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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

One quick nerdy correction.

The Grey Havens aren't Valinor. They're the port on Middle Earth you leave from to get there.

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author

Ah! Well, that conveniently exposes my Lore Ignorance--thank you for the correction!

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

That is kind of where the fuzziness of the edges of Tolkien's world does come into play somewhat - In the Lord of the Rings books, Valinor is very much presented as a sort of a different "plane" or purgatory or sort of like Asgard something - but then in the Silmarillion it's just a place on a different continent.

He was sort of Lucas-esque in constantly retconning that stuff over the course of his life (and in all the posthumously published stuff by Christopher Tolkien) - so it's not always 100% internally consistent.

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

Yeah, I was explaining all the back story to my wife and daughter. They were asking a bunch of questions like if Valinor is so great, why don't the Elves just head back there. But I think your comment does a good job of getting at it. Except I would characterize it by saying that Valinor is both a different continent and on a different plane. You need to keep both those things in your head (or at least your heart) for the story to work.

Unfortunately, I wasn't ready with such a thoughtful answer last night, so I basically said "don't ask so many questions; just watch for awhile."

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I kind of disagree. At this stage, Valinor is a different continent, but it is the one where the gods live, and also, travel is restricted, so a) you can go there but not back again, and b) once there, you are kind of directly subordinated to the Valar (gods), so if you want to be master of your own fate, free will and all that, Middle Earth is the place. That's the reason many elves still choose to stay. Also, most of the elves in Middle earth have never met the Valar and are kind of suspicious it might be a trap. And of those who HAVE been there, most of them embarrassed themselves badly and still feel ashamed about it.

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

That a good answer too Elias. There probably is a free will issue going on as well. But I think part of what makes it work is to think of Valinor as a place but not quite a place (or at least not just a place). It's a destination you go to when your time on Middle Earth is done, with what constitutes "done" being a bit of a spiritual question that is different for different folks.

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

Yeah - it's in keeping with the germanic myth/biblical inspiration of the books, you just have to kind of accept that it's both, and that everything isn't always 100% defined and a lot of the mythology is kind of unknowable.

I'd just say that this sort of works better in the "third age"-era stories, because (as Zack pointed out in the review) - you're catching glimpses of these older, weirder, more mythical things through the eyes of more relatable, earthy characters. So Frodo and Sam don't really fully grasp what exactly Valinor is and you, as the audience, don't really need to know either. But then when you make a story actually set there, the seams kind of show a little more.

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"But then when you make a story actually set there, the seams kind of show a little more."

Yeah, Beren and Luthien is fine as a saga, but do we want to SEE Sauron win a rap battle and then being badly beaten by a dog?

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

Haha, I remember the part where Huan battles Sauron (in the shape of a giant wolf), and then fights Carcharoth being my favorite bit of The Silmarillion, but it'd probably come of as inadvertently silly if you tried to incorporate it into a realistic-looking live action show.

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I am curious to see how the show ends up answering your wife and daughter's question. I couldn't really tell if the Ban of the Valar was in place and the Elves were unable to return without explicit permission or if they were voluntarily in exile and Gil-Galad determined who could go back and when. It could be something that is addressed later and it probably won't end up making that big a difference to the overall story, but the nerdier side of me would like that cleared up.

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I re-read the Silmarillion as a preparation for this, and it was way more specific than I remember. Valinor is a western continent across the sea from Middle Earth, but SPOILER ALERT midway through this series it gets physically torn off and placed in a different plane, and the world is made into a globe. Valinor is still accessible to elves as a one-way trip when they tire of hanging aroung in Middle Earth, more or less specifically by sailing through the sky.

Valinor isn't the afterlife after death, though, because that is the Hall of Mandos (who is one of the Valar), which might or might not be pchysically located in Valinor but that is irrelevant as you don't get out once you get in (with the occasional exception).

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Yeah, but even The Silmarillion was compiled by Christopher Tolkien doing his best to reconciling conflicting things that Tolkien wrote at various points, often decades apart - so it's all a bit retconned in order to make things line up that Tolkien never really defined fully/consistently.

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the cool thing is that Tolkien wanted an epos in the style of Kalevala or the Edda but written in the English language, and by constantly revising it creating conflicting versions, he actually made it more authentic, as old myths usually exist in conflicting versions.

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

Yeah, definitely agree - that's all I was getting at; you just kind of have to accept some of this stuff is myth and you're not gonna get a full logistical accounting of, like, what exactly prevents you from going back to Middle Earth once you're in Valinor or whatever.

Making a show that deals directly with these less-explicitly defined parts of the mythos just raises more of those sorts of questions than when they're sort of mentioned in passing in the LoTR books/movies.

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

Meanwhile, agree on the review overall. The story isn't yet gripping. But I will give it some time.

The visuals in general are great, but I found Khazad-Dum particularly amazing. Now that is a kingdom under a mountain that would stay in anyone's heart forever, not just the Dwarves.

Loved bad ass Galadriel. She fights, she swims ... As for Elrond, while Denethor was the character that Peter Jackson most desecrated in his movies, Hugo Weaving was by far the worst casting decision. There wasn't a single moment he was on screen in LOTR that didn't have me wondering what Agent Smith was doing in Middle Earth. It was awful. And then the lines that Jackson gave him just added to the misery.

So Robert Aramayo could never be a worse Elrond. Still, he wasn't great. Elrond for me is a combination of wisdom, strength, and gentleness. Aramayo just seemed nerdy and a little funny looking.

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at this point he's like a quarter of his age from the trilogy, right? nerdy and eager to prove oneself seems like a totally natural precursor to wisdom and strength

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Hopefully you're right pfire, and I'll grow to like him more in the role.

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

Glad to have you on this beat, Zack!

I found myself dreading the show since it was announced, and it slowly won me over. I think you nailed the... sterile feeling of things, or sense of "i guess we have to do this" some scenes have. But Morfydd's performance really won me over.

LOTR is painted in broad strokes (the eternal 'joke', "it's all walking and then a volcano") but uses those to delve deeper into its themes and characters. I enjoyed Galadriel and Elrond here as people instead of goal posts on a quest. The Elrond/Durin/Disa scene was my favorite of this couple eps, as they were recognizably people. And I'm not made of stone in a way where I don't find Durin tending to a tree in the mines of Moria very endearing.

Story-wise, sure, we have an idea of where things land and the general shape of things. But I'd also be very happy if they spent all this money in just a ~vibes~ show. This is a world where it feels nice to just hang out in.

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

Similar reaction -- I liked all of the leads and wanted to know more about them/spend more time with them. The show is visually gorgeous and the score is great... not sure I need the show to be more than that!

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I'm afraid I did legitimately think the dwarf kingdom was cool. It was nice to see a thriving society with elevators and stuff--by LOTR, all we see of dwarven society is rot and decay. They were smart to do another elf/dwarf frenemies situation. And it was legitimately funny that what's his face was pissed Elrond hadn't visited in 20 years and Elrond was like "oh was I just here?" And then so patently weedling his way into a dinner invite.

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Well color me shocked. Heading into this and HotD, I expected to be drawn into Thrones' political intrigue and compelling character work and bored to tears by the shiny endless parade of characters in a Tolkein story and well, that's flipped 2 episodes into each. I think the biggest thing I've noticed so far is that in House of the Dragon it feels like characters are talking at each other, and in Rings, they are talking to each other. I'm already impressed by the scale and score and I think Dragon suffers from staying mostly in one spot as they hurry up and get their time jumps out of the way, whereas Rings greatly benefits from all that map hopping (i.e. burning Amazon's money). It was such a joy to hang out with the Dwarves again, I love they cribbed the mirror idea from Legend (or maybe something earlier, I am not well versed in all the fantasy tropes) to provide natural light to what would otherwise be a sweaty dark cave. Looking forward to seeing where this goes and that in itself is a pleasant surprise.

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Funnily enough, when Amazon first started teasing a Second Age of Middle Earth show, the obvious guess was that they'd be doing Numenor-set political intrigue/dynastic struggle show as opposed to the continent-hopping version they landed on. While it looks like we will eventually be getting to that part of things, it looks to be one thread of a tapestry instead of the whole picture. Or to put it in other terms, the House of the Dragon style show would have been the easier option, but they're taking the Game of Thrones style approach. I'm curious to see how that choice plays out long term.

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I think it was a smart choice now that we have two approaches to compare. For whatever it's worth, it seems like with the timing it will be impossible to not compare the two each week as they go on...might make for better discourse or might get annoying to not let each show stand on its own too. I'm a total noob when it comes to the deeper lore of Tolkien's work so I don't have any of that backstory to color my impressions, but am happy to learn from the rest of the community.

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

I'm a huge Tolkien fan who doesn't really care if adaptations deviate from their source material, so I'm in pretty much the perfect position to enjoy The Rings of Power. And no surprise, I very much enjoyed these first couple of episodes. At the most basic level I'm just so thrilled to luxuriate in Middle Earth again and let the imagery, costumes, and music just wash over me, but I found myself surprised at how quickly I found myself latching onto some of the new characters. Some of that comes from familiarity with where these different groups will end up - the Harfoots being nomadic make them feel like a more earthy, magical group than their Hobbit descendants will be, and seeing the Elves have more earthly concerns (and specifically, Galadriel being driven by vengeance and Elrond by ambition) rather than being ethereal stewards makes them feel approachable in a way that they never have been before (and really, were never supposed to be in LOTR).

But for me, the Dwarves were far and away the highlight. I think that's because in the Jackson films we saw Dwarves as individuals, but never really as a civilization in a way that we saw Hobbits, Men, or Elves. We saw what their ruined cities looked like, but not what they looked like when they were populated with people and families who were making a life. Beyond the plot points that they have the rights to and need to connect, there's an opportunity for this show to fill in little gaps in different civilizations and cities in a way that is very exciting.

And speaking of rights issues, the adaptation nerd in me can't stop wondering about what the show does and doesn't have the rights to. I know they paid for LOTR and the appendices and The Silmarillion and other writings are off limits, but I'm not fully clear on what that really means. If a name appears in a family tree or in passing in the books, are they allowed to incorporate backstory from those off-limits works, or do they just have the rights to the name? It felt pointed how...fuzzy the history covered in the prologue was, how fast and loose the show seems to be playing with the Ban of the Valar, and how Galadriel only ever said "my brother" as opposed to "Finrod" and after the first episode I thought I had my answer. But then the second episode name dropped Aule, Feanor, and the Silmarils, all things which I expected to very much be off limits. I keep finding myself wondering if a change was made because it legally had to be or for storytelling purposes, and while that sounds distracting I'm kind of enjoying not knowing what may or may not be able to be introduced next. I know these stories so well that having some uncertainty introduced into this new one is kind of thrilling.

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The first couple episodes remind me of GOT's first season--I can't really keep anyone straight (except Sean Bean and in this case Galadriel) and I'm just trying to keep up and not questioning a lot. Eventually it will either kick into another gear and it will all click for me, or it will stay in this liminal space of not-a-movie-not-a-tv-show. I'm not sure what the plot is yet (Orcs are back? Sauron is back? People are chilling?) but they kind of hint at one coming up sometime soon. What worked for me was there were scenes when the characters felt like real people: Elrond with his friend's family in the mine, the Hobbiharfootswhatever sneaking off to get berries, Nora from How I Met Your Mother and her forbidden Elf lover at the well, not so much for Galadriel yet but she looked cool. There's a promise of a lived in universe to be had and not just one counting on our love/knowledge of the LOTR Jackson trilogy. I hope it gets there (but not holding my breath).

(Also, in the only House of the Dragon comparison I'll make this week: thank god this show has some humor. HotD suffers greatly from that and just being one Very Serious tone all the time. At least this had some moments where I genuinely laughed/smiled in between the brooding.)

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I watched the first few GoT episodes without having read the books, and was hooked by the events of episode 4 if I remember correctly. For the Expanse it took until episode 7, so I am always willing to give a series a chance I it intrigues. I did not expect it, but RoP is much more intriguing than HotD, and I honestly am fearing that the latter will simply be eye-candy with the occasional good scene. RoP I am hoping it will soon have that moment when some of the storylines become more meaningful to each other. Also, as you mentioned, the characters are warmer and funnier.

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Also, how are we approaching book/general LOTR spoilers in the comments? I have a question about The Stranger but it might give stuff away. (But maybe not, I find LOTR lore wildly confusing as evident by the Valinor discussion here.)

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So, after having actually seen the first episode, the one thing that did not sit well with me, tone-wise was the fact that Great King Gil-Galad GRANTED access to the undying lands as an honour. Exactly WHAT access looked like at this period in Tolkien's timeline is a little unclear. The ban from the first age has been lifted. It is explicitly forbidden for humans, which suggests it isn't for elves, and there were elves living on an island that is sort of half-Valinor. These elves visit both Valinor and Numenor where men live.

But what strikes me as wrong about this lore-wise is that it is clearly the Valar (that is, the Gods of the Undying Lands) who decide what access to the undying lands should be like, and when men try to take this power in their own hands, they are punished for it. So that an elven king gets to decide who goes and who doesn't seems to me usurpation of the authorities of the Valar which is clearly a sin in the world of Tolkien.

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That was the one bit of lore that had me scratching my head too. I wasn't sure if Gil-Galad was granting access to Valinor or if he was announcing that those elves had been granted access by the Valar, though I would lean towards the former. I would imagine that'll get cleared up a bit as the season/series plays out but for now it was the one part that seemed a bit off.

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

Speculation Thread:

1) Who is The Stranger who crashed to Middle Earth like a comet?

2) Do any other characters jump out to you as having a secret about their identity?

3) What is in Durin's box?

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Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022

1) The way that the crater he made looked like a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame means they want viewers to think it is Sauron. I'm going to focus on the talking to insects and the affinity for Hobbits and say it's Gandalf and presume the eye thing is there as a misdirect for people with a more casual knowledge of the films (knowing full well that the other stuff could be a misdirect for people like me who watch/read LOTR multiple times each year).

2) There's something about Halbrand. You don't make a character's first be "looks can be deceiving" if they are supposed to be entirely on the level. I'm going to baselessly guess that he's either an exiled member of the line of Elendil and is going to be our Aragorn stand-in or he's the one who is actually Sauron in disguise.

3) Someone mentions Feanor and the Silmarils and later a character is looking at what is (presumably) a light-emitting gem which was found deep underground, I'm going to guess that the Dwarves found a Silmaril. But it can't be that, can it?

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1) Tolkien fans seem to be flipping frenetically to find out hints of who he might be, but to me, the answer seems obvious: It's David Bowie.

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Bowie getting cast as Elrond in the film series is one of the all time should-have-beens.

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Sep 3, 2022·edited Sep 3, 2022

> Dwarves found a Silmaril

Canon is that each of the three rejoined the world. One was taken to the sky and became the Morning Star; the other two were took by Fëanor's surviving sons who, finding themselves tormented by the light and unable to relinquish the jewels, cast themselves into the sea and the abyss respectively.

the dwarves could find the last one. really fascinating thought! if it were public knowledge it certainly would have made it into the appendices which form the basis for this show. so maybe they kept it secret, or maybe elrond makes the hard call that telling his people about it will lead to no good. or maybe they just break the canon ass that could be really exciting -- maybe Sauron, who never really saw the point of those jewels, uses the tension they inspire to his own advantage. it could be done wrong though and that would make me very sad, the Silmarils sparked a war that broke the world and the finality of their disposition feels really important to me as part of the end of the "Elder Days". To have one of them serve as just another D-plot would be an absolutely terrible use of the IP.

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I try to avoid fan theorizing and I'm not a big fan of fan theories in general so I'm not gonna go full tinfoil hat, but I see the possibility for some very satisfying narratives depending on what is in the box and who those characters are, not just in terms of Rings of Power but how it could inform actions characters end up taking in Lord of the Rings.

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I used the phrase "empty grandeur" recently to explain to a friend why I wasn't feeling enthusiastic about either this or House of the Dragon, and would be waiting in either case to see what kind of reviews they were getting. Unnecessary-seeming prequels have certainly surprised me with their quality in the past -- Better Call Saul and Hannibal both come immediately to mind -- so I'm not writing these off entirely. But your review captures exactly what I expected / feared about the latest venture into Middle-Earth and validates my decision to stay away for now.

Lots of different audiences out there, but personally I need compelling characters and an actual story. If I just wanted to revisit the world, I'd reread the books or rewatch the trilogy.

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You're right Joe about the need for compelling characters and a story. And Rings of Power certainly isn't there yet. But I'm still hopeful it could get there. So while I respect and understand the hesitation, here's to hoping a story will emerge that will justify us convincing you to jump in.

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Sep 2, 2022Liked by Zack Handlen

I'm hoping for that too! I'll keep reading Zack's reviews and the comments here, hoping that the season finds more of a hook for me as it goes along. I'm just not holding my breath on my front.

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was anybody else really bugged in the dialogue when elrond (pretty sure it was elrond) said the dwarves care for the living rock "like one cares for an aging relative". it's a neat analogy but not one an elf would identify as a universal experience -- it really isn't! their relatives don't age!!! why would elrond just say this and celebrimbor just get it?

it could be meant to demonstrate how much elves interact with other races, i.e. so much so that they've incorporated details of mortal lives into their own vernacular. i don't buy this. not because elrond wouldn't have this familiarity -- a) he's probably seen elder care in his travels, b) he may even have done it in his early life as the son of a human woman. but celebrimbor, the aristocrat and master craftsman, so absorbed in his engineering elrond practically had to remind him the other races exist? hard to imagine a plausible explanation for why he would just understand this and more importantly why elrond the attentive deliberate speaker could be confident it would land.

with a couple of changed words, they could have shown that elrond had witnessed and admired dwarven elder care and wanted to include that as another awesome thing to share about them: "like they care for their aging relatives". they wouldn't even have needed to shoot an example! it would have been a cheap easy way to deepen whatever else we're meant to know about Elrond's previous time in khazad-dum. not to mention, highlighting the different passage of time between the two peoples would have been a neat foreshadowing of the later conflict with Durin.

the only plausible reading i have of the scene as written is that elrond is nerding out hard and not exercising his usual care about reading the room, and in fact the analogy does not land, but celebrimbor is too much the politician to let it show. that could be there in the writing, but it isn't on the screen at all. to have elrond going a little too fast and to just slightly elevate a respectful but humoring "wow bud I'm sure excited too!" tone in celebrimbor's line actually would have been a fun character and relationship moment for both of them.

if they meant that, they didn't show it. instead it kind of plays as a straight interaction. the show overall and this plotline in particular are great, but this shit is sloppy. and easily fixed with ADR and/or editing. with so many eyes and resources, how the hell did this get missed?

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founding

Nice review, Zack, but I have to say, that's a lot of words to say nothing... I know your whole point is that there is not much to this show but could you please dive a bit more into it than that? You had two episodes' worth of content to do it and in the end I was more interested in the Stray Observations section than any of what came before 😕

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author

This is usually how I start off reviewing a series--broad strokes as I get the lay of the land, but more specific character and story stuff going forward. I'm sorry this one didn't work for you, but this week's will definitely be more specific.

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founding

Roger that 👌 Looking forward to reading your next piece, in that case!

On a more marketing point of view, I am not sure this option is the most suited for the "first review free, next ones not" strategy, as I think it might be difficult to hook people up with it 🤔

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I come at this series with essentially zero knowledge. I have not read the books nor watched the movies. So I actually don’t know where it’s going. As for my impression of the first 2 episodes, here goes:

1. Boy is this pretty.

2. Wait, what? Who? Where?

3. Okay, I am kind of understanding what’s going on.

4. Sometimes this show feels more like homework and also I am feeling a tad drowsy.

5. Oh, okay, dwarves. They seem fun.

6. Thanks for letting me know that the attacker in the house was an orc. That wasn’t spelled out.

7. Beautiful theme music. Ah, Howard Shore. (Fun fact: I enjoy listening to The Lord of the Rings film soundtrack music while never watching the movies.)

I think “it looks and sounds good, and some of the characters are fun” is enough to keep me coming back for more. I do think this recap and the comments are going to be helpful going forward!

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Sep 5, 2022·edited Sep 5, 2022

I went in with pretty low expectations and am pleased to find I'm looking forward to the next episodes. The one thing I'm wondering about is when is it supposed to take place? I was looking at a time line for the 2nd age in the Appendix for ROTK , and it's not like Sauron made his Ring and then next year, bam, Gil Galad and Elendil were fighting him. This takes place over hundreds if not thousands of years, which isn't a problem for the elf characters, but I'm interested to see what it means for the harfoots/humans; is there going to be time jumps, etc?

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My guess would be that they are going to collapse some of the key points of the Second Age into the lifespan of the human characters, which for some of them could still be hundreds of years. I suppose the other choice would have been to do an anthology-esque show where they swap out human characters every season and give them more contained arcs, but a look at the cast list makes me think they didn't opt for that.

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You could be right, I see they have certain people appearing that are more towards the end of the 2nd age. What would be kind of cool would be if they had different timelines going on simultaneously, they could get the elves caught up on happenings in the early part of the 2nd and the stuff on Numenor will be self contained for the most part. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

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Sep 3, 2022·edited Sep 3, 2022

Review hits pretty much he same notes I felt watching this.

It feels strangely expositionary as a whole. I actually think there's some heart to some of the story beats but at other times it feels alienating (sometimes even within scenes).

World is crafted quite beautifully, really dense and cinematography is stunning. Feels like they are actually going for a wholly cinematic angle which I like. It seems very Jackson-inspired though at the same time I never read the original books (well only the 2nd when I was a kid) so not sure to what extent it is just Tolkien-esque aspects both adaptions are portraying.

The dwarves are my favorite part so far, the rest of the characters didn't register much with me yet.

I do think there's some real threads for the series to build on, I'm just not sure if the creators (or Jeff Bezos) care enough to stray from the path the series is currently on. I'll keep tuning in though, curious to see which direction the show will take.

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Picking up on the second half of this: "it’s odd seeing the Gray Havens (aka Valinor) treated like a place where one goes and has a whole life and career and what not. I always read it as a metaphor for death. "

Yeah, that is more or less right. In LOTR, The Gray Havens is the end-station before you leave (Middle) Earth. But in the time period of this series, it was a vibrant kingdom and not yet a transit station.

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