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

The 1% who really know the material will be unhappy, and the remaining 99% will be bored. Also it’s going to get trampled by the Martin-run GOT prequel. It will be remembered as one of the biggest unforced errors in the short history of subscription streaming.

 

The problem is, most of the First Age and Second Age stories are (aside from a few crucial scenes) told in broad sweeping strokes, which do not translate well from page to screen. A TV show will inevitably need to fill in the gaps with dialogue and more "personalised" storylines, which has a high risk of looking like a fanfic, IMHO.

Edit: Which is why my expectations for this show are extremely low. I might get pleasantly surprised... but I doubt it.

 

Well, the premise of completely rearranging the timeline already makes it a billion-dollar fanfic. From a quality standpoint, it will either be good fanfic, meh fanfic or bad fanfic. But at the risk of sounding like the old man yelling at the cloud here, that's not why it shouldn't be watched. Amazon is in the leading pack that competes for worst corporation in the world. It shouldn't be earning a single cent of our money, no matter what for.

I suppose the TOS forbid me from finishing that sentence.

 

Sandman is showing that a "niche" product can pay off in spades.
This has the benefit of name recognition, but lacks the guidance of the original author, so who knows.

 

"The content IS the original author's guidance."

--William Shakespeare

You're probably generating revenue for Amazon even when you don't know you're generating revenue for Amazon.

 

For one, the fall of Numenor is just as interesting as anything else Tolkien wrote, in my view. And that's as a standalone story, without its ties to the LOTR narrative re: the kingdom of Arnor and Gondor.

Though unlike Peter Jackson's films, this does have the guidance of the Tolkien Estate - and specifically, his son Simon. Listening to how deeply the cast talks about the story, I have confidence that it's going to dive more deeply and interestingly into Tolkien than the films did. And as noted above, I think that kind of niche depth can drive a very interesting and novel TV show.

 

Also do you think it would be a good plot if Sauron rebuilt his powers by marrying an eagle princess so his descendants would be an "eagle eye" and thus even more powerful than his regular eyeball form?

 

And you call yourself human.

 

Cc: @Lordban

Here's Trystan Gravelle, playing Ar-Pharazôn (who will eventually be the last king of Númenor) discussing his character. This is a level of depth that Peter, Fran and Philippa never went into when talking about LOTR, and he's just an actor! And most of the cast talks just like this about their characters and the societies they inhabit. It's just...very encouraging stuff. And spot on in terms of its consistency with the source material. Personally, I think expectations will be significantly exceeded. Including for the very skeptical.

I'm guessing you haven't been following interviews with the showrunners and cast. As someone who's been very purist about Tolkien adaptations, I can't imagine reading better and more sophisticated things from the creators and cast.

 

This isn't encouraging to me. Pharazon's rule begins with a coup d'état, and he forces Miriel, his first cousin, into a marriage that is forbidden by the laws of Númenor.

He's not a typical man. He's a man with an almost unquenchable lust for power, and who is arrogant enough to put himself above Sauron, one of the strongest Maiar who ever existed, despite being a mortal man. Before Sauron corrupted him.

The only sophistication I see here is in how several hundred words obfuscate the actor failing to understand some fundamental truths about the original character. And if the character he is interpreting after the showrunners' vision is this "normal man", the yes, this is another proof this is only a ludicrously expensive fanfiction.

 

I’m going to enjoy something when it airs and refuse to not enjoy it bc I need something to enjoy. I don’t care if Amazon made it and just bought Roomba which I also just purchased which has an entire 3D map of my house and records it all the time and now Amazon has all that data to sell me more things and probably sells my data if Roomba hasn’t already

 

I'm guessing you haven't been following interviews with the showrunners and cast. As someone who's been very purist about Tolkien adaptations, I can say that what I've been reading and hearing is very encouraging.

Yes. You must suffer with those of us who fret over Galadriel describing her brother Finrod as having "died hunting the Enemy (Sauron)," when in fact he died fulfilling his oath to Barahir by helping his son Beren recover a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown, and just happened to run into a werewolf-shaped Sauron who killed him after an epic song contest. Get it right, show Galadriel!

You missed important context. This is the actor playing Pharazôn describing where his character is at the beginning of this 5-season television series (he has not yet committed a coup, and is simply advising Mìriel, who is ruling in her ill father's stead as queen regent), and it's his job as an actor to empathize with his character (and by typical man here, I suspect he means afraid of dying, chafing at being told what to do, concerned with his legacy, and envious of perceived elites). Pharazôn will get to where you expect him to be, for sure, as that is at the heart of the drama of Númenor's fall.

Further, you didn't address all of the other comments he made, which show that he has read and understands the dynamics behind the Akallabêth (and wherein he describes the seeds of his pride and arrogance which are a core part of his character BEFORE he ever interacts with Sauron). Sorry, but I know every inch of that story and the history of its writing (in my view, the Akallabêth is one of Tolkien's greatest pieces of writing), and you can't tell me that his comments (beyond those describing his character at the start of the story) do not strike at the heart of that story. Namely, these:

Keep in mind that this is an ACTOR talking about the Akallabêth in this way, not a writer or a Tolkien fan. Actors often have quite superficial things to say about the worlds they inhabit on screen, and this most certainly is not an example of that. He's talking about the Ban of the Valar and the gift of men (death), for Ilúvatar's sake. This isn't a typical television production.

You should be skeptical of Amazon. I am. But when the showrunners and actors say things that are highly consistent with very detailed elements of Tolkien's stories, that has to be acknowledged. The implementation of it all could still be awful. But the thinking behind a lot of it isn't.

 

I think there's been an unfair attack on "scholarly fans" in recent years in various franchises. In most cases when you have supposed "deep fans" being outspoken in criticism, there's an agenda - usually related to misogyny, racism, etc.
My only complaint about the series at this point is when they tried to spin it as a continuation of Tolkien's work. It's not. It's an adaptation, and I plan on treating it as such, much like the movies.

 

Agreed. In this case, the most outspoken critics online are Peter Jackson film fans who pretend to know who Tolkien was and what he stood for, but very quickly reveal that they are simply alt-right trolls that haven't read much of anything, nevermind Tolkien's broader works.

 

I got Galadriel and Sauron out of that. Everyone else I'd need to do a Google search on.

 

Even there, what little Tolkien did write goes disrespected. Pharazon was biding his time and gathering the strength he'd use to make his coup - it's might that made him "right", not law. And those questions were already asked by Pharazon's predecessors, ever since the days of Gimilkhor, and they already found answers. Why can't we travel here? Because the Valar so decreed. Why can't we do this? Because the Valar so decreed. Are we just second-class visitors then, to this earth that we live on? Yes, we are the Secondborn, doomed to die, while the Firstborn never die. Why can't we live forever? Because we are the victims of a great injustice.

The "might makes right" philosophy of the King's Men is what justifies their conquests of Middle-Earth, where they rule as arrogant masters; and it is the excuse not to rebel against the Valar, for in the time before Sauron came to Númenor, at least, the King's Men still understood that they did not have the strength to defy the Ban.

I'll grant that those questions being answered hundreds of years before the altered timeframe for the show doesn't help write TV. But - and indeed, this is where, again, we see an actor and not a fan - in Tolkien's writings, Pharazon is not sceptical. He already has decided what the answers were before his rule began. He's already a rebel, already wants to be king of Arda, and already wants to live forever. He just doesn't believe he can achieve the latter two - at least, until Sauron fools him into believing otherwise - but he will take everything else he can get by force.

And he does.

 

But there is nothing in what Trystan Gravelle said that contradicts any of that. As an actor, he has dug into Pharazon's soul, and he sees in him a man who is typically afraid of death, envious of the elves, resentful of the restrictions placed on his people, and concerned with his legacy. His asking those rhetorical questions clearly wasn't implying that Pharazon doesn't have the answers to those questions. He knows the answers. They are Secondborn, and the Valar have decreed restrictions on travel and lifespan, and that is an injustice in Pharazon's mind. Gravelle is saying quite clearly that these are Pharazon's feelings at the very start of the show.

Yes, the showrunners may be sort of compressing the traits of all the Adunaic rulers of Numenor into one person for the sake of drama. But what Gravelle said describes Pharazon well. Gravelle is simply speaking from his perch inside Pharazon's shoes. That's his job. My guess is that the showrunners would describe him differently, and less synpathetically. And I believe they have, though I'd need to dig a bit.

 

All your answers are in The Silmarillion. In fact, they're all in one chapter, the Tale of Beren and Luthien.

 

Is that Elvish for "Yahoo" then?

 

Err, you know that's not what Lordban is complaining about, right?

 

Wild Speculation on my part for this prediction:

However these new fantasy’s series shake out. Willow on Disney+ will be at least the second best. And it’s very likely of LotR and GoT - Andor will be the best regarded and long term most viewed of the fall 2022 fantasy series

Andor’s going to benefit from hitting the ground running with a mostly established story and time period that can explain what’s happening on the fly. The preplanned story in 24 episodes over two seasons will also keep the series streamlined and efficient. 24 episodes is enough to not rush while also maintaining urgency.

Willow is about as free as a known franchise can be. It’s a series with roughly two hours of content. It’s as open as the Empire Strikes Back was after Star Wars. Nobody may talk about it but there won’t be backlash over canon. At worst it’s probably going to be on par with the Dark Crystal series - which wouldn’t be bad at all.

 

You're probably right. It'll just look like a low-rent GOT, or a cheap LOTR knockoff, and audiences will...wait, is that a mural depicting all the rulers of Numenor along that long battlement?