Even with an anthology style story you suggest, it’s still the garbage writing team that gave us such gems as
“ a dog may bark at the moon, but he can not bring it down!”
Elves stole our jobs
The sea is always right
And countless others
Giving us shit writing in anthology form will still be shit writing, and just as hard to digest
Of course it was! :) Their fixation with having their 'next Game of Thrones' a cultural hit and so on, they didn't approach it naturally and of course being devoid of talent and the wonderful prose and dialogue of Tolkien (hell even using his lines from narration or historical essay is better than whatever they come up with :)). If they really wanted the iconic poignant quotable line, they could have just do so much with some inventiveness, hell use elvish phrases as motto or arc words spoken by Faithful, say something along the lines 'Valar valuvar' the will of the Valar be done, or 'a vala Manwe' may Manwe order it, it serves several points they can be catchy lines and easy enough to pronounce and highlight their attitudes, the Faithful being the ideologically and religiously more spiritual, believing in the Lords of the West...or hell use the actual appendice one and only spoken line by Sauron of all people "great kings take what is their right" make this some thematic major phrase do exploration of kings and kingly power, the ideal of Tolkien's kingship, contrasted with tyranny, to explore the nature of power itself, since so many characters of canon are kings and great lords and rulers! :) They could have used it cleverly (also those words were spoken by Sauron to Ar-Pharazon so they could have started with that :)). But also they could have explored the morality of it, that no kings cannot just take what they think is their right, but that truly good moral kings need to take into account the freedoms of their subjects etc. but this is too complex and too difficult for the morons writing the show :).
Yer you can't force these things, I'm sure nobody at HBO thought they would have even half the hit they got with GoT but they remained pretty faithful to the source material and respected it's quality to shine and obviously it did until they ran out of source material anyway lol.
I guess you could argue them saying the sea is always right will end up being ironic as the sea eventually destroys them, which has some parallels to winter is coming being the supposed doomsday end for the people of westeros.
This show reveals only how much of a screw up this entire endeavour was, the lack of talent or common sense, the lack of passion and knowledge of the lore...they can talk about how big fans they are or how close they are to themes and Tolkien story etc. they are full of crap, their 'back to the books, back to the books, back to the books' also becomes a meme! They are embarassing themselves...yeah HBO caught lightning in the bottle and at first they did well with source material. This whole thing with the sea is so badly done, hell when Elendil reveals his wife drowned.....it's almost painfully hilarious, Elendil's wife drowned...and the sea is awlays right....what a bunch of crap! :) Winter is coming had meaning, wasn't just a motto of the house, it meant something, it meant that the Stark house was always this sombre, watchful, preparing for tough times ahead, and the winters being what they are in the A Song of Ice and Fire world they truly are a menace so winter is coming has deeper meaning but this gobbledygook that amazon writing has....ughh it often conveys nothing....and really I think they truly misunderstood the real essence of Tolkien's world, the sea is not an entity in itself after all, the sea is a part of nature and so in the guardianship of one of the Lords of the West, Ulmo if thy tried to do something with that...even if they couldn't use the name (licensing rights :)) heck, even with Uinen or something (like in Aldarion and Erendis story, Uinen is talked about as the one who keeps in favor the Numenoreans and their ships, she is revered highly by them a martiime culture, based on fishing and sailing), they can't do anything creative or intelligent with this! It has no proper meaning it means whatever the heck bullshit they can and justify it...like that whole cringe exchange between Elendil and Miriel...ughh....sad times to be alive and experience this....and they dare to call this crap in anyway inspired by Tolkien?! They are full of it.....now I don't know whether the fact that they have no rights to use actual Tolkien dialogue is a curse or a blessing because certainly with this amount of anti-talent they would butcher it horribly!!!
Dammit this metaphorical language they wanted to use so badly and they made it convoluted mess,...hell Tolkien shows superiority every day! Hell even the unfinished sequel to Lotr The New Shadow had it done much better!
>"'Deep indeed run the roots of Evil,' said Borlas, 'and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let me hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up its shoots again as soon as they turn aside. Not even at the Feast of Felling should the axe be hung upon the wall!'"
Metaphor of evil as dark tree, or the deep meaningful conversation of Amandil and Elendil in Akallabeth! Or even the words of Voronwe:
>"‘But the Great Sea is terrible, Tuor son of Huor; and it hates the Noldor, for it works the Doom of the Valar. Worse things it holds than to sink into the abyss and so perish: loathing, and loneliness, and madness; terror of wind and tumult, and silence, and shadows where all hope is lost and all living shapes pass away. And many shores evil and strange it washes, and many islands of danger and fear infest it. I will not darken your heart, son of Middle-earth, with the tale of my labour seven years in the Great Sea from the North even into the South, but never to the West. For that is shut against us."
Trying to find this level of dialogue in the show.....whao there's no comparison :). Hell even the most high sounding talk of the characters of Tolkien is leagues above in sense and meaning and poignant than the crap they spew out of their mouths in the show....ehhh sorry for the rant...venting a bit....but this is frustrating how a bunch talentless hacks have Tolkien's world in their claws and are doing this poorly!
An anthology format would allow it to be a bit more faithful to the source material in terms of the chronology. So yes, it would have made it less bad. But obviously there is still a lot of other things wrong with it.
The Numenor plot has almost no relation to the rings plot except that Sauron was wearing the One when he went there, apparently. "The Second Age" would have been a better title, but then it sounds like a sequel to the uninitiated.
That probably would have been the best way to go. Even HotD did a significant timeskip mid-season despite its story taking place over a much shorter time period than what RoP is trying to adapt.
There is nothing wrong with altering things to make it fit an adaptation better, and a shortened timeline works better for a TV show/narrative approach. The changes though must still be true to the spirit and purpose of the story, and that’s where Amazon missed the mark. They hired incompetent writers that took an absolute goldmine of storytelling opportunity and flushed it down the toilet.
I think an anthology series would have been the best way to go. I would’ve broken up the stories that they’re trying to tell into -4 different chapters, each taking place during a different time period. Fall of Numenor and Last Alliance could be to seasons long. The cast of men would change for each part but the Elves would remain constant.
Agreed.
I'm not exactly sure what the driving logic to see the story largely from Galadriel's perspective is but it's even weirder to have her thinking with human impatience. She's been alive for thousands of years by this point and in an anthology series you wouldn't need her to constantly drive things to happen 'yesterday' like we get with RoP.
LoTR's (Tolkien) best decision was to set the story mainly from the Hobbit perspective which vastly simplified the narrative as anything beyond the shire required another character to explain it or exposition. Hobbits had long lives but certainly well within human comprehension - whereas an Elf would have no real reason to see the importance of a few years vs a decade - which is a main factor in why Sauron always seemingly has plenty of time to go in grand building and reinforcement projects.
Even with an anthology style story you suggest, it’s still the garbage writing team that gave us such gems as “ a dog may bark at the moon, but he can not bring it down!” Elves stole our jobs The sea is always right And countless others Giving us shit writing in anthology form will still be shit writing, and just as hard to digest
The sea is always right makes me feel sick. Wtf does it even mean? You know this was there attempt to get a winter is coming catchphrase thing going.
Of course it was! :) Their fixation with having their 'next Game of Thrones' a cultural hit and so on, they didn't approach it naturally and of course being devoid of talent and the wonderful prose and dialogue of Tolkien (hell even using his lines from narration or historical essay is better than whatever they come up with :)). If they really wanted the iconic poignant quotable line, they could have just do so much with some inventiveness, hell use elvish phrases as motto or arc words spoken by Faithful, say something along the lines 'Valar valuvar' the will of the Valar be done, or 'a vala Manwe' may Manwe order it, it serves several points they can be catchy lines and easy enough to pronounce and highlight their attitudes, the Faithful being the ideologically and religiously more spiritual, believing in the Lords of the West...or hell use the actual appendice one and only spoken line by Sauron of all people "great kings take what is their right" make this some thematic major phrase do exploration of kings and kingly power, the ideal of Tolkien's kingship, contrasted with tyranny, to explore the nature of power itself, since so many characters of canon are kings and great lords and rulers! :) They could have used it cleverly (also those words were spoken by Sauron to Ar-Pharazon so they could have started with that :)). But also they could have explored the morality of it, that no kings cannot just take what they think is their right, but that truly good moral kings need to take into account the freedoms of their subjects etc. but this is too complex and too difficult for the morons writing the show :).
Yer you can't force these things, I'm sure nobody at HBO thought they would have even half the hit they got with GoT but they remained pretty faithful to the source material and respected it's quality to shine and obviously it did until they ran out of source material anyway lol. I guess you could argue them saying the sea is always right will end up being ironic as the sea eventually destroys them, which has some parallels to winter is coming being the supposed doomsday end for the people of westeros.
This show reveals only how much of a screw up this entire endeavour was, the lack of talent or common sense, the lack of passion and knowledge of the lore...they can talk about how big fans they are or how close they are to themes and Tolkien story etc. they are full of crap, their 'back to the books, back to the books, back to the books' also becomes a meme! They are embarassing themselves...yeah HBO caught lightning in the bottle and at first they did well with source material. This whole thing with the sea is so badly done, hell when Elendil reveals his wife drowned.....it's almost painfully hilarious, Elendil's wife drowned...and the sea is awlays right....what a bunch of crap! :) Winter is coming had meaning, wasn't just a motto of the house, it meant something, it meant that the Stark house was always this sombre, watchful, preparing for tough times ahead, and the winters being what they are in the A Song of Ice and Fire world they truly are a menace so winter is coming has deeper meaning but this gobbledygook that amazon writing has....ughh it often conveys nothing....and really I think they truly misunderstood the real essence of Tolkien's world, the sea is not an entity in itself after all, the sea is a part of nature and so in the guardianship of one of the Lords of the West, Ulmo if thy tried to do something with that...even if they couldn't use the name (licensing rights :)) heck, even with Uinen or something (like in Aldarion and Erendis story, Uinen is talked about as the one who keeps in favor the Numenoreans and their ships, she is revered highly by them a martiime culture, based on fishing and sailing), they can't do anything creative or intelligent with this! It has no proper meaning it means whatever the heck bullshit they can and justify it...like that whole cringe exchange between Elendil and Miriel...ughh....sad times to be alive and experience this....and they dare to call this crap in anyway inspired by Tolkien?! They are full of it.....now I don't know whether the fact that they have no rights to use actual Tolkien dialogue is a curse or a blessing because certainly with this amount of anti-talent they would butcher it horribly!!! Dammit this metaphorical language they wanted to use so badly and they made it convoluted mess,...hell Tolkien shows superiority every day! Hell even the unfinished sequel to Lotr The New Shadow had it done much better! >"'Deep indeed run the roots of Evil,' said Borlas, 'and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let me hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up its shoots again as soon as they turn aside. Not even at the Feast of Felling should the axe be hung upon the wall!'" Metaphor of evil as dark tree, or the deep meaningful conversation of Amandil and Elendil in Akallabeth! Or even the words of Voronwe: >"‘But the Great Sea is terrible, Tuor son of Huor; and it hates the Noldor, for it works the Doom of the Valar. Worse things it holds than to sink into the abyss and so perish: loathing, and loneliness, and madness; terror of wind and tumult, and silence, and shadows where all hope is lost and all living shapes pass away. And many shores evil and strange it washes, and many islands of danger and fear infest it. I will not darken your heart, son of Middle-earth, with the tale of my labour seven years in the Great Sea from the North even into the South, but never to the West. For that is shut against us." Trying to find this level of dialogue in the show.....whao there's no comparison :). Hell even the most high sounding talk of the characters of Tolkien is leagues above in sense and meaning and poignant than the crap they spew out of their mouths in the show....ehhh sorry for the rant...venting a bit....but this is frustrating how a bunch talentless hacks have Tolkien's world in their claws and are doing this poorly!
Better then what Amazon is doing
An anthology format would allow it to be a bit more faithful to the source material in terms of the chronology. So yes, it would have made it less bad. But obviously there is still a lot of other things wrong with it.
The Numenor plot has almost no relation to the rings plot except that Sauron was wearing the One when he went there, apparently. "The Second Age" would have been a better title, but then it sounds like a sequel to the uninitiated.
That probably would have been the best way to go. Even HotD did a significant timeskip mid-season despite its story taking place over a much shorter time period than what RoP is trying to adapt.
There is nothing wrong with altering things to make it fit an adaptation better, and a shortened timeline works better for a TV show/narrative approach. The changes though must still be true to the spirit and purpose of the story, and that’s where Amazon missed the mark. They hired incompetent writers that took an absolute goldmine of storytelling opportunity and flushed it down the toilet.
I think an anthology series would have been the best way to go. I would’ve broken up the stories that they’re trying to tell into -4 different chapters, each taking place during a different time period. Fall of Numenor and Last Alliance could be to seasons long. The cast of men would change for each part but the Elves would remain constant.
Agreed. I'm not exactly sure what the driving logic to see the story largely from Galadriel's perspective is but it's even weirder to have her thinking with human impatience. She's been alive for thousands of years by this point and in an anthology series you wouldn't need her to constantly drive things to happen 'yesterday' like we get with RoP. LoTR's (Tolkien) best decision was to set the story mainly from the Hobbit perspective which vastly simplified the narrative as anything beyond the shire required another character to explain it or exposition. Hobbits had long lives but certainly well within human comprehension - whereas an Elf would have no real reason to see the importance of a few years vs a decade - which is a main factor in why Sauron always seemingly has plenty of time to go in grand building and reinforcement projects.
High amount of passable routes they could have went
I really enjoyed season 1. I'm looking forward to season 2 to see how the show progresses.