The books. I was wondering how much wiggle room they'd have to move things around without totally contradicting what the books said.
Almost none, frankly. Things have to play out in a certain order to have it make sense. Contraction of time is the best bet otherwise it takes nearly two thousand years from the forging of the rings to the defeat of Sauron by Isildur.
Which always stood out weirdly to me even though I knew the whys and hows of it. Like you said, it's fine for The Silmarillion, but for television, time contraction is inevitable especially with the far broader target audience. And I'm fine with that.
TBPH, I’d absolutely Lap-up a long-form series, as I find myself wanting to spend as much time as possible having this period of time explored. I think that, seeing how Numenor is realised on screen, with its geography, surrounding waters, and it’s culture, architecture, etc is high on my list of things I’m looking forward to (who am I kidding - I’m pretty much excited about all of this series!)
Assuming they do kind of compress the timeline a bit, I can see them starting off with an elderly Tar-Palantir ruling in Númenor, giving us a glimpse of how things used to be before stuff hits the fan.
Yeah, you just gotta expect it with adaptations like these. Someone will find something to complain about no matter what you do. Compressing the timeline just makes sense from a dramatic perspective.
It's a similar problem as faced by the Apple TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Obviously, the solution there won't work in this case just as time compression wouldn't work for Foundation. Whether this series uses time compression remains to be seen. Another possibility is a heavily non-linear narrative with lots of flashbacks but that could get very confusing very quickly. My suggestion would be: initially treat Annatar, Zigûr, and Sauron as three different characters at different times - only revealing the truth later; let men be relatively short lived at 300 years; have Galadriel and other elves be the thread that binds the tale. Let there be time jumps as in the books and show the result of time having passed, given the starting conditions, as a montage. Envy of the elves' immortality is the main reason for men under Ar-Pharazôn assailing Aman and subsequent actions by Eru Ilúvatar so that contrast should be preserved to some degree.
You mean like what happened with LOTR? There are still people pissed of that it seems that from the moment Bilbo leaves and the moment Frodo goes off only a little time has gone by in stead of the 20 odd years in the novel. Hell, I once read a entire near-essay on this very forum from someone who was pissed off that the Charge of the Rohirrim did not in fact take place during near dark as it does in the book. Fans, short for fanatics, will ALWAYS be pissed of because they think they know the best.
Well, such fanatics should obtain the necessary financial backing, acquire the rights, and remake the movies to their liking. I doubt the backers would see their stake money again, never mind any profit, but at least a few hundred "real fans" might be satisfied - except I doubt that would be the case. It's entertainment, not holy scripture, you wallies!
According to Wikipedia Amazon made a multi-season commitment when they picked it up and preproduction on Season 2 is supposed to start at the same time as post-production on Season 1.
On the subject of what latitude is enjoyed by Amazon regarding the timeline of established events, this old article fromThe Guardian purports to have Tom Shippey clarifying the matter: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...of-the-rings-cannot-use-much-of-tolkiens-plot A standout part for me is the following;
Given that some fans do not regard the Similarion as constructed as canonical, I can assure you that it would not necessarily satisfy all.
Why not do a time jump? Gets the chance to introduce new characters while still having ageless characters around to hold up the core of the story.
Yes, there have to be several generations of mortal men depicted while the immortal elves persist. Otherwise, there is no obvious motivation for the assault on Aman. Dealing with the huge periods between the major events is the main difficulty to be overcome in adaptation. It's the same problem as faced when adapting Foundation although its story only lasts a thousand years or so.