#will i bash on amazon forever without regret? yes

[guarujaa]

it just baffles me. the illogic of it all.

Your show is set in the 2nd age.

You want to show Khazad-dum at its height.

You want (need) a powerful female character.

You want (need) to show how Sauron/Annatar seduced people into following him.

You want (need) Galadriel.

Galadriel in the 2nd age:

lived in Eregion with her family for a while. Celebrimbor was the lord of Eregion. Celebrimbor made the rings with Sauron.

went across the Misty Mountains (across Khazad-dum) to settle with the woodelves and spent enough time there to be able to relate to Gimli about how sad it is that it's gone, etc.

never bought into the whole "Annatar is so awesome" trend.

I mean, you have enough material for conflict and intrigue there!

Like,

Celeborn does not go with her across the Misty Mountains, because he hates dwarves -> family issues

When she relocated with her daughter, she became great among the woodelves -> you have your powerful, influential elven queen

she had contact with the dwarves -> there you have your elf-dwarf diplomatic relations

She wasn't impressed with Annatar -> you have here being right.

What are they giving us instead?

I just can't believe they are reducing Galadriel to a wandering warrior!! are having her sail to Númenor instead of Elrond! Elrond, who has a very personal connection with that island!!! You want to show the growing enmity between Númenoreans and elves? Well, what better way to show it than with the brother of Númenor's first king????

I just... don't get it.

[shonelikethesun]

To those saying "we are telling the story now" or "we should modernize it", why has not Sauron the atomic bomb or Gandalf a car or Galadriel a phone then?

Because those sound ridiculous, right? Like your reasoning is.

A story from the past or another world should reflect that. Not today or us. Period. If you don't like it, adapt something else or create a new story.

[guarujaa]

and can we also talk about how bad the marketing has been so far?

We're two months away until the show comes out. The trailer hasn't given any clue about the plot, and while showing everything like Marvel does isn't, maybe, the way, you do need to give casual viewers something. My parents are casual viewers and they saw the trailer and were like -- "meh."

Second, say anything you like about the Hobbit movies, but Peter Jackson showed his face, he showed what he was doing. Remember his production diaries? Like, I get that you can only do that with a story that everyone already knows (which is not the case with Rings of Power, because aside from the key events that Tolkien talks about, we know absolutely nothing about what's going to happen in S1) and that due to covid there are a more restrictions blah blah blah -- but we haven't seen or heard anything from the showrunners. Anything they have said we learned indirectly, through Vanity Fair and Empire magazine.

And speaking of not seeing or hearing from the showrunners, there were a bunch of influential Tolkien fans invited to London (in secret) to meet them and see exclusive footage. Then these fans shared their impressions with the broader side of the fandom. They haven't said anything about the scenes they saw (I don't think they are allowed to), but they did say that the showrunners made a really good impression and that they are really Tolkien fans. And that's great and everything, but...

Why? Why would Amazon spend that much money to fly people from all over the world to London to meet the showrunners? (Because they can afford it) Wouldn't it be smarter and cheaper to simply put McKay and Payne in front of a camera and post the video and have them talk to everyone about Tolkien and the show instead of relying on a third party to appease the fans? Because a casual viewer, a casual fan will never find out about the London event. What do they care about what some other fan has to say about it?

Not to mention that they keep reusing almost all the same images, which is just...

If this was any other company, they wouldn't be able to get away with it because of a much more limited budget. But no, Amazon can afford to throw away their money -- because they'll just get twice as much back.

Amazon and the showrunners have done nothing to win trust. Have done nothing to earn it.

What a waste of money. What a waste of time.

Fuck you, Amazon.

You know how Sauron showed up in the Second Age in a fair disguise, and got a lot of the Elves to trust him, because they didn’t know who he was and that he was evil? Yeah. Well, Amazon has released a bunch of shiny new character posters to promote their upcoming TV show about the Second Age, and some people are uncritically eating it up—either unaware of the fact, or purposefully ignoring the fact, that Amazon is one of the world’s most evil companies, and it is doing tangible harm to people and the environment right now. If their TV show is popular, it will be a massive propaganda win for them, not to mention extremely lucrative. Do you not see the irony of this? Can we not learn one thing from Tolkien’s books? Please do not support The Rings of Power. Don’t give Amazon money for it. Don’t give the show positive promotion (that includes sharing the posters). If you decide you have to watch it, then pirate it. You know, at least the Elves of Eregion didn’t know who Sauron was, and that’s why he was able to trick them into trusting him. We have access to Google and can actually find out information about Amazon, so there’s really no excuse for supporting them.

[shonelikethesun]

If you watch again the whole season, you can mark ALL the scenes as either:

not in the canon

or

against the canon

Like, the whole "adaptation" is completely new or against what was originally intended by Tolkien. And that is honestly a feat.

[guarujaa]

I appreciate the effort the actors are putting into their characters, and I think the show itself looks much better than the Hobbit did. But the script itself is... not good lol. There seems to be a lack of focus and the show is both too long and too short?? and some of the choices man, don't look like they were made by professionals. like, idk where they put their money but it wasn't in the scripts

[guarujaa]

the rings of power covers from the empire magazine are so bad lmao, so generic

[guarujaa]

Also, how convenient that all this criticism of CT comes up *after* Christopher Tolkien's death. He's no longer with us to defend himself.

Also #2: how sexist is it actually to take an established powerful female character and instead of showing her rule her realm (along with her husband) you turn her into a generic revenge-seeking wandering warrior?????

Thanks for your answer to my last question. Just going to quote part of what you said here:

But I've seen a lot of people point to this quote as part of a very convoluted argument in defense of The Rings of Power. They point to it to say, ‘See! Christopher Tolkien was wrong! The LOTR movies were great! The Rings of Power will be great too! You're worried about nothing! Shut up!' The people who say this also tend to insinuate that Christopher Tolkien was just a grumpy, miserly old man who was too harsh on other interpretations of his father's work, and that anyone criticizing The Rings of Power sounds too much like him.

I agree with your take on this, but recently I've been seeing some of the shills for the series go even further and outright claim (or at least insinuate) the C.T "changed" his father's work. One person on another social media page went as far as to claim C.T himself said his father would have written a different version of The Silmarillion altogether.

There seems to be in this line of argument an obsessive focus on Tolkien's later material (especially relating to Galadriel), paricularly in the History of Middle Earth books. Its usually followed by the less than subtle implication that Tolkien was planning on rewriting parts of the Legendarium to make Galadriel (and other characters) more like Amazon's version and The Silmarillion as we know it isn't really J.R..R Tolkien's work but his son's.

To me, it almost smacks of the type of thing conspiracy theorists come out with. The subtle and often less than subtle implication that Amazon are somehow returning to some long "hidden" or "true" version of Tolkien's work which the "evil" Christopher Tolkien hid or changed.

I don't believe a word of it of course, but this is some insidious shit. Claiming that C.T. was somehow involved in a conspiracy to change and alter his father's work and heroic Amazon have somehow unearthed the "real" version he intended to write.

I completely agree, and I don't have much to add, because you already said it! It's really insidious that some people are implying that Amazon knows Tolkien's work better than his own son. And while it's true that Tolkien's work changed and evolved throughout his lifetime, that does not give Amazon free reign to do whatever they want with it. Besides, even though there is a version of the story where Galadriel fought in the Kinslaying, that doesn't mean she'd become a wandering warrior teaming up with a random human man to hunt down Sauron, like she does in The Rings of Power. (It just doesn't make sense. She has a realm to lead.) Amazon, and its defenders, will continue to insist that canon backs them up, but it doesn't, and when that fails, they'll do exactly what you're describing—they'll claim that real Tolkien experts, like Christopher Tolkien, somehow don't understand the mythology the way Amazon does. It's sickening.

[guarujaa]

ngl, seeing this first picture :

did bring tears to my eyes, issues aside

[shonelikethesun]

They want their fanfiction but the money that come with the rights. They are clearly disregarding us fans and going for the younger audience that has barely read LOTR (or not even that).

Not my Galadriel.

it just baffles me. the illogic of it all.

Your show is set in the 2nd age.

You want to show Khazad-dum at its height.

You want (need) a powerful female character.

You want (need) to show how Sauron/Annatar seduced people into following him.

You want (need) Galadriel.

Galadriel in the 2nd age:

lived in Eregion with her family for a while. Celebrimbor was the lord of Eregion. Celebrimbor made the rings with Sauron.

went across the Misty Mountains (across Khazad-dum) to settle with the woodelves and spent enough time there to be able to relate to Gimli about how sad it is that it's gone, etc.

never bought into the whole "Annatar is so awesome" trend.

I mean, you have enough material for conflict and intrigue there!

Like,

Celeborn does not go with her across the Misty Mountains, because he hates dwarves -> family issues

When she relocated with her daughter, she became great among the woodelves -> you have your powerful, influential elven queen

she had contact with the dwarves -> there you have your elf-dwarf diplomatic relations

She wasn't impressed with Annatar -> you have here being right.

What are they giving us instead?

I just can't believe they are reducing Galadriel to a wandering warrior!! are having her sail to Númenor instead of Elrond! Elrond, who has a very personal connection with that island!!! You want to show the growing enmity between Númenoreans and elves? Well, what better way to show it than with the brother of Númenor's first king????

I just... don't get it.

[beginnerblueglass]

And the way they’re making Elrond the “ambitious politician” when that description is so much more applicable to Galadriel. And “Commander of the Northern Armies” fits way better with Elrond, not Galadriel. They just… switched them.

it just baffles me. the illogic of it all.

Your show is set in the 2nd age.

You want to show Khazad-dum at its height.

You want (need) a powerful female character.

You want (need) to show how Sauron/Annatar seduced people into following him.

You want (need) Galadriel.

Galadriel in the 2nd age:

lived in Eregion with her family for a while. Celebrimbor was the lord of Eregion. Celebrimbor made the rings with Sauron.

went across the Misty Mountains (across Khazad-dum) to settle with the woodelves and spent enough time there to be able to relate to Gimli about how sad it is that it's gone, etc.

never bought into the whole "Annatar is so awesome" trend.

I mean, you have enough material for conflict and intrigue there!

Like,

Celeborn does not go with her across the Misty Mountains, because he hates dwarves -> family issues

When she relocated with her daughter, she became great among the woodelves -> you have your powerful, influential elven queen

she had contact with the dwarves -> there you have your elf-dwarf diplomatic relations

She wasn't impressed with Annatar -> you have here being right.

What are they giving us instead?

I just can't believe they are reducing Galadriel to a wandering warrior!! are having her sail to Númenor instead of Elrond! Elrond, who has a very personal connection with that island!!! You want to show the growing enmity between Númenoreans and elves? Well, what better way to show it than with the brother of Númenor's first king????

I just... don't get it.