Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The key thing about the "Jon Snow moment" is that it's sort of a Turin/Oedipus/Kullervo moment. You see, Jon's alleged father and everyone else has been lying, or duped, about his parentage since his birth*, and only a handful of people know who his parents really were (not including his girlfriend...)


*Jon's mother died in childbirth and her brother claimed the baby boy as his own bastard got on some wench, to spare her memory the taint of immorality. **

**And to protect the kid's life, since given who the real father was there were lots of people who would consider infanticide an option.

[Michael Murry]

**And to protect the kid's life, since given who the real father was there were lots of people who would consider infanticide an option."

Do you mean, like Elrond taking in Aragorn and adopting him as a foster son after the two-year-old baby's father, Arathorn II, met a violent death; naming the kid "Estel" to conceal his identity because of all the people who would want to kill him if they knew his true lineage? That G. R. R. Martin sure does know how to write "original" fantasy. But thanks for explaining the "Jon Snow moment." Now I know whatever it means to know something like that.

Still, I prefer Mordred as the quintessential bastard son of an English king cuckolded by his favorite knight. I loved that line of his from Camelot: "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt." Can't beat that for pithy dialog.

[Michael Murry]

Hey! That title-line I thought up a few postings ago gives me an idea for some vericose versification. Like:

Fast-Food Fulminations on televised Fan Fiction

Not Lord of the "Rings" (as in “onion”)
But Lard of the "Fries" (as in “French”),
Where the grease on the tongue counts as “flavor”
If the nose can put up with the stench.

Once again the “Istari,” or, “wizards”
Will return just in time for the feast,
Being “sent back” by "someone" to “fix things”
Just when everyone thought them deceased.

Their appearance, though, causes some problems,
For a Cause must precede its Effect.
So if Future comes back to the Present
Doesn't that leave the both of them wrecked?

Anyway, getting back to the re-make,
Or the re-boot of Middle Earth time,
Nothing has to make sense on the TV;
Not for any known reason or rhyme.

Like some boys left alone on an island
After all the adults disappear
Would they think up refined entertainment
Or descend to cheap killing and fear?

Stick around for this week's exploitation:
Every shop-worn cliché in the book
Which our next episodes will continue,
Feeding you both the worm and the hook.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2017

That will have to do for the present -- just in time before The Vikings, Season Five resumes tomorrow night, November 29 at 9:00 pm on The History Channel.

[Huinesoron]

While I agree that the most likely subject will be Young Aragorn (aka The Strider), I don't think it's quite a foregone conclusion. Pitchwife has already mentioned Westerness, though I think the level of Silm/UT involvement would be pushing it for now. But there is another story of Middle-earth - one filled with romance, catastrophe, known characters, grand battles (which The Strider would or should lack), and even a handful of hobbits. And best of all, it can be found - say it with me - entirely in the Appendices.

I'm talking, of course, about the Fall of Arthedain and the end of the Line of Kings in Gondor. It's one of the more detailed stories in the Appendices, and has the authentic Middle-earth 'feel' without being tied too strongly to the War of the Ring. It stars the Witch-King as primary antagonist, allows the creators to build entirely original societies (neither Angmar nor Arthedain are really 'shown' anywhere), but still has room for everything up to and including appearances by Legolas, Gandalf, Elrond, a hobbit named Baggins (at the fall of Fornost), and even Gollum (somehow!).

Back when The Hobbit movies were just out, I conjured up a breakdown of how Middle-earth: The Fall of Kings could work as a movie trilogy, and as a series it's arguably better: you don't have to find semi-arbitrary break-points in the plot (and in particular, you don't have to compress the entire war with Angmar into Film #2). I can't seem to find a Barrow-Downs policy on links, so if this isn't acceptable let me know and I'll remove and summarise it, but this is my original Livejournal post on the topic:

Middle-earth: The Fall of Kings - Line of Elendil, Last King of Arnor, & Throne of Gondor

Whatever the series is, I kind of hope it goes well - it would be nice to visit Middle-earth again, even if it is a(nother) modified version. But... yeah, I'm not overly hopeful.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Michael Murry

Do you mean, like Elrond taking in Aragorn and adopting him as a foster son after the two-year-old baby's father, Arathorn II, met a violent death; naming the kid "Estel" to conceal his identity because of all the people who would want to kill him if they knew his true lineage? That G. R. R. Martin sure does know how to write "original" fantasy. But thanks for explaining the "Jon Snow moment." Now I know whatever it means to know something like that.

That only works if Elrond lied to Aragorn and everyone else about his parentage, and saddled him with the undeserved taint of bastardy ("Yeah, I knocked up some tavern trollop in Bree."). Oh, and then "Estel" hooked up with a girl way, way more closely related to him than Arwen (unwittingly, of course).

And if Tolkien had kept the reveal of all these facts from the reader until somewhere in Book VI; Strider the Bastard fights his way down to Gondor having no idea he has any claim to the throne.


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

"You'll never find a virtue un-statusing my quo,
Or making my Beelzebubble burst.
You can take the high road, and I'll take the low;
I cannot wait to rush in where angels fear to go."

--Mordred

(Never be another lyricist like Fritz Loew).

[Michael Murry]

Thanks again, Mr Hicklin, for helping me to better understand the "Jon Snow" thing. Since I'll never read the books or sit through even ten minutes of the television series, I have to depend upon others to fill me in on the plot, characterizations, etc. Given the popularity of this kind of standard television fantasy, the forthcoming "Lord of the Rings" version will have much low-lying pasture to plow, so to speak. I have to wonder what the relatively tame and tepid Tolkien mythology has to offer today's consumer of commercialized, hack-and-slash, comic-book "entertainment."

The "royal bastard" theme has certainly gone though any number of permutations over the centuries. For example: In the current Vikings (now in its fifth season on The History Channel) the future Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great of Wessex (i.e., England) owes his paternal DNA not to his mother's official husband, Prince (now King) Aethelwulf, but to Athelstan, a Christian priest captured and then sort-of adopted by the Viking leader Ragnar Lothbrok who drags him back and forth between Norway and England as a sort of personal confidante/interpreter/geographer. Somewhere along the line, Athestan becomes more pagan than Christian (before reversing the process later) and has sex with (thereby impregnating) Princess Judith, enraging her husband, Prince Aethlewulf, but only firing the desires of Aethlewulf's father, King Eckbert, who then takes his own son's wife (and Alfred's mother) for a mistress. How shocking! Royal personages and priests behaving badly! Shame on them.

As for Camelot, I think -- according to Wikipedia -- that Alan Jay Lerner did the book and lyrics while Frederick Loewe did the music. I never could get straight which of those two did what. I just loved the music and lyrics. I read The Once and Future King decades ago and really should go back and read it again. I especially appreciated the concept of Merlyn the magician living backwards through time. Something about that always reminded me of Arthur C. Clark's Law: namely, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." All those fireworks that Gandalf kept detonating for show may have amazed the hobbits and other denizens of Middle Earth but only because they had not yet ventured far enough "to the East" to meet the Chinese who invented gunpowder but didn't realize its full implications. Tolkien certainly got a first hand glimpse of that explosive technological magic in the trenches of The Great War of 1914-1918. It does not seem to me that Gandalf really understood what he had let loose in the "Western" world with his little "magic" firecracker shows and Tolkien, who should have understood this lethal technology better than most, makes nothing of it at all (unless I missed something).

Anyway, getting back to Tolkien's mythology as per the Appendices: in 2933 of the Third Age, Lord Elrond "receives [the two-year-old Aragorn] as a foster son and gives him the name Estel (Hope); his ancestry is concealed." This "foster son" gambit, of course, makes Aragorn the foster brother of Elron's two sons. It also makes Elrond's daughter, Arwyn, Aragorn's older -- 2,690 years older -- foster sister. Logically, this makes any romantic relationship between the two foster siblings a form of "foster incest." Not just that, but in a reversal of the older male robbing the younger female cradle, we have the younger male cradle robbing the older female assisted living facility. Something tells me that young Aragorn may have fallen for an elvish female version of Dorian Gray. But one can only hope ...

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Michael Murry

Thanks again, Mr Hicklin, for helping me to better understand the "Jon Snow" thing. Since I'll never read the books or sit through even ten minutes of the television series, I have to depend upon others to fill me in on the plot, characterizations, etc. Given the popularity of this kind of standard television fantasy...

Game of Thrones (and the Martin books) are much better than that. Tolkien they're not, but then Martin didn't set out to write a Tolkien-esque world anyway. It's much more about sh!tty human behavior, political intrigue, treachery, backstabbing, assassination, dictatorship, religious fanaticism, human sacrifice, the awfuller aspects of war with attendant pillage, rape, massacre, refugees and suffering, and suffused by grey-and-black morality; he has said (quite truthfully) that his inspiration was as much the Wars of the Roses as Tolkien. Imagine a setting where even the Good Guys are a bunch of Denethors and Wormtongues, or at their very best, Boromirs.*

Vikings is, by comparison, a soap opera with battleaxes.

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

*Literally, since Goodest Guy Ned Stark was played by Sean Bean.

[Andsigil]

I'm deathly afraid that this Amazon series will contain every banal, contrived, idiotic trope of political correctness that anyone in Hollywood can think of, and that it will dash my hopes for this series upon the rocks of Thangorodrim.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"Estel's" identity wasn't that much of a secret; at best it was classified Confidential since it was known to all of Elrond's household, all the Dunedain, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn, Haldir and even Bilbo. The Dunedain, after all, knew good and well who their hereditary chieftain was and who he was descended from.

[Rhun charioteer]

Originally Posted by Michael Murry

Do you mean, like Elrond taking in Aragorn and adopting him as a foster son after the two-year-old baby's father, Arathorn II, met a violent death; naming the kid "Estel" to conceal his identity because of all the people who would want to kill him if they knew his true lineage? That G. R. R. Martin sure does know how to write "original" fantasy. But thanks for explaining the "Jon Snow moment." Now I know whatever it means to know something like that.

Still, I prefer Mordred as the quintessential bastard son of an English king cuckolded by his favorite knight. I loved that line of his from Camelot: "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt." Can't beat that for pithy dialog.

Jon Snow is somewhat like Aragorn in that is real father was the crown prince(hence being the true king) you see who ran off with Eddard Stark's sister, this created a chain of events that resulted in Jon'a real father dying in a rebellion at the hands of Ned Stark's sisters betrothed who by the way passionately hated the family of the crown prince whom he believed stole away and raped his betrothed. Hence Eddard Stark lying about Jon's actual parentage and defaming his own honor and reputation because said betrothed hated the family of crown prince even though Eddard Stark and his sister's betrothed were close friends who were fostered together. Despite this Eddard's sister's betrothed hated that family and would have had no compunctions about killing the child if he knew who the real father was hence Eddard claiming the boy as his own bastard son.

It's hinted in the books and basically confirmed in the TV show Jon is the rightful king and the "Azor Ahai" a sort of prophesied savior figure at the same time.

It's very convoluted but still follows fantasy tropes in the end whether Martin admits it or not.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

As for Camelot, I think -- according to Wikipedia -- that Alan Jay Lerner did the book and lyrics while Frederick Loewe did the music.

Quite right, my bad. Loewe however was a brilliant composer, especially in stylistic pastiche to fit the setting.