Amph One Thread To Rule Them All: The Rings of Power, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings & Middle-earth films

Tom Bombadil fans have never been treated so well.

 

If nothing else we'll hopefully get another really good score from Bear McCreary. I really enjoyed his work for season one.

 

Like the show, hate the show. Say what you willo. They gave us Tom Bombadillo.

Not a safe choice at all. Much respect.

 

Having now seen the new trailer since posting the above, this is even more true. Like others in here, I've been doing some season 1 rewatching. I still think it had issues, but I like most of it more now... and it does seem like the series will get better with season 2.

 

This, and scenes from the trailer, I think make clear why the showrunners had Mordor be created last season through the machinations of Adar last season, and it's actually kind of clever in terms of getting the point across, visually and narratively, about what the Rings do and why they are coveted.

Big Spoilers:

Spoiler

1. Adar destroys the Southlands to create Mordor so that his Uruks can live freely and without fear of the sun
2. Sauron helps the elves create the Rings of Powah!
3. Having been ousted from Eregion, and with no army or friends, a disguised Sauron tells Adar that the elves, with the aid of an ancient sorcerer (himself), are creating weapons (rings) that can reverse his transformation of Mordor
4. Sauron thereby manipulates Adar into attacking Eregion, the elven stronghold, in order to preemptively stop the elves and this ancient sorcerer (again, himself) from being able to wield the rings to revive Mordor's green past
5. In the meantime, Annatar Sauron manipulates the elves (via Celebrimbor) into creating a number of new rings to help ensnare the other peoples of Middle-earth (dudes and dwarves) through the promise of being able to preserve/ protect/ heal their respective realms
6. And then once Celebrimbor is of no more use to him, he lets Adar come in and destroy Eregion, thus throwing down a mighty enemy stronghold and feeling confident enough to reveal himself fully as the Dark Lord that he is. I suspect he does something similar re: the balrog and Khazad-dum, and that it ends up being less successful

I think I was also struck by how much more...dramatically authentic and consequential it felt than pretty much all the non-Andor Star Wars shows (and Mando S1 and 2). So that comparison might have helped ROP.

 

Son of Sauron confirmed.

 

A new teaser get us a look at Cirdan, maybe in Flashback as he has no beard.

 

In the lord of the rings novel it took borimir 110 days from Gondor to Rivendell but my question is, how long from the Peter Jackson version did it take boromir on his journey from there like how many days or months movie wise?

 

I don't know, but one of the things I liked in the movies is the feeling that things are a little more condensed or quicker moving. In the book, Gandalf spends months at the Minas Tirith library researching the One Ring, determines that the ring that Frodo has is indeed said ring, and then takes his sweet time getting back to warn Frodo that he needs to get out of town with it. And then Frodo takes months to do that, if I recall correctly. It's a strange lack of urgency given the circumstances.

But then of course there are other examples of things taking just as long in the movies too, and longer than it seems like they need to. Or even just the length of time that the ring spent at the bottom of the river, and then with Gollum. I get that they wanted it to fall out of recent memory and become sort of a legend, but still.

 

I know all are speculating flashback. But I think just as likely it’s the use of the Ring that reverses his aging. As reversing age/ halting time and decay is one of the main powers of the three Rings, and why the elves are drawn to them. It’s a mistake to use them, but a very attractive one.

That’s one of the main things I disliked about the movies. Middle Earth doesn’t feel like a real pre-industrial world where movement is difficult and information-gathering is slow. More like a connected series of theme parks that you can hop between quickly and easily. I have the same issue with the show, but it’s lessened a little by the long form storytelling.

First of all, Gandalf returns to Hobbiton right away once he gets his near/final proofs that the Ring is very likely the One (and then he doesn’t have final proof until it’s tossed into Frodo’s fireplace). It’s just…a long ride. And he has to make stops so his horse doesn’t keel over and die. It’s also not a strange lack of urgency as Gandalf simply isn’t sure. We know it’s urgent as readers because we know the Ring is a big deal and that it’s definitely the One. But Gandalf simply doesn’t know. And it takes a lot of digging to find out. And once he does find out, he wants to make sure nothing Frodo does raises suspicions about what he has. And so he urges Frodo to develop a plan to deflect suspicion, including the cover story of him moving to another corner of the Shire (even to the point of selling Bag End and buying a new house at Crickhollow). It all makes perfect sense in the book. It’s just not set in a modern world where information is transmitted quickly, or where it’s easy to know what the hell’s going on even a town over. It’s hard as heck for Sauron to find out where the hobbits even are, nevermind where this ring in a haystack is. So while as moderns we think get the hell out of the Shire because the dictator is coming to get you, said dictator is actually gonna take years to figure out where this so-called Baggins might be. So Gandalf prioritizes not raising suspicion or calling attention to it.

This is one of the central reasons why Tolkien’s world-building is so much better than most fantasy. It actually respects the slow and difficult information flow that you’d have in this world, which is effectively an early medieval society (apart from the Shire/ Bree anachronisms).

And it’s why so many medievalists love it. One of the few popular books that immerses the reader completely in a pre-modern world with pre-modern logic and dynamics to the whole narrative. Heck year we’re gonna stay in Rivendell for the entire winter and not leave until spring. Have you tried walking over those mountains in winter? He just refused to have his narrative steamroll over natural barriers. Which is why there’s such a naturalistic quality to the books that dramatic films and shows have struggled to capture well. It’s not easy.

 

Except, at least according to the Tale of Years, it was late winter and not spring when they entered the mountains. The Council of Elrond was 25th October, and they left Rivendell on the 25th of December, and entered Moria on the 13th of January.

 

Lol. I know, I was simplifying for effect (and also simplifying regarding their route, as they hadn’t yet decided to cross at Caradhras - a great name, by the way). There was, however, initial planning to wait until spring, but scout reports drove them to decide to depart earlier - in late winter. So that initial thinking is what I was channeling to illustrate the decision-making mind of someone traveling in a pre-modern world. That was the point. When they actually left is ultimately irrelevant.

ETA: Remember also that there was a delay as they didn’t know if the Nazgûl might still be out there. And so they wait a long while for scouts to scour far and wide to make sure they’d gone. And by the time that’s confirmed, it’s deemed prudent to wait out a chunk of winter.

 

A better example of "avoid too much winter travel" might be the fact that they spend a month (mid-January to mid-February) in Lorien.

 

True, though they didn’t quite know how much time was passing in the funky nostalgic ringworld that is Lorien.

Jokes aside, the point was simply that geography, geology and weather (together…nature) were of central importance to Tolkien’s narrative. He didn’t like detaching his characters from the earth on which (and in which) they existed. He didn’t like using the environment as just a pretty or a grim stage backdrop. It is ever-present, ever-important and all-encompassing. And that’s a major secret to the books’ success as an incredibly immersive piece of fiction. The readers have to get over that mountain too, and Tolkien ain’t helping.

 

Yeah, but who cares about all that when you can have a character just swim halfway across the Atlantic ocean like it's a no big deal, right?

 

There’s actually no indication of how far she swam, as she then chanced upon the raft. Not a narrative choice I would’ve made, but somehow, out in the water, it feels less jarring than the rapid teleportation on land. And I don’t know. It has that strange sense of wild myth about it. More Celtic than Anglo-Saxon, but that wildness somehow works for me in that context.

 

we are talking about a series where a main character fell 502,294,838 feet down a mine shaft with a fire demon and then spent literally like eight days or something climbing a staircase up an entire ****ing mountain while continuously fighting said fire demon… and DID NOT suffer altitude sickness when reaching the peak of Zirakzigil despite climbing REALLY fast #fail

Spare me that complaint.

 

he did forget his name after all that though

 

I think you’re starting to run up against translating a work of mythic fantasy literature into a commercially successful film. In a film it’s going to be inherently difficult to portray the passing of time like Tolkien is able to in his text. A film has to move forward at a pace which keeps the attention of an audience - in the text Tolkien is able to take us through the practical realities of travelling across the world much more easily than you can on film. We’re reading it almost like a real historical narrative, in part, and it works by adding depth and detail to the historical record (like you would when you’re reading historical nonfiction), whilst on film those type of details often get in the way. Unless you insert lines like “I spent months in that library, Frodo” or “three months later” as a super, that’s never going to translate well onto film. The mediums are just completely different in how they effectively tell a narrative.

 

Obviously you can’t include all the trekking in a movie or TV show, even if you’ve got ten seasons. But there are ways of portraying it efficiently, outside of rapid teleportation, that give you a good sense of it. My favorite was at the beginning of episode 5 of RoP. It’s a montage of the long harfoot journey set to a nice folk song by Poppy. Passage of time, and travails, shown nicely and in a very Tolkienian way, without giving the sense that Middle Earth is the size of Delaware. Or that the showrunners think of the geography as a merely pretty backdrop. They got that very right and it’s the sort of thing I’d have liked to see more of. They got it wrong with Elrond and Celebrimbor casually strolling to Khazad-dum. Though even there, based on how it was done, the implication is that they probably left their horses and escorts nearby, and strolled up to the gate alone because dwarves are weird and suspicious.

True. Though to be as fair as possible to those who complain about Galadriel’s swim, but not about Gandalf spelunking, the latter is essentially a semi-god and the former is not. But as I said, Galadriel swimming for days just doesn’t bother me. And I think it’s because it feels like something some crazy Irish mythological hero would’ve done, like Cuchulainn.

 

dp

 

I agree that you can do that in parts (and the films themselves do it sometimes), but given how much sheer travelling is involved in the books, it would quickly become tedious. One of the most noticeable compressions in the films was Gandalf after he first leaves the Shire and then returns. In the books it’s a very gradual opening, time-wise - Biblo’s birthday happens and Frodo receives the ring, Gandalf leaves and seventeen years later he returns to tell Frodo of the origins of the Ring, etc, and then leaves again telling Frodo he’ll be back to help him. That works in the novel, because we’re getting exposition, world building and setting up the story, and it’s more realistic that everything doesn’t just happen to start moving on Bilbo’s accord. But in the film it would not work for a fair few reasons, so they compress this - Gandalf leaves in a haste, researches, and then returns. Frankly, I never really thought about the impracticality of the travelling time, etc, even knowing the size of the world, because you’re caught up in the sweep of events. I never really felt that the world was small, because the film off-sets it by showing the sweeping landscapes of New Zealand.

What works in the book wouldn’t really work in the film, and vice versa.

 

The sad thing is - and this haunted Tolkien late in life - he never managed to reconcile the travel times in The Hobbit with Fellowship of the Ring. (Specifically, the travel time near Rivendell).

 

I agree that it would’ve been impossible to capture that sense of time and distance and slow communication in the films. Just not enough time. But that’s partly why I always thought a high-budget LOTR TV show, clocking in at about fifty hours or so, would’ve been the better way to adapt it.

That said, the time and distance compression at the start of the LOTR films is the best of it. I really enjoy the first half of FOTR, in part for that reason. Things still take time to develop, even though it’s much more reduced than in the books. I start having problems with the world presentation once Merry and Pippin bump into Frodo and Sam in the cornfield. The whole story and world feels thin for me after that. Except for Theodred’s funeral in the TTT Extended Edition. Suddenly the films really feel like Tolkien during that sequence. We just had to endure zombie Theoden and Gandalf zombie-healer first.

 

Technically altitude sickness is about lower oxygen tension and lower overall atmopsheric pressure as one ascends. If the staircase is indoors and magically sealed/pressurized (as one imagines it might be to help resist a demon's presence) then altitude sickness is no more a problem here than it is on a commerical airliner. He is technically up higher in the air but atmospheric conditions also never changed for him.

This is honestly much less implausible than the eagles thing.