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#1 |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,971
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I don't know how much impact it's having on people's thoughts, but I've noticed a couple of us seem to be misinterpreting Galadriel's lone quest. She's not a reckless vigilante on the hunt for enemies long dead - she's right. There's literally a shot in the trailer of her finding the Morgoth--spawned enemies she's been insisting are there, while (presumably) Gil-Galad and Elrond brush the idea off. "Morgoth is banished," they say, "the Balrogs are slain, Sauron has slunk off never to be seen again - take it easy, there's no orcs or trolls anywhere this side of the Orocarni."
But there are. And as a high-ranked leader of the Noldor, Galadriel is well within her rights to ignore her possibly-nephew's complacency, take a few soldiers, put on her old armour (because going /un/armoured would be suicidal), and go get the evidence. Which exists. Because she's right. The Enemy is still there; the War never ended. And the safety of one Artanis Nerwen isn't more important than proving the threat. (Heck, even at the end of the Third Age she probably wore armour - I've always pictured her tearing down the walls of Dol Guldur with magic in a dress, but realistically, you wear armour so one Orc with a bow doesn't get insanely lucky.) hS
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#2 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ensconced in curmudgeonly pursuits
Posts: 2,515
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#3 | |
Wight
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: The best seat in the Golden Perch
Posts: 219
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Another way might be to view it as a "show, don't tell" rendering of Tolkien's depiction of Galadriel as one of the Elven leaders who did not think evil was gone forever, and who wasn't taken in by Annatar. A clumsy one, maybe, but we really don't have sufficient information yet to be able to fully form that judgement. It's correct to be cautious about this for sure, but it's not correct to go from 0 to 120 on the internet hate fest at this stage.
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#4 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ensconced in curmudgeonly pursuits
Posts: 2,515
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Just a trailer! Any half intelligent producer with the slightest clue of the work they are expropriating should have at least made a trailer that wouldn't alienate readers. And from what I've read elsewhere, I am not the only one who finds these cute little fan-fic deviations to be flat-out juvenile Mary-Sue level scripting. But if that's the type of story plotting you like following, by all means dish out your dollars to Amazon.
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
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#5 | |||
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,513
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As for the rest - Galadriel is influential. She is a leader. She doesn't end up in a situation where she is all alone against the world. She persuades people. If those people are not her Noldorin relatives, they are people of her following. She sends spies and scouts. She organizes patrols. She gathers intelligence in ways that are accessible only to her as Melian's student. At the very least, if she believes her presence is more necessary on a quest than at the heart of her kingdom, she still doesn't go alone. She is supposed to play the game on a bigger scale, as the leader of a kingdom, or at least a large population. A place to which she got with all her characteristics and experiences listed upstream the thread. And what really hurts me is that of all those characteristics, the only one that seems to have survived so far was her tomboyishness. But I admire your optimism. I agree that it is not outside the realm of possibility that actually this can all make sense within a reasonable portrayal of Galadriel. I just don't have your faith that it could be such. Why couldn't they just stick to Numenor or something and be as unreasonable as they want with some Second Age king I don't even remember? Make up a whole backstory for him and his court, it would not even severely contradict anyone's head cannon... Gil-Galad and Galadriel could make appearances - appearances, not lead roles - to tie the story to what is known in the movieverse... That would have been grand. Quote:
(And if we stick to the bare text when it comes to dress, most of the people of ME would have to go around naked, lacking an explicit statement regarding wearing any sort of clothing). Third Age Galadriel in LOTR seems so wise, and you can hardly imagine her otherwise. But in the context of The Sil, the difference in the 1st and 3rd Age Galadriel is also that by LOTR she is tired; she accepts defeat, she no longer wants to fight the windmills of time, and this repeated acceptance humbles her. The question is - will this be evident from the show's backstory? Or is it going to be "Galadriel was foolhardy and high spirited and brash, but then she grew out of it and became calm and wise"? Quote:
But yes. Absolutely expecting juvenile level character arcs and plot development. And, I mean, in the event that some of it isn't that - I would be pleasantly surprised.
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#6 | |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,330
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I suppose it's worth mentioning that Elrond (who clearly was a general, at least during the First War of the Rings) was present at the battle of Dagorlad and the siege of Barad-dur with Gil-galad, as was Thranduil's father Oropher, but Galadriel makes no mention of having been there herself.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#7 | |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ensconced in curmudgeonly pursuits
Posts: 2,515
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When I referred to hunting, I was referring to balrogs and orcs (not a traditional bow hunt for four-hooved mammals). When I referred to commanding armies, I was not referring to a sovereign sending generals into battle, but rather that Galadriel was not a field general with sword in hand like Henry V exhorting his troops, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead!"
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
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#8 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,971
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But seriously, the articles and trailer make it clear that what I outlined is exactly what the showrunners are doing. They're not showing Galadriel on some quixotic quest - they're showing her as the only person who recognises the threat and is willing to do something about it. That's all I was pointing out. And that concept is taken directly from Unfinished Tales: "But eventually Galadriel... percieved that there was an evil controlling purpose abroad in the world, and that it seemed to proceed from a source further to the East, beyond Eriador and the Misty Mountains." Tolkien specifically cites Galadriel as both becoming aware of and perceiving the rising threat of Sauron. She later "scorns" him as Annatar, but - despite (again in this account) being ruler of Eregion, doesn't throw him out. Tolkien is painting a clear picture of Galadriel as the one person who believes the Shadow is out there. In this account, her involvement in the founding of Eregion is specifically as a ward against Sauron and to forge a a military alliance with Khazad-Dum (note that "Ost-in-Edhil" means "Fortress of the Elves". She crosses the mountains and acts against Sauron's influence in Lorinand, and later moves there to "[take] up rule, and defence against Sauron". This is what we know Galadriel was up to, in the part of the Second Age which has been temporally compressed into season 1 of the show: she was an active, mobile, military presence who is the only person named as working to counter Sauron. Could she have done all that in a flowing white dress? Maybe, but it seems foolhardy when Elvish armour is available. (As for the other Ages: in the First she was a student in a time of peace, and apparently left Beleriand entirely before war broke back out. In the Third, she was tied to Lorien, both as its ruler and as the bearer of Nenya.) hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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