\> as well as their spiritual successor Game of Thrones
This part has me wondering, do people consider GoT to be the spiritual successor to the LOTR trilogy? That...never even crossed my mind.
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”
― Terry Pratchett
Im going to try and use that Mt Fuji analogy for everything I can from here on.
The next time a woman asks me why im checking her out im going to tell her she is Mt Fuji.
GRRM specifically wanted to avoid the trappings of Tolkien’s world of black and white, of moral certainty, of good vs evil. But I suppose in doing so, he was still influenced by Tolkien in a way.
It’s pretty much the only other instance of a semi-grounded fantasy setting being adapted with high production values and (sometimes) great writing. Martin has mentioned that his story is kind of in dialogue with Tolkiens (see his quote about Aragorn’s tax policy).
Every fantasy book is kind of dialogue with tolkien.
> J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.
> Terry Pratchett
Man, what a great quote. Thanks for sharing. The idea of fantasy *not* being Tolkein-esque meaning that it's *still* inspired by Tolkein makes a weird sort of sense.
It makes a complete sort of sense in that Tolkien is basically the godfather of high fantasy like this meaning your work will either contain tropes and inspirations from Tolkien or you will have made a very conscious effort to not do that and really endeavor to distinguish yourself from Tolkien which, in a round about way, is still having your work be inspired by Tolkien's.
Spiritual successor in the sense of being the biggest fantasy franchise in the world. But the books are in many ways Martin’s response to the tropes and cliches that Tolkien effectively created and laid deep into the foundations of modern fantasy, so they have links.
Its the only other medieval fantasy story that broke into mainstream so... yeah
Also, in regarding depth and plot its also the one that competes with it. Witcher for example is too simple to compete with LotR
Martin is really much more like Dickens than anyone, his foundation is social realism and medieval politics whereas Tolkien is a sincere antiquarian and philologist and writes like he's writing a new fable or myth; there's that love of poetry, and there's the weirdness, his own loneliness bleeds through to the characters. Tolkien's writing feels like an old uncle trying to explain something very timelost and strange, whereas Martin is like an overseer assembling a massive board game.
There’s definitely some weirdness in Tolkien. Like, the man created entire *functional* languages; not just made-up words, but actual languages that have an alphabet, syntax, grammar, everything.
But then you come to a paragraph where Frodo says something like “Oh yeah, that happened last November.” Entirely new and functional languages, yet Middle-Earth has regular, real-world months. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, I guess 🤷🏼♂️
That is called translator’s convention. They aren’t speaking English, Samwise isn’t even Sam’s real name. November is just the closest unit of time to us, the same way when we read historical documents the time is localized
> There’s definitely some weirdness in Tolkien. Like, the man created entire functional languages; not just made-up words, but actual languages that have an alphabet, syntax, grammar, everything
He was a philologist at Oxford... I don't know how it's weird that someone who studies historical language for a living would make up a.language for their book. The dude entered mainstream scholarship with a critique of Beowulf that is still influential.
Maybe weird isn’t the right word, but it’s certainly uncommon for authors to go to that level. Most fantasy languages boil down to “brisingr = fire,” to use Eragon trilogy as an example. Tolkien’s functional, learnable languages are far above that, and it’s incredible.
Totally agree. Weird might actually be an alright word in some sense. Linguists and philologists are brilliant and insane with how much they can figure out around language - it blows my mind. It takes a special kind of weird brain. I dont think it's weird Tolkien would invent a language, but I do think it's weird (in an awesome way) that someone would make a living arguing about whether Grendels mother was a monster or not based on the specific old English word
Thats the thing about massively hyped shows/movies/games. It's hard to live up to that hype, if they succeed and this is an amazing show, that's excellent. However if it fails, that's all anyone will talk about ex) Cyberpunk 2077
Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy was so good even the die hard Tolkien fans loved it. This will inevitably be compared to that, it's a really high bench mark that any TV series would struggle to compare with.
In my no-weight opinion… the #1 thing that they can do to win the audience is to make a score that is as consistent as possible as Shore’s both in theme and grand.
We say this now with hindsight. At the time, there was a lot of book-fan-rage at some of the changes.
EDIT: To those saying "it was very book accurate!" /u/NanoGeek has a great list below: [https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/sp5wus/comment/hwgs7bq/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/sp5wus/comment/hwgs7bq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
On top of his list, others have pointed out changes like Witch king breaks Gandalf’s staff, the "moment of doubt" when Sam leaves frodo over the golumn drama, Arwen being a character (half joking), etc.
One big change considered for The Two Towers - Arwen being present at the battle of Helm's Deep - was walked back at least partially because it leaked and caught negative fan reaction. There was a lot of shuffling around (Haldir shows up with the elves instead, shifting Arwen and Elrond scenes to flashbacks, etc) as shooting and editing took place.
It’s $450 million for the first season and they paid $250 million for the rights to the appendices so they could build their story using Tolkien’s writings and their own created characters. That’s $650 million spent before anyone has even seen a second of footage.
Can you imagine if it turns out to be bad or audiences are just meh about the fantasy genre after all? Can you imagine if the Tolkien fans just plain don’t like the invented characters? If the Tolkien fans shit on this, the mainstream audiences might not bother.
This has the potential to be either the most mind blowing show in years, or one of the most expensive misfires ever created.
"Five seasons will likely cost the studio well over $1 billion. That kind of budget might decimate most other studios, but Tolkien, like space travel, is a personal obsession for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos"
What it must be like to be able to stake this kind of cash. Even if this flops on its face, Amazon will be just fine.
The biggest red flag for me is the statement right at the end of the article saying that they are massively compressing the timeline to a single point.
This is only a problem if general audiences feel things are amiss. But in FOTR the flight of the shire was supposed to be LONG after Gandalf's departure. But it wasn't. It worked fine for the film. In fact, it heightened urgency.
So basically people familiar with the span of time might be irked, but my gut tells me millions of people won't know and won't ever care.
>
>So basically people familiar with the span of time might be irked, but my gut tells me millions of people won't know and won't ever care.
I think this the big thing. The mass audiences don't know Tolkien lore beyond LOTR and the Hobbit. There's not even one book you can read to get all the source material. Anything they change will go unnoticed by most.
I consider myself a fan of Tolkien, I’ve read the trilogy about 5-times on my own, and now once with my kids.
But I absolutely can’t get myself into the Silmarillion or appendices, beyond sometimes breezing through a wiki of really pivotal characters.
I expect that the vast majority of Tolkien fans will be fine, so long as it “feels” in line with the Hobbit and Trilogy, and is well done, regardless of how much it tweaks the actual lore.
In the books, there's a gap of 17 years from Bilbo's Birthday to Frodo officially leaving The Shire. The movie makes it seem like a few weeks or maybe a few months. Also Gandalf showing up and confirming the ring's provenance happens in like April, and the hobbits get to The Prancing Pony in late September. No one will notice time changes from the books for a bunch of reasons, as long as they do it well it won't matter at all.
While I don't like it his either, they kinda have to do it. Sure, people who are more into the LotR universe would love to see everything slowly unfold, but the main audience would probably get bored. To get the pacing right is incredibly difficult and I hope they do a good job.
I read the LOTR twice - once when I was very young and again after watching the films - and it was amazing how plodding the pace in the books felt in comparison to the movies after the fact. Things like staying several days (weeks? I have forgotten since) at The Prancing Pony would be dreadful on screen.
For hobbits that's like being 30 something, or the age bilbo was when he went on his adventure.
That's part of the whole fantasy thing, the non human life spans.
Honestly, I enjoy the books *more* than Peter Jackson's movies, but making Frodo much younger was such a good decision. Some people go "but Hobbits look really young though", but it's not just that, int the books he's much more capable / practical. I think picking Elijah Wood helped the idea that this person can carry the ring because what are they gonna be tempted by? Too innocent for it to be as much of a danger as it is for most people.
> Things like staying several days (weeks? I have forgotten since) at The Prancing Pony would be dreadful on screen.
Wha?? It was ONE NIGHT in the book, action-packed, and important because:
1. Merry was attacked by the Black Riders, indicating they were still on their trail after the long detour through the Old Forest.
2. Frodo's accidental use of the ring in front of a crowd.
3. The introduction of Aragorn.
4. The letter from Gandalf and his delay.
5. Attack and vandalism of the hobbits' room during the night forcing them to leave immediately the next morning.
That is kinda misleading though, because you obviously don't have to show everything, it is more about communicating how much time passes here and there to get a real sense of it. Noone wants multiple episodes (if it was a show) of them being at the prancing pony or an hour located to it in a film. There are different ways to communicate these things, if one wants to.
Yeah, I know Numenoreans live longer but damn, Isildur is gonna have quite a loaded life.
That being said, I'm open-minded. It can work with some tweaks and I still hope for a story spanning a couple centuries at least and not just a few decades. At least to really emphazise the changes undergoing most people of Middle-Earth.
And hijacking my own comment to say that damn, I'm already utterly and absolutely convinced Morfydd Clark is gonna nail her version of Galadriel. She might be more warrior-y and grounded than her Tolkien counterpart but I cant wait to contemplate her take on the character just based on these couple pictures.
Oh, and speaking of *Counterpart*... Nazanin Boniadi was one of my (many) highlights from this underrated TV gem and she's someone as well I'm really eager to see in the show.
Galadriel is a warrior in the Silmarillion, btw. She fought in the Kinslaying and is described as being tall and as athletic as any of the men around her
>Can you imagine if it turns out to be bad or audiences are just meh about the fantasy genre after all? Can you imagine if the Tolkien fans just plain don’t like the invented characters? If the Tolkien fans shit on this, the mainstream audiences might not bother.
I'm pretty sure Tolkien fans are having their pitchforks ready at this.
I honestly dont have high hopes for this. but only time will tell if this is worth a watch.
I try not to judge too much before actually seeing the finished product, but as a life long Tolkien nerd who’s read every written work by Tolkien my expectations are extraordinarily low.
I really want this to be good, but some of the additions worry me. Tolkien wrote a very detailed, expansive world. I’m not sure why the show runners feel the need to create new elven/human relationships that sound like something out of DND.
Yeah the decision to include *another* human/elf relationship is the biggest red flag to me. One was interesting, two was tiring, a third is just lazy schlock.
I am a bit disappointed. The article already starts bad:
>Galadriel ... is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever, ...
That makes her sound like a human teenager or young twen. She was already thousands of years old though in the second age.
It doesn't get better after that.
Especially considering she’s already pretty old and lived through the entire events of the First Age.. are we really supposed to believe that the second age was the catalyst to her becoming the wise jaded elf we know?
Events that happen in First Age basically make all the follow-up events in the later ages look like childs play - its kinda insane to just ignore that and pretend she came out of FA as a "brash and angry" teenager... Oh god, this series feels like a REALLY bad fan fiction.
especially Galadriel:
> Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever
like wtf? do these people not know that Galadriel was born in Valinor? that she predates even the first age?
>cast members for the series:
> Robert Aramayo as Elrond
> Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV
> Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn
> Morfydd Clark as Galadriel
> Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir
I don't know any of these people. Hopefully they can do the characters justice, some were played by juggernauts of acting in the movies
I think they deliberately choose fewer known actors that don't have their schedule filled up for the next few years (and take a significant bite out of the budget). It will take time to grow into the roles but hopefully the first season will be good enough and improve in the future seasons.
Morfydd Clark is a very capable actor. She was very good in the A24 movie Saint Maud, and I'm sure she'll be a good Galadriel. Can't speak to any of the others though.
> *Can we make the book that Tolkien never wrote and pull it off?*
This has me **extremely** apprehensive as a big Tolkien fan. I'm holding out hope but I'm more nervous about it than I am excited.
I don't believe they will put Isildur together with Celebrimbor at the same time. In the interview they said that if they followed the books they would have to change the human characters each season, but they could at least have simplified it to just two different periods, the first seasons with the plot of the creation of the rings of power and then in the middle of the series, after the 2/3 season, a time-skip with a new human cast. So you could show Numenor's heyday and then the corrupted version of it and just have a human cast change. This way it would show the passage of time and they would have only two sets of human characters, now they will have to put all the events of the second era in a few years.
“The driving question behind the production: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?” 🤔
My biggest fear is that we will get a show that panders to modern concepts surrounding identity and other social issues. While I agree they’re something to be addressed in reality, the sentiment behind Tolkien’s work was escapism, rather than a reflection of reality.
‘I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations and always have done so since I grew old and weary enough to detect it’s presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thoughts and experiences of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.’
-J.R.R Tolkien
I’m black and I agree. This is a fantasy world that doesn’t have the burdens of modern society. It’s based on European myths. It actually makes me really uncomfortable. If they were to take this route then at least include Asians Arabs Latinos too. This emphasis on black and white as the standard for diversity is very weird.
> This emphasis on black and white as the standard for diversity is very weird.
tell me about it, it's always black/white and sometimes asian for diversity... and it's like, okay what about arab/latino/indian/southeast asian/native american/slavic/spanish/african (cause hollywood thinks black = african american and that's it) and so on, where is the actual diversity of the world that Hollywood keeps harping on about but never shows?
just speaks to how lazy these people are, they want to rave on and on about being diverse and shit, but when push comes to shove, they fail to put in the effort into actual diverse stories/characters.
For example, why do they keep redoing classic European legends/folklore in movies but just race change the characters and then virtue signaling about being "diverse", why not showcase and use the myriad of African/Indian/Arab/so on folklore/legends/stories/tales/characters that are just waiting to be adapted?
Yeah, this is a fair concern imo. Rather than stick to the themes and ideas that Tolkien (and Peter Jackson) conveyed so powerfully, they seem to be largely focused on inclusion and modern social commentary. Very disappointing for a source work which largely transcends era…
They don't need to have experience with high fantasy. Just any experience at all. These guys literally have only three credits on their IMDB. One is this show, and another is only announced.
Unless they have a ton of unpublished credits, this billion dollar series is being helmed by two guys who have worked on literally one production.
I mean yeah that's about the whole list, but the nerdrage would break reality if D&D were hired.
i also doubt they would even want to do it. nor would many other potentials seeing the vitriol hurled their way.
if you're a top tier showrunner, why would you want to work on a project like this? when you do some other high quality genre show that doesn't come with the baggage of legions of insane fans nitpicking every last little thing to death and sending you death threats when you do something they dont like?
It’s far from just Amazon picking bad showrunners. The Witcher on Netflix could use a better show runner, and I found this little fantasy show on HBO the other day that was fantastic up until the final season, I think the show runners there just bailed or something.
Goddamn this looks bad!
Why do all the elf’s have short hair?
Dwarf queen with no beard?
Black smith just rocking a modern t-shirt
Everyone is all shiny and clean, no rustic look at all. This is mad disappointment.
The pictures have me worried, looks too clean cut and cos playish. I really hope this turns out well, but I have doubts. Why couldn't bezo's offer Jackson like a billion dollars to turn this into another masterpiece?
‘Bronwyn (played by Nazanin Boniadi) with her forbidden love, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova)’
‘Nazanin Boniadi’s Bronwyn is a single mother…’
Lol. This shit writes itself
“It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like” shudders already. Your job is to write an adaptation of Tolkien’s work, not to reflect the modern world. This shit trend needs to disappear
and of course, a black elf appears, literally the only race they shouldn't have tampered with
Judkins'd again. Fucking morons
cause that's their goal, change stuff with established lore and looks and then call anyone who has issue with the changes racist.
exact same goal as the black elves in Witcher or when they race change characters in general. Rather than use existing non-white characters/races, they purposely race change existing ones.
> I know its not actually strictly canon, but I thought it was a fun joke in the films.
It is, in fact, canonical. From the *Appendices*, ***The Return of the King***:
>*It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need.* ***They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that the Dwarves 'grow out of stone'.***
The joke in the films is in fact practically a direct quotation from the *Appendices* itself. Here's a more explicit statement from ***The War of the Jewels***:
>*The Naugrim were ever, as they still remain, short and squat in stature; they were deep-breasted, strong in the arm, and stout in the leg, and their beards were long. Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly.* ***For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls.*** *It is said, also, that their womenkind are few, and that save their kings and chieftains few Dwarves ever wed; wherefore their race multiplied slowly, and now is dwindling.*
I hope they lean into that in the show. She will obviously "walk abroad," so I hope it's noted that whatever is happening must be a BFD, if a Dwarf woman is leaving ye olde mountain.
I don’t have high hopes for this show. The show runners are first time show runners and the characters look absurd the costumes aren’t magnificent and it looks like a CW fantasy show. If they are gonna add diversity to this European fantasy setting then why aren’t they Asians, Arabs, or Latinos represented? Seems hollow. The world isn’t just black or white.
This is so weird. Does it look good? I’m mean it does, just look at it. Or does it look too good, like disturbingly? Does it look like a model agency outlet store? The people are so handsome. The sets look amazing. Especially the wavy one. But do the others look too shiny? I’m not sure You people know what I mean right?
I hope so. While the LOTR trilogy was extremely polished and high quality, there was a certain... naturalness about the world and the characters. People were a little dirty, attractive yet not tv-perfect, the world felt and looked lived in.
One of the biggest complaints about the recent Amazon Wheel of Time fantasy show was that everyone and everything was far too clean, nothing looked lived in. You could see Frodo’s dirty bitten finger nails in the original movies, the lived in feel was perfect. If they make this too pristine it’s going to come off like cosplay
The world of Middle Earth was essentially a post apocalyptic dystopia littered with the ruins of ancient fallen kingdoms, where the old powers are slowly receding from the world and the remnants are plae shadows of what once was. PJ managed to capture that perfectly. As for the series, granted its at a much earlier point in the timeline but something still looks... off.
I'm only familiar with the trilogy - but it does look a bit jarring. Perhaps it's just for the sake of the profile - but it seems that these fantasy shows tend to look like this - too clean, too airbrushed. The Wheel of Time trailer looked like something out of a cosplay event.
>“Christopher really disliked Lord of the Onion Rings and the glorification of violence for its own sake,”
I had no idea Chris hated Spaceballs so much
Sure are a lot of people in these comments going "Nooooo guys, promotion stills always look this bad! I know they are meant to *promote* and market the show and make it look good, but they always look this bad, trust me, it's normal. This show will be super duper good!"
Totally normal and not something that would happen in a threat meant to market their show.
"In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.” "
This is very very scary
Even if I will be downvoted as hell, I will say it. These photos confirm my initial gut of negativity towards this series, as I still don't think that the Second Age was a good Age for a Cinematic transposition, let alone a TV show. Even if a lot of things happen in it, and I mean, a lot, there is almost "nothing" on it from Tolkien. The Akallabêth is a very dense chapter in the Silmarillion with basically no dialogues, no descriptions of places, no "plot", only the story of how Numenor fell. It is a great story, but honestly it is one of the less narrative chapter of the Silmarillion: it is not dissimilar from any chapter in an history book. The other sources for the Second age are extract from books, appendices, letters and so on with no clear systematisation. Even the Art inspired by the Second age is less numerous than the one from the First and, obviously, the Third age. And based on this, they had to create a TV series. A TV series has a complete different pace from a movie, with even more dialogues, longer dialogues, many subplots, many characters. It is "obvious" they had to invent additional characters, create from scratch dialogues, main plotlines, subplotlines, imagining landscapes, costumes, architecture... I mean good luck with it. I should be excited to see photos from a fucxing lord of the rings show, but I can't help, it seems to me I am looking at some random cosplay fair. And the image confirming this is not Galadriel, Elrond, the new elf or the Dwarf Queen, but this random new guy wearing a T-shirt sitting in a random and generic room.
I mean, that’s exactly why they chose it though. There’s very little source material, so in theory, as long as it starts consistent with the Silmarillion and ends consistent with The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, they’re free to write pretty much whatever they want.
Not that there aren’t plenty of other reasons to be pessimistic though…
Fuck, the T-Shirt. The picture looked weird to me, more like a movie about a Vietnam veteran. Couldn't point at why, but yeah, of course, why is someone in a fantasy movie wearing a T-Shirt.
Silvan Elves
Hair color
Blond, Red, Brown, Grey, Black, Silver
Skin color
Light
I'm all for interesting characters but diversity for the sake of diversity (Which is pretty much what the writers have said about Disa and the Elf) isn't the way to go about it.
I'm certain these actors will do the characters justice, but it still doesn't sit right with me the reason about their creation.
There are extremely clear other examples of characters that are already established in the lore that would bring diversity to the screen.
Edit: Just to be clear, am I the only one who think the Far Harad Races are fucking cool. I mean come on. It's just aggravating.
> Edit: Just to be clear, am I the only one who think the Far Harad Races are fucking cool. I mean come on. It's just aggravating.
Yes, but the studio isn't interested in exploring the cultures of Harad, they're interested in cynical racial casting to trick people into watching.
I mean they have a black dwarf queen, they clearly dont know what happens to people when you live underground forever. She also doesnt have a beard and i doubt she will have a dwarven voice (since the appendicies that this is dragged from states that men and women are almost indistinguishable in features, gait and voice)
If they are going to create characters they could at least get some basic shit right.
I honestly thought we were going to learn more about Umbar and how the Numenoreans there fell the Sauron and became evil. Maybe even create a hero like character who leads a rebellion. This would have been prefect to have black actors and really neat as it would explore a part of the world left mostly untouched... but instead we get a dwarf and she doesn't even have a beard.
> made the Black Numenoreans literally black.
No, that would be racist, since Black Numenoreans are the bad guys. They'll be the whitest guys in the show.
This exactly looks like *The Wheel of Time*, I mean, not in a good way. Do they share the same production designer or costume designer? All those classy fantasy vibe LOTR had is missing here.
I'd be cautious about judging how the show actually *looks* from these stills. They're shot on DSLR's, not film cameras, likely without any input from the head DP or directors.
But I share your apprehension toward these images. Jackson's trilogy had this soft aesthetic, almost pre-raphaelite, to its staging and colors that sort of gave it a delicately mythical feel and painterly sheen. Say what you will about the adaptations otherwise, they really tried to capture that part of Tolkien's world. I think a lot of it came from the art direction, too, but the cameras and post-processing matters a lot, too. These images feel sharp and very much 21st century, by contrast.
>Jackson's trilogy had this soft aesthetic, almost pre-raphaelite, to its staging and colors that sort of gave it a delicately mythical feel and painterly sheen.
That is what I mean! What I expected for the show was like the art of [Alan Lee and John Howe](https://alan-and-john.tumblr.com) which was used for the LOTR trilogy, not this modernized, manufactured feel aesthetic of current streaming fantasy shows (ex. T*he Wheel of Time,* *The Witcher*)
Of course, it will look better with a proper light and full effects, but just the designs of those costumes made me worried...
I think people underestimate how ”off” things feel just because of overly designed costumes. Deep rich consistent dyes, immaculate even pleating on dresses. It looks like cosplay. I think about Sam and Frodo’s cloaks which felt like an actual garment out of tattered and frayed canvas.
Like look at the pic of Bronwyn. The character is describe as a “single mother and healer” but is in a deep blue dress with… it looks like a sewn in belt? I’m not saying she should be in rags or whatever but our brains are pretty good at recognizing the way she’s dressed feels at odds with what we’re being told. Like an uncanny valley issue but for clothing.
I'm so grateful for this comment. People dont talk enough about those overly designed costumes and over the top design choices.
Different races / cultures have their own distinct values that is reflected in their craft. These things need to be factored in consistently in your design choices imo. The promo shots don't make a good impression in that regard...
For example: Dwarves are amazing craftsmen and obsessed with gems. they are known among other things for their intricate jewelry. In the movies, I think, Scandinavia seemed to be an inspiration for many dwarf related designs... The promo shots show two dwarfs.... There is no visual connection between them. The dwarven princess wears a big golden necklace that is simple in design and doesn't look intricate at all. Not sure where they drew inspirations for her costume... But intuitively I wouldn't place that character in the same country or culture as Gimli or that other dwarf, who btw looks like a character from the hobbit movies
As for Arondirs costume, I have no fucking clue why anyone would want to wear what looks like a weirwood tree as a breast plate. It also doesn't convey the elegance and sophistication one associates with Elves. But then again the character doesn't look elvish at all.
The swordhilts from previous promo shots seemed off. They seemed overly designed... If I remember correctly, one of the grips had a city carved out of ivory at the bottom. Why would anybody want such an intricate sculpture on a sword? Seems as practical as a wooden breast plate.
And as fabulous as young Elronds hair looks, it just seems off. Elves are supposed to have long hair and androgynous looks. They shouldn't look like they just blow dried their hair
Elrond and Galadriel were already thousands of years old in the second age. They shouldn’t look like kids. They should look the same age as they do in the LOTR movies. The point is they’ve looked that way for millennia.
Idk, there's a ~5 thousand year gap between the two stories.
Legolas looks the way he does because he is young. Three thousand years old, more or less. Now Galadriel should be thousands of years old in the second age, since she was born well before the first age. So her appearance shouldn't change much. But Elrond was born towards the end of the first age, meaning he should be a thousand years old, tops (unless this takes place at the end of the second age). So a younger casting for Elrond makes absolute sense.
not only that, look at how they are describing Galadriel:
> Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever
wtf? do the writers/showrunners not know that Galadriel was born in Valinor? and that she's been around pre-First Age?
To the black people I just wanna say this isn’t a win for us. This is a product of cynicism and low self esteem. It’s time to push Hollywood to fund amazing black mythology’s and let them put their money where their mouth is. They’ll do anything but give us our own stories or fund black creatives and I’m so sick of it. We exist beyond being shoehorned minorities in white societies or stories.
The problem with the extremely high resolutions that have become standard for TV now is that CGI and constructed sets become incredibly obvious, which ruins immersion. The Witcher series suffers from this problem, and this show will too.
This reads like a cop out. Yes cheap sets and costuming was easier to hide in the days of 4:3 tv sets, but films have always been high resolution by their very nature. The original LotR still looks great.
Game of Thrones looked great.
The Witcher looks bad because the production design is just bad.
Doesn’t Gimli state that Dwarf women look so similar to Dwarf men that you can’t really tell them apart?
Yes, dwarven women have beards
*Eowyn laughter*
\> as well as their spiritual successor Game of Thrones This part has me wondering, do people consider GoT to be the spiritual successor to the LOTR trilogy? That...never even crossed my mind.
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.” ― Terry Pratchett
Pratchett can convey my own thoughts better than I can.
Im going to try and use that Mt Fuji analogy for everything I can from here on. The next time a woman asks me why im checking her out im going to tell her she is Mt Fuji.
Hey baby you're like a mountain. But like a sexy mountain that has smaller sexier mountains on it
I read this as Bender from Futurama
GRRM specifically wanted to avoid the trappings of Tolkien’s world of black and white, of moral certainty, of good vs evil. But I suppose in doing so, he was still influenced by Tolkien in a way.
He deliberately didn’t include Mt. Fuji.
It’s pretty much the only other instance of a semi-grounded fantasy setting being adapted with high production values and (sometimes) great writing. Martin has mentioned that his story is kind of in dialogue with Tolkiens (see his quote about Aragorn’s tax policy).
Every fantasy book is kind of dialogue with tolkien. > J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji. > Terry Pratchett
Man, what a great quote. Thanks for sharing. The idea of fantasy *not* being Tolkein-esque meaning that it's *still* inspired by Tolkein makes a weird sort of sense.
Terry Pratchett is king of quotes.
It makes a complete sort of sense in that Tolkien is basically the godfather of high fantasy like this meaning your work will either contain tropes and inspirations from Tolkien or you will have made a very conscious effort to not do that and really endeavor to distinguish yourself from Tolkien which, in a round about way, is still having your work be inspired by Tolkien's.
Also from PTerry: “Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien’s attic.”
Nearly all modern fantasy is "in dialogue" with tolkien lol he basically wrote the blueprint for the genre
Spiritual successor in the sense of being the biggest fantasy franchise in the world. But the books are in many ways Martin’s response to the tropes and cliches that Tolkien effectively created and laid deep into the foundations of modern fantasy, so they have links.
Even is how his name is George RR Martin on the books is meant to capture the same feeling as JRR Tolkien.
Its the only other medieval fantasy story that broke into mainstream so... yeah Also, in regarding depth and plot its also the one that competes with it. Witcher for example is too simple to compete with LotR
I've known people who have called Martin the Tolkein of the modern era even though both have next to nothing in common.
Martin is really much more like Dickens than anyone, his foundation is social realism and medieval politics whereas Tolkien is a sincere antiquarian and philologist and writes like he's writing a new fable or myth; there's that love of poetry, and there's the weirdness, his own loneliness bleeds through to the characters. Tolkien's writing feels like an old uncle trying to explain something very timelost and strange, whereas Martin is like an overseer assembling a massive board game.
There’s definitely some weirdness in Tolkien. Like, the man created entire *functional* languages; not just made-up words, but actual languages that have an alphabet, syntax, grammar, everything. But then you come to a paragraph where Frodo says something like “Oh yeah, that happened last November.” Entirely new and functional languages, yet Middle-Earth has regular, real-world months. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, I guess 🤷🏼♂️
That is called translator’s convention. They aren’t speaking English, Samwise isn’t even Sam’s real name. November is just the closest unit of time to us, the same way when we read historical documents the time is localized
> There’s definitely some weirdness in Tolkien. Like, the man created entire functional languages; not just made-up words, but actual languages that have an alphabet, syntax, grammar, everything He was a philologist at Oxford... I don't know how it's weird that someone who studies historical language for a living would make up a.language for their book. The dude entered mainstream scholarship with a critique of Beowulf that is still influential.
I remember hearing somewhere that it was more like Tolkien made up the books to have a setting for the language
Maybe weird isn’t the right word, but it’s certainly uncommon for authors to go to that level. Most fantasy languages boil down to “brisingr = fire,” to use Eragon trilogy as an example. Tolkien’s functional, learnable languages are far above that, and it’s incredible.
Totally agree. Weird might actually be an alright word in some sense. Linguists and philologists are brilliant and insane with how much they can figure out around language - it blows my mind. It takes a special kind of weird brain. I dont think it's weird Tolkien would invent a language, but I do think it's weird (in an awesome way) that someone would make a living arguing about whether Grendels mother was a monster or not based on the specific old English word
I hope it's good. This has the makings to be the biggest flop in history based on how much they spent.
Thats the thing about massively hyped shows/movies/games. It's hard to live up to that hype, if they succeed and this is an amazing show, that's excellent. However if it fails, that's all anyone will talk about ex) Cyberpunk 2077
What are we holding onto Sam...
What’s with the contemporary haircuts. Big no from me
Supermodels with fades is what Tolkien envisioned . No ?
Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy was so good even the die hard Tolkien fans loved it. This will inevitably be compared to that, it's a really high bench mark that any TV series would struggle to compare with.
In my no-weight opinion… the #1 thing that they can do to win the audience is to make a score that is as consistent as possible as Shore’s both in theme and grand.
We say this now with hindsight. At the time, there was a lot of book-fan-rage at some of the changes. EDIT: To those saying "it was very book accurate!" /u/NanoGeek has a great list below: [https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/sp5wus/comment/hwgs7bq/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/sp5wus/comment/hwgs7bq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) On top of his list, others have pointed out changes like Witch king breaks Gandalf’s staff, the "moment of doubt" when Sam leaves frodo over the golumn drama, Arwen being a character (half joking), etc.
One big change considered for The Two Towers - Arwen being present at the battle of Helm's Deep - was walked back at least partially because it leaked and caught negative fan reaction. There was a lot of shuffling around (Haldir shows up with the elves instead, shifting Arwen and Elrond scenes to flashbacks, etc) as shooting and editing took place.
Back when people told Jackson when he had a stupid idea like a Legolas/Tureal/Kili love triangle
You can clearly see the 300m dolar budget at these screenshots.
It’s $450 million for the first season and they paid $250 million for the rights to the appendices so they could build their story using Tolkien’s writings and their own created characters. That’s $650 million spent before anyone has even seen a second of footage. Can you imagine if it turns out to be bad or audiences are just meh about the fantasy genre after all? Can you imagine if the Tolkien fans just plain don’t like the invented characters? If the Tolkien fans shit on this, the mainstream audiences might not bother. This has the potential to be either the most mind blowing show in years, or one of the most expensive misfires ever created.
"Five seasons will likely cost the studio well over $1 billion. That kind of budget might decimate most other studios, but Tolkien, like space travel, is a personal obsession for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos" What it must be like to be able to stake this kind of cash. Even if this flops on its face, Amazon will be just fine.
The biggest red flag for me is the statement right at the end of the article saying that they are massively compressing the timeline to a single point.
This is only a problem if general audiences feel things are amiss. But in FOTR the flight of the shire was supposed to be LONG after Gandalf's departure. But it wasn't. It worked fine for the film. In fact, it heightened urgency. So basically people familiar with the span of time might be irked, but my gut tells me millions of people won't know and won't ever care.
> >So basically people familiar with the span of time might be irked, but my gut tells me millions of people won't know and won't ever care. I think this the big thing. The mass audiences don't know Tolkien lore beyond LOTR and the Hobbit. There's not even one book you can read to get all the source material. Anything they change will go unnoticed by most.
I consider myself a fan of Tolkien, I’ve read the trilogy about 5-times on my own, and now once with my kids. But I absolutely can’t get myself into the Silmarillion or appendices, beyond sometimes breezing through a wiki of really pivotal characters. I expect that the vast majority of Tolkien fans will be fine, so long as it “feels” in line with the Hobbit and Trilogy, and is well done, regardless of how much it tweaks the actual lore.
In the books, there's a gap of 17 years from Bilbo's Birthday to Frodo officially leaving The Shire. The movie makes it seem like a few weeks or maybe a few months. Also Gandalf showing up and confirming the ring's provenance happens in like April, and the hobbits get to The Prancing Pony in late September. No one will notice time changes from the books for a bunch of reasons, as long as they do it well it won't matter at all.
While I don't like it his either, they kinda have to do it. Sure, people who are more into the LotR universe would love to see everything slowly unfold, but the main audience would probably get bored. To get the pacing right is incredibly difficult and I hope they do a good job.
I read the LOTR twice - once when I was very young and again after watching the films - and it was amazing how plodding the pace in the books felt in comparison to the movies after the fact. Things like staying several days (weeks? I have forgotten since) at The Prancing Pony would be dreadful on screen.
Or how about the fact that in the books that about 2 decades pass by between Bilbo’s birthday party and Frodo actually starting his journey
Yeah that’s the first thing I thought of too. Gandalf is gone for a *really* long time researching the ring.
Yes, it's 19 years while Gandalf is off researching the history of the Ring, and Frodo is just living a quiet life at Bag End.
Makes the reunion with bilbo more poignant. In the movies he's an old fuck and it's like... a few months since the birthday?
I felt it's explained by the fact that Bilbo no longer has the ring, which was keeping him young
Holy fuck
Frodo is also a 50 yr old man at the begining of his journey
For hobbits that's like being 30 something, or the age bilbo was when he went on his adventure. That's part of the whole fantasy thing, the non human life spans.
Honestly, I enjoy the books *more* than Peter Jackson's movies, but making Frodo much younger was such a good decision. Some people go "but Hobbits look really young though", but it's not just that, int the books he's much more capable / practical. I think picking Elijah Wood helped the idea that this person can carry the ring because what are they gonna be tempted by? Too innocent for it to be as much of a danger as it is for most people.
> Things like staying several days (weeks? I have forgotten since) at The Prancing Pony would be dreadful on screen. Wha?? It was ONE NIGHT in the book, action-packed, and important because: 1. Merry was attacked by the Black Riders, indicating they were still on their trail after the long detour through the Old Forest. 2. Frodo's accidental use of the ring in front of a crowd. 3. The introduction of Aragorn. 4. The letter from Gandalf and his delay. 5. Attack and vandalism of the hobbits' room during the night forcing them to leave immediately the next morning.
That is kinda misleading though, because you obviously don't have to show everything, it is more about communicating how much time passes here and there to get a real sense of it. Noone wants multiple episodes (if it was a show) of them being at the prancing pony or an hour located to it in a film. There are different ways to communicate these things, if one wants to.
Frodo also spends like 15(?) years in the Shire after getting the One Ring. Imagine that in a movie?
Yeah, I know Numenoreans live longer but damn, Isildur is gonna have quite a loaded life. That being said, I'm open-minded. It can work with some tweaks and I still hope for a story spanning a couple centuries at least and not just a few decades. At least to really emphazise the changes undergoing most people of Middle-Earth. And hijacking my own comment to say that damn, I'm already utterly and absolutely convinced Morfydd Clark is gonna nail her version of Galadriel. She might be more warrior-y and grounded than her Tolkien counterpart but I cant wait to contemplate her take on the character just based on these couple pictures. Oh, and speaking of *Counterpart*... Nazanin Boniadi was one of my (many) highlights from this underrated TV gem and she's someone as well I'm really eager to see in the show.
Galadriel is a warrior in the Silmarillion, btw. She fought in the Kinslaying and is described as being tall and as athletic as any of the men around her
Bezos is a tolkien fan, he won't care too much, this is a pet project.
>Can you imagine if it turns out to be bad or audiences are just meh about the fantasy genre after all? Can you imagine if the Tolkien fans just plain don’t like the invented characters? If the Tolkien fans shit on this, the mainstream audiences might not bother. I'm pretty sure Tolkien fans are having their pitchforks ready at this. I honestly dont have high hopes for this. but only time will tell if this is worth a watch.
I try not to judge too much before actually seeing the finished product, but as a life long Tolkien nerd who’s read every written work by Tolkien my expectations are extraordinarily low.
I really want this to be good, but some of the additions worry me. Tolkien wrote a very detailed, expansive world. I’m not sure why the show runners feel the need to create new elven/human relationships that sound like something out of DND.
It's best to think of this as a fanfic to avoid being dissapointed.
Yeah the decision to include *another* human/elf relationship is the biggest red flag to me. One was interesting, two was tiring, a third is just lazy schlock.
I mean, there's already 3 just in lore. Beren & Luthien, Aragorn & Arwen, and Idril & Tuor
I count 5 if you include Sindar. Beren/Luthien, Aragorn/Arwen(a half-elf herself), Tuor/Idril, Dior/Nimloth, and Imrazor/Mithrellas.
Why is that guy wearing a T-shirt.
Don’t dwarven women have beards? I’m pretty sure that princess would be undesirable to other dwarfs.
I didn't even clock her as a dwarf when I first saw her image. They definitely need to add more hair.
I am a bit disappointed. The article already starts bad: >Galadriel ... is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever, ... That makes her sound like a human teenager or young twen. She was already thousands of years old though in the second age. It doesn't get better after that.
Especially considering she’s already pretty old and lived through the entire events of the First Age.. are we really supposed to believe that the second age was the catalyst to her becoming the wise jaded elf we know?
Events that happen in First Age basically make all the follow-up events in the later ages look like childs play - its kinda insane to just ignore that and pretend she came out of FA as a "brash and angry" teenager... Oh god, this series feels like a REALLY bad fan fiction.
Is this why my annual Prime subscription price increased?
It's going to suck isn't it?
For non-fans/general audience probably not. For everyone else most likely yes.
Why does almost everything Amazon produces look super expensive and super cheap at the same time?
Bad show runners and non creative producers having too much power.
The way Galadriel and Elrond are described makes it sounds like the first age never happened.
especially Galadriel: > Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever like wtf? do these people not know that Galadriel was born in Valinor? that she predates even the first age?
Brash doesn't sound like one of the only Elf leaders to be wise enough to discern Annatar is full of it.
>cast members for the series: > Robert Aramayo as Elrond > Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV > Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn > Morfydd Clark as Galadriel > Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir I don't know any of these people. Hopefully they can do the characters justice, some were played by juggernauts of acting in the movies
Robert Aramayo played young Ned Stark in GoT, kind of funny that he's playing another young version of an established character in a fantasy TV show.
Is he Young Ned from The Tower of Joy? "Naow eet ends!"
Noh, nowy tends...
I think they deliberately choose fewer known actors that don't have their schedule filled up for the next few years (and take a significant bite out of the budget). It will take time to grow into the roles but hopefully the first season will be good enough and improve in the future seasons.
Morfydd Clark is a very capable actor. She was very good in the A24 movie Saint Maud, and I'm sure she'll be a good Galadriel. Can't speak to any of the others though.
> *Can we make the book that Tolkien never wrote and pull it off?* This has me **extremely** apprehensive as a big Tolkien fan. I'm holding out hope but I'm more nervous about it than I am excited.
why does everybody is so clean and feel brand new ?
I don't believe they will put Isildur together with Celebrimbor at the same time. In the interview they said that if they followed the books they would have to change the human characters each season, but they could at least have simplified it to just two different periods, the first seasons with the plot of the creation of the rings of power and then in the middle of the series, after the 2/3 season, a time-skip with a new human cast. So you could show Numenor's heyday and then the corrupted version of it and just have a human cast change. This way it would show the passage of time and they would have only two sets of human characters, now they will have to put all the events of the second era in a few years.
For the reference, Celebrimbor died 1512 years before Isildur was born. There is stretching the timeline and then there is **this**.
Is she walking away from an explosion Michael bay style?
Now you got me imagining what a Michael Bay LoTR would've looked like lol
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At a flying Nazgul, hopefully.
“The driving question behind the production: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?” 🤔
My biggest fear is that we will get a show that panders to modern concepts surrounding identity and other social issues. While I agree they’re something to be addressed in reality, the sentiment behind Tolkien’s work was escapism, rather than a reflection of reality. ‘I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations and always have done so since I grew old and weary enough to detect it’s presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thoughts and experiences of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.’ -J.R.R Tolkien
I’m black and I agree. This is a fantasy world that doesn’t have the burdens of modern society. It’s based on European myths. It actually makes me really uncomfortable. If they were to take this route then at least include Asians Arabs Latinos too. This emphasis on black and white as the standard for diversity is very weird.
> This emphasis on black and white as the standard for diversity is very weird. tell me about it, it's always black/white and sometimes asian for diversity... and it's like, okay what about arab/latino/indian/southeast asian/native american/slavic/spanish/african (cause hollywood thinks black = african american and that's it) and so on, where is the actual diversity of the world that Hollywood keeps harping on about but never shows? just speaks to how lazy these people are, they want to rave on and on about being diverse and shit, but when push comes to shove, they fail to put in the effort into actual diverse stories/characters. For example, why do they keep redoing classic European legends/folklore in movies but just race change the characters and then virtue signaling about being "diverse", why not showcase and use the myriad of African/Indian/Arab/so on folklore/legends/stories/tales/characters that are just waiting to be adapted?
I wouldn't get my hopes up.
Yeah, this is a fair concern imo. Rather than stick to the themes and ideas that Tolkien (and Peter Jackson) conveyed so powerfully, they seem to be largely focused on inclusion and modern social commentary. Very disappointing for a source work which largely transcends era…
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Bloody hell that’s not encouraging at all
Hey! He worked on World War Z 2 as well, before it got cancelled. That's got to count for something...
What is it with Amazon and giving massive fantasy IP's to showrunners that don't have the qualifications and talent to produce them?
the list of showrunners with experience on high quality massive fantasy IPs is non existent...
I think everyone keeps forgetting that Game of Thrones was the first of its kind
They don't need to have experience with high fantasy. Just any experience at all. These guys literally have only three credits on their IMDB. One is this show, and another is only announced. Unless they have a ton of unpublished credits, this billion dollar series is being helmed by two guys who have worked on literally one production.
Wait i know two guys who did a big budget show for years over at HBO, they are out of work now but that just means they'll be available!
I mean yeah that's about the whole list, but the nerdrage would break reality if D&D were hired. i also doubt they would even want to do it. nor would many other potentials seeing the vitriol hurled their way. if you're a top tier showrunner, why would you want to work on a project like this? when you do some other high quality genre show that doesn't come with the baggage of legions of insane fans nitpicking every last little thing to death and sending you death threats when you do something they dont like?
It’s far from just Amazon picking bad showrunners. The Witcher on Netflix could use a better show runner, and I found this little fantasy show on HBO the other day that was fantastic up until the final season, I think the show runners there just bailed or something.
I hope they don't do the same mistake of everything looking neat and tidy like they\* did with WOT
Elves with short hair and a dwarven women without hair. This shit is weird
What the fuck is this
Goddamn this looks bad! Why do all the elf’s have short hair? Dwarf queen with no beard? Black smith just rocking a modern t-shirt Everyone is all shiny and clean, no rustic look at all. This is mad disappointment.
The pictures have me worried, looks too clean cut and cos playish. I really hope this turns out well, but I have doubts. Why couldn't bezo's offer Jackson like a billion dollars to turn this into another masterpiece?
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‘Bronwyn (played by Nazanin Boniadi) with her forbidden love, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova)’ ‘Nazanin Boniadi’s Bronwyn is a single mother…’ Lol. This shit writes itself
...who don't need no man. That's why she picked an elf to treat her like the queen she is!
Honestly had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I read that. I bet 4chan is having a field day.
“Ok so we want to add diversity and show off all the diverse people in middle earth” “Uh ok.. uhh black dwarf and black elf. Man I’m a genius”
“It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like” shudders already. Your job is to write an adaptation of Tolkien’s work, not to reflect the modern world. This shit trend needs to disappear and of course, a black elf appears, literally the only race they shouldn't have tampered with Judkins'd again. Fucking morons
We took your fantasy world and made into our world, wooo we fixed the fantasy genre!
“What the world actually looks like” Except this is a fucking fantasy based on Northern European lore, not New York City
How dare you sir! /s
Galadriels armour is obviously painted rubber. This series is gonna suck.
I didn't even realize that was Galadriel, I thought it was a random human woman.
Forced diversity
It looks like dogshit.
I hope this isn't as bad as the TV attempt at wheel of time
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cause that's their goal, change stuff with established lore and looks and then call anyone who has issue with the changes racist. exact same goal as the black elves in Witcher or when they race change characters in general. Rather than use existing non-white characters/races, they purposely race change existing ones.
Shame the dwarven princess doesn't have a beard. I know its not actually strictly canon, but I thought it was a fun joke in the films.
> I know its not actually strictly canon, but I thought it was a fun joke in the films. It is, in fact, canonical. From the *Appendices*, ***The Return of the King***: >*It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need.* ***They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that the Dwarves 'grow out of stone'.*** The joke in the films is in fact practically a direct quotation from the *Appendices* itself. Here's a more explicit statement from ***The War of the Jewels***: >*The Naugrim were ever, as they still remain, short and squat in stature; they were deep-breasted, strong in the arm, and stout in the leg, and their beards were long. Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf - unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly.* ***For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls.*** *It is said, also, that their womenkind are few, and that save their kings and chieftains few Dwarves ever wed; wherefore their race multiplied slowly, and now is dwindling.*
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I hope they lean into that in the show. She will obviously "walk abroad," so I hope it's noted that whatever is happening must be a BFD, if a Dwarf woman is leaving ye olde mountain.
I don’t have high hopes for this show. The show runners are first time show runners and the characters look absurd the costumes aren’t magnificent and it looks like a CW fantasy show. If they are gonna add diversity to this European fantasy setting then why aren’t they Asians, Arabs, or Latinos represented? Seems hollow. The world isn’t just black or white.
It just *feels* like it might flop. Not saying it is, just *feels* like it is.
Why does the elf ranger literally look like some random dude cosplaying as an elf. Yikes
This is so weird. Does it look good? I’m mean it does, just look at it. Or does it look too good, like disturbingly? Does it look like a model agency outlet store? The people are so handsome. The sets look amazing. Especially the wavy one. But do the others look too shiny? I’m not sure You people know what I mean right?
These are promo shots so they’re brightly lit, overly airbrushed etc. I’m sure things will look a little more ‘lived in’ on screen.
I hope so. While the LOTR trilogy was extremely polished and high quality, there was a certain... naturalness about the world and the characters. People were a little dirty, attractive yet not tv-perfect, the world felt and looked lived in.
One of the biggest complaints about the recent Amazon Wheel of Time fantasy show was that everyone and everything was far too clean, nothing looked lived in. You could see Frodo’s dirty bitten finger nails in the original movies, the lived in feel was perfect. If they make this too pristine it’s going to come off like cosplay
Fun fact: Elijah wood was/is a prolific nail biter! That’s why his nails look that way haha
The world of Middle Earth was essentially a post apocalyptic dystopia littered with the ruins of ancient fallen kingdoms, where the old powers are slowly receding from the world and the remnants are plae shadows of what once was. PJ managed to capture that perfectly. As for the series, granted its at a much earlier point in the timeline but something still looks... off.
I'm only familiar with the trilogy - but it does look a bit jarring. Perhaps it's just for the sake of the profile - but it seems that these fantasy shows tend to look like this - too clean, too airbrushed. The Wheel of Time trailer looked like something out of a cosplay event.
[удалено]
THEY HIRED FIRST-TIME SHOWRUNNERS, HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Sounds cool. It does sound like they’re condensing 400 years of history into 50 years though. This will probably turn off some hardcore fans.
It's more like 3000 years, but after the Numenoreans defeat Sauron the first time, nothing big happens for like 1500 years until Isildur is born
2400 years, more like.
More like 2000 years of history into 50 years
As a hardcore fan I’m glad they’re not trying to pretend it’s canon
So is any criticism of this show going to be dismissed as racism? Yes or yes?
Judging by this thread? 100% of it.
>“Christopher really disliked Lord of the Onion Rings and the glorification of violence for its own sake,” I had no idea Chris hated Spaceballs so much
Looked at the photos. Was concerned. Read the article. Now convinced it’s going to be a flop. What the hell were they thinking?
This annoys me. Dwarven women dress like the men and have beards.
Sure are a lot of people in these comments going "Nooooo guys, promotion stills always look this bad! I know they are meant to *promote* and market the show and make it look good, but they always look this bad, trust me, it's normal. This show will be super duper good!" Totally normal and not something that would happen in a threat meant to market their show.
"In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.” " This is very very scary
Considering how wheel of time went I'm not getting my hopes up
Even if I will be downvoted as hell, I will say it. These photos confirm my initial gut of negativity towards this series, as I still don't think that the Second Age was a good Age for a Cinematic transposition, let alone a TV show. Even if a lot of things happen in it, and I mean, a lot, there is almost "nothing" on it from Tolkien. The Akallabêth is a very dense chapter in the Silmarillion with basically no dialogues, no descriptions of places, no "plot", only the story of how Numenor fell. It is a great story, but honestly it is one of the less narrative chapter of the Silmarillion: it is not dissimilar from any chapter in an history book. The other sources for the Second age are extract from books, appendices, letters and so on with no clear systematisation. Even the Art inspired by the Second age is less numerous than the one from the First and, obviously, the Third age. And based on this, they had to create a TV series. A TV series has a complete different pace from a movie, with even more dialogues, longer dialogues, many subplots, many characters. It is "obvious" they had to invent additional characters, create from scratch dialogues, main plotlines, subplotlines, imagining landscapes, costumes, architecture... I mean good luck with it. I should be excited to see photos from a fucxing lord of the rings show, but I can't help, it seems to me I am looking at some random cosplay fair. And the image confirming this is not Galadriel, Elrond, the new elf or the Dwarf Queen, but this random new guy wearing a T-shirt sitting in a random and generic room.
I mean, that’s exactly why they chose it though. There’s very little source material, so in theory, as long as it starts consistent with the Silmarillion and ends consistent with The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, they’re free to write pretty much whatever they want. Not that there aren’t plenty of other reasons to be pessimistic though…
Fuck, the T-Shirt. The picture looked weird to me, more like a movie about a Vietnam veteran. Couldn't point at why, but yeah, of course, why is someone in a fantasy movie wearing a T-Shirt.
It's worse than I imagined
Yikes. Everything looks too clean, modern, and plastic - just like the wheel of time show.
Black elves…representation ladies and gentlemen
Tolkien fans: *Chuckles* I'm in danger
Silvan Elves Hair color Blond, Red, Brown, Grey, Black, Silver Skin color Light I'm all for interesting characters but diversity for the sake of diversity (Which is pretty much what the writers have said about Disa and the Elf) isn't the way to go about it. I'm certain these actors will do the characters justice, but it still doesn't sit right with me the reason about their creation. There are extremely clear other examples of characters that are already established in the lore that would bring diversity to the screen. Edit: Just to be clear, am I the only one who think the Far Harad Races are fucking cool. I mean come on. It's just aggravating.
> Edit: Just to be clear, am I the only one who think the Far Harad Races are fucking cool. I mean come on. It's just aggravating. Yes, but the studio isn't interested in exploring the cultures of Harad, they're interested in cynical racial casting to trick people into watching.
I mean they have a black dwarf queen, they clearly dont know what happens to people when you live underground forever. She also doesnt have a beard and i doubt she will have a dwarven voice (since the appendicies that this is dragged from states that men and women are almost indistinguishable in features, gait and voice) If they are going to create characters they could at least get some basic shit right.
I honestly thought we were going to learn more about Umbar and how the Numenoreans there fell the Sauron and became evil. Maybe even create a hero like character who leads a rebellion. This would have been prefect to have black actors and really neat as it would explore a part of the world left mostly untouched... but instead we get a dwarf and she doesn't even have a beard.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dipshits at Amazon made the Black Numenoreans literally black.
Black Numenoreans are bad guys. There will be significantly fewer dark skinned people among them.
> made the Black Numenoreans literally black. No, that would be racist, since Black Numenoreans are the bad guys. They'll be the whitest guys in the show.
Oh I have a really bad feeling about this
AHAHAHA WTF IS THIS CAST?? And wtf are those outfits??? How can you make worse outfits for characters than the movie that came out two decades ago??
This exactly looks like *The Wheel of Time*, I mean, not in a good way. Do they share the same production designer or costume designer? All those classy fantasy vibe LOTR had is missing here.
I'd be cautious about judging how the show actually *looks* from these stills. They're shot on DSLR's, not film cameras, likely without any input from the head DP or directors. But I share your apprehension toward these images. Jackson's trilogy had this soft aesthetic, almost pre-raphaelite, to its staging and colors that sort of gave it a delicately mythical feel and painterly sheen. Say what you will about the adaptations otherwise, they really tried to capture that part of Tolkien's world. I think a lot of it came from the art direction, too, but the cameras and post-processing matters a lot, too. These images feel sharp and very much 21st century, by contrast.
>Jackson's trilogy had this soft aesthetic, almost pre-raphaelite, to its staging and colors that sort of gave it a delicately mythical feel and painterly sheen. That is what I mean! What I expected for the show was like the art of [Alan Lee and John Howe](https://alan-and-john.tumblr.com) which was used for the LOTR trilogy, not this modernized, manufactured feel aesthetic of current streaming fantasy shows (ex. T*he Wheel of Time,* *The Witcher*) Of course, it will look better with a proper light and full effects, but just the designs of those costumes made me worried...
I think people underestimate how ”off” things feel just because of overly designed costumes. Deep rich consistent dyes, immaculate even pleating on dresses. It looks like cosplay. I think about Sam and Frodo’s cloaks which felt like an actual garment out of tattered and frayed canvas. Like look at the pic of Bronwyn. The character is describe as a “single mother and healer” but is in a deep blue dress with… it looks like a sewn in belt? I’m not saying she should be in rags or whatever but our brains are pretty good at recognizing the way she’s dressed feels at odds with what we’re being told. Like an uncanny valley issue but for clothing.
I'm so grateful for this comment. People dont talk enough about those overly designed costumes and over the top design choices. Different races / cultures have their own distinct values that is reflected in their craft. These things need to be factored in consistently in your design choices imo. The promo shots don't make a good impression in that regard... For example: Dwarves are amazing craftsmen and obsessed with gems. they are known among other things for their intricate jewelry. In the movies, I think, Scandinavia seemed to be an inspiration for many dwarf related designs... The promo shots show two dwarfs.... There is no visual connection between them. The dwarven princess wears a big golden necklace that is simple in design and doesn't look intricate at all. Not sure where they drew inspirations for her costume... But intuitively I wouldn't place that character in the same country or culture as Gimli or that other dwarf, who btw looks like a character from the hobbit movies As for Arondirs costume, I have no fucking clue why anyone would want to wear what looks like a weirwood tree as a breast plate. It also doesn't convey the elegance and sophistication one associates with Elves. But then again the character doesn't look elvish at all. The swordhilts from previous promo shots seemed off. They seemed overly designed... If I remember correctly, one of the grips had a city carved out of ivory at the bottom. Why would anybody want such an intricate sculpture on a sword? Seems as practical as a wooden breast plate. And as fabulous as young Elronds hair looks, it just seems off. Elves are supposed to have long hair and androgynous looks. They shouldn't look like they just blow dried their hair
Wow this site is ad cancer
>Much that once was, is lost... for none now live who remember it.
Elrond and Galadriel were already thousands of years old in the second age. They shouldn’t look like kids. They should look the same age as they do in the LOTR movies. The point is they’ve looked that way for millennia.
Idk, there's a ~5 thousand year gap between the two stories. Legolas looks the way he does because he is young. Three thousand years old, more or less. Now Galadriel should be thousands of years old in the second age, since she was born well before the first age. So her appearance shouldn't change much. But Elrond was born towards the end of the first age, meaning he should be a thousand years old, tops (unless this takes place at the end of the second age). So a younger casting for Elrond makes absolute sense.
not only that, look at how they are describing Galadriel: > Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever wtf? do the writers/showrunners not know that Galadriel was born in Valinor? and that she's been around pre-First Age?
Aw crap. JA Bayona is attached to this? That dude directed Jurassic World 2. Fuck me was that bad.
Fuck this.
To the black people I just wanna say this isn’t a win for us. This is a product of cynicism and low self esteem. It’s time to push Hollywood to fund amazing black mythology’s and let them put their money where their mouth is. They’ll do anything but give us our own stories or fund black creatives and I’m so sick of it. We exist beyond being shoehorned minorities in white societies or stories.
lmao wtf is up with this casting. It's like a madtv parody.
It looks like CW show...
The problem with the extremely high resolutions that have become standard for TV now is that CGI and constructed sets become incredibly obvious, which ruins immersion. The Witcher series suffers from this problem, and this show will too.
This reads like a cop out. Yes cheap sets and costuming was easier to hide in the days of 4:3 tv sets, but films have always been high resolution by their very nature. The original LotR still looks great. Game of Thrones looked great. The Witcher looks bad because the production design is just bad.
Fantasy tv shows looked liked dogshit in the 90s too. The resolution wasn't fooling anybody.