"The Rings of Power" Vanity Fair article

[mhagain]

It occurs to me that the First Age stuff is easily solved. There's enough material in the LotR Appendices to form an outline that can be usable as a prologue, and then all that needs to be done is show some non-specific scenes of Elves and Men in combat. So we could very easily be shown, say, Finrod in combat (at one of the earlier battles), together with a voiceover that just says he died but without explaining how. Fingolfin and Fingon don't actually appear in the Appendices, not even by name. Turgon does but only as a fleeting reference. Of all the First Age Elven Kings, Finrod is the one with most information about him, and we're told he was King of Nargothrond, brother of Galadriel, and gave his life to save Beren (but nothing more specific).


There's also the matter of Gildor Inglorion, with Inglorion meaning "son of Inglor", and Inglor being an earlier name for Finrod from first edition times, but that's probably best kept away from.


For the Second Age, the biggest hole is, as I've said, the story of Celebrimbor. The material in LotR is so thin as to be virtually non-existent, and even if the show can supplement it with the Silmarillion it's barely better. They absolutely need Unfinished Tales for this, particularly if they need to present it in a matter that doesn't contradict Unfinished Tales. Doing a story of Celebrimbor without UT, but also without contradicting UT, would be absurd, and the only solution would be to put the whole matter of the Rings creation and theft by Sauron behind the scenes. Which would also be absurd for a show named "Rings of Power".


On that basis I refuse to believe that the show doesn't have this material, but I guess we'll see.


Everything else seems adequately covered. Númenor, on a quick glance through LotR and comparison with Akallabeth, is very well-covered, but it would, I agree, be a shame to lose the Miriel story. Galadriel is very thinly-covered again, but there's no real detail there anyway, which would free the show up to invent things. Lindon, more or less likewise. And so with pretty much everything else.


If I were to fan-theory about the timeline compression, something that might work might be placing Sauron's capture and imprisonment in Númenor directly after the Númenoreans rout Sauron from Eriador. In other words, a merging of Tar Minastir and Ar Pharazon. There's not a huge amount of info in the Tale of Years (or any other source, barring the Númenorean king list) for the gap between the two anyway, so that should be very doable.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Yes, one could cobble together a Second Age storyline from Appendices A and B. Especially since, as per the showrunner, the series only takes place in the last century or so of the Age: Isildur's lifetime, and the Fall of Numennor and the Last Alliance are covered laconically but decently..

But it should be kept in mind that such a storyline only could, hypothetically, be done. There was never any guarantee that it would be, because there was never any guarantee that the job would be entrusted to writers of any skill or sensitivity. And now it is apparent that they possess neither; they can no more comprehend what they have been given to work with than a tribe of cave men could comprehend a smartphone. Every single thing about the reveal reeks of cluelessness, and the replacement of Tolkien with schlock standard-issue Genre Fantasy.

Whether or not they get hair color or skin color or the basics of nomenclature right is just the surface of it, and really unimportant except as a symptom of the disease: total incapacity and incomprehension, Cardi B fans confronted by the Missa Solemnis, Orcs in Lothlorien.

Now, I don't think it's necessary that to count as a "true fan" one has to have read the Athrabeth or the Statute of Finwe and Miriel, or even the Silmarillion for that matter. But if we take The Lord of the Rings on its own terms, it is palpable on every page that they are in the same universe, that Frodo and Aragorn and all the rest live in the same reality that encompasses the high seriousness of the more recondite works.

The Athrabeth could not exist in this Amazon travesty. There is no room for a philosphical framework here, because the only framework there is is "how do we work this hackneyed plot device into the story?" The most expensive television production in history has less intellectual depth than a decent superhero flick: nothing but an assemblage of lazy cliches. The problem with General Galadriel in her silly plate armor is not wther it is "canon" or "faithful to the books," but rather, and far more egregiiously, that Warrior Wimmen are a tired old pop-culture trope by now (dear God, James Cameron made Terminator 2 and Aliens back in the eighties!), and Amazon Galadriel (ha!) is just a reflection of an impotence of creativity, an inability to conceive of a mighty woman in any terms other than the worn-out masculine framework of hitting things with sharp objects and climbing glaciers with really, really inadequate mountaineering equipment. Tolkien, a man born in Victoria's reign, could manage it, but not these contemporary Hollywood hacks.

I have to say, this has caused me to ameliorate somewhat my disdain for PJ's LR, simply by demonstrating that it could have been so, so much worse.

[Boromir88]

Not to give Lommy more cringes, but just thinking about Galadriel being a water-bender because, you know she has the "Ring of Water."

Clearly, Elrond being a politician would make sense to get Vilya, the "Ring of Air," to help with all the hot-air politicians have to spew.

I seem to vaguely recall that at some point Gil-galad had Narya, but ends up giving it to Cirdan. "The Ring of Fire" hmm..Gil-galad being engulfed in flames in his battle against Sauron, could have just been fire-bending gone wrong. Or maybe Cirdan figured out a good insurance scam when his ships catch fire - I mean he always has blaming the Noldor to fall back on.