Rings of Power by J.R.R. Tokenism.

[Grey Cloud]

Finally realised who Gladys reminds me of.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Grey Cloud

[belegost]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

They are funny in totally different ways. ?

I did not laugh while watching the show.

[Guest]

> I have watched first two episodes and I agree with Gray cloud's comment. Didn't read the book so I do not know how much the series detours from original story, but the it sucks in many ways.

[Kendo 2]

The first episode was enough for me to see what it is and what it isn't.  The scene rendering and 'cinematography' are top notch.  Everything else is trash.  Galadriel, warrior princess...seriously?  Who the fuck thought THAT was a good idea?  Galadriel can kill with a look or a wave of her hand.

 

Amazon is finally revealing the audience scores, BUT if you give it less than 3 stars they flag your review as 'inappropriate' and that it 'violates community guidelines'.  So a well-though-out critique with specifics as to what you didn't like is NOT ALLOWED.  That's a chickenshit way of doing business and I hope the truth gets out.  On the plus side, my normie sister (who couldn't care less about Tolkien) has heard about the controversy and that the show is Hollywood woke propaganda.  She is a streaming junkie and she's not going to watch it.

[Grey Cloud]

27 minutes ago, Evaloves4 said:

I have watched first two episodes and I agree with Gray cloud's comment.

Did you watch it in English or Croatian? I'm just thinking of the poor souls who have to try to translate this into another language. The English is like a bad machine translation. ?

 

6 minutes ago, Kendo 2 said:

Galadriel, warrior princess...seriously?

And to add insult to injury, she's not even a well made character. I don't think the actress is a good choice for the role either. I only noticed in this 3rd episode how short she is. She was walking alongside this new character Halrand(?) who doesn't appear unusually tall when he's next to other males but Gladys barely made it to shoulder height.

 

As for the viewing figures, a better idea will come when whatitsname the industry figures are released. The are usually about a month behind.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Did you watch it in English or Croatian? I'm just thinking of the poor souls who have to try to translate this into another language. The English is like a bad machine translation. ?

 

And to add insult to injury, she's not even a well made character. I don't think the actress is a good choice for the role either. I only noticed in this 3rd episode how short she is. She was walking alongside this new character Halrand(?) who doesn't appear unusually tall when he's next to other males but Gladys barely made it to shoulder height.

 

As for the viewing figures, a better idea will come when whatitsname the industry figures are released. The are usually about a month behind.

> I watched it online with English subtitle.   The thing that I didn't like too is that every race, human, elves and orcs had British accent. They should diverse it. I couldn't listen Orcs with typical British accent. It hurt my ears.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Evaloves4

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Evaloves4 said:

> I watched it online with English subtitle.   The thing that I didn't like too is that every race, human, elves and orcs had British accent. They should diverse it. I couldn't listen Orcs with typical British accent. It hurt my ears.

That's what I always wanted some diversity in the accents. Dwarves are Scots (which I love so I'm fine with it), Elves are English and for some funny reason orcs/orks are Cockney.

I want one of the races to be 'Hispanics' or 'French' or 'Slavic'

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Rikken said:

That's what I always wanted some diversity in the accents. Dwarves are Scots (which I love so I'm fine with it), Elves are English and for some funny reason orcs/orks are Cockney.

I want one of the races to be 'Hispanics' or 'French' or 'Slavic'

 

> Exactly. Even Skyrim has diverse English accents. I liked the way Nords are speaking. specially Mjoll, just I love to hear Southern accent in USA

Edited September 10, 2022 by Evaloves4

[Guest]

Unpopular opinion I liked it. I know I'm gonna get smashed by Tolkien purists,  but I enjoyed it.

 

That's the problem with rebooting a legendary series, everyone is gonna dunk on it when they do anything to it.

 

Same thing with ff7r.

[belegost]

9 hours ago, Evaloves4 said:

Didn't read the book so I do not know how much the series detours from original story,

Apart from a scenography and a few name drops here and there this has nothing to do with any of Tolkien's written works. Stuff is completely made up, you didn't miss anything.

 

Same case of badly written fanfiction just like Netflix witcher.

Edited September 10, 2022 by belegost

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, belegost said:

Apart from a scenography and a few name drops here and there this has nothing to do with any of Tolkien's written works. Stuff is completely made up, you didn't miss anything.

 

Same case of badly written fanfiction just like Netflix witcher.

> Tell me about Netflix Witcher. The three of us were very impatient to see it and when it came out, my we almost got sick how bad it was. Such a disappointment. Anyway, we loved LOTR and Hobbit although there were some things that bothered us too, but it was tolrelable. This series is serious crime against mind and logic.

[Grey Cloud]

9 hours ago, Rikken said:

orcs/orks are Cockney.

More of a generic London accent IMO. It would have been better to make the orcs scared of a bit of rain rather than the sun.

 

8 hours ago, zelphador23 said:

That's the problem with rebooting a legendary series, everyone is gonna dunk on it when they do anything to it.

To a certain extent yes but the criticisms I have made have nothing to do with how faithful it is to Tolkien. To me it is crap in every department of the technicalities of making a TV series, e.g. plot, characters, dialogue, continuity, etc.

 

What is it you like about it?

Edited September 10, 2022 by Grey Cloud

[Grey Cloud]

10 hours ago, Evaloves4 said:

The thing that I didn't like too is that every race, human, elves and orcs had British accent.

 

8 hours ago, Rikken said:

I want one of the races to be 'Hispanics' or 'French' or 'Slavic'

 

We are still waiting for the Welsh accent. ?

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

 

 

We are still waiting for the Welsh accent. ?

> I have heard so many English accents in the Hotel (No offense) but Irish and African accents are the worse to understand for us. it takes time to adopt to it

[Decèdere]

I'm pretty sure people who hate this show made up their minds about it long before the first episode aired, and are now searching for every little nitpick, like insignificant continuity errors, to tear it apart. Like, who the hell is playing count the elves in that scene? Maybe the other two went to take a quick piss. What does it matter? If things like that bothered me I probably would have to stop watching movies and tv shows altogether.

[Grey Cloud]

On 9/10/2022 at 12:43 PM, Decèdere said:

I'm pretty sure people who hate this show

Has anyone on this thread used the word 'hate'?

 

On 9/10/2022 at 12:43 PM, Decèdere said:

before the first episode aired,

The writing was on the wall with the various trailers and 'meet the cast' type events. Furthermore, certainly in this thread, people have given a variety of reasons as to why they dislike either the entire show or just a specific aspect or aspects of it.

 

On 9/10/2022 at 12:43 PM, Decèdere said:

like insignificant continuity errors, to tear it apart.

If it was just a one-off incident then perhaps but there are several such incidents in each of the three episodes.

 

On 9/10/2022 at 12:43 PM, Decèdere said:

If things like that bothered me I probably would have to stop watching movies and tv shows altogether.

I haven't owned a TV for 20+ years and I haven't been to the cinema for a similar amount of time. I watch the occasional series or film like this because I like fantasy and have done for over half a century.

I know a well made series when I see it and I know a poorly made series when I see it - whether fantasy or no. You appear to be advocating just sitting there and accepting whatever is presented like some docile sponge.

 

Why not tell us what you think is good about the series rather than make ridiculous comments about other people.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Grey Cloud

[Grey Cloud]

Never mind the writers being unable to match this, the actors are unable to match the delivery.

Tolkien narrates the Ride of the Rohirrim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxnHuVEwUg 3:36 mins

 

[sila]

9 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Never mind the writers being unable to match this, the actors are unable to match the delivery.

Tolkien narrates the Ride of the Rohirrim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxnHuVEwUg 3:36 mins

 

Damn listening to that makes me want to read the books again so badly.

[Grey Cloud]

31 minutes ago, sila said:

Damn listening to that makes me want to read the books again so badly.

Yep. I came across it by chance and now I'm thinking books or films. ?

 

I came across Bernard Hill reciting the 'The Lament of the Rohirrim" a few days ago - hairs on the back of your neck stuff.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Grey Cloud

[axz2]

If you were going to rank Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, The Witcher, and The Wheel of Time on fidelity to the source, internal consistency ignoring the source, and general quality in all other ways ignoring those two things.  What would your personal rankings look like?  (Ideally separate rankings for each point but if you just want to provide one ranking that's fine too).

[Mez558]

To play something of Devils Advocate to the series.

 

When the Elves return to Valinor(?) and their armour is removed they appear to be wearing a mail tunic which I guess is Mithril or something of a similar nature. You know, like the mail shirt Frodo wears that some how protects his body from being crushed when a cave troll tries to skewer him.

I understand this is not how that scene plays out in the books but perhaps the writers (assuming they had made a point of reading all the source material) just liked using that macguffin to keep the Elves alive, thinking that most of the viewers probably hadn't read the Books just seen the films or maybe not even that but had grown up watching action movies where normal people are thrown into walls and get up just a little winded.

Also Drizzt Do'Ordinary does mention that his people's wounds heal on their own, suggesting some sort of enhanced regeneration so perhaps that was meant to help explain the lack of wounded.
 

(Please don't tell me how a mail shirt works and that it would not protect against this sort of damage. I am aware of that but this precedent was already set by Peter Jackson)

 

Also, bear in mind half of us are playing Skyrim, where much of the land is like an icy tundra, with female characters wearing little more than leather lingerie with high-heels and the most common explaination for why this is still immersive is "There's Magic and Dragons and shit so why not?"

I got nothing in the way of defense about the other criticisms.

 

So will just have to resort to...

 

There's Magic and Dragons and Lenny Henry is a Hobbit Shaman so why not?

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Mez558

[lPalpatinel]

I was about to give the series a chance, but I started reading comments about how the series was being politicized by amazon, so that was one of the reasons I gave up watching the series.

[Grey Cloud]

18 hours ago, Vampire Hunter said:

so that was one of the reasons I gave up watching the series.

Why not give it a watch and make up your own mind?

Personally the gender politics and whatnot don't really get in the way. I'm not really bothered about the lore so, e.g., a black elf doesn't really bother me and Gladys is a badly scripted, shit character regardless of any other consideration.

 

18 hours ago, Mez558 said:

When the Elves return to Valinor(?) and their armour is removed they appear to be wearing a mail tunic which I guess is Mithril or something of a similar nature.

That something would be plastic. ? Apparently mithril hasn't been discovered yet but may be what is in the casket Durin and son look in.

 

18 hours ago, Mez558 said:

protects his body from being crushed when a cave troll tries to skewer him

Wouldn't do your bonce much good when a troll bounces you off a wall.

 

18 hours ago, Mez558 said:

Also, bear in mind half of us are playing Skyrim, where much of the land is like an icy tundra, with female characters wearing little more than leather lingerie with high-heels

And the other half are playing with iNeeds and the like where the weather kills you.

 

18 hours ago, Mez558 said:

"There's Magic and Dragons and shit so why not?"

The Whoopi Goldberg gambit doesn't work. Tolkien set the parameters for the world and the show should follow them. Would the right-on self-righteous make any noise if there were 6ft tall hobbits or dwarves?

Even fantasy magic is expected to follow a set of rules and you don't see dragons living in three bedroom bungalows. Magic does magic and dragons do dragons according to the rules of whatever world they are in.

 

 

-----------------

There have been several fight scenes so far:

The ice troll where the male elves take on the troll one at a time and get tanned. Gladys fettles it on her own.

 

The woman and her son who take on and kill the orc. The son especially takes a beating from the orc but is okay immediately after the fight and up for a cross-country hike.

 

The elves enslaved by the orcs fight the warg one at a time and die. Don Lemonlas eventually fettles it. All the other elves are killed by the orcs but Don Lemonlas survives.

 

Halrand takes on four smiths who allow him to take them on one at a time. So far he is the only competent white male character. He is also being set up to be one of the major evil-doers.

 

We are three hours in and still don't really know anything about anything or anyone. Compare that to how much was covered in the first film of the PJ trilogy.

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by Grey Cloud

[Mez558]

12 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

The Whoopi Goldberg gambit doesn't work. Tolkien set the parameters for the world and the show should follow them. Would the right-on self-righteous make any noise if there were 6ft tall hobbits or dwarves?

 

I'm not sure who the right-on self-righteous are or what sort of noises they make.
I don't see there being a problem with 6ft Hobbits or Dwarves, if a 6ft man or woman identifies as a Hobbit, isn't that their right, now? (light blue touch paper... run for cover)

 

I had to google what you meant by whoopi goldberg gambit. None of my post was a serious argument and that part was just a dig at all the people who have used it on here.

I mean my closing line was about Lenny Henry being a Hobbit Shaman... Does that sound like a serious argument?

 

I'm not a huge Tolkien fan and I have come to accept diverse casting in film and TV. Sometimes the casting works other times I just have to try to ignore it or it will ruin, what could be, a good show or film. 

 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Wouldn't do your bounce much good when a troll bounces you off a wall.

And yet that happens to Boromir in the Cave Troll scene and he just needs to shake his head a few times, then rejoins he fight. I am not justifying or even really excusing it. It happens in other genres of movie too, even ones where they are meant to be set in some semblance of reality which just makes you sort of numb to the person getting up and walking away afterwards.
The only armour that would protect you from being flung, with that sort of force, against a solid object would be a Zorb ball... Or apparently Elvish, whatever it was meant to be, armour.
 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Even fantasy magic is expected to follow a set of rules and you don't see dragons living in three bedroom bungalows. Magic does magic and dragons do dragons according to the rules of whatever world they are in.

 

I couldn't agree more but when it comes to casting, at least, that is no longer something we can suspect. I mean if Hollywood can re-write actual historical events then what hope does fiction have?

 

I wonder if I would be so understanding of a Book series or Author I am a fan of....
I just hope Amazon Prime or Netflix they stay well away from The First Law.

 

 

 

[Grey Cloud]

This is more like a shampoo (and conditioner) advert than a scene from Tolkien. (2 mins)