Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Michael Murry

Thanks again, Mr Hicklin, for helping me to better understand the "Jon Snow" thing. Since I'll never read the books or sit through even ten minutes of the television series, I have to depend upon others to fill me in on the plot, characterizations, etc. Given the popularity of this kind of standard television fantasy...

Game of Thrones (and the Martin books) are much better than that. Tolkien they're not, but then Martin didn't set out to write a Tolkien-esque world anyway. It's much more about sh!tty human behavior, political intrigue, treachery, backstabbing, assassination, dictatorship, religious fanaticism, human sacrifice, the awfuller aspects of war with attendant pillage, rape, massacre, refugees and suffering, and suffused by grey-and-black morality; he has said (quite truthfully) that his inspiration was as much the Wars of the Roses as Tolkien. Imagine a setting where even the Good Guys are a bunch of Denethors and Wormtongues, or at their very best, Boromirs.*

Vikings is, by comparison, a soap opera with battleaxes.

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*Literally, since Goodest Guy Ned Stark was played by Sean Bean.

[Andsigil]

I'm deathly afraid that this Amazon series will contain every banal, contrived, idiotic trope of political correctness that anyone in Hollywood can think of, and that it will dash my hopes for this series upon the rocks of Thangorodrim.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"Estel's" identity wasn't that much of a secret; at best it was classified Confidential since it was known to all of Elrond's household, all the Dunedain, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn, Haldir and even Bilbo. The Dunedain, after all, knew good and well who their hereditary chieftain was and who he was descended from.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by WCH

Game of Thrones (and the Martin books) are much better than that.

...Whilst still being possibly the single most over-hyped and over-rated series I can think of, off the top of my head.

As for "Lord of the Rings: The Early Years", I am very confident now that it is going to suck like the deepest, vilest slime-pool in all the Dead Marshes. For some reason I'm quite looking forward to it.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

As for "Lord of the Rings: The Early Years", I am very confident now that it is going to suck like the deepest, vilest slime-pool in all the Dead Marshes. For some reason I'm quite looking forward to it.

Putting a Game of Thrones lusty spin on things, just think of the pedophilic delight of a several hundred year-old Arwen getting the hots for barely-pubescent Aragorn. Dirty ol' Elvesses! Not to mention the menage-a-thirty between the orcs and Celebrian (with the Aredhel-like insinuation that "it is not said that she was wholly unwilling"). Face it, Elrond got pretty dull after a few millenia. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Why are you glaring at me like that?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, they'll have to augment Tolkien's rather limited cast of female characters just to get to requisite number of boobies onscreen

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Well, they'll have to augment Tolkien's rather limited cast of female characters just to get to requisite number of boobies onscreen

I'm pretty sure it is a foregone conclusion that they are going to do that anyway.

[Michael Murry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

"Estel's" identity wasn't that much of a secret; at best it was classified Confidential since it was known to all of Elrond's household, all the Dunedain, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn, Haldir and even Bilbo. The Dunedain, after all, knew good and well who their hereditary chieftain was and who he was descended from.

I don't own DVD copies of the three Peter Jackson "Hobbit" movies, so I have to depend on youtube to look up various scenes to refresh my memory on the occasions when I want to comment on something related to these of awful film experiences. In terms of this discussion thread, I took a particular interest in the obvious sequel-set-up scenes near the end of The Batttle of the Five Armies when the "young Elf lord" Legolas takes leave of his father, King Thranduil without a clue as to where he wanted to go and what he might possibly do. In a typical Hollywood "western," the hero cowboy would simply mount up and slowly ride off on his horse into the setting sun. For "royal" elves like Prince Legolas in a Peter Jackson movie, this would involve riding away "into the West" on an enormous CGI moose with antlers spanning twenty-five feet, at least. But I digress ...

I went over all this "Legolas leaving" stuff in comment #74 above so I don't want to repeat all that here. I only wanted to figure out where the next movies might go on the basis of where "the narrative" left off at the end of The Hobbit in 2942 when Bilbo returns to the Shire with his little magic ring. Specifically, I wondered why King Thranduil didn't tell his son, Legolas: "Just head on over to Imladris (i.e., Rivendell) and check out this ten-year-old boy Aragorn, the true heir to the throne of Gondor." Why bother with all the "Confidential" name-concealing stuff if everyone in Imladris -- except Aragorn himself -- knew the real story? And what would Legolas do in Imladris for another decade while waiting for Aragorn to grow up, turn twenty (in 2951), learn his true name, meet his older foster-sister Arwyn, and go out into the wild where he would meet and become friends with Gandalf five years later in 2956? Why does King Thanduil play these stupid "figure it out for yourself" mind games on his own son when he could just let him in on what so many other people already know even when Aragorn himself doesn't? I just don't see how this works.

At any rate, Tolkien didn't mention Legolas until the Council of Elrond (in October of 3018) where Elrond reveals Aragorn's true identity to the assembled guests, Legolas included. According to Tolkien, King Thranduil had sent his son Legolas to Rivendell to tell Lord Elrond and other important persons that Gollum had escaped from the wood-elves' rather lax supervision. As Appendix B tells us, Aragorn had captured Gollum and turned him over to the elves and Gandalf for interrogation the previous year (3017) so one would presume that King Thranduil's son Legolas had at least met Aragorn back home in Mirkwood at the time of this turnover. So why did King Thranduil send his son Legolas on a wild goose chase for decades when he could have told him: "Just stay here with us in Mirkwood and this 'Strider' character will come visit us in another seventy-five years (3017) bearing a disgusting little creature for us to keep prisoner for him and his wizard buddy Gandalf? Then, when we lose the foul wretch like we lost the hobbit Bilbo and some dwarves earlier this year (2942), you can take a message to Rivendell the following year (in 3018) and find out this guy Strider's true name along with everyone else. So why not just save yourself a lot of needless wandering around to no purpose?."

Something tells me that this Legolas character has a lot of wandering around lost to do in these forthcoming movies -- at least, "based on" the information Tolkien provided in Appendix B of Lord of the Rings. Bilbo's poem might even require some modification:

Pyrite, or "fool's gold" does glitter.
Some wanderers truly are lost.
Bad movies make viewers feel bitter
When they think how much tickets now cost.

From the ashes some soot shall be scattered
On the living room floor made of clay.
For the rich only one lesson mattered:
The penniless once more shall pay.