The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum


Visit The *EVEN NEWER* Barrow-Downs Photo Page

Go Back   The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum > Middle-Earth Discussions > The Movies
User Name
Password
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 12-16-2022, 05:28 PM   #1
Formendacil
Dead Serious
 
Formendacil's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Perched on Thangorodrim's towers.
Posts: 3,346
Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Formendacil is lost in the dark paths of Moria.
Send a message via AIM to Formendacil Send a message via MSN to Formendacil
A Historian's Take on a "Flat" RoP

Bret Devereux, a military historian with interests that have intersected with Middle-earth before (there's a thread on this forum SOMEWHERE about his several-post analysis of the Battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor, in which he basically says the movies don't make complete military sense, but that Tolkien usually does), posted a long form analysis today on his blog that I think hits on what parts of The Rings of Power really didn't work:

The Blog Post

Basically, Devereux's issues with RoP isn't that RoP deviates from Tolkien--it's that it deviates from what we know of human societies and by doing this, RoP is really not presenting the same kind of "real world" society, which Tolkien generally (not perfectly) does a deliberate job of doing--and does well, for the most part.

I think a lot of the problems I had--the sorts of things that got tossed in my Watch-and-React posts--are in this blog, and it feels nice to be validated. His overall argument, that RoP's Middle-earth feels flat (i.e. rather than fully realised) might be the best way of articulating what I think the show is, even if I think I enjoyed it a bit more than he did.
__________________
I prefer history, true or feigned.
Formendacil is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-16-2022, 05:53 PM   #2
Galadriel55
Blossom of Dwimordene
 
Galadriel55's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,299
Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.
William posted a quote from the article on this thread. I didn't realize that this is the same Bret Devereux - I read both his Helms Deep and Minas Tirith series, and some of the GoT articles. I have to read this essay now. And, as I start to read, I am strangely pleased that the critiques he starts raising in the early sections match the examples I came up with on the other thread. Besides this being a Very Good Point, I also really like Bret Devereux writing in general, and will definitely read the rest of the article.
__________________
You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera
Galadriel55 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-17-2022, 04:13 PM   #3
Mister Underhill
Dread Horseman
 
Mister Underhill's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Behind you!
Posts: 2,752
Mister Underhill has been trapped in the Barrow!
This is a very enjoyable and insightful blog post, and while RoP defenders will surely dismiss much of it as nitpicking, or say that, oh, to take one example, there's no time, or budget, or even much dramatic interest in explaining the finer nuances of Númenorian political organization, it does a great job of articulating a major weakness of RoP: not only is it not, from a worldbuilding standpoint, internally coherent, it is sometimes aggressively incoherent.

The author buries the lede a bit -- it's not that we necessarily want a long explanation of a political situation, or a proto-Hobbit migration pattern, or whatever. We want to feel that the writers have thought about these things, or I think more pointedly, what we really want is not to think that much about the worldbuilding. When it's working right, it's almost subliminal. It's not tugging at our conscious mind -- "Wait a minute... given this setup, how do these proto-hobbits have all this fabric?" (I actually did have this thought as well.) We want to sense that the world clanking away in the background makes sense.

The heavy implication in the blog is that if the creators of the show had thought more deeply on some of these topics, this is not the show they would have created. There are DNA level problems here.

If you were going to do a Tolkien show, I think you could get away with a lot in terms of deviation from established lore, time compression, and so forth, so long as you tick a few essential boxes, and one of those is "Middle-earth must feel real."
Mister Underhill is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 11:45 AM.



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9 Beta 4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.