Spoilers Lord of the Rings TV series

[M.A.C.O.]

YEEZUS!

Amazon has sunk half a (capital B) Billion dollars trying to capture that lightning in a bottle that Game of Thrones captured a decade ago.

I haven't liked anything I've seen in the trailers, but the show is free on Prime. So, I'll get something for my extravagant $140 year subscription.

 

[Orphalesion]

JRR Tolkien did consider - and perhaps even started writing - a sequel to LotR called "The New Shadow" but he gave up on the project. I believe he thought it would be anticlimactic, depressing and uninteresting with mostly just men in it.

Yeah, I think his words were something along the line that it would turn out to be a political thriller, and that he had little interest in writing them.

From what I remember it included some sort of shady secret cult/society forming in Gondor, and by the time it started Elves, Dwarves and Orcs had largely faded from the world (though he'd said something about there being bored youngsters in the Reunited Kingdom that would 'play at being orcs' and stuff like that)

I'm not really sad that he abandoned it. Would it really be Middle Earth without all the magic and things like that?
I'm more disappointed that he never got around to writer longer versions of the Silmarillion Tales, and that he didn't finish/possibly abandoned the "Round World" version of his mythology, in which Ambar always was round and the whole thing was more naturalistic.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I'm more disappointed that he never got around to writer longer versions of the Silmarillion Tales, and that he didn't finish/possibly abandoned the "Round World" version of his mythology, in which Ambar always was round and the whole thing was more naturalistic.

Having read the different portions of The Fall of Gondolin, I'm sorry he didn't get the chance to thoroughly tell that story. The two biggest components in the published edition almost work as two halves of the whole story but they're starkly different in styles (the first half is deeply detailed and intricate, while the second, earlier written half is more broad strokes of the moments).

 

[Ragitsu]

I haven't liked anything I've seen in the trailers, but the show is free on Prime. So, I'll get something for my extravagant $140 year subscription.

I'll hit up my friend Jack, if nothing else.

I expect the aesthetics to (mostly) be on point, but the tone to be off-kilter.

 

[Ragitsu]

Yeah, I think his words were something along the line that it would turn out to be a political thriller, and that he had little interest in writing them.

From what I remember it included some sort of shady secret cult/society forming in Gondor, and by the time it started Elves, Dwarves and Orcs had largely faded from the world (though he'd said something about there being bored youngsters in the Reunited Kingdom that would 'play at being orcs' and stuff like that)

I'm not really sad that he abandoned it. Would it really be Middle Earth without all the magic and things like that?

A gaiden that involves a Haradrim or perhaps Easterling soldier making their way home could have potential.

 

[fireproof78]

We know even less about those cultures. How can it be done and "true to canon" or "spirit of the work"?

 

[JD]

The problem is that they are obviously not respecting the world. They're creating new main characters, changing the roles of existing characters, inventing new plots out of the blue. Peter Jackson did not create any new main characters, he adapted an actual plot, and he respected the world; in fact he was, in his own words, "adapting it for Tolkien", not for what is suspected that younger audiences will like.

I was under the impression that all we really got for the Second Age in the books was just kind of a brief overview of the major events. If that is the case, then they really have no choice but to make up new characters, plots, and things like that in order to fill out a full length TV series.
Honestly, I think it was a great idea on their part, it gives them a basic framework to start with, a few important characters, major events to hit, but it's open enough that they have room to do their own thing too without go to far off from what Tolkien gave us.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I was under the impression that all we really got for the Second Age in the books was just kind of a brief overview of the major events. If that is the case, then they really have no choice but to make up new characters, plots, and things like that in order to fill out a full length TV series.

In The Silmarillion, yes, but we have gotten subsequent expanded stories edited by Christopher based on his father's notes such as The Children of Húrin, the aforementioned The Fall of Gondolin, and Beren and Lúthien. This November, we're getting The Fall of Númenor although it's obviously not edited by Christopher (but it is edited by Tolkien scholar Brian Sibley).

 

[JD]

Oh, OK.

 

[Set Harth]

Having read the different portions of The Fall of Gondolin, I'm sorry he didn't get the chance to thoroughly tell that story. The two biggest components in the published edition almost work as two halves of the whole story but they're starkly different in styles (the first half is deeply detailed and intricate, while the second, earlier written half is more broad strokes of the moments).

The only Fall of Gondolin content I have is the Silmarillion treatment, the Book of Lost Tales version, and the stuff in Unfinished Tales covering Tuor's arrival.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

You should check out the separate publication for The Fall of Gondolin if you can. Here's my review of it when it first came out.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

That line in the latest trailer spoken by who I assume is Annatar/Sauron about not believing all that has been told sounds a lot like "fake news". JRR Tolkien had a great distaste for allegory. His fiction about Middle Earth was intended to be a new English folklore with Roman Catholic sensibilities to replace what had been lost or forgotten after the Norman conquest. If this series contains too much directly implied commentary about current issues, it will not be in the spirit of his work.

 

[Ragitsu]

JRR Tolkien had a great distaste for allegory.

That didn't stop his works from featuring a healthy quantity of allegory.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

More universal themes of good and evil I'd say. Allegory usually has a more one-to-one mapping of story to history to purvey a hidden moral or political meaning, which isn't obviously the case in JRR Tolkien's works. His experiences in the trenches during WW1 probably had some influence on his writing but Morgoth and Sauron are not meant to be taken as representing Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler in the slightest. As Tolkien's ancestry was partly German (East Prussian), I doubt he equated Germans with orcs.

 

[Ragitsu]

Then, there's his stance on/against industrialization.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, I concede that could be considered allegorical in its very broadest definition - the "Scouring of The Shire" is an example, of course.

 

[thribs]

A lot of negative press about it online. Seems alright to me. Something to watch

 

[Orphalesion]

A gaiden that involves a Haradrim or perhaps Easterling soldier making their way home could have potential.

1

I don't really see how, since it'd fall into the same trap of lacking many/most Middle Earth elements.

 

[saddestmoon]

A lot of negative press about it online. Seems alright to me. Something to watch

Yeah - I made the big mistake of reading YouTube comments for the latest trailer…

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah - I made the big mistake of reading YouTube comments for the latest trailer…

Never read the comments! Especially on YouTube!