Costumes, sets and other visuals of TROP

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Nice idea for a thread!

I will however start by first being the voice that gainsayeth a little - I agree that the show's visuals are "impressive" exactly in the same sense PJ's were: in the way the word "impressive" is often used, to signify something grand, pompous. I recall that being one of the things that did not entirely sit well with me in PJ's version and RoP seem to be continuing along the same lines. Especially cities and buildings, but also mountains or vistas being massive or having massive objects; feeling sort of heavy.

My vision of Middle-Earth has always been more - how to say it - "airy" than big and bulky and massive. Less of the "this is Reichstag with rich golden roof" and more of the "this is a city woven of thin gossamer strands" (metaphorically speaking, of course). I am not sure how much is it possible to actually capture this in live-action, everything that is "real" (or CGI, as it were) will always be more "crude" than what one's imagination conjures.

Mostly this concerned the cities of Men, or at least the "High Men" (Gondor, in RoP Númenor). I would have preferred them to be somewhat... subtler. And it does not mean that would automatically make them give any less of the vibe "wow, this is the work of a powerful civilisation".

In RoP, it can be also applied in miniature to Gil-Galad with his massive, heavy-looking golden cloak that reminds me of the massive "golden trampoline" of Thorin in his delirious vision in The Hobbit films.

But that is more like a general disclaimer about what I like and dislike about the adaptations so far in general, and it has to do with my personal preferrence and the fact that none of the filmmakers have so far managed (in majority of the cases; of course I like some of the stuff, and other to a degree) to do it the way I'd have imagined.

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I do love many of the details in the RoP. Míriel's headdresses have to be one of the top, as they are the first thing that comes to mind. As I have said elsewhere, I'd wear them all if I had them at home. If they ever make some prop replicas of this, and if there's a 'Downer millionnaire who would want to celebrate a Bilbo-style birthday and give presents to all the other 'Downers, I'd like to ask for one of these, please.

As I mentioned also elsewhere (and hinted at in the above), I am not that much of a fan of Númenor, but I like it overall. What I definitely dig are its ships and sails, and the sunburst emblem on them. Very epic, very cool.

Speaking of what I dig, I must also second the super-positive impression from the Orcs. They look about 500% more real and more individualistic than PJ's Orcs, and it is all definitely way more creative take on the Orcs than anything else. In my opinion this is how all these designs should have been treated (for example the abovementioned Númenor). Something we haven't seen before.

Whereas I love the Harfoot culture more like a worldbuilding concept than as a visual concept (looks too much like straight outta PJ's Hobbiton!), I acknowledge that it is pretty. I think that this is the example of something that looks vastly different from what I think it should look like (I'd design "Stone Age Hobbits" more "stone" and less "grass", less "leafy fairy dress from St. Patrick's Day" and more "drab brown"), it may be visually prettier than what I'd imagine, and I it has its own spirit. The various twig hair accessories seem to me more like from some Fairy-tale, with stress on the word Fairy, but hey, it suits them.

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

- Lindon with the mellyrn (?) and Khâzad-dûm were impressive set designs, even if both had a bit of generic high fantasy vibe and could be something you could see in a recent(ish) video game (like Dragon Age or Divinity: Original Sin).

Basically that. I mean it is just laziness, in my opinion, "doing the way things are done". And it has been that way basically since PJ. All these "high fantasy" settings have picked on PJ's design, every fortress city looks like PJ's Minas Tirith, every evil fortress looks like PJ's Morannon or Barad-Dur. I'm basically waiting for someone to break the trend; RoP is not, seemingly, going to be it.

I liked however the underground plantations with the mirrors to reflect the sunlight for growing crops. It is also an idea that would imo suit better some other fantasy setting, but it gives the scenery of a Dwarven city at the peak of its glory more variety than just "Mithril bridges! And look, Mr. Frodo! More mithril bridges!"

Originally Posted by Lommy

- Why do a majority of the male Elves have short(ish) hair? Where are the flowing locks Tolkien described and PJ embraced? Gil-Galad and Adar look so much better than Elrond, Arondir, "Finrod" and the rest of them.

Don't get me started. And at least Gil-Galad is a good guy and has long hair, otherwise I started to fear that this was one of the "long-haired, ergo effeminate men are eevil" tropes with Adar.

I would not mind the Elves having short hair if it had some sort of artistic vision behind it (see below), but now, many of them have the kind of haircut that makes them look like football players from the 90's. Maybe some ladies who were at that time 13 and fancied Pavel Nedvěd appreciate, but I am just not the target audience. (Heck, scratch that, Pavel Nedvěd had longer hair than that. But he had the horrible waves there like Elrond and co. seem to have.)

Originally Posted by Lommy

- I am not a huge fan of Bronwyn's dress which looks like it's missing an undershirt. She's showing much more skin than anyone else in her culture or climate. Because she's not say a smith toiling in a hot forge or a prostitute advertising her body, I'm led to assume it's just because she's the conventionally attractive female protagonist of that plotline, and that's just sexist.

No, and on the contrary, every time I see Bronwyn, I get the reflex that I'd throw a scarf over her shoulders or something, because it seems to me that she must be freezing.

Like sure, this is the Southlands, but it does not look like we are exactly sunbathing among pomegranate trees, and mainly, none of the other characters act like we are. Most of all, those super-thin straps over her shoulders look horribly impractical and uncomfortable for casual wear.

So yes, I am leaning towards the "female protagonists must be pretty and show some skin" explanation. I mean even Arwen in PJ's LotR (d'uh!) was handled in a better way (and she WAS clearly intended to look pretty and all, but her dresses made sense in the scenes she was in - like wearing a pretty dress when going on a date with Aragorn but something else when riding to rescue Frodo; I'd also be okay with Bronwyn wearing something like this if she were going on a date, but not otherwise).

Originally Posted by Lommy

- Why does Arondir have a classic green man motive straight from a medieval cathedral depicted on his breastplate? Looks nice but ???

It also struck me as strange but I liked it as a nice design for a Wood-Elf. Whereas I imagine Wood-Elves completely differently, I must say that after taking a step back, I overall appreciated the generic soft-shadow-greenish-brownish-wood-colour-palette of Arondir's outfit. If you wanted to say "okay, THIS is a wood-elf", you picked well.

Speaking of the Green Man and all that. When I saw the first scene of short-haired Finrod talking to Galadriel, and before that those (short-)red-headed rascals with very pointy ears, I thought: well these look nothing like the long-haired Elves we mostly imagine when we say Elf, these look like some Puck or leprechauns. That was dispelled later when the Elves no longer continued to look like that (even though Elrond sort of looks like that, with his round rather than long face and imo massive ears and grin that would fit very well with "tehee, I just spoiled all your milk and cursed your goat"), but in that first scene, after my initial "oh no they made them short-haired, more 'earthy' and un-ethereal" I suddenly got this surge of "oh but they made them Puck-like, leprechaun-like, gnome-like, well why not? That would be also artistic license and stepping out of PJ's shadow and out of the shadow of how any generic fantasy portrays Elves these days anyway!" So I actually would have been happy, or even very happy, if they went that way. Sadly not.

Originally Posted by Lommy

- The glimpse of the Two Trees was lovely, but the part of undying lands where child Galadriel was making her boat looked way too mundane.

Yes, it did (see above). I think THAT scene, of all, could have been slow-motion, and either wrapped in some misty haze or with some glittery Instagram filter on - I am being (fairly) serious here - it was, after all, supposed to be Somewhere Else. It was not supposed to be your average meadow two miles beyond Lower Barroton, which is exactly what it looked like.

My absolute favourite thing out of the show that has not been mentioned yet however is the weapon design. I am thinking specifically of the "Lugrom blade" (as Oddwen called it), but actually all the weapons so far to me look much more interesting than those in PJ's LotR (however much they may have been based on some probably very faithful-to-description John Howe sketches or whatnot). I cannot quite put my finger on it, and it is peculiar as I am usually not much of a weapons enthusiast, but somehow, these designs really look compelling and cool to me. Especially the Lugrom blade.

And the last thing I have to mention? Well, the attention to detail is showed in many ways, and for those who have read my other recent posts - you guessed it - yes, the warg had nipples! Six of them! If that is not attention to detail, I don't know what is...
But no, seriously, I liked it. (The warg otherwise was horrible, of course.)