"Tolkien never said that Gandalf wasn't a surfing enthusiast, nor that he never owned and operated a crab shack by the shore to finance his hobby." This absurd statement is compatible with the way the ROP show runners are treating the lore.
I hate that they're acting like "follow your nose" is Gandalf's catchphrase- he was talking about following the fresh air to find your way out of the mine tunnels, he's not Toucan Sam!
It's because writers are not-very-smart and best lines they wrote they took from the movies or books, but without ability to actually think what they meant, because writers are not-very-smart. So they e.g. use phrases out of time because viewers can 'recognize' them. Did some character say this in LorR, we must use it! Their own plot devices and dialogue seems horrendous; rocks look down and boats look up... what?
@@tubetorpedo "to be good, you have to be a little bit evil." What a great message, I'm sure Tolkien would have written that if he'd had the chance! 🙄 The most honest thing they've said is that Tolkien DIDN'T write this- except they think that somehow links him when LITERALLY EVERY OTHER STORY EVER WRITTEN by anyone else is that exact thing, a story he DIDN'T write! That doesn't make it special; that's the exact OPPOSITE!
same for the "stormtroopers miss a lot" meme in disney star wars. they crawl the net for public sentiment and then use that with no regard for human life, real humor, good storytelling or convincing dialogues.
@@tubetorpedo yeah quite often they reuse those lines in completely random way not caring about the context, for instance the vision in the palantir, the lines are used from those spoken by Galadriel on her mirror...they completely forgot that palantiri do not show the future in the lore, in fact that scene SHOUKD HAVE BEEN ABOUT LOOKING INTO Galadriel's mirror it would make more sense then, and more narrative purpose.. as Galadriel would be showing TO MIRIEL the possible visions of the future to convince her to aid the Elves and advise, this would also show a glimpse of Galadriel we know and her powers!
"Don't be afraid, there will be no RoP contents in here" - that actually put my mind at ease, since I'm new in your channel. Thank you, this is a really great video!
they 100% did, but they dont care. everybody is talking about it, and ALL the people who are not fans but "loooooove" the movies still watched it, which means money. Not like they care much about anything else, they'll just hop on and ruin the next beloved franchise for money, greed, influence and power. But if you criticise the bad movies, they'll declare you a rightwinger/incel/whatever, as they cast them so diverse. Star Wars ✔️ LotR ✔️ Dr. Who ✔️ Marvel ✔️ Personally i'd guess DC will be bought next, just because i'm cynical.
No Forgiveness, these monopolies only want to use the cultural heritage of others to expand their pockets. Tolkien would Despise shipping company Amazon and the environments they destroy.
The lack of ownership by Amazon of most of LOTR's lore/license (thank God) is a very common excuse I've seen thrown around to defend this trash heap. And honestly, it is such a lazy and cowardly cop-out. Good storytelling is good storytelling. If the same writing team that put this monstrosity together had access to the full licenses of Tolkien's work, they wouldn't have made a better show, they simply would've had more material to butcher. A couple of years back we would nitpick to say a piece of media was bad. Now we nitpick to pretend something is good. The fact that the foundation of this project was a delusional desire to "update" and "fix" Tolkien for a modern audience spelt catastrophy from the start.
Basically the entire character of Galadriel in the show violates the lore, she was already the Lady of the Wood around this time and had been with Celeborn possibly for the entirety of the Second Age if not more by the time of the show.
I love how the defense is that "oh she's a feisty teenager", while in the second age she was close to 3500 years old and one of the oldest elves in ME, older than both Gil-galad and Celebrimbor if i recall correctly.
@@shadyminkins5704 They did make a character who is entirely unlikeable - every time there is a fight you hope she is skewered but alas we are stuck with her overly choregraphed fight/dances and stilted conversation.
After all those countless years Tolkien spent editing the Silmarillion to make it consistent down to every detail, a lot of that time being near to death himself and working tirelessly to bring this history to us, and these showrunners just add a fourth Silmaril like it's nothing. It was a bad show standing on it's own, using Tolkiens work as clout was just abusive.
I was talking with a coworker today who was excited about the Rings of Power. Since I'm up on the lore I felt it was my responsibility to spend the last 15 minutes of our lunch break explaining to him all the places in which they broke canon. 😌 It shouldn't have surprised me though since he thinks the Disney Star Wars far surpasses the original trilogy. 😥
I have friends who Love RoP... knowing the lore... I have to bite my tongue because I don't wanna ruin something they actually enjoy. But when they ask me if I like it I tell them straight up... "its absolute garbage." And they stop talking about it. Everyone wins. Hahaha
@@danemiller4852 Same, and everytime I'm asking myself how can they like that if they know the lore? It totally baffles me. But I also try not to say much because once I start, I cannot stop 🤣
I'd really love to ask the showrunners "Who is this for?" Because after watching a few reviews where they have a "normie" friend who watched it with them, the normie tended to be confused and lost about the name-dropped stuff (since it's meant to be significant, but only if you actually know the lore), while people who DO know the lore get constantly pissed off at how much of the lore it spits on and rewrites.
The writers in Hollywood truly feel ideologically possessed to subvert source material to the point where whenever I hear an adaptation now, I instantly think "And I bet the head writer finds themselves above this intellectual property."
Excelent explanations and final words. I just wanted to share the bit that did actually trigger me, which was the changing of the mythos of the Silmarils, when Gil-Galad reveals to Elrond that a random Elf hero had battled a random Balrog in some random tree in Lindon and somehow mithril was created out of that encounter and a Silmaril being hidden in the tree. That was just beyond poor choice of everything really, writing, dialogue, mythology. It just doesn't make sense even if the average viewer wouldn't know what the gems were and how important they were during the first age. Neither Maedhros nor Maglor would've been random enough to either hide it or "lose" it in a tree. Especially if the tree is not a sapling from either the two trees or the white tree. It's just messed up all over lol.
lol 12 seconds in.... "I'm going to do a bonus round of 'Rings of Power'; but don't worry, there will be no 'Rings of Power'........LMAO!! LOLOLOLOL!!!!!
Love to see a relaxed, cool man making such a case against something, if you are a fan or Tolkien's work or not, we all have to aim to this level of discussion. See you!
I haven't read any of the books. Never saw any of the films or this show. But at least I had the decency not to piss on the lore and fans for a quick buck.
I call bullshit. They have CLEARLY read "The Lord of The Rings". It's the TITLE. Although you are correct that this is all they have read. ;) These are the kinds of people who think they know what is going on in the world because they read headlines of news articles.
Thank you for this factual and reasonable comparison of the text to RoP. It's easy to write off the criticism as some socio-political knee-jerk reaction, when in fact those of us who read and love Tolkien have only asked for a respectful, accurate portrayal of the world and characters we love.
You're welcome. It is always difficult to dismiss criticism if you generalise and act as if they are all non-constructive. But there is actually lots of constructive criticism out there that the showrunners could react to. Sadly they don't!
The LotR movies were good because they were made from a place of love and respect, the changes where mostly excusable for the purposes of making it work as movies. The production studio where unsure of their investment but it payed off big-time. The Hobbit trilogy was mediocre because it was an attempt to repeat the success of LotR trilogy for the purposes of greed, sure they (eventually) got the same people to do it, but their hearts weren’t in it for all the expansions and filler necessary to turn it into a trilogy. Rings of Power is bad because it comes entirely from a place of greed and has clearly attracted the worst possible people to try and get in on the action and boost their egos.
The goal of this show was never to honor Tolkien’s deeper lore, ideas, or philosophies, but rather to use his name, stories, and characters as a vehicle to advance a political and social agenda, since they knew doing so would reach a very large audience.
I think you are right. I have compared it to greenwashing of sports by fossil fuel companies. Amazon wants to be seen as progressive, even though they are a far right corporation that hates workers having any rights or liveable wages. There is a serious point to be made there that goes beyond the shallow 'woke' (I hate that word, and you never find it outside of America) reaction of the far right brigade.
Even read with this little inflection, these passages still give me chills - something that the entire series could not manage. Anyway, I love this video!
Thank you very much for sharing Colindo. I echo others here in saying how refreshing it is to have a level-headed discussion about these inconsistencies.
Excellent analysis. Thank you! As a long time reader of Tolkien, I was absolutely frustrated and angered with Rings of Power. I agree; they had licensed a fair amount of lore material and could easily have put together a decent adaptation of the Second Age. It’s obvious to me that the showrunners had no respect for Tolkien’s work (did they even read it?) and, in some twisted delusion, they thought they could improve upon it! To add insult to injury, other aspects of the show were just terrible: characterizations, dialogue, acting, costumes, etc. I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether they will make amends in the second season, but I doubt it.
I really enjoyed that reading XD I love how these showrunners pretend like LOTR is so amazingly open to interpretation when most of the world events are explicitly explained and dated in the books.
I think the show runners were reading LOTR for dummies, and then decided that that was still not clear enough, so they just took some names and called it good…
Thank you for this! I have been trying to convince people on both sides of the ROP debate even before the show premiered that all of information needed to do justice to the Second age was available in the source material that Amazon did indeed have the rights to. They only needed to follow it as a guide. Of course, there was plenty of room to flesh it out and add new characters and situations along the way, but no reason to change the entire narrative. Even the extreme condensing of the timeline was unnecessary in my opinion. The mini-series Centennial from 78-79 did an excellent job of telling a compelling story that spanned almost two hundred years. This was without the advantage of having extremely long-lived characters such as Dwarves and Numenoreans or immortal ones such as Elves or Vala.
You're welcome. Happy I could be of help. You describe my overall sentiment precisely. Also I would have loved a season where time passes normally for the elves, but men and dwarves keep changing as generations come and go. Would have been a great start for the Second Age.
For comparison's sake, in a recent interview George R.R. Martin talked about the difficulties of adapting decades of history to a tv show format - where do you begin the story, how do you deal with the passage of time, etc. I guess he never considered cramming everything together and presenting it as if millenia of history happenend in a single weekend. Another thing missed by Rings of Power for no reason at all is that the Hobbits were migrating for the same reason the Istari arrived - the darkening of Mirkwood (Greenwood at the time). They're migrating because they have been pushed out of their home, not because "they're Irish anarcho-pirmitivists, and they just kind of do that I guess"
just imagine if competent directors/writers made a show about the Silmarillion. It would be amazing. Unfortunately, we're stuck with the most poorly written fan fiction of all time instead.
why pay for the Silmarillion when you can just buy out the appendixes to get the "LOTR stamp" on your unofficial fanfiction. That is the only reason ANYTHING Tolkien was licensed. Don't know if this was before or after Amazon fired all the Tolkien scholars for disagreeing with them.
@@sarahgopats4571 so true, unless theres a renaissance of film where directors and studios desire to create art like PJ did with LOTR instead of quick cash grab films/shows injected with political propaganda like we have nowadays, i dont want anyone to even dare think about making a film or show about the silmarillion.
It would be, but few would appreciate, so they would lose money anyway. The Silmarillion is fiction History, more poetry like than theater like. Difficult to adapt to TV. However HBO has successfully done so with GRRMs Targarien show
Yes and the most egregious changes are not even associated with the material they have access to. Perhaps the worst of all is giving a false narrative to Finrod and then extrapolating a second false narrative from the first and giving it to Galadriel (the revenge trope which does NOT exist). So the pilot episode alone completely undermines the Beren/Luthien/Finrod triarchy which Tolkien himself said was the HEART of the legendarium.
They could not even keep track of their own writing, so it should come as no surprise that they could not keep track of their own writing AND what Tolkien had written. Their own writing is so bad and seems to indicate that they are not very bright people. It is amazing that they managed to BS their way into the job and actually get this show made. They’re obviously better BSers than they are writers. Even if you completely ignore the fact that this is supposed to be a LOTR story based on Tolkien’s universe, and simply treat it as a random fantasy title with no legacy to adhere to, it is still a story told with many contradicting and illogical details, and a whole lot of stupid silly dialog. They do not know what they are doing and nobody should’ve ever given them this chance. Whether or not they followed lore is important, but is practically secondary to whether or not they could actually write a story worth following in the first place. Clearly they could not.
People have mentioned that before that they only worked on projects that were not realised. I wonder if they are just incredibly inexperienced writers.
@@Colindo I think it is very safe to say they are incredibly inexperienced writers, yes. I believe all that’s actually on their resumes can’t really even go on them since it was a small amount of uncredited work in some Star Trek title. Surely if you did anything worthwhile you’d receive credit for it. So who knows to what extent anything he/they contributed actually mattered to that uncredited job. (I say he/they because I kind of think it was only one of the pair that actually was involved in that one, but I’m not 100% on that.) The large amount of incredibly amateurish and nonsensical stuff in every episode we got certainly speaks to them being inexperienced. I kept waiting and hoping for it to get better as it went along each week, but as we all saw, it only got worse and worse. Amazon should just delete season one and start over with some competent people. Heh.
These writers didn't seem to give a crap about the lore. They just wanted to throw their own politics into Tolkien's story since they knew if they had made their own fantasy, not a soul would have watched it. No respect for the time line, the characters, or the reasons behind the fall of Numenor, Moria, and even how Sauron first become the main threat in the 2nd age.
If you changed all the character and place names, no one would ever suspect it was Tolkien's world. It would just be a badly-written generic fantasy. The only reason they wanted Tolkien's name on it is for name-recognition, nothing else.
Thank you for speaking up! So many of us see the lore trampled and defiled for a "theatrical production" without saying anything. I really appreciate the fact that you quoted directly from the books so nay-sayers can suck it!
These showrunners took more inspiration of 50 shades of Grey than LOTR. Sauron is not an absolute evil he is a flawed man redeemable by the love of a pure but ignorant girl. This is fanfic at its worst.
They seem to be inspired by all sorts of things.. EXCEPT the Lotr source material hehe, hell they even slipped in the slur "knife-ears" from Dragon Age into the show! How is this possible no idea, but they used a racial slur for elves from a different fantasy universe haha! The Dragon Age games have in them certain amount of racism towards the elves as the second class citizens, but it's not the case with Tolkien and there are no expressions or insults towards elves based on their shape of ears! If anything there is only one instance of insult/slur towards Elves done by Easterlings of First Age: "The Easterlings came into the land in great numbers, and they dealt cruelly with the people of Hador, and robbed them of all that they possessed and enslaved them. All the people of Húrin's homelands that could work or serve any purpose they took away, even young girls and boys, and the old they killed or drove out to starve. But they dared not yet lay hands on the Lady of Dor-lómin, or thrust her from her house; for the word ran among them that she was perilous, and a witch who had dealings with the white-fiends: for so they named the Elves, hating them, but fearing them more. For this reason they also feared and avoided the mountains, in which many of the Eldar had taken refuge, especially in the south of the land; and after plundering and harrying the Easterlings drew back northwards. ..." I guess Arondir should be happy they have not called him...."black fiend" hehe. But seriously the certain post-Tolkien derivative fantasy tropes in use in the show are getting annoying like the whole exaggerated scottish accent of the Dwarves or some other loose reference which can also bring in mind Dragon Age like the tunnels (in the games dig by Darkspawn in the show by Orcs, though obviously they do make tunnels and passages but they are not creating that sort of underground road net hehe in Tolkien's world). Also the forced diversity also brings in mind the DA as it is Bioware game so it has certain...progressiveness in those sorts of things.
Clarity is always refreshing. This RoP situation has inflamed my opinion of corporate involvement with Tolkien. Since the first article, the first abominable "fan"... whatever they called that panel of fakers... I've sensed the problems were too many to deal with. Well, that and their buying off of my favorite YT lore channels, that I have not watched a single second of that production.
I was surprised by some Facebook pages with lore content how positively they were reporting about the show. I think I mentioned it in one of my videos, how they would cherrypick specific plotpoints that were correct and then said: "You see, this show is true to the lore!"
Apparently from some inside sources it was sort of on the right track...before Christopher died. That's how long this project was in the works, then the next gen sold out and didn't bother.
@@Colindo Hey Colindo, If you ever decide to rewatch the Hobbit trilogy, you should watch the M4 Hobbit Book Cut! The lead editor, M4, teamed up with some digital editors to make a single film version of the trilogy. They desaturated, corrected the color grading, omitted characters, and added film grain to make this version match the appearance of the LOTR trilogy! And they cut out all the excess crap that wasn't in the book! All the Thorin dwarf backstory is a bonus chapter on his blu ray files titled Durin's Folk. It's how I start my Middle-Earth marathon, and I highly recommend it!
@@Colindo They are liars, which is a minor form of evil. They distort the truth for their own gain. It is honestly sad that people do this, that they have so little dignity in themselves and integrity that they debase themselves for mere sheckles The showrunners also lie quite easily, just straight up saying "this is straight from the lore." But it was obvious this was going to be absolutely terrible. With Christopher gone, there was no one to keep a soulless corporation in check. LOTR movies was lightning striking, even if they weren't perfect. You cannot put faith in that happening, and when it is blatant a soulless corporation is involved like Amazon, no one should've supported this show
There are a number of things about The Rings of Power that bother me, but first and foremost is the presumptuousness of altering Tolkien's lore and telling fans that they're bad people for being angry about it. Not only do the writers of that show have the audacity to propose that Tolkien's material was inadequate, they also have the temerity to propose that their version is superior because it "corrects Tolkien's oversights." The very idea that the work needed correction is a travesty in and of itself.
Is Tolkien your religion or something? You disregard that the show makes changes that condense the timeline so we can see the same characters experience the origins of the war for the One Ring instead of having things happen 600 years apart to completely different characters every episode. Amazon has removed reviews & spoken against fans who don't like Latino elves because they don't understand what Amazon is doing but they think they do. This is an adaptation, that's all. No one at Amazon is under any illusion that every loud group of fans can be pleased. Even if they stuck strictly to the source material, people would complain about how poorly paced the show is & how they should've changed this or that to make it more interesting. There's no winning with some people.
@@2QAYL1138 Instead of cramming hundreds of years of backstory into one storyline, they could have chosen any major event or any point between major events to stage the show around. They had plenty of unaccounted-for timeline to work with without having to interpolate unnecessary, non-canonical BS.
@@andrewmize823 They probably would have done that because they would've had to, if the Tolkien estate didn't approve their idea to condense the timeline.
They didn't alter the lore; that is impossible. They made their own crappy show, one of the worst shows of all time, and if that confuses you so much that you think Tolkien's lore is altered, I almost feel bad for your defective brain.
The show runners keep lying and the actors keep talking nonsense. The Sauron actor, stated he wanted to be with Galadriel as she was an elven warrior that gave him access. This alone show their ignore of Galadriel. They actually reduced her power....she is a princess and a sorceress. Not a "warrior". What a disaster for the LOTR and its future.
I don't think they even managed to "reflect the world we live in today". It's probably just the world some of the producers etc live in. Instead of providing a longed-for, escapist visit to the lore of the Second Age, they dragged Tolkien's work into a culture war, that ~98% of all consumers or fans don't even care about, for either "side". Incompetent showrunners trying to make money by fan-baiting and deliberately causing controversy, that's what I hate most about this "adaptation".
@@culturevsman5024 except for the official interviews, the social media posts, podcasts etc, before and after it aired. The show's PR played the culture and representation card from the start just as well and they referenced several changes to the lore/characters because of this. The showrunners never denied any of that and some of their critics called that out from the start. I'd also say Amazon realised they had an objectively bad show on their hands that was also far from Tolkien's material so they, opportunistic fucks themselves, used the opposing opportunistic fucks for publicity (just as vice versa) - good or bad PR doesn't matter as long as it's publicly fought over. I saw the show, I saw PJs movies, I saw videos of several of these opportunistic fucks and I had read most of Tolkien's work long before to get a broad spectrum before making up my mind about it. My personal criticism of the show is pretty much the same as the presenter's in his/their reaction videos. So yes, there is apparently a bit of a culture war going on in US/western entertainment/social media, but like I said, if you don't look into it too deeply, especially if one isn't a native speaker, American or on social media you won't notice that nor will anyone outside these right-wing/left-wing-whatever-bubbles really care.
@@culturevsman5024 Yes, there was. Making "Miriel" black and other "diversity" casting not in keeping with the lore, including adding a number of made-up female characters to bring some kind of sexual balance to Tolkien's world, turning "Galadriel" into an unrecognizable Karen warrior and disappearing Celeborn so that she could adventure as a strong, independent woman, making half the "Numenorean" army female, portraying almost every male character as weak and effeminate, a tavern scene where a "black elf" is referred to by a hillbilly stand-in as "you people," a nonsensical "the elves are takin' yer jobs!" scene. And that's just the most obvious stuff off the top of my head. This show was littered with modernism and culture war references. It was the Current Year zeitgeist written all over it. The "showrunners" themselves said they were going to do exactly that (Tolkien had to be "modernized"). You are either lying about all of this or modernist thinking is so ingrained into your worldview that you are incapable of seeing it, much like a fish doesn't realize he is wet. Either way, the "opportunistic fucks" were 100% right about this show and you are wrong.
@@FinrodFelagund5 Dude I see it for what it is. Yes there were diversity casts but I wasn't being preached too, I wasn't beat over the head with social justice. It aint ever going back the other way so I don't let things like Miriel being black bother me. She gave a pretty darn good performance but no you don't even wanna recognize that. You can say its not accurate, I agree with you . I disagree that its not entertaining.
I have today binged watched all of your R.o.P videos, so it is safe to say that I enjoyed your content. I hope that you do not make us wait a whole year for new videos. I, especially, enjoyed this last video of yours. I hope that you will produce more videos like this. Maybe a "Everything lorewise wrong with R.o.P" video would be awesome. yes, i know you suffered a lot, but someone has to do it 😅. Keep up the good work and I hope to see you soon.
Hi, thanks for the kind words (except wanting me to suffer more, shame on you! 😉 ) but I will not be able to rewatch any of that for an in-depth research. I might turn towards other parts of the wide lore-worlds of Middle-Earth.
It is a shame they didn't hew closer to the actual timeline. It would still allow Gandalf the ability to interact with the hobbits, and explain why he had a soft spot for them.
I've followed your RoP watching sessions, and then some of the more joyous video of you commenting LOTR movies. Since I've read The Silmarillion, the Hobbit but not the LOTR books, I find the videos both insightful and fun, and shared your view on many if not most of the contents, especially on RoP. Most recommended.
Something I picked up from one of Just Some Guy's videos is that they, uh, "borrowed" a plot element from Beren And Luthien for Galadriel's backstory. That more than anything bothered me.
Well, they didn't finish the statement. "Back to the book to look up more character and place names." Because that's pretty much all they took from it.
Just finished The Silmarillion for the 2nd time last night. Some of Rings of Power is a vague shadow of that story and much is just plain invented tripe.
Even though the second age isn't well fleshed out in LOTR appendices there is enough there to build the framework of a 5 season show. Why they changed things so much baffles me, they could have split the second age into 5 sections and concentrated each season on each of these. Even that would be too much content for 5, 8 show seasons, so they could probably have just taken 5 key event in the second age and dramatised one of those for each season. Sure they would have to change a few things as they don't have the rights to everything but could still have crafted something compelling that didn't break LOTR law.
@@spencerhansen8374 Indeed, but now Amazon studios is a billion dollars down with little of anything to show for it. Even they can't justify that and their shareholders aren't happy. With the price rises they have had to implement to pay for this sorry mess neither are their customers.
ROP is like something a 5 year old would produce for a creative writing excercise, except the child's work would make more sense and be more entertaining.
this video deserves more views, what really baffles me is the people that so readily jump to the defense of a billion dollar conglomorate, like if the show was any good I could at least understand it not as an adaptation which it utterly fails at, but even just as a generic fantasy show, we truely live in an age of senseless consumerism. I think its important to make the destinction that RoP isn't actually woke, its not trying to push any social change, its not standing for any progressive ideas, it only goes as far as it feels safe in the current enviroment. It is despicably transperent how they agressively rolled out the black elf narative to draw attention to the show to provoke a reaction, a reaction that to them is now providing a convenient excuse to hide behind to not accept valid critisim. The Rings of Power is the most corperate cynical overpriced garbadge produced to date, its a giant turd that had woke signaling slapped on top of it in what amazon was certain to be a success. Just to be clear the show writers definetly try to push their idiology, frankly after the elves steal our jobs and we need to build a wall around numenor I half expected them to double down, have galadriel get impregnated with saurons child and then they have to drive to another state to get an abortion in the next season, but whats important to point out here the people that put these hacks in charge are simply motivated by greed, something readily apparent if the current rumours about the panic behind the scene and supposed sidelining of the show runners turn out to be true. Now I don't think there is any salvaging this mess, but it might genuilny be entertaining to watch as they each start handing down this burning dumbster fire from creative lead to creative lead trying to salvage their billion dollars.
Yes, they have stated in a roundabout way that what they looked for were lines that were specific in countering what they were writing. The example they gave was that it was never stated that Galadriel never went to Numenor, therefore they could have her go there regardless of the intent or implication of the original texts.
Interesting. That is a pretty roundabout way of figuring out what to show of the Second Age. Since they could have shown what is actually written. I wonder why the writers did things in the way they did.
I can only theorise that they had a story that they wanted to tell, and used what was not written down as an excuse to wrap what they could around it. Again, in another interview they stated that season 1 was an origin story for Galadriel, and I assume that having her live peacefully with Celeborn for 8 episodes did not fit in with what they wanted.
@@Gorbz What I don't understand is that if they argue this way, why don't they check properly? Half of the lines I read I could find from memory. This is just undignified.
@@Colindo I honestly do not know. I can take guesses, but until they come out and state why it was written this way (which I doubt happening), guesswork is all it would be. All we know for certain is that Payne and McKay are debate club graduates, spent 10 years not getting any of their scripts turned into productions, they asked J.J. Abhrams to put in a good word with Amazon for this job, wrote a synopsis that Simon Tolkien liked (I believe it has been said it was "exactly what he wanted"), and that they combed the text to find what was not said so they could make a story with that.
SHOWRUNNERS: How can we stop this guy for not revealing our violations? ME: You can't. He's reading the book and understood the content...can't say the same from you.
I couldn't bring myself to watch RoP. It was clear from the initial teaser content and the subsequent attacking of fans that the writers had made a complete hash of the lore. It's such a shame that fans have to be degraded as '-ists' and -phobes' just because we have a deep connection with the tales, and that Tolkien himself warned against poor adaptations of his work.
@@culturevsman5024 There was nothing good about it. You are defending a show that disappeared Celeborn and replaced him with romantic undertones between "Galadriel" and "Sauron." Abhorrent.
@@FinrodFelagund5 Celeborn smelliborn dude...that may have sucked but what about the Durin and Elrond friendship. Durin and his father was well done. Even Disa was entertaining . Peter Jackson fucked over Tom Bombadil Hard and I mean hard...no one bashes him to death over it. Jackson screwed Faramir aswell....did I cry about it no I DID NOT.
@@culturevsman5024 You don't cry about anything apparently, even when giant corporations buttfuck you without any lube. CONSUME PRODUCT, THEN GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT.
Rings of Power, The Witcher, Resident Evil... shows, movies, whatever. Adaptations are always shit. Showrunners *do not care* about what the original vision was. They want to take a famous IP and make it somehow their own. It's a sad reality we live in, but a lot of these writers do not respect the original artist's vision in the slightest. They don't see a great writer in Tolkien, they see a chance to rewrite everything they thought he did wrong and that they could do it better. They are, of course, sorely mistaken and their shows are always canceled and their movies fall apart, but they do it every time.
Adaptation is not shet. It is just as u said, shetty showrunners. I mean, why dahfug would u hire someone without an ounce of passion, with hatred for the original work? The writers and producers, etc clearly doesn't care and have no respect for the original work. So why hire such people to work on it? It makes NO logical or rational sense. Welp I can see why the libs hate capitalism. :) Liberals are a cancer.
@@lovisericachii4503 I agree with you, but I wouldn't go as far as to say liberals are cancer. There are plenty of liberal TH-camrs and conservative TH-camrs alike that hate what the showrunners and writers behind The Rings of Power have done.
They don't want to make an IP their own, they recognise it as a business prospect and want to milk it for what they can get. It'd be like any small business that's made a name for itself that's been bought by a larger Corp to make as much money in a short period of time before burning it out. They don't care about legacies or awards or anything other than guaranteed income within a short period of time
Yes, glad you brought up the little snippet in the Silmarilion about “Sauron repenting”. That has always seemed to me since I read the Silmarilion when it first was published, in my own personal Second Age, as literally meaning that Sauron ACTED like he was sorry for a period of time on the order of a week when he was ‘arrested’ after the War of Wrath. He told a convincing tale to Eonwe (his ‘bounty hunter’) which likely was more of a “sorry I was caught” in his heart, but when told to voluntarily report to the authorities on his own recognizance he jumped bail and fled immediately back into hiding. How the hell anyone, show runners or fans, could blow that up into “Sauron was sincerely sorry and repentant, and wanted to help after the war” is beyond me. But to me the real damage of this ridiculous way of looking at things is that it is a violation not of the existing lore, some of which was virtually written on scraps Christopher Tolkien found after his father’s death, but of the spirit of the stories. Another idea for a video in your channel, but one that might require more like 16 hours than 16 minutes, would be to go through Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” and pick out all the places in the series where they violate what was is written there about the rules for “Fairy Stories”. I don’t think most people think of it in these terms, but can feel it nonetheless. But I feel like lore changes are secondary to having things happen which turn the world into something more like OUR world instead of Tolkien’s Faerie. In some places it was a little funny, like the Orcs being an oppressed race and Adar wincing at Galadriel’s use of the word “orcs” - and saying to the effect “it’s URUKS, we consider orc derogatory”. 😂 But the thing about the world in the books is that it is NOT our world - evil is real, magic is real and angels and devils are real - it is a fairy story and has a different logic. In “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien wrote that there can never be any “knowing winking” at the “magic” in such stories if it is to remain a Fairy Story. Deconstructionist Middle Earth and deconstructionist Sauron basically rips the spirit out of it as far as I’m concerned. I think THAT is the part the writers of this show apparently REALLY don’t get. Not to worry, they still will have a large and presumably profitable extra group of pure hate-watchers to pad out their ratings.
Yes, I always understood Sauron's behaviour like this. Otherwise the "he quickly fell back to old behaviour" wouldn't make sense. I'm not sure if I ever read "On Fairy Stories" completely, but it is often cited in other texts. Might have to have a look, but you are right that the essential sentiment that is necessary for the depth of story that we know from the LotR is not followed in this series at all.
@@Colindo Honesly people that believe fantasy tropes of any sort are literally true in the real world are probably the root of a lot, if not most actual evil in the world. But the other side of the coin are people that think literary fantasy can survive making it become too realistic in the adaptation. But at least the only harm they can do is ruin a television series.
"Tolkien never said that Gandalf wasn't a surfing enthusiast, nor that he never owned and operated a crab shack by the shore to finance his hobby." This absurd statement is compatible with the way the ROP show runners are treating the lore.
That's probably gonna end up being included in Season 2 now.
Honestly, I'd rather watch a show about that instead of whatever rings of power is
Well done! Sounds like you covered all the major plot points that Payne and McKay nuked from orbit.
Thanks!
I hate that they're acting like "follow your nose" is Gandalf's catchphrase- he was talking about following the fresh air to find your way out of the mine tunnels, he's not Toucan Sam!
It's because writers are not-very-smart and best lines they wrote they took from the movies or books, but without ability to actually think what they meant, because writers are not-very-smart. So they e.g. use phrases out of time because viewers can 'recognize' them. Did some character say this in LorR, we must use it!
Their own plot devices and dialogue seems horrendous; rocks look down and boats look up... what?
@@tubetorpedo "to be good, you have to be a little bit evil."
What a great message, I'm sure Tolkien would have written that if he'd had the chance! 🙄
The most honest thing they've said is that Tolkien DIDN'T write this- except they think that somehow links him when LITERALLY EVERY OTHER STORY EVER WRITTEN by anyone else is that exact thing, a story he DIDN'T write! That doesn't make it special; that's the exact OPPOSITE!
same for the "stormtroopers miss a lot" meme in disney star wars.
they crawl the net for public sentiment and then use that with no regard for human life, real humor, good storytelling or convincing dialogues.
@@tubetorpedo yeah quite often they reuse those lines in completely random way not caring about the context, for instance the vision in the palantir, the lines are used from those spoken by Galadriel on her mirror...they completely forgot that palantiri do not show the future in the lore, in fact that scene SHOUKD HAVE BEEN ABOUT LOOKING INTO Galadriel's mirror it would make more sense then, and more narrative purpose.. as Galadriel would be showing TO MIRIEL the possible visions of the future to convince her to aid the Elves and advise, this would also show a glimpse of Galadriel we know and her powers!
I Would rather they had used "You shall not pass!!" as his catchphrase
"Don't be afraid, there will be no RoP contents in here" - that actually put my mind at ease, since I'm new in your channel. Thank you, this is a really great video!
Damn, beat me to it!
You are most welcome!
I don’t think Amazon understood the depth and strength of the Tolkien fandom.
they 100% did, but they dont care.
everybody is talking about it, and ALL the people who are not fans but "loooooove" the movies still watched it, which means money.
Not like they care much about anything else, they'll just hop on and ruin the next beloved franchise for money, greed, influence and power. But if you criticise the bad movies, they'll declare you a rightwinger/incel/whatever, as they cast them so diverse.
Star Wars ✔️
LotR ✔️
Dr. Who ✔️
Marvel ✔️
Personally i'd guess DC will be bought next, just because i'm cynical.
No Forgiveness, these monopolies only want to use the cultural heritage of others to expand their pockets. Tolkien would Despise shipping company Amazon and the environments they destroy.
They did, they need to destroy LOTR, it didn't really work this season, they have 4 more to fill us with crap
The lack of ownership by Amazon of most of LOTR's lore/license (thank God) is a very common excuse I've seen thrown around to defend this trash heap. And honestly, it is such a lazy and cowardly cop-out. Good storytelling is good storytelling. If the same writing team that put this monstrosity together had access to the full licenses of Tolkien's work, they wouldn't have made a better show, they simply would've had more material to butcher. A couple of years back we would nitpick to say a piece of media was bad. Now we nitpick to pretend something is good.
The fact that the foundation of this project was a delusional desire to "update" and "fix" Tolkien for a modern audience spelt catastrophy from the start.
Basically the entire character of Galadriel in the show violates the lore, she was already the Lady of the Wood around this time and had been with Celeborn possibly for the entirety of the Second Age if not more by the time of the show.
I love how the defense is that "oh she's a feisty teenager", while in the second age she was close to 3500 years old and one of the oldest elves in ME, older than both Gil-galad and Celebrimbor if i recall correctly.
@@MkZuO12345 She is 119 years older that Gil-galad. Celebrimbor and Celeborn were probably born in Years of the Trees too, but when exactly is unknown
She was a great mage or seer not a sword-swinging tyrant.
The entire character of Galadriel also violates the concept of a likeable protagonist =p
@@shadyminkins5704 They did make a character who is entirely unlikeable - every time there is a fight you hope she is skewered but alas we are stuck with her overly choregraphed fight/dances and stilted conversation.
Thank you for taking the time to do this. Rings of power is a disrespect to tolkein. It could have been so great
You are welcome.
This could have been a great show if they had just hired people who cared about Tolkien's vision and adapted the sources that were available to them.
After all those countless years Tolkien spent editing the Silmarillion to make it consistent down to every detail, a lot of that time being near to death himself and working tirelessly to bring this history to us, and these showrunners just add a fourth Silmaril like it's nothing. It was a bad show standing on it's own, using Tolkiens work as clout was just abusive.
What 4th silmaril?
- How much of the show is lore innacurate?
- Yes.
- What do you mean?
- I mean, yes.
I was talking with a coworker today who was excited about the Rings of Power. Since I'm up on the lore I felt it was my responsibility to spend the last 15 minutes of our lunch break explaining to him all the places in which they broke canon. 😌 It shouldn't have surprised me though since he thinks the Disney Star Wars far surpasses the original trilogy. 😥
I have friends who Love RoP... knowing the lore... I have to bite my tongue because I don't wanna ruin something they actually enjoy. But when they ask me if I like it I tell them straight up... "its absolute garbage." And they stop talking about it. Everyone wins. Hahaha
@@danemiller4852 Ruin it, defend Tolkien
@@danemiller4852 Same, and everytime I'm asking myself how can they like that if they know the lore? It totally baffles me. But I also try not to say much because once I start, I cannot stop 🤣
@@resathe6760 thats exactly what happens to me lol
I'd really love to ask the showrunners "Who is this for?" Because after watching a few reviews where they have a "normie" friend who watched it with them, the normie tended to be confused and lost about the name-dropped stuff (since it's meant to be significant, but only if you actually know the lore), while people who DO know the lore get constantly pissed off at how much of the lore it spits on and rewrites.
The writers in Hollywood truly feel ideologically possessed to subvert source material to the point where whenever I hear an adaptation now, I instantly think "And I bet the head writer finds themselves above this intellectual property."
Excelent explanations and final words. I just wanted to share the bit that did actually trigger me, which was the changing of the mythos of the Silmarils, when Gil-Galad reveals to Elrond that a random Elf hero had battled a random Balrog in some random tree in Lindon and somehow mithril was created out of that encounter and a Silmaril being hidden in the tree. That was just beyond poor choice of everything really, writing, dialogue, mythology. It just doesn't make sense even if the average viewer wouldn't know what the gems were and how important they were during the first age. Neither Maedhros nor Maglor would've been random enough to either hide it or "lose" it in a tree. Especially if the tree is not a sapling from either the two trees or the white tree. It's just messed up all over lol.
I fully agree that this was atrocious. Though other things were as well.
A well done commentary! You, sir, are indeed a well-read Tolkien scholar.
Thanks for the kind words!
Great to have Edmure Tully get to the bottom of this
lol 12 seconds in.... "I'm going to do a bonus round of 'Rings of Power'; but don't worry, there will be no 'Rings of Power'........LMAO!! LOLOLOLOL!!!!!
Must not scare away the audience :-D
Thank you so much for this video and for explaining in detail what the actual text says.
It was a pleasure!
Love to see a relaxed, cool man making such a case against something, if you are a fan or Tolkien's work or not, we all have to aim to this level of discussion. See you!
Thanks for the favourable assessment!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times".
guarantee you nobody involved in the show has ever read lord of the rings
I haven't read any of the books. Never saw any of the films or this show. But at least I had the decency not to piss on the lore and fans for a quick buck.
I call bullshit. They have CLEARLY read "The Lord of The Rings". It's the TITLE.
Although you are correct that this is all they have read. ;)
These are the kinds of people who think they know what is going on in the world because they read headlines of news articles.
I think you're confusing incompetence for laziness. They didn't want the show to fail and worked on it a lot, it just didn't do much good.
B-but they had DOZENS of tolkein scholars!
I doubt many of them had even watched the films... They seemed to just have a list of characters, then adapted some bad mediaeval based fan fics.
Superbly done. We need to chronicle all the desecrations.
Thank you for this factual and reasonable comparison of the text to RoP. It's easy to write off the criticism as some socio-political knee-jerk reaction, when in fact those of us who read and love Tolkien have only asked for a respectful, accurate portrayal of the world and characters we love.
You're welcome. It is always difficult to dismiss criticism if you generalise and act as if they are all non-constructive. But there is actually lots of constructive criticism out there that the showrunners could react to. Sadly they don't!
@@Colindo Do you think the show is salvageable? Even if they got in some decent writers, has season one completely wrecked it from here on in?
The LotR movies were good because they were made from a place of love and respect, the changes where mostly excusable for the purposes of making it work as movies. The production studio where unsure of their investment but it payed off big-time.
The Hobbit trilogy was mediocre because it was an attempt to repeat the success of LotR trilogy for the purposes of greed, sure they (eventually) got the same people to do it, but their hearts weren’t in it for all the expansions and filler necessary to turn it into a trilogy.
Rings of Power is bad because it comes entirely from a place of greed and has clearly attracted the worst possible people to try and get in on the action and boost their egos.
"Don't worry, there will be no Rings of Power content here"
*Cringe nerve breaths a sigh of relief* 🤣
Don't want anyone to have more anxiety than necessary ;-)
"There can be only one Lord of the Rings, only one who can bend them to his will. And he does not share power!"
I think the only person working on set who've read an entire Tolkien is the janitor.
Should have hired him to write the show. Would have been better.
Was there a janitor at all? You'd think they would dispose of this show as garbage
Very well done. Tolkien is his best defender.
I knew where the series was going when they fired Tom Shippy right after Christopher Tolkien passed away.
Why are they like that 😩 can't fathom.
I'm not too comforted with Simon Tolkien now in charge who apparently consulted on the show.
I knew where the show was going as soon as Amazon acquired the rights.
@@drdeesnutts48 I saw just one interview of Simon and he seemed really bitter. Hope he finds some peace in his life 🤔
@@FinrodFelagund5 Yeah same and that was back before everything went completely woke.
How do you make a show out of just Appendices?
The goal of this show was never to honor Tolkien’s deeper lore, ideas, or philosophies, but rather to use his name, stories, and characters as a vehicle to advance a political and social agenda, since they knew doing so would reach a very large audience.
I think you are right. I have compared it to greenwashing of sports by fossil fuel companies. Amazon wants to be seen as progressive, even though they are a far right corporation that hates workers having any rights or liveable wages.
There is a serious point to be made there that goes beyond the shallow 'woke' (I hate that word, and you never find it outside of America) reaction of the far right brigade.
It's just bizarre to pay that much money for the rights only to disregard or completely violate the story.
Even read with this little inflection, these passages still give me chills - something that the entire series could not manage.
Anyway, I love this video!
Incredible and thorough research work. This for all those who say that the series was totally "rooted" and "attached" to the lore.
Excellent research and presentation !
Thank you very much !
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you like it.
Thank you very much for sharing Colindo. I echo others here in saying how refreshing it is to have a level-headed discussion about these inconsistencies.
You are welcome!
Excellent analysis. Thank you! As a long time reader of Tolkien, I was absolutely frustrated and angered with Rings of Power. I agree; they had licensed a fair amount of lore material and could easily have put together a decent adaptation of the Second Age. It’s obvious to me that the showrunners had no respect for Tolkien’s work (did they even read it?) and, in some twisted delusion, they thought they could improve upon it! To add insult to injury, other aspects of the show were just terrible: characterizations, dialogue, acting, costumes, etc. I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether they will make amends in the second season, but I doubt it.
Thanks! I agree with your assessment, it just seems quite disrespectful of Tolkien's work.
I really enjoyed that reading XD I love how these showrunners pretend like LOTR is so amazingly open to interpretation when most of the world events are explicitly explained and dated in the books.
If only they would have stuck to the vague parts for their interpretative work.
This show certainly reflected the world we live in today, a complete mess.
So says every generation. But yeah, this show is still crap.
under-rated comment :)
I think the show runners were reading LOTR for dummies, and then decided that that was still not clear enough, so they just took some names and called it good…
That made me laugh! Lol 😂
I think they were only reading "for dummies". Not the LOTR part.
@@dlevi67 they’d have fared better using finger puppets
Thank you for this! I have been trying to convince people on both sides of the ROP debate even before the show premiered that all of information needed to do justice to the Second age was available in the source material that Amazon did indeed have the rights to. They only needed to follow it as a guide. Of course, there was plenty of room to flesh it out and add new characters and situations along the way, but no reason to change the entire narrative. Even the extreme condensing of the timeline was unnecessary in my opinion. The mini-series Centennial from 78-79 did an excellent job of telling a compelling story that spanned almost two hundred years. This was without the advantage of having extremely long-lived characters such as Dwarves and Numenoreans or immortal ones such as Elves or Vala.
You're welcome. Happy I could be of help. You describe my overall sentiment precisely. Also I would have loved a season where time passes normally for the elves, but men and dwarves keep changing as generations come and go. Would have been a great start for the Second Age.
"Go back to the books, go back to the books ... actually we don't have the rights to ANY of that soo....." they lied basically.
They Lied To Get You In The Door, and They Will Lie To Keep You There.
Right at the beginning of the video you are further in the book than any of their writers got
Well, it has a very long and difficult foreword. Can't blame them, I guess 😁
new creators with talent deserve to be blessed by the algorithm...
I am lucky i found your channel , man
The algorithm went crazy on this video. Guess it hit a nerve.
For comparison's sake, in a recent interview George R.R. Martin talked about the difficulties of adapting decades of history to a tv show format - where do you begin the story, how do you deal with the passage of time, etc. I guess he never considered cramming everything together and presenting it as if millenia of history happenend in a single weekend.
Another thing missed by Rings of Power for no reason at all is that the Hobbits were migrating for the same reason the Istari arrived - the darkening of Mirkwood (Greenwood at the time). They're migrating because they have been pushed out of their home, not because "they're Irish anarcho-pirmitivists, and they just kind of do that I guess"
just imagine if competent directors/writers made a show about the Silmarillion. It would be amazing. Unfortunately, we're stuck with the most poorly written fan fiction of all time instead.
I don’t feel like I trust anyone with the Silmarillion. It’s rare to find producers/writers who care about the actual source material.
why pay for the Silmarillion when you can just buy out the appendixes to get the "LOTR stamp" on your unofficial fanfiction. That is the only reason ANYTHING Tolkien was licensed. Don't know if this was before or after Amazon fired all the Tolkien scholars for disagreeing with them.
@@sarahgopats4571 so true, unless theres a renaissance of film where directors and studios desire to create art like PJ did with LOTR instead of quick cash grab films/shows injected with political propaganda like we have nowadays, i dont want anyone to even dare think about making a film or show about the silmarillion.
It would be, but few would appreciate, so they would lose money anyway. The Silmarillion is fiction History, more poetry like than theater like. Difficult to adapt to TV. However HBO has successfully done so with GRRMs Targarien show
Yes and the most egregious changes are not even associated with the material they have access to. Perhaps the worst of all is giving a false narrative to Finrod and then extrapolating a second false narrative from the first and giving it to Galadriel (the revenge trope which does NOT exist). So the pilot episode alone completely undermines the Beren/Luthien/Finrod triarchy which Tolkien himself said was the HEART of the legendarium.
Well put!
"Violated"
That's an apt description of what happens to most classics that suffer through modern adaptations.
I actually spent some time pondering the right wording. But yeah, very happy with "violated".
Solid my friend. Thank you for this bashing of TROP.
You're welcome.
They could not even keep track of their own writing, so it should come as no surprise that they could not keep track of their own writing AND what Tolkien had written. Their own writing is so bad and seems to indicate that they are not very bright people. It is amazing that they managed to BS their way into the job and actually get this show made. They’re obviously better BSers than they are writers. Even if you completely ignore the fact that this is supposed to be a LOTR story based on Tolkien’s universe, and simply treat it as a random fantasy title with no legacy to adhere to, it is still a story told with many contradicting and illogical details, and a whole lot of stupid silly dialog. They do not know what they are doing and nobody should’ve ever given them this chance. Whether or not they followed lore is important, but is practically secondary to whether or not they could actually write a story worth following in the first place. Clearly they could not.
People have mentioned that before that they only worked on projects that were not realised. I wonder if they are just incredibly inexperienced writers.
@@Colindo I think it is very safe to say they are incredibly inexperienced writers, yes. I believe all that’s actually on their resumes can’t really even go on them since it was a small amount of uncredited work in some Star Trek title. Surely if you did anything worthwhile you’d receive credit for it. So who knows to what extent anything he/they contributed actually mattered to that uncredited job. (I say he/they because I kind of think it was only one of the pair that actually was involved in that one, but I’m not 100% on that.) The large amount of incredibly amateurish and nonsensical stuff in every episode we got certainly speaks to them being inexperienced. I kept waiting and hoping for it to get better as it went along each week, but as we all saw, it only got worse and worse. Amazon should just delete season one and start over with some competent people. Heh.
One article mentions that JJ Abrams seems to have inlfuenced the decision of giving them this job so... make of that what you will.
My issue is with the absurd claim they were addressing the sexual identity oversights made by Tolkien.
These writers didn't seem to give a crap about the lore. They just wanted to throw their own politics into Tolkien's story since they knew if they had made their own fantasy, not a soul would have watched it.
No respect for the time line, the characters, or the reasons behind the fall of Numenor, Moria, and even how Sauron first become the main threat in the 2nd age.
If you changed all the character and place names, no one would ever suspect it was Tolkien's world. It would just be a badly-written generic fantasy.
The only reason they wanted Tolkien's name on it is for name-recognition, nothing else.
Thank you for speaking up! So many of us see the lore trampled and defiled for a "theatrical production" without saying anything. I really appreciate the fact that you quoted directly from the books so nay-sayers can suck it!
These showrunners took more inspiration of 50 shades of Grey than LOTR. Sauron is not an absolute evil he is a flawed man redeemable by the love of a pure but ignorant girl.
This is fanfic at its worst.
They seem to be inspired by all sorts of things.. EXCEPT the Lotr source material hehe, hell they even slipped in the slur "knife-ears" from Dragon Age into the show! How is this possible no idea, but they used a racial slur for elves from a different fantasy universe haha! The Dragon Age games have in them certain amount of racism towards the elves as the second class citizens, but it's not the case with Tolkien and there are no expressions or insults towards elves based on their shape of ears! If anything there is only one instance of insult/slur towards Elves done by Easterlings of First Age:
"The Easterlings came into the land in great numbers, and they dealt cruelly with the people of Hador, and robbed them of all that they possessed and enslaved them. All the people of Húrin's homelands that could work or serve any purpose they took away, even young girls and boys, and the old they killed or drove out to starve. But they dared not yet lay hands on the Lady of Dor-lómin, or thrust her from her house; for the word ran among them that she was perilous, and a witch who had dealings with the white-fiends: for so they named the Elves, hating them, but fearing them more. For this reason they also feared and avoided the mountains, in which many of the Eldar had taken refuge, especially in the south of the land; and after plundering and harrying the Easterlings drew back northwards. ..."
I guess Arondir should be happy they have not called him...."black fiend" hehe. But seriously the certain post-Tolkien derivative fantasy tropes in use in the show are getting annoying like the whole exaggerated scottish accent of the Dwarves or some other loose reference which can also bring in mind Dragon Age like the tunnels (in the games dig by Darkspawn in the show by Orcs, though obviously they do make tunnels and passages but they are not creating that sort of underground road net hehe in Tolkien's world). Also the forced diversity also brings in mind the DA as it is Bioware game so it has certain...progressiveness in those sorts of things.
But, but, but...I can fix him.
I love this video so much. Your gentle yet stern dissection of this nonsense is hilarious.
Subbed.
Thank you for your support.
Clarity is always refreshing. This RoP situation has inflamed my opinion of corporate involvement with Tolkien. Since the first article, the first abominable "fan"... whatever they called that panel of fakers... I've sensed the problems were too many to deal with. Well, that and their buying off of my favorite YT lore channels, that I have not watched a single second of that production.
I was surprised by some Facebook pages with lore content how positively they were reporting about the show. I think I mentioned it in one of my videos, how they would cherrypick specific plotpoints that were correct and then said: "You see, this show is true to the lore!"
Apparently from some inside sources it was sort of on the right track...before Christopher died. That's how long this project was in the works, then the next gen sold out and didn't bother.
@@Colindo Well, they can't fool you and they can't buy me.
@@Colindo Hey Colindo, If you ever decide to rewatch the Hobbit trilogy, you should watch the M4 Hobbit Book Cut! The lead editor, M4, teamed up with some digital editors to make a single film version of the trilogy. They desaturated, corrected the color grading, omitted characters, and added film grain to make this version match the appearance of the LOTR trilogy! And they cut out all the excess crap that wasn't in the book! All the Thorin dwarf backstory is a bonus chapter on his blu ray files titled Durin's Folk. It's how I start my Middle-Earth marathon, and I highly recommend it!
@@Colindo They are liars, which is a minor form of evil. They distort the truth for their own gain. It is honestly sad that people do this, that they have so little dignity in themselves and integrity that they debase themselves for mere sheckles
The showrunners also lie quite easily, just straight up saying "this is straight from the lore."
But it was obvious this was going to be absolutely terrible. With Christopher gone, there was no one to keep a soulless corporation in check. LOTR movies was lightning striking, even if they weren't perfect. You cannot put faith in that happening, and when it is blatant a soulless corporation is involved like Amazon, no one should've supported this show
There are a number of things about The Rings of Power that bother me, but first and foremost is the presumptuousness of altering Tolkien's lore and telling fans that they're bad people for being angry about it. Not only do the writers of that show have the audacity to propose that Tolkien's material was inadequate, they also have the temerity to propose that their version is superior because it "corrects Tolkien's oversights." The very idea that the work needed correction is a travesty in and of itself.
Is Tolkien your religion or something? You disregard that the show makes changes that condense the timeline so we can see the same characters experience the origins of the war for the One Ring instead of having things happen 600 years apart to completely different characters every episode. Amazon has removed reviews & spoken against fans who don't like Latino elves because they don't understand what Amazon is doing but they think they do. This is an adaptation, that's all. No one at Amazon is under any illusion that every loud group of fans can be pleased. Even if they stuck strictly to the source material, people would complain about how poorly paced the show is & how they should've changed this or that to make it more interesting. There's no winning with some people.
@@2QAYL1138 Instead of cramming hundreds of years of backstory into one storyline, they could have chosen any major event or any point between major events to stage the show around. They had plenty of unaccounted-for timeline to work with without having to interpolate unnecessary, non-canonical BS.
@@andrewmize823 They probably would have done that because they would've had to, if the Tolkien estate didn't approve their idea to condense the timeline.
Huff that Copium. Amazon deleted reviews, because their show is trash and they need to cover it up.
They didn't alter the lore; that is impossible. They made their own crappy show, one of the worst shows of all time, and if that confuses you so much that you think Tolkien's lore is altered, I almost feel bad for your defective brain.
I really like your voice, as well as the video itself. Thank you!!
The show runners keep lying and the actors keep talking nonsense.
The Sauron actor, stated he wanted to be with Galadriel as she was an elven warrior that gave him access. This alone show their ignore of Galadriel. They actually reduced her power....she is a princess and a sorceress. Not a "warrior".
What a disaster for the LOTR and its future.
I shall file this under forensics.
I enjoyed this text comparison. I'd like to see more, keep it up!
Glad you liked it!
Yes, I agree.
I don't think they even managed to "reflect the world we live in today". It's probably just the world some of the producers etc live in. Instead of providing a longed-for, escapist visit to the lore of the Second Age, they dragged Tolkien's work into a culture war, that ~98% of all consumers or fans don't even care about, for either "side". Incompetent showrunners trying to make money by fan-baiting and deliberately causing controversy, that's what I hate most about this "adaptation".
Did you watch it?? there was little to no culture war shit in the show. The culture war happened on TH-cam by opportunistic fucks trying to get views.
@@culturevsman5024 except for the official interviews, the social media posts, podcasts etc, before and after it aired. The show's PR played the culture and representation card from the start just as well and they referenced several changes to the lore/characters because of this. The showrunners never denied any of that and some of their critics called that out from the start. I'd also say Amazon realised they had an objectively bad show on their hands that was also far from Tolkien's material so they, opportunistic fucks themselves, used the opposing opportunistic fucks for publicity (just as vice versa) - good or bad PR doesn't matter as long as it's publicly fought over. I saw the show, I saw PJs movies, I saw videos of several of these opportunistic fucks and I had read most of Tolkien's work long before to get a broad spectrum before making up my mind about it. My personal criticism of the show is pretty much the same as the presenter's in his/their reaction videos. So yes, there is apparently a bit of a culture war going on in US/western entertainment/social media, but like I said, if you don't look into it too deeply, especially if one isn't a native speaker, American or on social media you won't notice that nor will anyone outside these right-wing/left-wing-whatever-bubbles really care.
@@culturevsman5024 Yes, there was. Making "Miriel" black and other "diversity" casting not in keeping with the lore, including adding a number of made-up female characters to bring some kind of sexual balance to Tolkien's world, turning "Galadriel" into an unrecognizable Karen warrior and disappearing Celeborn so that she could adventure as a strong, independent woman, making half the "Numenorean" army female, portraying almost every male character as weak and effeminate, a tavern scene where a "black elf" is referred to by a hillbilly stand-in as "you people," a nonsensical "the elves are takin' yer jobs!" scene. And that's just the most obvious stuff off the top of my head.
This show was littered with modernism and culture war references. It was the Current Year zeitgeist written all over it. The "showrunners" themselves said they were going to do exactly that (Tolkien had to be "modernized"). You are either lying about all of this or modernist thinking is so ingrained into your worldview that you are incapable of seeing it, much like a fish doesn't realize he is wet.
Either way, the "opportunistic fucks" were 100% right about this show and you are wrong.
@@Ardathair Fair points indeed.
@@FinrodFelagund5 Dude I see it for what it is. Yes there were diversity casts but I wasn't being preached too, I wasn't beat over the head with social justice. It aint ever going back the other way so I don't let things like Miriel being black bother me. She gave a pretty darn good performance but no you don't even wanna recognize that. You can say its not accurate, I agree with you . I disagree that its not entertaining.
I have today binged watched all of your R.o.P videos, so it is safe to say that I enjoyed your content. I hope that you do not make us wait a whole year for new videos. I, especially, enjoyed this last video of yours. I hope that you will produce more videos like this. Maybe a "Everything lorewise wrong with R.o.P" video would be awesome. yes, i know you suffered a lot, but someone has to do it 😅. Keep up the good work and I hope to see you soon.
Hi, thanks for the kind words (except wanting me to suffer more, shame on you! 😉 ) but I will not be able to rewatch any of that for an in-depth research. I might turn towards other parts of the wide lore-worlds of Middle-Earth.
They released the show on Tolkiens death date… says it all
I subbed at your first few sentences. I'm all ears good sir.
Sounds amazing, glad you like it!
Ep1 seson 2: Galadrial wakes up in the shower "it was all a dream" 😂😂
Who shot “J.R.” Tolkien?
What a great idea - thanks for putting this together!
You are welcome!
I have really really enjoyed all your videos. I do hope you do more soon.
Thanks for the kind words. We'll have to see when I next get time for this.
It is a shame they didn't hew closer to the actual timeline. It would still allow Gandalf the ability to interact with the hobbits, and explain why he had a soft spot for them.
I've followed your RoP watching sessions, and then some of the more joyous video of you commenting LOTR movies. Since I've read The Silmarillion, the Hobbit but not the LOTR books, I find the videos both insightful and fun, and shared your view on many if not most of the contents, especially on RoP. Most recommended.
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you like it!
Something I picked up from one of Just Some Guy's videos is that they, uh, "borrowed" a plot element from Beren And Luthien for Galadriel's backstory. That more than anything bothered me.
let's not pretend that seeing someone dancing in the woods is literary genius
JSG is just some guy who reads TolkienGateway entries. Elu Thingol and Melian did it first!
So much for "Back to the book; back to the book; back to the book!"
Well, they didn't finish the statement.
"Back to the book to look up more character and place names."
Because that's pretty much all they took from it.
@@wumpusrat Hey WumpusRat, just wanted to let you know that your comments were flagged by TH-cam as "likely Spam". No idea why, but I unlocked them.
Just finished The Silmarillion for the 2nd time last night.
Some of Rings of Power is a vague shadow of that story and much is just plain invented tripe.
The painful part is when they keep referencing things only to butcher them afterwards.
Wonderful stuff. Thank you for the video.
THE SEA IS ALWAYS RIGHT!
🤣🤣🤣
I AM GOOD!
We've enjoyed watching what you've had to say about the show and the intellectual depth you have on the subject. Thank you.
You are most welcome!
Even though the second age isn't well fleshed out in LOTR appendices there is enough there to build the framework of a 5 season show. Why they changed things so much baffles me, they could have split the second age into 5 sections and concentrated each season on each of these. Even that would be too much content for 5, 8 show seasons, so they could probably have just taken 5 key event in the second age and dramatised one of those for each season. Sure they would have to change a few things as they don't have the rights to everything but could still have crafted something compelling that didn't break LOTR law.
They could have, had that been the agenda. But since it wasn't, they did their own thing. The lore and fans be damned.
@@spencerhansen8374 Indeed, but now Amazon studios is a billion dollars down with little of anything to show for it. Even they can't justify that and their shareholders aren't happy. With the price rises they have had to implement to pay for this sorry mess neither are their customers.
in order to do that, they would need to have talent and brains... They have non
Your subtle pauses and looks at the camera as you tear ROP apart using Tolkien’s own words are hilarious...
ROP is like something a 5 year old would produce for a creative writing excercise, except the child's work would make more sense and be more entertaining.
this video deserves more views, what really baffles me is the people that so readily jump to the defense of a billion dollar conglomorate, like if the show was any good I could at least understand it not as an adaptation which it utterly fails at, but even just as a generic fantasy show, we truely live in an age of senseless consumerism.
I think its important to make the destinction that RoP isn't actually woke, its not trying to push any social change, its not standing for any progressive ideas, it only goes as far as it feels safe in the current enviroment. It is despicably transperent how they agressively rolled out the black elf narative to draw attention to the show to provoke a reaction, a reaction that to them is now providing a convenient excuse to hide behind to not accept valid critisim. The Rings of Power is the most corperate cynical overpriced garbadge produced to date, its a giant turd that had woke signaling slapped on top of it in what amazon was certain to be a success.
Just to be clear the show writers definetly try to push their idiology, frankly after the elves steal our jobs and we need to build a wall around numenor I half expected them to double down, have galadriel get impregnated with saurons child and then they have to drive to another state to get an abortion in the next season, but whats important to point out here the people that put these hacks in charge are simply motivated by greed, something readily apparent if the current rumours about the panic behind the scene and supposed sidelining of the show runners turn out to be true. Now I don't think there is any salvaging this mess, but it might genuilny be entertaining to watch as they each start handing down this burning dumbster fire from creative lead to creative lead trying to salvage their billion dollars.
The only problem with reading this out loud is that it is falling on deaf ears.
Yin and Yang. Show was billion-dollar garbage but I found you through it! Love you! 😁
Poetically put ^^
Thanks! Love you too!
Yes, they have stated in a roundabout way that what they looked for were lines that were specific in countering what they were writing. The example they gave was that it was never stated that Galadriel never went to Numenor, therefore they could have her go there regardless of the intent or implication of the original texts.
Interesting. That is a pretty roundabout way of figuring out what to show of the Second Age. Since they could have shown what is actually written. I wonder why the writers did things in the way they did.
I can only theorise that they had a story that they wanted to tell, and used what was not written down as an excuse to wrap what they could around it. Again, in another interview they stated that season 1 was an origin story for Galadriel, and I assume that having her live peacefully with Celeborn for 8 episodes did not fit in with what they wanted.
@@Gorbz What I don't understand is that if they argue this way, why don't they check properly? Half of the lines I read I could find from memory. This is just undignified.
@@Colindo I honestly do not know. I can take guesses, but until they come out and state why it was written this way (which I doubt happening), guesswork is all it would be. All we know for certain is that Payne and McKay are debate club graduates, spent 10 years not getting any of their scripts turned into productions, they asked J.J. Abhrams to put in a good word with Amazon for this job, wrote a synopsis that Simon Tolkien liked (I believe it has been said it was "exactly what he wanted"), and that they combed the text to find what was not said so they could make a story with that.
@@Gorbz Simon Tolkien is a criminal
Ah, yes. A man of culture, I see. Subbed.
Love it!
Thank you for the research, this was very insightful.
it's called "Artistic License" you know..in other words, we don't care about the lore were gonna do whatever we want.....for the money.
I really dont see the financial value in dumping a billion into the bin to produce this steaming pile of shit
This show is to Tolkein, as a film that is "based on a true story" is to that true story.
Thank you for doing this.
You are welcome.
SHOWRUNNERS: How can we stop this guy for not revealing our violations?
ME: You can't. He's reading the book and understood the content...can't say the same from you.
I couldn't bring myself to watch RoP. It was clear from the initial teaser content and the subsequent attacking of fans that the writers had made a complete hash of the lore.
It's such a shame that fans have to be degraded as '-ists' and -phobes' just because we have a deep connection with the tales, and that Tolkien himself warned against poor adaptations of his work.
It was a good show man. Don't be swindled in to hating it by cynical dumbasses on TH-cam. Watch it yourself with a light heart and you'll enjoy it.
I liked it. Sorry for you.
@@culturevsman5024 There was nothing good about it. You are defending a show that disappeared Celeborn and replaced him with romantic undertones between "Galadriel" and "Sauron." Abhorrent.
@@FinrodFelagund5 Celeborn smelliborn dude...that may have sucked but what about the Durin and Elrond friendship. Durin and his father was well done. Even Disa was entertaining . Peter Jackson fucked over Tom Bombadil Hard and I mean hard...no one bashes him to death over it. Jackson screwed Faramir aswell....did I cry about it no I DID NOT.
@@culturevsman5024 You don't cry about anything apparently, even when giant corporations buttfuck you without any lube. CONSUME PRODUCT, THEN GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT.
What was that phrase? How did it go?
Oh, yeah.
"Without respect, we reject"
Rings of Power, The Witcher, Resident Evil... shows, movies, whatever. Adaptations are always shit. Showrunners *do not care* about what the original vision was. They want to take a famous IP and make it somehow their own.
It's a sad reality we live in, but a lot of these writers do not respect the original artist's vision in the slightest. They don't see a great writer in Tolkien, they see a chance to rewrite everything they thought he did wrong and that they could do it better.
They are, of course, sorely mistaken and their shows are always canceled and their movies fall apart, but they do it every time.
Adaptation is not shet. It is just as u said, shetty showrunners. I mean, why dahfug would u hire someone without an ounce of passion, with hatred for the original work? The writers and producers, etc clearly doesn't care and have no respect for the original work. So why hire such people to work on it? It makes NO logical or rational sense.
Welp I can see why the libs hate capitalism. :) Liberals are a cancer.
Tolkien is the most important. The first contingency
@@lovisericachii4503 I agree with you, but I wouldn't go as far as to say liberals are cancer. There are plenty of liberal TH-camrs and conservative TH-camrs alike that hate what the showrunners and writers behind The Rings of Power have done.
1982 Conan the barbarian is a fantastic adaptation that stays true to the original in both aesthetic and spirit
They don't want to make an IP their own, they recognise it as a business prospect and want to milk it for what they can get. It'd be like any small business that's made a name for itself that's been bought by a larger Corp to make as much money in a short period of time before burning it out. They don't care about legacies or awards or anything other than guaranteed income within a short period of time
Yes, glad you brought up the little snippet in the Silmarilion about “Sauron repenting”. That has always seemed to me since I read the Silmarilion when it first was published, in my own personal Second Age, as literally meaning that Sauron ACTED like he was sorry for a period of time on the order of a week when he was ‘arrested’ after the War of Wrath. He told a convincing tale to Eonwe (his ‘bounty hunter’) which likely was more of a “sorry I was caught” in his heart, but when told to voluntarily report to the authorities on his own recognizance he jumped bail and fled immediately back into hiding. How the hell anyone, show runners or fans, could blow that up into “Sauron was sincerely sorry and repentant, and wanted to help after the war” is beyond me.
But to me the real damage of this ridiculous way of looking at things is that it is a violation not of the existing lore, some of which was virtually written on scraps Christopher Tolkien found after his father’s death, but of the spirit of the stories. Another idea for a video in your channel, but one that might require more like 16 hours than 16 minutes, would be to go through Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” and pick out all the places in the series where they violate what was is written there about the rules for “Fairy Stories”. I don’t think most people think of it in these terms, but can feel it nonetheless. But I feel like lore changes are secondary to having things happen which turn the world into something more like OUR world instead of Tolkien’s Faerie. In some places it was a little funny, like the Orcs being an oppressed race and Adar wincing at Galadriel’s use of the word “orcs” - and saying to the effect “it’s URUKS, we consider orc derogatory”. 😂 But the thing about the world in the books is that it is NOT our world - evil is real, magic is real and angels and devils are real - it is a fairy story and has a different logic. In “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien wrote that there can never be any “knowing winking” at the “magic” in such stories if it is to remain a Fairy Story. Deconstructionist Middle Earth and deconstructionist Sauron basically rips the spirit out of it as far as I’m concerned. I think THAT is the part the writers of this show apparently REALLY don’t get. Not to worry, they still will have a large and presumably profitable extra group of pure hate-watchers to pad out their ratings.
Yes, I always understood Sauron's behaviour like this. Otherwise the "he quickly fell back to old behaviour" wouldn't make sense.
I'm not sure if I ever read "On Fairy Stories" completely, but it is often cited in other texts. Might have to have a look, but you are right that the essential sentiment that is necessary for the depth of story that we know from the LotR is not followed in this series at all.
@@Colindo Honesly people that believe fantasy tropes of any sort are literally true in the real world are probably the root of a lot, if not most actual evil in the world. But the other side of the coin are people that think literary fantasy can survive making it become too realistic in the adaptation. But at least the only harm they can do is ruin a television series.
I Wonder if they ever read the book ?
I don't, I'm convinced they just watched the Jackson trilogy and based everything off of that.
DURR
Fantastic video!
Thanks!
Unlike Amazon's "adaptation" this video is well met. Mae-govannen Colindo, and congrats on winning the YT algorithm.
Thanks. Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo!
I read through the whole Silmarillion religiously as if it were the Bible of Middle Earth.
Well it has that feel, I actually prefer the creation narrative in the silmarillion to any religious account, they pale in comparision.
It's just a great use of language that you can find in there. Also the weight of 50 years of development that led up to it.
Sad thing for me based on current TV shows, and if you hadn't read any fantasy, you'd quite reasonably conclude that GRR Martin > JRR Tolkien.
You will read the whole book. 🤣
If you have to do articles and interviews defending your work and explaining your choices, you’re doing something wrong.
Or very right.
Public feedback is not always correct, just look at J.K. Rowling.
All so unnecessary and hurtful. The show was a mistake from the start.