"The Rings of Power" Vanity Fair article

[Galadriel55]

Also, the trailer is out.

I watched it, but I don't think I can digest it fully, because I just spent the last few hours creating Spock Isildur Terminator for the Books forum and now it's quite late and I don't have sufficient brainpower left for analysis.



A quick summary of scenes:

1. White City
Likely Numenor. Architecture vaguely resembling visuals of minas Tirith from the movies. Lone mountain in the background. Some giant statue, not unlike the Argonath. A harbour. I think that's sufficient hints. Romenna perhaps?

2. Meeple (and thus they shall remain until proven otherwise)
Mountainous landscape, Scottish highlands type. No idea. Pretty.
Two Meeple. (What's the singular of "meeple"? "Moople"?)

3. Faun-girl
Dunno, she just has this look like she's either a faun or a fairy or some Midsummer Night's Dream character.
Perhaps she is a hobbit ancestor?

4. Waterfall
On background of icy mountains, and ?river below.
Are these meant to be Misty Mountains? White Mountains?

5. The Wall
...And the wildlings scaling it. No, this is not GOT, this is only... GOT with different names?
On second viewing, this actually appears to be the same place as #4, with the waterfall just to the right of the screen.
And the dagger is the Two Trees one, which makes the climber... Galadriel? And is that a variation of the Star of Feanor on her shoulders? I have so many conflicting feelings about this. It is going to be ridiculously action-video-game-like, but the little references in the aesthetic choices are tickling my nerdiness. But they would need to explain why Galadriel is wearing Feanor's insignia.

6. Life of Pi
That raft with a lone figure on it... at least I didn't see a second person there in that flash.

7. Slo-mo Silvan
Dude. Skateboard Legolas has got nothing on this.

8. The Comet
Fallen star? Meteor? Earendil's engines went down? Rogue dragon?
Followed rapidly by a man looking up, which makes it look like the continuation of the same scene.
The man on a stone platform near water. It's carved with leaves around the edge, and there are yellow petals (or gold flakes?) on the ground. The man is wearing gold cloth stuff over armour, looks formal.
Dunno. Lorien with its golden leaves? Legitimately no idea.
Oooh, but Huey, you have an element to work into your Ring theory! Clearly this is either a meteor from which they will get the iron for a ring, or a ring was made under the sign of this comet and the celestial body somehow symbolizes air (or fire for the burning?).

9. Cavalry Charge
Looks like it's Galadriel leading it. Are they sure that the character is named Galadriel, and not Eowyn? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference these days.
Some tall mountains in the distance but green plains under the horses' feet, which doesn't shake the image of Eowyn stealing Eomer's eored to play soldier.

10. Torchbearer and Goblin
Torchbearer has a quiver of arrows. Goblin looks like an ankylosaurus. Sorry, that's all I got.

11. Golden Wood
White bark, golden leaves - now this is probably Lorien.
Small river running through and dropping down a cliffside as a waterfall towards a larger river or lake. Perhaps the eastern border, where it comes close to Anduin.

12. Dwarf.
That's it. We've already seen the picture.

13. Excalibur!
No, it's - Elrond? possibly? - kneeling with a sword that's just propped up against a stone in a certain manner.
This is indoors - a cave? People around him in the background. Sort of reminds me of Henneth Annun in the books ( I actually don't remember what the Faramir scenes were in the movie and I have a feeling I am the better off for it).
The Elf of the Cave in a cave is not such a novel concept. I could even propose that this might be the early days of the outpost of Rivendell. Or perhaps he is visiting Moria.

14. Dwarven Princess
What was her name? Disa?
She appears to be praying, or doing some sort of ritual.
Her hands are still gold-stained. Conspiracy theorists, make your bets on the explanation behind that!

15. Life of Pi Part 2
Okay, now there are two people on the boat.

16. Fire
No idea, too fast. People escaping some explosion?

17. Dwarves
The Fathers of the Dwarves do what Gimli could not, and smash a stone with an axe in one strike.

18. Slo-mo Silvan Part 2
Dude. Legolas got nothing on this guy.
Can't glean much from background either.

19. Helm's Deep!
Well, some fight in the rain at night.
Lots of people in golden helmets and golden armour - or is that just the lighting? Guy in the front, who is yelling, has the helmet off. I still can't recognize him.
Looks like they are a defensive island being pressed from 3 (or more) sides by the dark-armoured army.

20. Hands
A large hand, dirt-stained, offered to and accepted by a small dirt-stained child's hand. Very abstract.


The voiceover / text:
[Female voice:]
Haven't you ever wondered what else is out there?
There's wonders in this world beyond our wandering.
I can feel it.

[Text:]
Before the King
Before the Fellowship
Before the Ring
A new Legend begins this Fall

(could this be a Harfoot preparing to wander off into the big scary world?

...and it's coming Sept 2, and disappointingly not Sept 22.





...I happened to scroll to the comments. The first few pages are a single quote - largely in Russian (anything to do with my cookies and browsing history, maybe? Or perhaps timezones - it's less linguistically unanimous lower down), there's one that looked Polish, one that looked Spanish (don't kill me if I'm wrong on these). Finally there's an English version: "Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good". What other languages can I spot? ...Portugese, perhaps? German? Another Slavic language, perhaps Czech? And yet another one, which I cannot place more specifically than "Other Western Slavic". And another Romance quote - not sure if a variation on the Spanish or I'm actually missing a whole other language there. On the whole, a bunch of Russian quotes and a fair number of Polish (I think) quotes, though both have slight variations in wording; A good number of English; a sprinkling of others - I'm sure that if I kept scrolling I would see more languages. Ah, just as I was leaving the page, a variation! "The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own".

So I googled it, and news articles report it as a multi-national smear campaign against the series. Make what you will of that. I am too tired to react, other than... they're not wrong, but it is worth the effort - creating this much negative attention? As opposed to pointedly ignoring it's existence? It's not like they're gonna stop it from happening... It's gonna happen, the posts aren't gonna stop it... So what's the point? Unless it's just too much frustration, and there is equally no chance maintaining the fatalistic zen, in which case I sympathize.


Dammit, this was supposed to be quick, and now it's midnight. >.<