tolkien: I wrote a book about the corrupting, soul-destroying effects of power
jeff bezos and elon musk: we’re such fans! https://t.co/F1tpWsPPqK
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) February 10, 2022
Would-be autocrats envy Tolkien’s ability to construct an entire universe where all the parts are interconnected and every element responds to the slightest touch. And they’re inevitably convinced that they would be Sauron, but ‘successful’ at controlling everything, forever. All shall love me, and despair!
First glimpse of Amazon's new Rings of Power show, the most expensive TV show ever made. https://t.co/vrmKLO8YMd
— jbasm (@JBasm) February 21, 2022
Galadriel’s world is a raging sea. Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever, and certain that evil is looming closer than anyone realizes.
By episode two, her warnings set her adrift, literally and figuratively, until she’s struggling for survival on a raft in the storm-swept Sundering Seas alongside a mortal castaway named Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who is a new character introduced in the show. Galadriel is fighting for the future; Halbrand is running from the past.
Their entwined destinies are just two of the stories woven together for a TV series that, if it works, could become a global phenomenon. If it falls short, it could become a cautionary tale for anyone who, to quote J.R.R. Tolkien, delves too greedily and too deep.
Amazon’s show, which debuts on Prime Video on September 2, is based not on a Tolkien novel per se but on the vast backstory he laid out in the appendices to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Five seasons will likely cost the studio well over $1 billion…
Because of Bezos’s immense wealth, The Rings of Power is actually less of a financial risk than it is a reputational one. Amazon needs to definitively make the case that it can produce giant prestige shows, and with this series, it’s courting the additional danger of amending and elaborating on the canon of a beloved storyteller. The showrunners, Patrick McKay and JD Payne, are agonizingly aware of the pressure. Their series will juggle 22 stars and multiple story lines, from deep within the dwarf mines of the Misty Mountains to the high politics of the elven kingdom of Lindon and the humans’ powerful, Atlantis-like island, Númenor. All this will center, eventually, around the incident that gives the trilogy its name. “The forging of the rings,” says McKay. “Rings for the elves, rings for dwarves, rings for men, and then the one ring Sauron used to deceive them all. It’s the story of the creation of all those powers, where they came from, and what they did to each of those races.” The driving question behind the production, he adds, was this: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?”…
?♀️?️ 'A new journey begins'…
We are thrilled to share the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings
✨ Starring Lloyd Owen, @NazaninBoniadi & Sophia Nomvete ✨@LOTRonPrime #LOTRonPrime #LOTR pic.twitter.com/AlwZOPteJA
— Artists Partnership (@TheAPartnership) February 14, 2022
First trailer teases The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV show https://t.co/FP1MZsLzNz
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 14, 2022
… Fans reacted online to the trailer, with one declaring: “Hell yeah! A black elf and black Dwarven Princess in the new Lord of the Rings show is giving me so much life and I’m crying happy tears. I’m so happy I’ve finally seen!”
Another noted: “Is it just me or have elves in stuff become less… elf-like.
“Ever since the original Lord of the Rings movies elves have just started to look like regular humans wearing fake ears, they don’t have that elf look. I don’t know what it is.”…
That is Disa, Dwarven Princess played by Sophia Nomvete pic.twitter.com/IY4mDAbnDU
— Quid Pro Quo (@QuidProQuo_MWI) February 14, 2022
Besides fact most medieval fantasy like LOTR is set in fictional realms so do whatever you want…people know the pre-medieval Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to Syria and didn’t get there by keeping people penned in to their hometowns, right? https://t.co/jWBfiycMHR
— zeddy (@Zeddary) February 11, 2022
This article is excellent-far better than the “inside look” nine days ago-and allows the writers to address a lot of concerns directly. It gives a little clearer view of their vision for the show.https://t.co/T2r1EE6Hvt
— Elijah the Middleborne (@TheMiddleborne) February 19, 2022
… Will It Look Like The Lord of the Rings?
In creating this new story, McKay and Payne’s goal was, in McKay’s words, “different but familiar.” While the series is not a precise continuation of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, it shouldn’t clash with the cinematic world fans have come to know and love. Actors like Morfydd Clark (Galadriel) and Robert Aramayo (Elrond) were cast, in part, because they could age into the older versions played respectively by Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving in Jackson’s films. Even Benjamin Walker, who plays Gil-galad, bears a striking resemblance to Mark Ferguson, who appeared as the elven king in a nonspeaking cameo in The Fellowship of the Ring’s prologue…
What, Exactly, Is the Source Material Here?So what did Amazon buy? “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” That takes a huge chunk of lore off the table and has left Tolkien fans wondering how this duo plans to tell a Second Age story without access to those materials. “There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay says. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with.”…
“We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkienian and gelled with the experts’ and the estate’s understanding of the material,” Payne says…
This Sounds Like a Lot of Made-Up Story! What of Tolkien’s Can One Expect?
The truth is, it’s all here. “We told Amazon we wanted to do four or five stories that are the big epics of the Second Age,” McKay says, starting with “the forging of the rings.” At the center of that origin is the famed elven smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Aramayos’s younger Elrond. In Eregion, Elrond is working to rebuild damaged alliances with the dwarves, including with his old friend, Prince Durin IV. “We’re going back thousands of years to when the party was in full swing,” McKay says. “We’re going to see the elf capital of Lindon where Elrond is a young up-and-coming operator within the political scene of the high elves during their glory day.” Lindon, with its golden autumn leaves and rocky shores, allowed Payne and McKay to expand on the beautiful New Zealand vistas Jackson captured for his film. “We wanted to go to coastlines,” McKay says. “You’ve never seen the coastline of Middle-earth onscreen before.”…
The second big story on McKay and Payne’s agenda is “the rise of Sauron himself, when he was a physical villain,” says McKay. No word yet on who might be playing the Dark Lord in his younger, more seductive phase. (Yes, Sauron, the flaming eyeball, was once canonically hot, or in the words of Tolkien himself, “fair to the eyes of Men.”) He may be hiding in plain sight or he may be yet to come, but Galadriel’s search for him takes her, and eventually the strange human she’s encountered, Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), all over the map…
So Should Fans Be Worried?
Fans will always be worried. That’s the nature of adapting something as beloved and enduring as The Lord of the Rings. McKay and Payne can relate. But it’s important to remember that Tolkien himself envisioned a number of different people telling stories set in his world. “In his letter to Milton Waldman, it’s letter 131,” Payne says, “[Tolkien] said he wanted to create an interconnected mythology that still would leave room for ‘other minds and hands wielding paint and music and drama.’ He wanted other artists to come after him and continue to push the boundaries of expanding what Middle-earth could be. It’s a terrifying but awesome responsibility to take the man himself up on his wish and continue his work in building out Middle-earth.”…
Kent
I for one am looking forward to it.
Baud
I hope the elves all speak Spanish.
CROAKER
Same I am all in… at least till someone Recognizes a certain Company
Old School
From the excerpts, it sounds like the whole story is planned out. That’s probably better than trying to figure out how to wrap things up in the last two seasons.
zeecube
Thanks for the respite, but now for some reason I am thinking of that time Sauron invaded Osgiliath.
John S.
The dwarf princess doesn’t look like a dwarf at all, and that has nothing to do with her skin color. She should definitely have a beard. Carnivàle did it!
CROAKER
@zeecube: do you know how hard that is ? the orc power required? how many spawn pits do you own? you need trolls, can you just conjure up a few of those? worgs just don’t come out of the Misty Mountains
zhena gogolia
@CROAKER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpJj0RhHeQg
Brachiator
I would just like to have my pop-tarts delivered on time. And a few more dollars for Amazon workers.
I was never much of a fan of the novels, but I enjoyed the movies tremendously. I hope the series is a success and gratifies all those who love this saga.
I guess this series may also be another nail in the coffin of traditional movie-going, and may move more people to streaming services.
Hollywood has already cut back on the previous steady supply of movies to theaters. And they are scared out of their minds that the backlog of inventory will fail when released to theaters. Problem is, these films cannot make as much money if they have to depend on streaming, because all the financing and back-end deal structuring was based on pre-pandemic models.
The James Bond film No Time To Die was held back for two years until the studio finally put it in the market because they feared that No One Would Watch. I think the studios are still holding back the sequel to Top Gun and maybe 2 Mission Impossible movies. There are a lot of hopes on another iteration of The Batman and a Pixar Buzz Lightyear prequel.
But streaming has its own problems. You have to get new subscribers, but after a while there may be constraints on how much revenue you can earn from a stable of movies.
It’s interesting to see how Apple and Amazon have become major players in the movie business. Could FaceBook be far behind?
CROAKER
@zhena gogolia: :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwG9iRFmY1I
MomSense
I just hope it’s better than what Amazon
did to Wheel of Time.
My kid met one of his idols today and was invited to his performance tonight and he just asked him to play with them.
Baud
@MomSense:
?
brendancalling
I no longer do business with Amazon in any way, shape, or form, so I’ll miss this. I think I’ll live.
brendancalling
@MomSense: specifics? What band? That’s awesome btw.
MomSense
@Baud:
more like ???? ?????
WhatsMyNym
@Brachiator:
Another reason I haven’t gone to the movies for years.
Roger Moore
@Old School:
Yes and no. The major plot points are all spelled out by Tolkien. Anyone who’s read the last section of The Silmarilion (or the appendices to The Lord of the Rings) knows the broad strokes of what happens. But those broad strokes are really all there is. Tolkien never wrote a novel version of this stuff, so the writers have a lot of room to fill in the plot details and characterization from their own imagination. It has to be both exciting and terrifying to work on the unmapped terrain of such a beloved series.
Ken
This reminds me — anyone know how the plan to film Jodorowsky’s Dune is going? I think the next step was going to be scanning the storyboard book they bought, and selling the scans as NFTs.
Gravenstone
If you want to watch some fun fantasy on Prime now, check out “The Legend of Vox Machina”. It’s a 12 episode animated retelling of a D&D campaign (created by Critical Role, a bunch of voice actors that started a gaming group that grew to a stream that eventually Kickstarted it’s way to getting their exploits animated). It’s stupid fun and anyone who’s played D&D should easily relate.
CliosFanBoy
@zhena gogolia: I like this version. ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAxy3HdiCOY
Jeffro
How do people find the TIME to watch all these tv shows?
I feel lucky if I can watch 2-3 movies a month!
S. Cerevisiae
Please let them put this out on blue Ray eventually for people who don’t have the bandwidth. I think it sounds excellent and I am a Tolkien geek.
zhena gogolia
@CliosFanBoy: lol
Kent
@Ken: Likewise, what ever happened to the sequels of Avatar that we were promised?
EDIT: Just googled it. Avatar 2 is due out December 2022.
zhena gogolia
@CROAKER: Hmm, I used to love that song. Is it based on Tolkien?
gene108
@Brachiator:
I’m in an ignored minority. I am a huge fan of the novels, but not a fan of the LOTR movies.
I just want to know, if Celeborn goes adventuring with Galadriel. What a way spice up a marriage after a few hundred or few thousand years!
CROAKER
@zhena gogolia: that and a few more
gene108
@Gravenstone:
Thanks. I’ll check it out. I was bummed when COVID put the kibosh on “JourneyQuest” continuing.
zhena gogolia
@CROAKER: ??
Ken
@zhena gogolia: You may be thinking of Eye in the Sky by The Alan Parsons Project, or I Can See for Miles by The Who, or All the Single Ladies by Beyoncé.
MomSense
@brendancalling:
Anson Funderburgh!!!
Old School
@Roger Moore:
Well, that’s not true because I read The Silmarilion around 30 years ago and I have no idea what the story will be.
Anyway, with a billion dollars over five years, hopefully they aren’t going season to season with the plot.
raven
yawn
CROAKER
@zhena gogolia: well
Battle of Evermore
Over the Hills and Faraway
Craig
@gene108: As a kid I remember noticing that Celeborn was the Lord of Lorien, but that Galadriel was the real power around that place. That was cool.
surfk9
@Craig:Thing about Celeborn and Galadriel was that he was Teleri and she was Noldorian. A fact that got her a rebuke from Melian
Oklahomo
@Craig: When your wife has a finger-nuke you learn to put the ring down.
Leto
@Gravenstone: The Legend of Vox Machina was very good. My friend was so excited when the Vox project was announced as they’d been a long time fan of the Critical Role show. I’ve started watching the older CR shows and they’re thoroughly enjoyable. I hope there are more seasons of Vox coming.
@gene108: I’m in the same camp, but with Dune. Huge fan of the novels, not the current movie.
PJ
@surfk9: Uh-oh.
SpaceUnit
I predict that at some point all the characters in this series will break the fourth wall, look straight into the camera and glowingly endorse Amazon products.
Kalakal
I want to see how they do the Witch King of Angmar. As a teenager I thought that was an awesome job title.
Baud
@SpaceUnit:
“Protect your family from orcs with the new One Ring Security System.”
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
Or they could try making new stuff. Weird idea, I know.
surfk9
Celeborn and Galadiel left Beleriand after the defeat of Morgoth. She was exiled for her rebellion so was forced to go to Lindon. Beleriand was under water.
brendancalling
@MomSense: as a musician-dad, i so totally approve that message. What a good guy—and stereotypically musician thing to do. I’ll bet your kiddo was thrilled!
geg6
I am torn. LOTR is one of my oldest literary loves. So I am not sure I’m ready for how this could be fucked up. At least I know it can’t possibly be like GoT because there are characters I can get behind from the books. If it works, I’ll be all in. But I will wait to see what the reaction is once it’s available. I am naturally leery.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m looking forward to it too. I was a big fan of PJ’s movies, so much so that I wound up writing a bunch of LOTR fanfiction. PJ brought that world alive for me. There was a lot of room to imagine things
Kalakal
@MomSense: That’s really cool. He must be over the moon
Gravenstone
@Leto: Apparently a second season was part of the production agreement with Amazon. Hence the cliffhanger ending to episode 12. No idea about timing, though.
Jeffro
Btw for the fantasy readers out there, I’ve gotten into Joe Abercrombie’s “First Law trilogy” (yes, I know I’m late to the party) and it is a hoot.
geg6
@WhatsMyNym:
I feel you. They could hold all of those forever for all I would watch, let alone pay to watch.
SpaceUnit
@Baud:
Too funny!
But yeah, probably. It’s fricking Bezos.
lowtechcyclist
Come and hang out over here! I’m not sure how many times I’ve read the trilogy front to back (I’m guessing more than a dozen, less than 20), and the movies just got worse from one to the next. Omitting the siege of Isengard and Gandalf’s climactic confrontation with Saruman was unforgivable all by itself.
I’m game to give this new story cycle a try, though. At least it doesn’t involve stories I know by heart.
JanieM
@Roger Moore:
Oh, I think there are plenty of egos big enough not to be the least bit terrified.
Poe Larity
And yet, Coppola, with warehouses full of Oscars, can’t get funding for his dream project.
NotMax
Did I perchance hear someone craving hirsute female dwarves?
;)
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: Hey, can you post the link to your son’s music video again? This time I promise to buy the album!
Subsole
@Ken:
They’re having trouble signing Dali, last I heard.
NotMax
Scene where we find out what really happened with the lady Ents.
She: “Does this moss make me look fat?”
He: “Yes dear, it does.”
Cut to a long shot of all the females disappearing over a far hilltop, in a procession framed against the last rays of a setting sun.
Poe Larity
I’ll only watch if this guy does all the Quenya and Mannish dialogs
https://twitter.com/ava/status/1495929134685765632?
jnfr
We went to a theater this weekend for the first time in two years. I’m kind of amazed to realize that.
Subsole
@SpaceUnit:
“All will love me, and despair” indeed…
Mike E
@geg6: I am thinking along the same lines as you. I came late to the trilogy after seeing Jackson’s Fellowship, finally pushing past Tom Bombadil or whatever briar patches that stymied me from reading the damned thing in the first place. After completing the set, I read them again. Then a third time. Then, Two Towers finally hit the theaters…heh. The books really hightened the pivotal aspect of the narrative of the middle of the saga but made me sceptical about Jackson being able to stick the landing in the final movie, a dilemma of his own making imo. Amazon better not get too much over their skis or it’ll be ugly quick!
@lowtechcyclist: My brother reads lotr every summer since the paperbacks came out…do the math ?
Roger Moore
@Oklahomo:
The thing is they gave Galadriel the ring rather than Celeborn because she already massively outclassed him.
MomSense
@brendancalling:
I’m waiting to hear from him. He was texting me during their first set while waiting to sit in on the second set so hopefully it is going well. I’m sure he’s nervous so of course I’m nervous.
CROAKER
@Jeffro: click tap pain. . . There are moments
Leto
@Poe Larity:
No, there’s still plenty of money out there to throw at old white men to tell the same story over and over.
MomSense
@StringOnAStick:
Here it is!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fFe15Mpk0
i think it’s only available streaming. I heard a couple rough cuts of new songs and they are much more bluesy/rock n roll which is fun.
Oklahomo
@Roger Moore: There are some very lop-sided marriages in the back story. And some marriages that are just odd in a creepy way, like Eöl and Aredhel.
gene108
@surfk9:
Her mother was Eärwen, daughter of Olwë, Melian’s brother-in-law. Olwë was lord of the Teleri, in Valinor and there abouts.
Auntie Melian gave her a stern talking to for not being entirely honest with her about the deeds of the Noldor on the way to Middle Earth.
Villago Delenda Est
Casting Bezos, Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey into Mount Doom can not happen a nanosecond too early.
JanieM
@lowtechcyclist: I’m in your club too.
I read The Hobbit and LOTR for the first time when I was 16 (1966). I still have the article (maybe from Life magazine?) where I first heard of it. Then I read LOTR (tho not always THe Hobbit) about once a year for 50 years — now I just skim around.
I didn’t care for the first two Peter Jackson movies, and my son told me not to bother with the third because I’d be so pissed off…. I listened to him and have never regretted it.
gene108
@SpaceUnit:
Elrond: I’m a lover of lore, but keeping track of musty tomes and decaying scrolls is such a hassle, but thanks to Amazon Web Services, I can store the entire history of Middle Earth in the Cloud. And retrieval’s so easy, even a Beorning could do it (visual of a bear trying to open a filing cabinet and failing).
Leto
@Villago Delenda Est: throw them into the fire, Isildur!!!!!!
opiejeanne
@Poe Larity: What’s Coppola’s current Life’s Dream?
PJ
@Leto: From an interview I read last week, at the moment, Coppola is self-funding the movie. So you can thank all the wine-drinkers out there (though it sounds like you are not a fan of his movies.)
divF
@JanieM: @lowtechcyclist: I first read LoTR in 1967 when the books showed up in the SFF section of my local public library. Around that time, there was a radio show (out of WGBH?) called Reading Aloud that was a single reader making his way through the entire trilogy. I only was able to listen to it for one summer, since it was broadcast in the middle of the day. Nonetheless, one of the most impressive things I have ever heard was the reading of the fall of Isengard in the Two Towers. One reader, with modest changes in intonation, captured all of the characters, especially in the climactic confrontation with Saruman – chilling.
I was disappointed with the movies, but I expected to be. There was no way to compress the story into even three feature-length films. I reserve judgement on the new shows – the Tolkien legendarium backstory is much less character-driven than the LoTR itself, and so there is more freedom to play with it without violating my entrenched sensibilities.
surfk9
@gene108: True dat , but she was fiercely into going back to Middle Earth to establish her own kingdom while not being involved with the Terleri slaughter
Urza
@Villago Delenda Est: Amen
Danielx
@Villago Delenda Est:
What, you don’t want them suspended face down for at least a couple of minutes?
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’d pay to see that movie!
NotMax
@opiejeanne
To make THE definitive super-gorilla movie, The Groddfather.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
There are some very vocal people who are hot to have every comic, TV show and movie that they loved as a kid brought back as a big screen movie blockbuster or a major TV series. You see this with the reanimation of the Karate Kid franchise, for example. At the same time, frightened studio executives even before the pandemic figured that they could not go wrong making infinite sequels and reboots of well known and beloved “brands.”
New stuff? Creativity? Who needs that when you can win big with Zombie pop culture dug up from the past? The post pandemic film and TV landscape has made movie moguls even more skittish about trying anything new.
joel hanes
Hugo Weaving as Elrond was an enormous miscast in the Jackson LOTR
NotMax
Nearly midnight blog time and no post so much as acknowledging Presidents’ Day?
There have been some better ones who held the office, after all.
Peale
Since its kind of open, I’m kind of pissed off at the Mouse for buying up a series that I wanted to watch on YouTube and at the last minute announcing that it was only going to be shown on its Hotstar streaming service, which is not available in the US. One of the things I’ve appreciated a bit about Netflix is that they’ve gone big into international series and aren’t afraid to put up something in a foreign language with subtitles. For those of us who grew tired of US series decades ago, its been nice to not have to VPN or rely on torrents and fansubs. Disney isn’t going to sully its D+in the US with foreign series and films. And looks like it isn’t going to mix that into Hulu. Instead they are segregating too much into streaming services for specific national markets.
S. Cerevisiae
@gene108: that was both hilarious and dear god I can see them do it. I particularly like the image of the Beorning.
Peale
@SpaceUnit: Actually wouldn’t mind it. Galadriel comes indoors after a long day doing elven stuff only to get into an argument with Elrond over who is going to cook that night. Frodo comes in and explains the benefits of Fresh Direct and gives them a discount code for 20% off their first order.
S. Cerevisiae
@joel hanes: he was nothing like the Elrond in my head from the novels.
Tehanu
I’ve read the books probably more than 100 times; I re-read them every couple of years, usually. I enjoyed the Jackson movies which, on the whole, were reasonably faithful to the story though not as much to the general philosophy, but the books are what matter to me. But that quote of Tolkien’s about other hands working in his mythology is important. Do those other creative types take Tolkien’s work and do things with it that I, personally, wouldn’t? Of course they do — and they should. I’ll try to judge them on whether they’re faithful to Tolkien — not whether they please me in every respect.
@joel hanes: Totally agree with you. I like Hugo Weaving, but he was all wrong for the part.
James E Powell
@joel hanes:
It wasn’t just the casting it was how he played or was told to play the role. Who would you have preferred in the role?
Yarrow
Has Amazon not produced “giant prestige shows” before? What counts as a giant prestige show?
Poe Larity
@opiejeanne: Megalopolis. The movie to replace It’s A Wonderful Life for your annual season watching and debate the meaning of life or your navel.
Self funded, the vineyards did better than the horses.
piratedan
there’s plenty of great potential source material out there in both Fantasy and Science Fiction that is breathtaking in its literal exposition, some of it gritty, some of it tragic, much of it that are simply great stories, what they need are sponsors as there are millions of readers out there that form a foundation of a fanbase for potential viewers.
there are lots of awesome settings out there to be explored, from the Russo-Greek themed Barrayar of Lois McMaster Bujold, to the mythic streets of fantasy inhabitants that is Glen Cook’s Tun Faire. David Weber’s Manticore and its telepathic/empathic treecats to the expansion of humans as the maguffin in CJ Cherryh’s Pride of Chanur into a pre-existing alien space compact, which spins events into chaos.
The key imho is in the story-telling and there are a great many fanstastic storytellers out there, the key is being true to the characters and their stories…
gene108
@joel hanes:
Yup
Elrond was handsome. Pierce Brosnan or someone like him is who I’d have had in mind.
Also, the movie’s adaptation of Elrond and Aragorn’s relationship was so off from the books. There was history there that could’ve been explained in a line or two of exposition.
Show Aragorn sitting on the ground in Rivendell, knees pulled up, head resting on his knees, with one arm around his legs and another on on his sword showing him in a moment of doubt.
This is observed by Merry and/or Pippin.
Elrond comes behind the hobbit(s), “I fostered him here, since he was two when his father died. He knows all that he desires rides on this quest. There is no turning back for him. He becomes the greatest of his line since Elendil or fails utterly”.
A few seconds and the backstory is established
James E Powell
@Yarrow:
I’m kind of curious about that as well. The term “prestige TV” has become common, but I’m not sure what is and what isn’t prestigious enough to qualify. People were talking about Fleabag & Mrs. Maisel as great shows. My personal favorite was Patriot.
gene108
@Leto:
From your Wiki link:
I wonder if he’s going to shock the world and do a live action remake of Doomed Megalopolis ?
prostratedragon
@Poe Larity: Metropolis revisited? I might find that interesting.
Peale
@Yarrow: The Boys, Good Omens, and The Man in High Castle probably count as “Big.” Mrs. Maisel, The Underground Railroad, and Mozart in the Jungle probably count as “Prestige.”
PJ
@Tehanu: are you more than 200 years old? You must have some stories of your own!
Anotherlurker
@piratedan: I’m still waiting for a huge budget production of “Ring World”.
CaseyL
@prostratedragon: I don’t want anyone to touch Metropolis! The original is briliant – the Maria-to-robot sequence still gives me chills – and any updating is going to be glitzy and CGI’d and just awful.
(Yes, the acting is incredibly mannered, and the 1920s idea of vamping is unintentionally hilarious, but… I just can’t see a modern remake being “better,” just fancier.)
S. Cerevisiae
@Anotherlurker: oh god yes! I really want to see Nessus and Speaker, I would think a Puppeteer would have been impossible before the era of CGI.
piratedan
@S. Cerevisiae: I even envision something along the lines of Corwin shaping reality in Zelazny’s Nine Princes of Amber beimng doable these days
trollhattan
No way Morfydd is a real name. Get that gal some vowels and a sammich.
trollhattan
@CaseyL: Oh hell no. That would be like “Oz, the Director’s Cut” or “Casablanca II–Rick Gets Him Some”
trollhattan
Guys, this is more serious than I thought. BoJo is unleashing The Cobra!
“In case of emergency, break glass, remove cobra.”
NotMax
@S. Cerevisiae
Trio of SF titles that immediately spring to mind which would today lend themselves to involve much less production agita and much more visual oomph than at the time of their publication.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama
John Varley’s Titan
Lloyd Biggle Jr’s All the Colors of Darkness
.
sab
@CROAKER: Isn’t Stairway to Heaven about Galadriel?
NotMax
@sab
Not about the upper story of the House of the Rising Sun?
//
sab
@joel hanes: Yes! I walked out of the first movie at the Council of Elrond and never saw the rest of it.
Tehanu
@PJ: No, I just read very fast — always have — and I would guess the majority of that 100 times was when I was a teenager and actually wrote my diary entries in tengwar. Can’t really read them now, of course! But I still do re-read the books — in fact, the last time was about 6 months ago.
Craig
@Jeffro: “Still Alive”
prostratedragon
@CaseyL: I think that horse has been gone so long that the barn has been through a few conversions. Think how many times the plot outline and elements have been repeated —the city personified by a woman, the true and false or fashioned character, the opposing manipulators Frederson and Rotwang (amazing that his initials are C.A.R.), the bifurcated city, …
joel hanes
@James E Powell:
Who would you have cast [as Elrond]?
I’m no movie buff, and don’t hold the mien and abilities of a stable of actors in mind, so probably can’t make a really good call here.
Maybe Jason Isaacs ?
sab
@Tehanu: “Wrote my diary in tengwar”. I am laughing so hard I can’t think. I am impressed. Could have been me except I didn’t have that much persistance.
Craig
My buddy and I were talking last night about Tolkien. We decided that we’d like to make a stand alone story of Tom Bombadil starring Matt Berry. It’s gonna be amazing!
Stephen
@James E Powell:
“Welcome to Rivendell, Mr Anderson”
Tony Jay
@James E Powell:
@joel hanes:
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the films but I didn’t mind him in the role at all. He’s got that ‘not human’ cheekbone and eye thing going on that I associate with Elves and his wise, slightly grumpy and often terse mien fitted the character.
He has, after all, seen the whole post-Beleriand drama play out first hand, from the Rise of Sauron to the Fall of Numenor, and now the fate of absolutely everything good in the world relies almost entirely on the fortitude and character of a single Dunedain Ranger whose success – while vital – will also deprive Elrond of the person he loves most in the world for the second time.
Damned right he’s grumpy. His brother’s side of the family haven’t exactly got a 100% record of making the wisest decisions in their ridiculously fleeting lives.
sab
@Tony Jay: Well, that is an interesting take on Elrond. Seems accurate, and I am embarrassed that in 50 years I didn’t figute it out for myself.
bjacques
I would watch the hell out of Matt Berry as Tom Bombadil. And I would really watch a miniseries of Bored Of The Rings with updated but less ephemeral advertising references, like the plugs for Amazon as described above. Which I guess would also require Matt to play Tim Benzedrine instead. @Craig:
Tony Jay
@sab:
It hit me a while back when I was reading that Tolkien’s view (sometimes, depending on his mood) was that Elves and Men were all ‘human’, but while Men were modern humans with all their foibles and unknown bright future post-Death, the Elves were the pre-Garden of Eden model with immortality, an innate oneness with the world around them and a wide-eyed appreciation for divine beauty that ‘God’ (in this case represented by the Valar) so valued that they wanted them to come and live with them forever in Paradise.
Elrond chose to be one of those ‘perfect people’, and why wouldn’t he? But then his twin brother, who he no doubt expected to spend the rest of forever alongside, chose to be a Man and give that all up. You’ve got to imagine that there were long and heated discussions between the brothers over what the fuckity fuck Elros thought he was doing and why he was doing it, and even though the island nation Elros led the Edain to took the best of Elven and Edain culture and elevated it way into the stratosphere, Elrond still had to watch his beloved twin age and die and go off somewhere he’d never, ever see him again.
Fast forward a few thousand years. Numenor has gone from island refuge to Global Hyperpower to Evil Empire to mythical anecdote and Elrond has done his bit by stepping up to keep the best of its legacy alive in the form of Aragorn, but now his own daughter, the woman all of the Elves who were alive at the time say is basically the closest they’ll get to a reincarnation of the last Elven princess who gave it all up for a hunky slice of Man Meat, is telling him she’s going to do the same thing.
Apart from the crushing sense of loss Elrond must feel at the prospect of Aragorn ‘winning’ the War of the Ring and with it his promised Queen, there’s got to be a small part of him deep in there wondering, what did Luthien and Elros and now Arwen see in this ‘Gift of Man’ that he missed? When all is said and done, did he actually make the right decision all those years ago?
Yeah, I’m looking forward to this Second Age storyline. There’s a lot in there that Tolkien never expanded on.
Cermet
@Baud: Finish so as to match Tolkien’s original language source
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Someone didn’t read the books but going to lecture everyone else. There is a reason why “wise, ethereal” Galadriel knew she would go nutters if she got her hand on the One Ring.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fun fact there was thriving slave trade between Medieval Europe and North Africa going both ways. According to the 1080 Doomsday Book 10% of the population of England were slaves. While I gather most of the slaves were Irish, still.
Kalakal
@Anotherlurker: I’d go for that, espescially if they extended it to Tales of Known Space. I’d really love to see Pak Protectors
JML
I’m looking forward to the new LotR series; there’s a ton of potential there. Adaptations are tricky; if you get the look and feel right when you change mediums people are generally willing to accept changes that are made to accommodate that new medium. for example, I loved the PJ LotR films. It didn’t bother me at all that they gave all of Glorfindel’s stuff to Arwen, for example, because the look and feel were right and moving her as a character more actively into the narrative made sense from a storytelling perspective.
I had a harder time with The Wheel of Time, which made a lot of storytelling choices and changes that didn’t seem important to the story…while also making a number of significant changes that were needed to streamline the narrative. The combination was hard for someone who read all the books. (I’ve decided that it’s a good show, but a poor adaptation)
Regarding the whole endless comic book adaptations: have a little mercy and kindness for those of us who love comics and have waited decades for super-hero movies that don’t suck. Prior to Blade coming out, we had 2 good Superman movies and 1 good Batman movie and everything else was trash. There wasn’t a single decent Marvel movie at all, and even after Blade it was pretty hit or miss until Iron Man kicked off the new era. (they still haven’t done a good FF movie, at least 40% of the non-Tom Holland Spider-Mans aren’t just bad they’re really bad, X-Men has had some dreadful ones, etc) There’s over 90 years of super-hero comics publishing, and we’ve been dying for this. And there’s still loads of great stories to adapt, which could be awesome.
TheronWare
I remember when HBO’s Rome had such a large budget they had to end it after just three seasons! Oh how I miss my Rome!
ChristD
@lowtechcyclist: I watched three minutes of the first movie and was appalled. I never watched any of the movies.
Paul in KY
@Leto: Always thought Elrond should have just shoved Isildur & Ring into the fire. He was marveling at the Ring & wouldn’t have seen it coming.
Paul in KY
I’m interested to see how they portray Sauron. Very handsome & ‘kingly’ in his Annatar form.
I’ve always thought a good scene would be meeting outside with Celebrimbor & some other high mucky-mucks and it is cold & all the Elves/Dwarves/humans in attendance are blowing out visible, steaming breath. Sauron is not. That would show an essential difference between them & him.