thrall of Sauron until around Third Age 3000 when he uses the palantir and becomes ensnared.

According to wikipedia, The Peoples of Middle-earth. ( I should clarify, if necessary, that these are merely an alternate set of names for the same characters, not an additional pair of wizards. )

 

I was kind of hoping they'd show a wise and powerful Saruman at the beginning of this trilogy, and then his encounter with the Necromancer makes him begin to question, and he finds the palantir. But he seems to have started off already very arrogant and deluded. Though, to be fair, he was always a bit proud according to Tolkien (Saruman volunteered to be in the Istari while Gandalf didn't think he was worthy and had to be talked into becoming one of the 5 Wizards). But the first Hobbit movie makes me wonder if he's already secretly on Sauron's side.

 

Agreed, Saruman (or Dooku) is prideful and imagines himself superior to lesser creatures, which appears to include everyone except Sauron (or Sidious), at least in his own mind. For such a person the only weapon that makes sense is the most powerful weapon obtainable -- namely, the Ring (or the Dark Side). And the only way to quell the rabble is to use the weapon and subjugate them into a Pax Romana.

 

I know what you mean. It would have been interesting to see a "good" Saruman, one that could have justified Gandalf's favorable opinion of him in FOTR (think McKellan's relieved decision to go to the head of his order: "He'll know what to do!"). But as we've seen and commented on, Saruman is already a prideful schmoo in TH:AUJ. I think that's a lost opportunity for a more subtle character arc, but Jackson is clearly going with broad stereotypes (not necessarily a bad thing) rather than nuanced development.

 

Yeah, Sir Christoper Lee also wanted to portray the "good" Saruman.

Same problem with Dooku, if we could see him as the passionate Jedi Master in EP I, too bad.

 

I too was a bit disappointed in the Hobbit when Saruman immediately jumped into arrogant bastard mode. Seeing Saruman as the man Gandalf described would have been tragic.


I'm not sure how the Dol Guldur stuff will play out. I know I saw some clip on an entertainment show a month ago showing Gandalf wandering around in there only to bump into Radagast. Then the two read some stuff on the walls saying something like "here rests the leader of the nine" or whatever. But to their horror, the tomb was opened from within! But that was the end of the clip.

 

Ah, so that explains that. But will Thrain be there too? Or did Gandalf already meet him (thereby acquiring the Key)? And if so, where? And whatever the answers, why can't Jackson simply present Tolkien's fiction on-screen with minor tweaks in presentation, rather than mangling the chronology for the fans?

 

7 months left till DOS

 

To be fair, at least some of the "mangling" arguably makes sense. Consider the Dol Guldur situation: in the book chronology Sauron had already been discovered there and driven out, and then in the timeframe leading up to The Hobbit it's happening all over again. And Gandalf must go to Dol Guldur all over again, and discover the same secret he discovered before. The lingering impression created by reading that part of the Tale of Years is of the White Council dithering somewhat uselessly for around a century or more. I guess that's understandable for characters who've lived for thousands of years, but compressing the whole process for the sake of a film trilogy was a defensible move IMO.