Rings of Power -- all opinions and spoilers welcome thread.

[Parmandur]

No. She isn't going to get her "revenge" at the expense of Middle Earth. And she also wouldn't be rejected since she now has hard proof, not just "He's out there somewhere even though no one has seen him for a thousand years."

Sauron laid out her fears of rejection in their conversation, and as Sauron had explained to Galadriel the key to manipulating people is using their fears and giving them a perceived solution that fits your own goals.

Rewatching Halbrand is really delightful, because of how honest he is about everything he is doing.

 

[Maxperson]

Sauron laid out her fears of rejection in their conversation, and as Sauron had explained to Galadriel the key to manipulating people is using their fears and giving them a perceived solution that fits your own goals.

Bad writing had Sauron lay out fears that the the Galadriel of the show would never have given in to.

Lots of bad writing in this show.

Rewatching Halbrand is really delightful, because of how honest he is about everything he is doing.

And that's another thing. The idea of Sauron being conflicted in this way is not Tolkien at all.

 

[Parmandur]

Bad writing had Sauron lay out fears that the the Galadriel of the show would never have given in to.

Lots of bad writing in this show.

Writing that you do not enjoy ≠ bad writing. The writers spent a whole Season laying out a scenario where going through with making the three rings is the only perceived path forwards...due to hubris. It is artfully laid out.

And that's another thing. The idea of Sauron being conflicted in this way is not Tolkien at all.

Well, actually...Sauron being conflicted after the fall of Morgoth very much A Thing, even though it didn't stick. Very much like how he is in this show. And he isn't really co flicted here: he's a deeply malignant narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur made worse by being legitimately smarter and more powerful than everyone around him.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Indeed, hubris is the central theme of the while series: Numenor will fall to hubris, Khazad-Dum eill fall to Durin's hubris, Eregion will fall to hubris, etc. All the good guys are falling to hubris...though in the end that will get Sauron, too.

On the other hand I think they are making a poor job of setting it up. Let's take Khazad-Dûm. Since LotR (the films) everyone knows that "the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame." It was already set up to be a story about hubris. In the show it started well along this idea, because they had Durin III saying "no, we won't mine here, it's too dangerous and RISKS THE LIVES OF DWARVES."

Hubris would be "I like mithril, I know it could risk the lives of my subjects, but I am wise enough to mine prudently, let's extract this mithril and create many shiny things I like, and look, it works, proving that I am really the best..." until of course it no longer works.

Here we have an elf who risked his life to save dwarves lives in a mining incident, asking Durin IV to extract mithril to save EVERY SINGLE ELF LIFE IN THE WORLD. So the debate is framed as "Should we risk a few lives to save great many lives, including those of people who risked their own lives to save ours in the past?" It isn't hubris to say "yes" to the latter. If anything Durin III can't be seen as "wise" in the show, but outright evil to let innocent die (instead of say allowing the elves to dig themselves, or ask if there is any volunteer among the dwarves, one of which would be his own son...)

 

[Parmandur]

On the other hand I think they are making a poor job of setting it up. Let's take Khazad-Dûm. Since LotR (the films) everyone knows that "the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame." It was already set up to be a story about hubris. In the show it started well along this idea, because they had Durin III saying "no, we won't mine here, it's too dangerous and RISKS THE LIVES OF DWARVES."

Hubris would be "I like mithril, I know it could risk the lives of my subjects, but I am wise enough to mine prudently, let's extract this mithril and create many shiny things I like, and look, it works, proving that I am really the best..." until of course it no longer works.

Here we have an elf who risked his life to save dwarves lives in a mining incident, asking Durin IV to extract mithril to save EVERY SINGLE ELF LIFE IN THE WORLD. So the debate is framed as "Should we risk a few lives to save great many lives, including those of people who risked their own lives to save ours in the past?" It isn't hubris to say "yes" to the latter. If anything Durin III can't be seen as "wise" in the show, but outright evil to let innocent die (instead of say allowing the elves to dig themselves, or ask if there is any volunteer among the dwarves, one of which would be his own son...)

Durin III lays out his thinking to his son son, and...he is 100% correct about the fate of the Elves, based on Tolkien's work. Like, deeply right on the metaphysical end, not just atrolley car calculus. Prince Durin's hubris is denying his father's wisdom based in legitimate insight and trusting in his own power.

 

[Maxperson]

Writing that you do not enjoy ≠ bad writing.

Correct. Bad writing = bad writing, and writing a character as one way and then taking a hard left = bad writing. Jumping her off of a ship in the middle of nowhere instead of several better and more reasonable option = bad writing. Lots of bad writing here.

It's not bad writing because I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy it because it's bad writing.

The writers spent a whole Season laying out a scenario where going through with making the three rings is the only perceived path forwards...due to hubris. It is artfully laid out.

Achieving their goal through a bunch of okay writing and quite a bit of bad writing =/= artfully done.

Well, actually...Sauron being conflicted after the fall of Morgoth very much A Thing, even though it didn't stick.

He was not conflicted in the evil bastard that he was. He came out to see if he could just be forgiven without anything more the way Morgoth was in the past. He was told that he had to come and receive judgment. He ran away because he knew what a right evil bastard he was. Never in his history was he conflicted between good and evil the way the show portrays.

 

[Maxperson]

This guy is a bit over the top and heavy on the rhetoric, but he hits on a lot of the bad writing and spells out why it's bad. He's pretty accurate if you ignore the venom. I also disagree with him that as a generic fantasy show that it was still trash.

‘The Rings Of Power’ Season 1 Review: Amazon’s Arrogant Betrayal Of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’

Amazon's attempt to adapt Tolkien's Second Age was reckless, amateurish and arrogant. The result was neither good Tolkien nor good fantasy nor good storytelling. An adaptation fit only for those with little knowledge of either the source or of what makes good stories tick.

www.forbes.com

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I feel a subplot which leans into the possibility that Sauron - at least, at one time - genuinely sought some kind of forgiveness from the Valar might be intelligently leveraged. But we're way past that point in the current timeline (whenever that's supposed to be); out of pride, and a desire to avoid consequences, Sauron has blown that chance. And really, regarding his brief submission, all we have is a line "and some say that this was at first not falsely done." So we're just reading some speculation about the possible motivation of a Maia; one which is quickly refuted by his actions.

he's a deeply malignant narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur

Humanizing Elves is bad enough, but those of the Angelic order? Again, the mystery and power evaporates like a stale fart. And what we have is:

"Boo-hoo; Melkor was mean to me."

And, to Galadriel:

"Will you be my girlfriend?"

Bleh.

 

[Mercurius]

I feel a subplot which leans into the possibility that Sauron - at least, at one time - genuinely sought some kind of forgiveness from the Valar might be intelligently leveraged. But we're way past that point in the current timeline (whenever that's supposed to be); out of pride, and a desire to avoid consequences, Sauron has blown that chance. And really, regarding his brief submission, all we have is a line "and some say that this was at first not falsely done." So we're just reading some speculation about the possible motivation of a Maia; one which is quickly refuted by his actions.



Humanizing Elves is bad enough, but those of the Angelic order? Again, the mystery and power evaporates like a stale fart. And what we have is:

"Boo-hoo; Melkor was mean to me."

And, to Galadriel:

"Will you be my girlfriend?"

Bleh.

Replace "Rivendell" with "Riverdale" and you get closer to the emotional maturity level of the Rings of Power characters.

 

[OB1]

This guy is a bit over the top and heavy on the rhetoric, but he hits on a lot of the bad writing and spells out why it's bad. He's pretty accurate if you ignore the venom. I also disagree with him that as a generic fantasy show that it was still trash.

‘The Rings Of Power’ Season 1 Review: Amazon’s Arrogant Betrayal Of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’

Amazon's attempt to adapt Tolkien's Second Age was reckless, amateurish and arrogant. The result was neither good Tolkien nor good fantasy nor good storytelling. An adaptation fit only for those with little knowledge of either the source or of what makes good stories tick.

www.forbes.com

Didn't glean any insight from this article (I've gotten far more in this thread). He seems to confuse bad writing with his not personally liking the choices made by the creators. Anytime a reviewer starts going on at length about how they could have done better, I take their critique with a massive grain of salt. It's quite easy to write a paragraph or two outlining a 'better' story idea, and quite difficult to flesh that out into 40 episodes of dramatic storytelling that engages tens of millions of people.

Honestly, his critique of the coincidences at the start of the story shows that the reviewer doesn't understand storytelling at a basic level. Coincidence is often (maybe almost always) what starts a story. No one complains that the droids ended up at Luke's farm, or that Obi-wan happened to be wandering the desert when Luke was attacked by sand people. And that's because those are the events that set the story in motion. Conversely, at the end of a story, you have to have established reason behind the end happening as it does. Gollum appearing in Mount Doom to 'save' Frodo only works because of everything that had been established between Frodo, Gollum and the Ring up to that point.
As I've discussed earlier in this thread, the writer also doesn't seem to understand what a 'mystery-box' is, or the difference between a compelling use of one and a poor use. Sauron hiding his identity from Galadriel and the audience makes sense for him as a deceiver. The Stranger's identity being a mystery makes sense because he doesn't know who he is. These are mysteries that the characters and the audience are attempting to work out, and are important to the characters in the story. A bad mystery box typically doesn't have an answer to what's inside when it is conceived or is only important to the audience, and is put in only to invite speculation.

Anyhow, just want to say that I've been enjoying the discussion in this thread. As a non Tolkien reader, much of the discussion has served to illuminate my feelings on the story, which, while I enjoy, I can also understand how some may not, given the changes it has made to the source material.