"the lord of the rings: the rings of power" is out on amazon

[[DHT]Osiris]

But wasn’t that Radagast in the intro scene to the Harfoots?

No idea, got a screenshot?

 

[eelw]

I was giving 50:50 on him being Radagast

Okay watching it again, it may not be. But from my initial impression, I did think he was Radagast. And for the stranger, as soon he started to play with the firefly, believed him to be Gangalf.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

View attachment 68831

Okay watching it again, it may not be. But from my initial impression, I did think he was Radagast. And for the stranger, as soon he started to play with the firefly, believed him to be Gangalf.

Oh I was guessing those were just hunters. Radagast wasn't big on murdering wildlife anyhow.

I was hoping the firefly thing was just a nod to Gandalf, not actually Gandalf since it was a little on-the-nose. I care less at this point since the rest has been so good.

 

[brianmanahan]

what are those white angel-looking demon things?

 

[eelw]

SAURON!!!

 

[sactoking]

Definitely the best episode of the season. Biggest downside is either the writers have very few original ideas of their own or they're intentionally leaning way too hard into "foreshadowing" events from the Hobbit and LotR. Like, one or two little nuggets would have been fine but this episode especially featured a dozen (?) instances of 'eerily similar parallels.'

 

[Newbian]

Three rings down... 17 to go.

 

[zinfamous]

There are four more seasons

Sauron wins a whole lot, though.

 

[eelw]

Definitely the best episode of the season. Biggest downside is either the writers have very few original ideas of their own or they're intentionally leaning way too hard into "foreshadowing" events from the Hobbit and LotR. Like, one or two little nuggets would have been fine but this episode especially featured a dozen (?) instances of 'eerily similar parallels.'

Well Galadriel being totally manipulated is new. And the purpose of forging of the rings is changed.

But yeah hinting of Gandalf and Sauromon was like renaming of Mordor in episode 7.

 

[brianmanahan]

when in doubt, always follow your nose

 

[brianmanahan]

i really enjoyed the throwback to galadriel's "in the place of the dark lord you will have a queen!" freakout from LOTR

 

[MrSquished]

Excellent finale, totally completed the season. It definitely makes a lot of the slower buildup and stories the previous episodes make sense and really hits home. Without all that storyline of certain characters, it would not have made this ending so hard-hitting.

I do appreciate they could pace it a little faster at times, and I think the showrunners know that. In interviews they are planning to make season 2 a little more 'lively', connecting more of the story to action is basically what they say but with this finale this season was brilliant. As long as they don't make it too action-packed, should be perfect.

I knew exactly who the main two question marks were until the last episode, and then this one really not only explained that but a shitload more. As an LOTR fan, though not a Tolkien-head, I got shivers watching this as it's really giving us the foundation for what we all loved about the LOTR story.

 

[brianmanahan]

I do appreciate they could pace it a little faster at times, and I think the showrunners know that. In interviews they are planning to make season 2 a little more 'lively', connecting more of the story to action is basically what they say but with this finale this season was brilliant. As long as they don't make it too action-packed, should be perfect.

yeah i'm hoping they listen to some of the feedback and make next season's pacing a little quicker and scope a little more focused

whenever it comes out i'll be watching it

 

[MrSquished]

Spoiler: Spoilers

It was obvious early on the stranger was Gandalf. Thus I was convinced Halbrand had to be Sauron. It could not be the dark elf and really nobody else really made sense. Halbrand clearly had a dark side. However, after the last episode when he was mortally wounded and Galadriel had to rush him to be healed, I was confused because at that point I was really questioning if Halbrand was Sauron. But boy oh boy his manipulations were amazing. Great stuff.

 

[zinfamous]

Spoiler: Spoilers

It was obvious early on the stranger was Gandalf. Thus I was convinced Halbrand had to be Sauron. It could not be the dark elf and really nobody else really made sense. Halbrand clearly had a dark side. However, after the last episode when he was mortally wounded and Galadriel had to rush him to be healed, I was confused because at that point I was really questioning if Halbrand was Sauron. But boy oh boy his manipulations were amazing. Great stuff.

Spoiler

the meteor confused me a bit when they first showed it--I thought that the dude on the wrecked boat was Sauron for no particular reason; I think because I was confused about where the meteor landed at first...but then when they made it to Numenor and introduced Isildor, I thought that was a flashback introducing this king on the boat guy, because they looked rather similar to me, and so for an episode I thought that was Isildor shipwrecked with Galadrial. As for Gandalf, I thought it was either him or Sauron from the beginning. The main reason for assuming this was Gandalf is that it would simply explain his love for hobbits if they were his very first friends. But in this final episode, when the cult wizards mistook him for Sauron but said "it's the other one!" I still can't see how that isn't Saurumon? Saurumon is meant to be, actually created to be the anti-Sauron, is he not? Gandalf/Mythrandir was never meant to be the balancing power to Sauron. As for the stranger being Sauron, it just seemed like an interesting way to bring him in, plus the trickles of hints from episode to episode linking that kind of appearance to what we should expect for Sauron

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this series, having started this at about 2 episodes per night this week. I try not to binge too much anymore because I find that I remember absolutely nothing when that happens. I don't think our brains have enough time to create lasting impressions the way binge watching has compressed these time commitments. I like this a lot more than the current GoT stuff, which isn't that bad but I think Amazon's LotR is incredibly well done.

I particularly like the framework of following Galadriel, essentially imagined as the commander of Elfdom's/Middleearth's elite commander of the most elite special forces crew, doing her mission. I just like the "will not stop even at the ends of the world" attitude given towards her mission.

I didn't feel like any of the pacing here is all that slow or lacking in enough action--it actually feels like a lot more than what we got through the majority for the first two LoTR movies, where essentially "nothing happened" until the final hour of those two films, combined. Indeed, the pacing here was really no different and even the sappy, drawn-out long shots of locations or gratuitous, wistful closeups of individuals with vaseline lenses (soap opera effect) are pretty much The LoTR standard established by Jackson. Granted, some of those moments in this series are totally cracked out and could be dialed down a bit, lol, but I mean...it's part of the established aesthetic so it's certainly expected and I feel like you have to accept it if you enjoyed the movies.

(there is one glaringly bad issue here, however, in the first episode. I think it is when Galadrial is talking to her brother or maybe later with Elrond? but there is this....feels like 5 minute long soapy close shot of Galadrial in slow-mo, her hair flowing and all that, and there are several angle shots of this conversation cutting back and forth with close shots, where the lighting is so completely wrong between the shots edited in to the final cut of this scene that it's obvious these were stapled together over a couple of takes from multiple shootings, where they were not matching light at all. I'm wondering if there was some pandemic influence on the beginning of this production and they really didn't have the time to get the shots they needed with available light or what was going on and they are left with what they had, but that scene was so fucking sloppy wrg to editing that I felt like I was watching a Michael Bay trash flick. The shot continuance here-natural progression of shots such that the blocking for actors and/or camera placement and angles feels natural and logical--is really bad, too. You instantly feel like you, as the audience, are standing behind the camera watching the sausage get made. It's...not great.) ...yeah, that's a lot to write about my one real complaint in this entire series, whish is probably just 2 total minutes of screen time, haha, but I can't stop thinking about it.

Score and original music is absolutely on point, especially Fiona Apple in the final episode. Holy shit is that good stuff! Gives me vibes of Golum's theme for the credit roll of Two Towers.

I like the harfoots even though I don't give a crap about that story (I never cared about any of the hobbits, anyway). What I like is the production that went into creating this entire community. The level of detail to how they act, run their community, dress, the types of things they carry with them that show tons and tons and tons of creative work behind the scenes to establish an entire history of these people and the individuals. It's absolutely impressive and probably the best example in the series so far of what a $4 billion dollar investment in production can do for you. I think the majority of viewers won't really recognize this, but that is also the point. Without thinking, anyone watching this stuff probably doesn't even question the depth of this culture. You can pretty much see that any and all questions that could possibly be asked about these fantasy people has been written down, scrutinized, and fully realized. Think about the scene where the Stranger trips into their camp at night and reveals himself by accident to all the other tree hobbitses (as I find myself calling them). They all go into possum mode by instinct and freeze. Simply by the way they are dresses, permanently, and their habits and training and the environments they live in, they are completely hidden. We can't even see them when they aren't even hiding behind anything. I don't know why, but this made me so happy. It's really a little detail, but it shows me that everyone behind the camera is putting all possible effort into making everything in front of the camera be completely real. It's super good stuff. The closest is probably GoT, but in the fantasy world, I don't think there is any movie/show that comes close to this series in putting together a fully-realized world.

I didn't even talk about the dwarves!

Spoiler

I like the way the rings are introduced as coming into being here, even though it seems "a little quick," because it never made sense to me why the Dark Lord Sauron was supposed to be a part of that process anyway? That never seemed...very well explained in Tolkien's words. But that could just be me forgotten things that have been established. I know a lot of the stuff in this time period is bing created for this series, because it is a big gap where only fragments had been told in flashbacks, but I also do seem to recall that Sauron wasn't always evil? He was a legitimate "good" part of the order and was only lately or secretly influenced by Morgoth? Meaning, he may have already been a servant of Morgoth prior to the rings, but as the lore explained it, this maybe wasn't revealed until after he tricked the elves and dwarves and humans into crafting the rings? In a way, that idea still kind of works here--they didn't know it was actually Sauron--but here, Sauron is already quite the enemy. I kinda like that, fooling them out in the open like this.

 

[UsandThem]

Score and original music is absolutely on point, especially Fiona Apple in the final episode.

Fiona Apple.

 

[zinfamous]

Fiona Apple.

She actually has kept on recording at, I think, the same type of pace she has always has. Just not on the top of the charts or very public like she was back in the 90s.

She's also done a few one-off themes for stuff like this. Here's a superbly good one. I'm pretty sure she writes her own lyrics for this stuff which, if you compare to the theme in this series (much of which is the text inscribed on the One Ring, right--if not all of it, so that took care of itself, haha), shows just how fricking talented she is, understanding the content perfectly and cramming it all into simple, quick lyrics and just grabbing the entire mood of the story through her sound. Good, supremely talented stuff.

(you won't find <--this guy championing the absolutely vapid, while technically competent if not completely boring skills of silly, pointless trollops like Maria Carrey around here, no sir! )

 

[brianmanahan]

(you won't find <--this guy championing the absolutely vapid, while technically competent if not completely boring skills of silly, pointless trollops like Maria Carrey around here, no sir!)

 

[brianmanahan]

Score and original music is absolutely on point, especially Fiona Apple in the final episode. Holy shit is that good stuff! Gives me vibes of Golum's theme for the credit roll of Two Towers.

i'll admit i got hooked on listening to the harfoot song "this wandering day" for a while

 

[BoomerD]

Now that I've finished the season...it was OK. Perhaps not "OMFG! THAT'S THE BEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN!" good, but OK. I didn't give a crap about the black Harfoot, elf, or dwarf-wife. Just a non-issue to me. Parts of the series were kind of slow, some of the battle scenes seemed over-done...as seems to be the norm nowadays, (I'm looking at you, Marvel) but...it was very watchable. I DO wish they'd have dropped the entire series all at once instead of dribbling it out one episode every week. It makes it easier for me to keep up.
I wasn't too surprised about theold man who fell from the sky, just didn't think he qas going to be Sauron, in spite of the clues leading the viewer in that direction.

 

[purbeast0]

Watched the finale last night and big fat ... "meh" ... for the whole season. It really only had one really good episode, the 6th one, and that was about it. I thought the finale in general was weak as shit for a finale. We found out who 2 people are and the rings were forged. Whoopidity doo.

And the harfoots are the worst fucking thing ever to make it onto my TV.

 

[brianmanahan]

And the harfoots are the worst fucking thing ever to make it onto my TV.

 

[JM Aggie08]

Watched the finale last night and big fat ... "meh" ... for the whole season. It really only had one really good episode, the 6th one, and that was about it. I thought the finale in general was weak as shit for a finale. We found out who 2 people are and the rings were forged. Whoopidity doo.

And the harfoots are the worst fucking thing ever to make it onto my TV.

Watch your filthy whore mouth.

 

[MrSquished]

Watched the finale last night and big fat ... "meh" ... for the whole season. It really only had one really good episode, the 6th one, and that was about it. I thought the finale in general was weak as shit for a finale. We found out who 2 people are and the rings were forged. Whoopidity doo.

And the harfoots are the worst fucking thing ever to make it onto my TV.

yeah man, you are clearly not into LOTR because this is what the whole series is about, telling us what happened before LOTR to make it LOTR.

 

[purbeast0]

yeah man, you are clearly not into LOTR because this is what the whole series is about, telling us what happened before LOTR to make it LOTR.

What gave it away Sherlock, the fact that I said the whole season was "meh" ?