The Rings of Power - Discussion
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@Arkandel “This authority who’s dead and therefore can’t speak for himself totally agrees with my opinions, which I shall now prove he would do by citing nothing he ever said which would support my assertion.”
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@GF said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
@Arkandel “This authority who’s dead and therefore can’t speak for himself totally agrees with my opinions, which I shall now prove he would do by citing nothing he ever said which would support my assertion.”
I tend to assume anyone who does this to complain about “wokeness” is basically just the kid in Jojo Rabbit – running around with his imaginary friend in his head, telling us all what he’d want, with all perception of said imaginary friend completely divorced from reality, and to be taken about as seriously as, yes, Taika Watiti playing Hitler.
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@GF Well, J.R.R. Tolkien’s opinions on race were… pretty clear, I think. We don’t need to resort to necromancy or anything.
“I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White." - JRR Tolkien, in his own words, denouncing any conscription of his stories to a specific race. -
@Arkandel In case my post came off as addressing you rather than Elon, I’d just like to clarify that now.
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ADMIN EDIT by Tez:
Removed racist content.
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@Sam-Hyde Hi! We don’t do racism here. So cut it out.
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@Pavel Oh yeah? Well, Elves suck. Fucking know-it-alls.
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On the other hand the depiction of Dwarves in this series is fucking amazing and possibly the best part of it for me. I didn’t see that coming! Disa and Durin are awesome.
Online posts trying to guess who Sauron is are so funny, too.
<literally any new character appears>
<DiCaprio meme pointing at screen> -
Durin + Elrond are amazing!
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@Arkandel said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
Durin + Elrond are amazing!
Disa always wanted a new table.
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I’ll probably have more coherent thoughts later but I dipped by toe in over the weekend and I am hooked, in spite of myself. Seems really well-done all around.
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I gotta admit, some of the shine came off for me in the episode before last when Galadriel confronted Halbrand and was basically like, “ugh pathetic, man you’re above these commoner rags.”
I know it’s probably an incredibly silly thing to complain about considering this is Tolkien but like, the whole romantic fantasy of how noble and divine the concept of monarchy is just strikes me as gross now. Maybe I’ve just grown out of it, which doesn’t bode too well for my enjoyment of the series.
Durin and Elrond do indeed still kick ass tho.
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@Wizz I’m a bit miffed about Gil-Galad being… well, disagreeable. Not quite a villain but certainly douchey if you get my drift.
Come on. It’s this guy:
Gil-galad was an Elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing;
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.His sword was long, his lance was keen.
His shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven’s field
were mirrored in his silver shield.But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.On the other hand complaints by hardcore fans are getting absolutely ridiculous at this point. One person actually complained Numenorians are too short - why isn’t Elendil a giant?
Good luck finding a bunch of 7 foot tall good actors who fit the roles.
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@Wizz said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
I gotta admit, some of the shine came off for me in the episode before last when Galadriel confronted Halbrand and was basically like, “ugh pathetic, man you’re above these commoner rags.”
I know it’s probably an incredibly silly thing to complain about considering this is Tolkien but like, the whole romantic fantasy of how noble and divine the concept of monarchy is just strikes me as gross now. Maybe I’ve just grown out of it, which doesn’t bode too well for my enjoyment of the series.
Durin and Elrond do indeed still kick ass tho.
I feel the same way. I’ve loved Tolkien’s world and books since my earliest memories of being able to read at all, and I’m still greatly enjoying the show, but depictions of servile adoration for fictional monarchies hits different now.
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@Kestrel
I hate when people and publications act like there’s some sort of rivalry between this and GoT or like you have to choose one over the other or whatever because that is just endlessly dumb, but I do think in this one area you could actually make the case that GoT is the better series in that on the whole it doesn’t mimic Tolkien’s weird glazed-eye fawning over feudalism like so many other fantasy series and presents it at least fairly realisticly as deeply flawed and problematic instead.I was very much the same as a kid and just took it all at face value, lol. It almost makes me wonder if that’s at least some part of why so many modern people have this rosy fondness for actual real world monarchies, just having grown up with these glowing and romantic fantasies? If even remotely true…big oofs.
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To some degree the fawning over feudalism is something I accept as a genre convention within fantasy. I won’t say it doesn’t bother me, it’s one of the things that makes me not entirely engage with the genre, but I kind of accept it going in. For all the things I dislike about A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin does undercut this in interesting ways at various points (and was quickly followed by a legion of imitators who did it less well, just like Tolkien).
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@Third-Eye I really wish that more governmental systems were explored in fantasy rather than strong-state hereditary feudalism, especially the kind that tends to downplay or eliminate the role of guilds, militaries, and cities. There were so many interesting possibilities even around the same time period that most of these fantasies draw from, and if you’re adding magic, then things should be different!
Which is not as relevant to a Tolkien adaptation, but still.
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@Pyrephox said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
@Third-Eye I really wish that more governmental systems were explored in fantasy rather than strong-state hereditary feudalism, especially the kind that tends to downplay or eliminate the role of guilds, militaries, and cities. There were so many interesting possibilities even around the same time period that most of these fantasies draw from, and if you’re adding magic, then things should be different!
Which is not as relevant to a Tolkien adaptation, but still.
I think Sauron starts a jeweller’s guild at some point, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Apprentice style politics of Celebrimbor’s inexplicable mad scientist energy trying to get them all in line.
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@Wizz said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
I hate when people and publications act like there’s some sort of rivalry between this and GoT or like you have to choose one over the other or whatever because that is just endlessly dumb, but I do think in this one area you could actually make the case that GoT is the better series in that on the whole it doesn’t mimic Tolkien’s weird glazed-eye fawning over feudalism like so many other fantasy series and presents it at least fairly realisticly as deeply flawed and problematic instead.
Even though I agree, I think there are two important caveats here.
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Tolkien specifically and intentionally created a world, and its stories, based on myth and legend rather than realism. He drew his inspiration heavily from great epic poems of the past which showcased outdated ideals - even for his own time.
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George Martin - and he says this himself - got to draw and write based on what other authors before him had created. For example his famous question (“Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”) takes ‘advantage’ of the fact Middle Earth exists in the zeitgeist. When Tolkien wrote his own books there was much less he got to build on top of; he was the pioneer. Of course newer works will be rich in different aspects.
What’s interesting though is TV shows and movies shape culture much more than books can - they simply expose a greater audience to the material. In a way I’d argue, for many people, Rings of Power will become the default baseline for the Second Age than the Silmarillion ever could.
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@Arkandel said in The Rings of Power - Discussion:
Tolkien specifically and intentionally created a world, and its stories, based on myth and legend rather than realism. He drew his inspiration heavily from great epic poems of the past which showcased outdated ideals - even for his own time.
And he did this in part because he deeply despised modernism and everything that came with it, and longed for an idyllic, imaginary past. We all know he had his reasons, but there’s no real caveat there that I can see – he wrote the fantasy as much for himself as for us, an idealized feudal world, as if feudalism isn’t intrinsically awful no matter how you portray it.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love Tolkien and his works, he is undeniably one of the most influential authors of the 20th century and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I just also really dislike that particular aspect of what he wrote and think fantasy as a genre is better off without it.
