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09-30-2022, 05:08 AM | #1 |
Psyche of Prince Immortal
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**Spoiler Warning** Rings of Power S1E6 - "Udûn"
Just finished the latest episode, and as always, I have thoughts:
What I didn't like: - We finally get the showdown between the Southlanders and the Orcs(Sorry Adar, Uruks). It didn't really feel like the grand battles we are used to, and this i feel is because of the utilization of the scenes and characters. We have seen big and grand shots of beautiful places such as Numenor, Lindon and Khazad-dum, only to be stuck in a small set or room that never seems to break over fifty people. Which leads to the battle in this nondescript village being rather lackluster. - I know I have critiqued the pacing before, but the editing here has been some of the worst. Having a quick cut to the Numenoreans charging along the plain really took away from the moment in the tavern when you hear the hoofbeats like thunder. Same with seeing Waldreg using the key to break the dam and release the river like a proud ent, and then switch to a heartfelt scene between father and son. This could very well be personal taste, but I can imagine better editing would do a great service. Also, the whole switcheroo with the sword-key was silly, along with the "hiding it so nobody knows oh but wait this kid knows". - The "save each other" cliche was running amok in this episode. I count at least four times where it happened. And this happened twice between Galadriel and Halbrand(been messing up his name before) and just felt like poor characterization. Even the one time where this cliche would make sense, with Isildur riding in to save his father, it gets undone with Halbrand saving him instead. - Galadriel seems to have one emotion/face in this episode, and in past ones. I see they are using the Legolas style of spicing combat up with her saddle-dancing there. What I liked: - The star of this episode is Adar, who is making me root more for the Uruks then the elves or men at this point. I definitely feel like he will be set up as the false enemy as Saurons plots become unravelled. - The VFX of Orodruin blowing up was really cool, but maybe overdone plotwise since the episode ends with the village being covered in volanic ash and of course all the named characters will survive this. - I like the proto-Gondorian armour, and most of the costume design in general. Obligatory shout out to Elendil's helmet. Predictions: - I feel more and more that Halbrand is Sauron now, especially from his interaction with Adar. Adar believes that he killed Sauron, who is known to take multiple forms. While the acting leaves a lot to be desired if he is in fact Sauron, it fits in plotwise. Hoping this awkard, possibly sexual, tension between Galadriel and Halbrand peeters off soon. - Everyone is going to survive cause that tavern is made of something stronger then mithril: plot armour.
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09-30-2022, 01:56 PM | #2 |
Laconic Loreman
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Overall, the episode was pretty good. Nothing was as memorable as the songs in the previous episode, but nothing was as weird as the silmaril/mithril plot either.
The action scenes were ok. They didn't really do anything for me, besides looking good. I was tense during the orc Theo/Bronwyn fight in Ep 2 and the trenches fight in Ep 3. I don't think this episode did as good of a job as building tension, prior to and during the fight sequences. When Adar entered the tavern and the orcs start slaughtering the survivors only then did it pick up. I also liked when the defenders realized that it was men that they were fighting and killed during the initial skirmish. I agree with Gil-Galad that Adar was the standout performance in the episode. He gives us the uruk origin story and I like his conversation with Galadriel. Adar says they are creations of "the One," the Secret Fire, just like elves and are thus allowed to live in the world. Galadriel says they are corruptions from Morgoth, made in mockery. But it sets up the question of orcs and their redemption, making them more than just nameless slaves for the heroes to kill. I thought it was interesting the Numenoreans took orc prisoners, as well. Not something I was expecting to see in a traditional fantasy story.
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09-30-2022, 06:19 PM | #3 | |||
Odinic Wanderer
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Also completely unreleated, is Halbrand's kingdom supposed to compose of more than a single village? Quote:
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09-30-2022, 10:10 PM | #4 | |
Drummer in the Deep
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Next Sunday A.D.
Posts: 2,145
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Nice of Adar to bury his sunflower seed hulls.
Female orc confirmation??? GIMBATUL! Ooh the blood color reveal was cool. The reveal of the townspeople's bodies reminded me of the passage in RotK where the army of Mordor tossed the heads of the fallen over the walls of Minas Tirith. Yeah, seal the outside of the wounds so all the blood leaks inside where it's supposed to be! Boy when I tell you I cackled when I saw the mountain that the river was flowing towards, I cackled when I saw the mountain that the river was flowing towards. I like the idea of Adar as an anti-Sauron, I wonder if he will denounce or embrace Annatar/TotallyNotSauron when he appears? Quote:
I do too, though this did suffer a lot of the usual boring Gloating Enemy Suddenly Stabbed From Behind, Oh No This Character Is Dead No Wait They Aren't, and This Trap Won't Work Oh Wait Yes It Will moments.
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10-01-2022, 01:07 AM | #5 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Sep 2009
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10-01-2022, 08:48 AM | #6 |
Dead Serious
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I had time to watch this yesterday... but it didn't motivate me as much as doing the other things I could do, which continues to suggest this show doesn't super motivate me.
Again, my various reactions:
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10-08-2022, 10:45 AM | #7 | ||||||
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,369
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I've been finding myself putting off watching this, I'm watching along rather reluctantly, almost as a chore rather than something I would look forward to. I feel like that speaks to the quality of the show, really. Long past my actual anger at any inconsistencies has burned away, all that's left is, well, indifference mainly. There just isn't enough in this show to keep stimulating interest. I would not lose a wink of sleep if I never found out what happens next. And I fear this episode hasn't changed my mind.
This time, I decided to actually take notes like Form, rather than try to remember things after the episode.
Overall impression: I like Adar and the Orc philosophizing. The Orcs in this show are definitely a plus. I like the Alfirin traditions - plant the flower before battle which will either grow on your grave or stanch your wounds... It just seems appropriate. I am profoundly unmoved by any of the emotional or epic stuff - it's hard to be invested when you know the characters are gonna live, or to feel the emotional suspense when you lack the characters' backstory. And I agree that the scene sequences and the pacing was not great - and the dialogue remains predictably so. The volcano cliffhanger loses all its cliffhanginess because you know all the important characters will live. Quote:
Agree with everyone saying Halbrand is becoming increasingly Sauronian. Quote:
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So - I feel like my impressions are pretty consistent with everyone else's so far on this thread. I absolutely agree that the Adar storyline was the best of this episode. And that the scale of the world and its people seems utterly arbitrary. And pretty much all the other points. Only thing I would disagree with is that I would call the volcano an anti-cliffhanger, as it doesn't really hang you very much. I am also seriously considering not watching any further at this point - but equally might just finish the season for the purpose of being able to discuss it here. If not for the social aspect of discussing it, I wouldn't be watching any further. Heck, I probably wouldn't even have watched this episode.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera Last edited by Galadriel55; 10-10-2022 at 10:45 AM. Reason: Fixed formatting |
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10-08-2022, 04:58 PM | #8 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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I didn't watch this one until yesterday morning. I'm less enthused by it than I was, and to be honest real life in the UK is like a particularly absorbing grimdark fantasy right now so I've been occupied with that dystopian story. Though I was definitely lined up to watch House of the Dragon on Monday night at 9pm - that show is really hitting the marks - and have watched that episode three times, it was so good.
Anyway...it was packed full of action and there was a lot I really enjoyed in it, but I'm finding myself getting infuriated about logic holes in the plot so let's get that out of the way. Reading Tolkien, I never once felt the urge to go and look up scientific information of any kind but after this episode I spent a good couple of hours looking up Vulcanology (I used to work with someone with a doctorate in this but thought she maybe wouldn't appreciate me hassling her about it, you know...). Nobody can face out either pyroclastic flow *or* pyroclastic surge (more likely with a water-meets-magma eruption - it has a proper name, and we saw an example of this with the recent big eruption in Iceland). They'd both likely burn you to a crisp, if you weren't asphyxiated. You have next to no chance of survival, and if you do, you are going to be very badly burnt with lung damage. It didn't end up in the next episode with it all being a dream that Galadriel had in the shower. At least Dallas writers had that. They need to sharpen this kind of stuff up. We can deal with dragons, magic etc but we *know* how cataclysmic volcanic eruptions work, we have them in the real world. I really enjoyed the angle of where Adar came from and what he was trying to do, that has legs. I liked how he tricked them by sending in their former neighbours in the Orc armour. And I liked the interrogation scene with Galadriel. This has potential. I also enjoyed the scenes with Elendil and Isildur, as they developed the father-son relationship, and the 'horse lore' part was great too. And I watched the next episode soon afterwards, which I found better, in my Netflix-addled, instant gratification needing mind.
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10-18-2022, 04:43 AM | #9 |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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Slowly but surely catching up... thank goodness the plot threads are colliding! I'm very happy to have Galadriel + Numenor + Southlands all in one place now, makes keeping track of them much easier.
It was interesting to compare Galadriel and Arondir's fighting styles. Galadriel continues to use 'be where the enemy isn't' as her primary tool - witness that bizarre falling-off-a-horse maneuver she used twice(!). Arondir, meanwhile, is, uh... rubbish in close combat, and just got beaten up until Bronwyn saved him. But he has a solid 'use the architecture as a weapon' theme that Galadriel doesn't use (she just charges). A few more "Commander"s thrown at Galadriel this time. I think it is actually the only military title even vaguely applied to her - is it in UT that it says she "looked upon the dwarves with the eye of a commander"? It's also the primary translation for Quenya "cáno", so it's definitely the most appropriate rank, but still feels very weird. One big issue was the repetitiveness of the Southland fight. No less than three times, they celebrated their victory only to find that Oh No! it's not over yet. That's a pacing problem. I would also have preferred to see the battles. The biggest offender was the whole 'gasp, my hand is wet' sequence. I... assume we were supposed to be seeing that the blood was red rather than black? But a) it was dark and everything looked black, and b) it was firelit so any red looked like reflection. Very badly played. I did comment to my wife that there was nothing actually proving that Galadriel and Bronwyn were in the same timeframe. It would have been hilarious if the Numenoreans had shown up and discovered the remains of a battle a thousand years earlier. ^_^ Alas. I've been assuming the tower and village are somewhere around Minas Morgul. That means the Numenoreans sailed up Anduin to future Osgiliath, from which they could probably see the smoke/fire rising over the village. It would be, what, ten, twenty miles to the village then? That's reasonable. But the Orodruin sequence makes it clear that the geography is tower - village - Orc camp - volcano, so I guess the village has to be on the Mordor side. Is there a pass behind Minas Morgul? They obviously didn't take Cirith Ungol, but I've never been clear whether there's a main access route to go with the Spider-infested cave. Um, what else... disappointed that Adar isn't a named canon character, but proto-Orc (sorry, Uruk) is pretty interesting. I feel like the writers assumed an emotional investment in individual Southlanders that we never had - oh no, Treadmill or whatever, we literally didn't know thee! I wonder if they chopped some stuff out - a scene giving us a reason to care about Fake Barliman and Treadmill, and maybe introducing the Promised King stuff as something other than Galadriel's weird obsession. Favourite moment was Arondir breaking a hammer on the hell-forged sword. I was convinced he was about to declare a quest to take it to a volcano and set out to kidnap a couple of Harfeet to drag along. ^_^ Weirdest moment was Bronwyn suddenly spouting what I'm sure was Sam's narration in Mordor about light the Dark can't touch. It's nice that they tried, but it didn't fit, and didn't deserve the lampshade they hung on it. Oh, and my wife the nurse was just as appalled by Bronwyn's "treatment" as everyone else. "But WHY are they cauterising it? She'll just have internal bleeding!" hS
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10-18-2022, 12:27 PM | #10 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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10-22-2022, 04:29 AM | #11 | ||
Shady She-Penguin
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: In a far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 8,093
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Certainly better than episode 5, but still not the greatest... the logistics and logics were rather confusing (why was it day where the Númeoreans were charging and night inside the tavern??), and I also am not a fan of Galadriel/Halbrand sexual tension (or their dynamic in general with her pressing him to be a king). Also the battle scene was nothing special, and Arondir and Galadriel's battle moves (in the whole series) are getting rather ridiculous, as is the excessive use of slow motion.
Adar was certainly the best thing in this episode - or to be honest, in the whole series. He's an interesting character and an interesting concept, and Joseph Mawle is doing a great job portraying him. I hope he didn't die. He made me root for the orcs, which was well done. Galadriel, when positioned against him, seems like a concerningly genocidal elf supremacist on the other hand. He had a point about her being corrupted by darkness. I was confused about why the alfirin seeds needed to be stuck into the wound before the cauterising. Seems a little unhygienic and counterproductive to me, but I guess it is Elven magic. And I'm not even starting about the geological plot twist in the end because I can't pretend I understand how volcanos work, but I would think it's not like this... Quote:
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10-22-2022, 06:38 AM | #12 | ||
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 7,431
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This episode had some fairly interesting stuff. The whole action part was fairly entertaining, despite some stunts that Mongolian raiders could pull off, but not sure about someone in full plate armour, and despite the unnecessarily-long-ugly-stabbing-Orc-in-the-eye and switching of daylights.
Obligatory slow motion even felt right about two times. Otherwise there were quite a few boringly predictable scenes ("now someone is going to stab the Orc from the back to save the protagonist") and a couple of ridiculous ones (turn the key to start the flood... to start the mountain... okay). On the other hand what I fairly liked was the entire Halbaradsson-Galadriel-Adar triangle (also their chase). As in the previous episode, the Galadriel-Harbingerman dialogue felt like it makes sense in spirit, if not in canon: it reflects some aspects of Galadriel that generally are true. At the same time Adar and everything about the Uruks was very interesting in terms of uniqueness. If the show has brought anything new, then it was this angle. Definitely something I did not expect. I hope it will continue to somehow be addressed. As Elrond says in FotR: "For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." This is very much in the spirit of that. (And I recall here on the 'Downs some thread about the irredeemability/redeemability of Orcs, and I think this could serve as a nice illustration for one side of it.) Quote:
I am not personally sure however about Galadriel being portrayed as the horrible racist, but I assume - or I am pretty certain, because it is inevitable - that the show is going somewhere with this and that she will change her mind at some point. (In fact, it is pretty good for character development, if we consider e.g. Galadriel's canonical fluency in Dwarvish, that she is somehow very welcoming of other races, so perhaps here we are going to witness an explanation how it became thus - perhaps some big eye-opening [ahem, again, no pun intended] experience.) Quote:
Anyway the entire thing with the sword being The Key did not make any sense. I will now ignore the whole "we are looking for a sword. It is somewhere here. It is under the floorboards and thus we will never find it!" The whole system - so who made it? Morgoth? For what? To "start up" Orodruin - for what? And if he made it, why did he not already do it? And why did he hide the key? Or if whoever hid or lost the key, why did they put it just in the area, not too far, but not too near to Orodruin itself either? - the entire mechanism seems ridiculous. Okay, if such a thing is geologically possible, fine, but does that mean it will keep flowing like that forever, or else Orodruin would stop? Interesting that, say, the Gondorians did not just bar the river after conquering Mordor later, in order to stop the thing? (Or is that what Gandalf and co. mean when they say that Orodruin starts again in the Third Age after Sauron's previous absence?) - what did Adar want to do with the key anyway? What good is it to him? When I saw Mr. Evil Butterbur turning the key and unleashing the river, I thought it would create Lake Núrnen that, you know, Adar could use to make a foundation of his future Uruk Paradise State, starting with farming. Most of all, ad The Key Plot (see my comment to ep. 5), it would have been so much better had we been told more about the sword before. Before we had no idea why it was so important and this aftermath did not make it make much sense in retrospect. Not bad, but nothing super-amazing either. Certainly about 200% better than the previous episode, but an average okay-but-not-special TV series episode with some ridiculous stuff and a couple of better scenes thrown in.
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10-22-2022, 09:25 AM | #13 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,318
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You don't just gallop around the countryside, period. Horses are not dirt bikes; they get tired- and tire very quickly when running, just like people. Cavalry does NOT gallop in transit. Jackson got the great charge close to right: the Rohirrim started at a walk, accelerated to a trot, and only went to a gallop as they got within bowshot. The images of the Numenoreans coursing across the countryside for hundreds of miles from the coast to Mordor(!) as if the fox was in sight was just silly.
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10-22-2022, 01:36 PM | #14 | ||
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
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10-25-2022, 04:39 PM | #15 |
Haunting Spirit
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 99
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My ideas for what the Battle of the Soutland could have been.
Loved this episode, but I think it could have been much better. This is how I would have done it to make it more grandeur in scale:
-Have the battle occur in the Ostirith tower. Adar will lay the tower under siege. They will eventually break in and rest of them will flee to a nearby forest. The orc numbers will be greater than being reduced by Arondir destroying the tower. -Numenor sends 7 ships. 3 of them will only transport horses. -There will be two brigades going: One regular soldiers like we see and the other one is the Queen's elite guards. They will wear the same color as Miriel's armor. -After the orcs has taken over the tower and drive the southlanders to the open field and surrounding them, the Numenoreans in a huge numbers and fight. -More close combat between the orcs and numenoreans. A truly forest battle. -No fake out death with Brownyn. -Few elite guards will show how powerful Numenor really is by taken out orcs left and right with ease. -Have dozens of silvan elves fighting alongside with Arondir. -A short and brief fight between Adar and Halbrand. |
10-26-2022, 06:13 PM | #16 |
Laconic Loreman
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According to some of the Prime video extra features, "Nampat!" translates to "Death" in Black Speech. So, I suppose they were trying to draw the parallel to the Rohirrim's "Death!" charge?
I don't mind it for these orcs. Even if the Southlander defenders didn't understand Black Speech, just hearing an orc battle-chant approaching would be intense and terrifying. I think the portrayal of the RoP orcs is superior to Jackson's (even in the LOTR trilogy). It's truly the standout achievement of the series, up to this point, in my opinion. Giving them a terrifying war chant adds another layer to them.
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