"Rings of Power" trailer analysis

[Huinesoron]

Images from the latest trailer:

Opening shot: Galadriel and the pile of helmets. Looks like a Battle of Beleriand to me.



My favourite shot: Galadriel, Miriel, and a Palantir. The Seeing-Stone is covered here, but it's absolutely gorgeous when they take the cloth off.



And two shots in one: Cultist Eminem, in closeup and with his buddies.



He's definitely designed to look like a priest/cultist - check out that staff! It looks like a human woman on the right of the image, holding what I'm parsing as a drum (she has a hand on top of it, so I don't think shield). On the left could be an armoured human; could be a Numenorean soldier without the helmet plume; could also be an animal-skull orc. I can't really tell.

hS

[Blind Guardian]

The costume designs are gorgeous. The locations and details to buildings and objects is amazing. I'll give them that. It's definitely visually appealing.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Forced "diversity" of melanin levels is just part of the faddish silliness of the age, and gets a lot of people very exercised about trivialities. I am more concerned about the writing- and what I have seen of it suggests that this thing will make the MCU look like Shakespeare.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I am more concerned about the writing- and what I have seen of it suggests that this thing will make the MCU look like Shakespeare.

Me too. I think the visuals are stunning. I'm happy with the casting and the characters - sure, short-haired elves look a bit funny, but I can see their Elrond as the young heir of Earendil who will eventually mature into the Master of Rivendell, just as I can believe Arondir as a Wood-elf of some stripe. I'm not super happy about the names in Tirharad and with the Harfeet, but I can cope with them.

Even on the writing side... the dialogue we've heard is decent enough, allowing for the fact that it's been clipped for trailer lines. The overarching plot is fundamentally time-compressed Tolkien - I can accept that for narrative reasons. But the show is going to stand or fall on the in-between stages of the writing - the plot beats, the character decisions, the coincidences and dei ex machina which need to be invoked to get it all to hang together.

And we've seen... basically nothing of that. Galadriel thinks there's baddies around; Elrond apparently doesn't. Galadriel goes on a boat, maybe to Valinor, maybe gets shipwrecked. The dwarves don't like Elrond. Orcs are bad. Miriel has an army, a Palantir, and apparently a baby.

We have no idea how all that hangs together. I feel like we've seen the most out of Galadriel, but I could still write a dozen plots that would fit with her known scenes. It could be terrible! It could be awesome! We could have the entire sequence of events backwards, and the trailers and interviews could have been carefully cut to make us believe the opposite of what's actually in the show!

It's not going to be Tolkien. It can't be - he's dead, and he didn't leave us a novel of the Fall of Numenor, just an array of very brief summaries and some very old drafts. What I, personally, am hoping for is something that feels like an adaptation of the novel Tolkien didn't write - something as close to the hypothetical Numenor book as, say, the Jackson films were to LotR. Yes, there will be Osgiliations and random Haldirs, and "By Elbereth and Luthien the fair" will be replaced by "If you want him, come and claim him" - but I hope it will feel like I can see the book behind it, and imagine that I could reach in and pull a copy out to read.

(The Fall of Numenor doesn't count, though I fully intend to give it a place on my shelf alongside the Great Tales.)

hS

[Blind Guardian]

There's a brand new trailer out on Amazon Prime. The modern pop song is...blah...What were they thinking?

Also Galadriel is called "Commander" in it and is literally leading a team of people, it looks like, across the ice wastes (Helcaraxë?) in the North. I forget what those are called.

In the first shot, there is a guy screaming that looks laughably fake. Is that supposed to be Feanor? I thought Feanor and the Noldor had black hair? Also didn't he turn to ash when he died? Edit: somehow I completely missed, through my many read throughs of the Sil, that Galadriel is Feanor's niece and not sister. I feel pretty stupid right now.

(Oh no, that song is bad...that song is SO BAD and I like Epic style music be it pop or metal or rock. I can honestly say that I have listened to enough Epic music to say that this song is terrible. The first line is literally "Speak your truth" barf.)

[One person falls over in the snow, ice, and wind]

Person: Commander wait!

Galad: No we keep moving!

Oh sure, just abandon your people instead of giving them a hand. It's not like they were injured or bleeding!


Person: Why do you keep fighting?

Galad [screaming]: There is a tempest in me.

Galadriel doing a video game style flip and slicing at a monster, but she rolls ON HER HAIR. Ouch!

People using a chain attached to horses to knock down Orcs.

An Elf running on chains and jumping impossibly high while swinging an ax.

Galadriel's shoes are literally metal plates and she's in the snow. RIP frost bitten feet.

Lots of shots of Galadriel fighting. It seemed to be her goal and a re-occuring theme as the last line is "You have fought long enough Galadriel, put up your sword" to which she replies "Without it what am I to be?"

This trailer is underwhelming and kind of goofy. At least they fixed the CGI on Galadriel hanging from the cliff.

Here's the link
https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=...are_seas&r=web

[William Cloud Hicklin]

From the last two trailers, I get the impression that the dialog was written by just drawing slips of paper out of the Big Box O' Cliched Lines (tm) and writing them down in order. How can anyone so tone-deaf as to language possibly imagine themselves competent to adapt Tolkien?

"The book that Tolkien never wrote"....nor ever would have.