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

[FitzTheRuke]

"Combining it with other ores to stretch it out" isn't "alloy it with another metal to make it work." He planted a seed, rather than giving the solution.

Sorry, how is that not the same thing? I'm not sure there's any suggestion Halbrand could have made that wouldn't make a Master Elf Smith look like an idiot for not having thought of. He should have thought of everything.

The "try it softer" part worked for me, though. It's easy to make the mistake of trying "too hard'.

 

[Ryujin]

Sorry, how is that not the same thing? I'm not sure there's any suggestion Halbrand could have made that wouldn't make a Master Elf Smith look like an idiot for not having thought of. He should have thought of everything.

The "try it softer" part worked for me, though. It's easy to make the mistake of trying "too hard'.

It's not the same thing because it's the difference between a "less skilled and knowledgeable" smith suggesting that 'if you don't have enough of the good stuff you dilute it', and 'if the stuff doesn't work then mix it with something that will make it do.' Suggest something that skirts the edge of what you want the 'brilliant smith' to realize and suddenly he has a 'brilliant idea that's all his own.'

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I agree that "combine it with other metals" is exactly the suggestion to make an alloy.

It would be more subtle to have Halbrand lament: "It sucks that your existence-protecting metal is in so few quantity and nobody is skilled enough to create an alloy that would retain this mystical quality, as mithril will certainly refuse to meld with base metal..." and Celebrimbor "Yes moron, I thought of it already" . Thinking... "But why limit myself to base metal, hey galadriel, I just happened to see your dagger, hand over your gold from Valinor please, I am a pure genius".

 

[Ryujin]

I agree that "combine it with other metals" is exactly the suggestion to make an alloy.

It would be more subtle to have Halbrand lament: "It sucks that your existence-protecting metal is in so few quantity and nobody is skilled enough to create an alloy that would retain this mystical quality, as mithril will certainly refuse to meld with base metal..." and Celebrimbor "Yes moron, I thought of it already" . Thinking... "But why limit myself to base metal, hey galadriel, I just happened to see your dagger, hand over your gold from Valinor please, I am a pure genius".

Yes, the idea to make an alloy is the same. The reason is different, which is where I see subterfuge.

 

[Maxperson]

"Combining it with other ores to stretch it out" isn't "alloy it with another metal to make it work." He planted a seed, rather than giving the solution.

What do you think combining multiple ores together to make more metal than one metal alone is, if it's not making an alloy?

OK, the first and third are immediately off the table. The second may or may not contain sufficient information to make the conclusions that you have made. My memory says no, though it's been a while.

The first and third are not off the table in any way. They can't be used for specific events, but there's no specific events in "how Tolkien elves act." or "How Galadriel behaves."

 

[Maxperson]

The "try it softer" part worked for me, though. It's easy to make the mistake of trying "too hard'.

I still don't buy it. He's not just a master smith. This particular smith was so good that other grand masters look up to him for advice because he was far beyond them. He would have tried hard, medium, soft, kinda soft but not quite medium...

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I still don't buy it. He's not just a master smith. This particular smith was so good that other grand masters look up to him for advice because he was far beyond them. He would have tried hard, medium, soft, kinda soft but not quite medium...

I liked the specific verbal interaction where Halbrand nudged Celebrimbor, but found that the circumstances which led to its coming about to be rather contrived or implausible. Given what we can glean of Celebrimbor's prideful character in the books, even had he deigned to interact with Halbrand, I would have expected his reaction to be more along the lines of:

"Who is this gnat?"

I think there were a lot of missed opportunities in the show for a better pacing of developing relationships, and would have preferred a slower seduction of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain by Sauron. I'm not sure how they can even insert the Annatar alias at this point, without further stretching credulity; I suspect this persona will be omitted altogether - which is a shame, as it seems rather foundational to the events of the Second Age.

I think the timeline compression will ultimately undersell Sauron's capacity for deceit and manipulation; he does, after all, play a very, very long game.

 

[trappedslider]

I really should read Lord of the Rings Appendices again

 

[Maxperson]

I liked the specific verbal interaction where Halbrand nudged Celebrimbor, but found that the circumstances which led to its coming about to be rather contrived or implausible. Given what we can glean of Celebrimbor's prideful character in the books, even had he deigned to interact with Halbrand, I would have expected his reaction to be more along the lines of:

"Who is this gnat?"

I think there were a lot of missed opportunities in the show for a better pacing of developing relationships, and would have preferred a slower seduction of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain by Sauron. I'm not sure how they can even insert the Annatar alias at this point, without further stretching credulity; I suspect this persona will be omitted altogether - which is a shame, as it seems rather foundational to the events of the Second Age.

I think the timeline compression will ultimately undersell Sauron's capacity for deceit and manipulation; he does, after all, play a very, very long game.

It didn't even have to be slow. It just had to be different. Annatar wasn't human or elven, so he probably approached the elves and said something like, "Greeting. I am a maia come from Aule to help you." Sauron really was a maia of Aule, so he had great understanding of crafting and would have had secrets that even Celebrimbor didn't have. That would have been the deceipt and trickery, and wouldn't have required a little know nothing human(and no human smiths knew anything compared to the great elven smiths) to utterly unbelievably help out Celebrimbor.

 

[MarkB]

It didn't even have to be slow. It just had to be different. Annatar wasn't human or elven, so he probably approached the elves and said something like, "Greeting. I am a maia come from Aule to help you." Sauron really was a maia of Aule, so he had great understanding of crafting and would have had secrets that even Celebrimbor didn't have. That would have been the deceipt and trickery, and wouldn't have required a little know nothing human(and no human smiths knew anything compared to the great elven smiths) to utterly unbelievably help out Celebrimbor.

I thought the way they handled it was pretty good. He started out by flattering Celebrimbor so that the smith was then effectively showing off to him, and none of his suggestions appeared to be based in actual knowledge - they were just providing a different perspective that let Celebrimbor see another angle while still not questioning the human's lack of any real knowledge.

And frankly, if you play up the elven smiths as being so far beyond human knowledge as to make humans utterly irrelevant, you lose your audience, because the whole thing is then occurring on a level for which we have no reference point - the difference between "inhumanly skilled elven craftsman" and "even more inhumanly skilled maiar craftsman" becomes imperceptible from our viewpoint, and leaves no reference by which we can discern whether one or another suggestion or deception is good or bad.

Also, since the entire audience is human, playing the "elves are just better" card too hard just makes them even less relatable.