[+] The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - SPOILERS ALLOWED

[BRayne]

Ok, totally made my day with this.

After I posted that I did a little research and found a fun coincidence. The estimated publishing years of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, where we find the earliest accounts of most of the Arthurian canon, and de Troyes' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart are 1136 and 1181 which puts them 45 years apart. Guess what was published 45 years ago next Thursday? The Silmarillion

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Heh, really? The Silmarillion or the Lost Tales are some of the most widely read fiction ever? I'm thinking not so much.

I would imagine the Silmarillion rivals A Brief History of Time as the most unread book!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ah well. My enjoyment of Tolkien's poetry has led me to reading (and enjoying) his version of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" in Middle-English alliterative verse, as well as his, and other authors' translations of "Beowulf", and trying to learn Old English eventually.

Back when I was studying Sumerian philology we were always told to go back to the originals before going into secondary literature.

YMMV.

Seamus Heaney's Beowulf is much better. Tolkien was a first-rate scholar, but second-rate poet.

 

[Hriston]

That's because at the time writing the idea that a woman could be a warrior was radical and out there - when Tolkien was born women where considered the property of their male relative, and he was 26 before (some) women got the right to vote in the UK. Hence, Dernhelm is Eowyn and can kill the Witch King because she is no man is treated as a big surprise in the book, and was intended as a radical pro-feminist statement. For a modern audience this is obvious, and in the movie Peter Jackson doesn't try to conceal "Dernhelm's" identity.

Now, they could have gone with the "full caster" approach, but Galadriel killing the ice troll with Guiding Bolts would have made for a very different, much more high magic tone. Tolkien's view was magic is subtle. And subtle doesn't work well on TV and film. Which is why the scene in the Extended Edition were Saruman casts fireball is so bad.

So yes, they made changes in Galadriel, but they were necessary, given the different time and the different medium.

I’m not sure what changes you mean. In the part of my post you quoted, I said the portrayal of Galadriel as a warrior is NOT a problem in my view because it IS consistent with Tolkien’s writings about her. It seems to me like you’re responding to something I didn’t write.

 

[reelo]

Seamus Heaney's Beowulf is much better. Tolkien was a first-rate scholar, but second-rate poet.

That might be, I haven't read Heaney's (yet)
Currently reading Liuzza's.

I found Tolkien's "Green Knight" very good, though.

 

[Nikosandros]

I imagine what would happen if Pinocchio was released by Disney today. Anger and outrage at the betrayal of the text! Where is Collodi's sarcasm? Why isn't the talking cricket smashed to his death and why has he been renamed?!

 

[Hussar]

I imagine what would happen if Pinocchio was released by Disney today. Anger and outrage at the betrayal of the text! Where is Collodi's sarcasm? Why isn't the talking cricket smashed to his death and why has he been renamed?!

Didn't they just release a live action one? I thought i read something about that.

As far as the example of the colorized photo? Nope. Would not bother me in the least. I would judge the photo for being a thing itself and while I could certainly compare the two, claiming that the second one should conform in some way to the first one is not something I would do. Now, if the second one was claiming to be a faithful copy of the first, only colorized, then, sure, that's a different story.

But, Rings of Power has been billed as its own thing right from the beginning. They are NOT using, and heck cannot use, the original source material. Full stop. So, it's "inspired by" all the way through.

Now, to be fair, "I don't like it" is a perfectly reasonable reaction and I would defend someone's not liking something to the ends of the earth. But, I'm just so sick and tired of all the hoopla about how they are somehow offending Tolkien (He's spinning in his grave) and things like that. Good grief. If you don't like it, there are a thousand other things to watch. I just don't get the incessant need that people have to scream at the top of their lungs about how much they dislike something.

((The above is 100% NOT directed at anyone in this thread. Absolutely not. It is very much NOT my intention to point fingers at anyone. I am talking about the Twitterati and the umpteen "Rings of Power hates Tolkien" stories that are crossing my feed on a daily basis. Elon Musk can take a long walk off a short pier.

 

[Nikosandros]

Didn't they just release a live action one? I thought i read something about that.

Yes, they actually released it, but I haven't seen it and I was thinking about the old classic, which certainly changes a lot of things from the book.

As far as the example of the colorized photo? Nope. Would not bother me in the least. I would judge the photo for being a thing itself and while I could certainly compare the two, claiming that the second one should conform in some way to the first one is not something I would do. Now, if the second one was claiming to be a faithful copy of the first, only colorized, then, sure, that's a different story.

I apologize, I'm not following you here.

But, Rings of Power has been billed as its own thing right from the beginning. They are NOT using, and heck cannot use, the original source material. Full stop. So, it's "inspired by" all the way through.

Yes, that much has been clear right from the start.

Now, to be fair, "I don't like it" is a perfectly reasonable reaction and I would defend someone's not liking something to the ends of the earth. But, I'm just so sick and tired of all the hoopla about how they are somehow offending Tolkien (He's spinning in his grave) and things like that. Good grief. If you don't like it, there are a thousand other things to watch. I just don't get the incessant need that people have to scream at the top of their lungs about how much they dislike something.

((The above is 100% NOT directed at anyone in this thread. Absolutely not. It is very much NOT my intention to point fingers at anyone. I am talking about the Twitterati and the umpteen "Rings of Power hates Tolkien" stories that are crossing my feed on a daily basis. Elon Musk can take a long walk off a short pier.

I agree. Personally, I'm not crazy about the series so far, but I'll keep watching it and I hope that it grows on me. In any event, I find it visually stunning.

 

[reelo]

I'm just so sick and tired of all the hoopla about how they are somehow offending Tolkien (He's spinning in his grave) and things like that. Good grief. If you don't like it, there are a thousand other things to watch. I just don't get the incessant need that people have to scream at the top of their lungs about how much they dislike something.

((The above is 100% NOT directed at anyone in this thread. Absolutely not. It is very much NOT my intention to point fingers at anyone. I am talking about the Twitterati and the umpteen "Rings of Power hates Tolkien" stories that are crossing my feed on a daily basis. Elon Musk can take a long walk off a short pier.

I don't feel pointed at, don't worry.

It just gets tiresome (for me) to defend my position of disappointement from any attempts to lump me (and other is my case) in with the toxic racists that are rampant in many fandoms (of which LotR is just the most recent) these last few years, and that's why tend to be vocal about it.

Edit: I'm not saying it (the lumping-in with racists) happens here on these boards. But I want to avoid confusion whenever I can.

 

[billd91]

Twelve year old me would have sold a kidney to watch this. Fifty year old me just can’t get past the wall of noise.

Twelve year old me, maybe. But within a few years, every time a fantasy movie was announced, me and my friends would groan, 'Oh! It's gonna suck!"

Of course, that was the state of 1980s fantasy adaptations for film and television. Times are a bit different now. Production values and budgets are higher. There have been some much higher quality adaptations out there of various works to build up our hopes.

And yet, we are coming after the Hobbit trilogy, which was not adapted very well and had tons of high production value scenes that were pretty much just filler, and the last couple seasons of Game of Thrones, which saw a decline in quality as it moved past collaboration with the original author. And, of course, we had the Star Wars sequel trilogy which had some really good characterizations and interesting story points, but largely amounted to a rehash of the first movie, a story painting itself into corners, and a wrap up that may have worked itself out of the corner but pretty much repudiated most character advancement in its predecessor.

So, yeah, we've got expectations all over the map and a recent history of feeling burned by various choices made by movie-makers and showrunners to the point where I'm kind of back at more cynical teenage me thinking "Oh! It's gonna suck!" Fortunately, RoP has largely been better than that, but I'm still scratching my head at what they're doing with Galadriel at sea. Of all of the elements of RoP so far, it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb of WTF?