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Old 09-18-2022, 02:46 AM   #18
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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White Tree

So, I finally got to watch this - back-to-back with Episode 4, so apologies if I mix something up. I will try to post here just the things that I am (fairly?) certain happened in ep 3.

This time, I shall go in the order: the great, the bad, the okay.

The Great

The Harfoot culture continues to be my favourite part of the series. The more savage aspects of their culture nicely contrast with the fluffy hobbitishness. But we don't live in fluffy smials yet, we live in this dangerous jungle, tooth and claw, where sometimes people fall behind, freeze, or... BEES. (I actually liked all of this.) The "memorial service" was in fact very moving. And it's a great concept, too.

Sidenote, I wonder if somehow one day some "fallen behind ones" eventually develop into the sedentary Hobbits.

Otherwise: in fact, the worldbuilding in general is really good on many levels - the same goes for Mordor (SEE? I WAS RIGHT! IT IS MORDOR!). I am extremely satisfied that this beautiful green landscape turned out to eventually become the slag we all know. Also the "cut down the trees, uproot 'em, smash 'em, stick 'em in a stew..." er... anyway; very Tolkien-y in general!

And the Orcs! The Orcs not just somewhat sheepishly occasionally complaining about the sun, but literally unable to remain in the sun! They may be capitalising it a lot, but better that they over-stress it than if they just skim over it! I much prefer this to PJ's "ah well, the difference between a snaga and an Uruk-hai is merely cosmetic; by the time of the Hobbit, completely forgotten". And - again worldbuilding - I love the Orc "dig cover" (I remember those from my time at the excavation site in Khirbet Qeiyafa, very useful!) and especially their "anti-sun ponchos"! Man, the Orcs are resourceful, cunning in the practical sort of way, they hate the sun and you can see it... they are great!

The Bad

Okay. The warg, some people have mentioned, I don't care what it looks like after the half-pig that PJ gave us, but why the puppy eyes! I however kinda liked the small detail that we saw its nipples (okay, this should have gone to the Mirth thread... no, but seriously: I mean it; I liked it as a random detail that showed the attention to detail when making that creature).

But the warg overall actually did not bother me that much.

What DID bother me was basically everything concerning Harbrand. I am okay with him being this sort of crude thieving a...sphodel, but what I absolutely disapprove of is his way of treating Galadriel. Or let me rephrase: okay, if he is the asphodel, and he dares to speak to a High Elven lady like he would speak to a commoner (fine - he met her when she was half-drowning somewhere, so maybe his personal impression of her is somewhat different; even though I argue that there should be some aura of untouchability about the Elves, definitely the High Elves, as it were; basically he should be "are you an angel?" and shut up), but even if he does dare to "play clever" and throw Han Solo-ish witticisms at Galadriel, she ABSOLUTELY ought to throw a Leia back at him and retort in some wise Elven quip that would totally ground him. And we did not see that. I call that sloppy writing, because that makes Galadriel, with all her sword-swinging and fiery-eyed muttering "I shall not rest until I avenge my brother", absolutely toothless.

The second thing that I disliked about Har Har Brand (yeah you can see the guy really gets on my nerves, but it isn't really him, it's the scenes he ends up in) was the beat-up in the back streets scene. Unnecessarily violent. Still doesn't reach the Game of Thrones level (thank Eru), but a little too much for my taste. I also hope Mr. Halberdsson eventually becomes a Ringwraith or something, because that would partly excuse this terrible violence. I mean, I like characters with personalities that are not stark black or white, but this is still Tolkien, and I think that e.g. Aragorn would never have done this. So I hope Mr. H. becomes an antagonist rather than protagonist, and it better happen soon. In any case, I hope we won't see this detailed violence much, ideally as little as possible if not at all.

On a similar "this is not Game of Thrones" note - the dialogues continue to be rather bad most of the time, which is a pity. It is no longer fake-Shakespearian mumbo-jumbo now that we haven't had Elves talking to each other in a while. But still I really think they should have hired a couple of professional writers to proofread. For some reason, what really disturbed me was Elendil's dinner talk with his kids. That just sounded out of some random, any random TV series. John and his kids. Homer Simpson and his kids. Or even Ned Stark and his kids. But that's the problem. This is still supposed to be Tolkien and this is still supposed to be Elendil. I am not saying that he needs to say "nay, Isildur! Thou hast not wash'd thy teethe properly! Let me brush them with a mallorn bough yonder, and show their quality!" - but it should be rather something in that direction than just "hey Isil how's the marks at school?" "Not bad dad." "Great to hear. Wanna grab some popcorn when we return from McAnardil's?"

I mean it is good to show the characters acting in mundane situations, and not making them just heroic figures who probably do not have to go about their daily work, take off their shoes or pee (but still please don't show the latter). And it is obvious that you need to show some mundane interactions and talk about mundane topics and not be just "I say, we must destroy the Dark Lord!" But even that can be done in some... I don't know... fancier way?

It may feel a bit classist. But Tolkien's stories were a bit classist. Or "fancy", as it were. But there is no problem with stuff feeling a bit "high culture". I mean, do we have any more TV series that would be like that nowadays? Exactly. So I think having one would not kill anybody.

And since we are talking about speaking, and since before I said "thank Eru". I am not sure if this was already in this episode or in the next, but I am mildly disturbed by Elendil randomly saying "gods" (and later Míriel said something else; it may have been in the following episode). Like... yes, to a degree, yes, okay. The Valar were called "gods" in some of the drafts (that however nobody has the right to?), otherwise the g-word was really sort of a no-no to LotR and basically everywhere else. Definitely in the main bulk of the canon. So, I find it very un-Middle-Earth-y to use it. Especially by Númenoreans. Or by Faithful Númenoreans. In fact, true, the only place where I would find it appropriate IS on Númenor in its decline - call it a sort of symbolic as the "fall to the heathen ways". But it is just disruptive. Have you ever heard PJ's characters use that word? No. That was like the one thing he did right.
But yeah - if it turns out that this is a clever ploy and setup for, say, eventually Sauron coming and being called a god, and Elendil being the one to use the word just being a sign of bad influence that he picked up from the surrounding culture, then I'm taking this back.

Oh and one more thing was absolutely terrible. The slow-motion horses. And why did Galadriel take such a delight in riding a horse? Why on land would she be so delighted by that? It was just weird and random.

The... okay

Basically everyone I talked to praised Númenor's Greek/Byzantine architecture. I... yeah, I liked it, but I'm at the same time kind of bored. Everyone everywhere thinks that just stomping the Colossus of Rhodes into the port makes a civilisation look great and ancient. Like yeah, the colours, the colours are pretty. Overall really nothing to complain about. But a bit more, I don't know, imagination would have still helped. And I personally always imagined Númenor as sorta rather Egyptian. (Get it? Ar-Phara-oh! Okay, no, horrible, sorry.) But that is purely a comment about personal preference. Not bad, not terrible.

But I liked the costumes, and especially Míriel has AMAZING headdresses. Ar-Pharazon is great, I want to see more of him - he's rather more Rasputin than I'd imagine him normally, but whatever, changes changes.

On a related note, I was sorta happy in the beginning that there were some PJ referrences, like nice evocative, maybe to lure back the nostalgic PJ fans, but not too many. Now it seems like there are more and more of them and I am not sure I like it. I think some of the visuals - the "Minas Tirith replica" (or rather, MT being the replica of this, as it were) looking too much like PJ's own Minas Tirith. You could have made some distinctive changes, say, in colouring, size, or somesuch. And others. I don't recall all the scenes, but there were multiple (and more in the following episode, I'm not sure what's where). "My friends, you kneel for no one" and the "elf Boromir being shot by arrows in exactly the same pattern" being some I can recall for sure.

Overall rating

It definitely picked up the pace (even though to be fair, there still is not that much plot! For example the Harfeet - however much I like the worldbuilding - it's been 3 episodes and we got no closer to finding out anything about the Meteor Man. We are literally in the same spot as three episodes ago). There are some nice things, but I still need the characters to make me care about them in person, or their plotlines.

When watching this with Nogrod, Lommy and Greenie, we likened the series to A Feast for Crows. I think that's an apt comparison. AFFC, for those who do not know, is the fourth book of the series that became Game of Thrones. And that specific book has been sometimes criticised for featuring a lot of random plotlines following some of the characters just riding around the countryside doing things absolutely irrelevant for the plot. The big difference, and the reason why many still enjoyed the book, was that those characters had been already known and established. Say, if you read a book about Faramir walking from Minas Tirith to Osgiliath, it would probably not be a thriller, but you might enjoy it because you already know and are familiar with Faramir. But if the same story was written about Halbagor son of Halborn, you probably would have no motivation to read it, unless Halbagor was established to have a really interesting personality in the first paragraph, or unless there was a really big overarching plot point, that we would know from the beginning that something really dramatic would happen if he managed to get to Ithilien. With all the characters in RoP so far, these elements are completely lacking. I hope this will change.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
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