The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

[Snowdog]

No.... well, I guess it does if you pay Jon $5 a month.... I meant it was Elora from TORc back in the day. She posted her review on facebook. She doesn't do forums these days.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Gotcha!

[Holbytla]

I'm not expecting June and Ward Cleaver to walk through the door. I get that in 2024 the lines are more gray than 70+ years in the past, and that the characters need to be more Fëanor complicated like.

Would it be so wrong or too boring to have a Fingolfin type character today? I know we got 5 minutes of Finrod, but isn't it possible to flesh out some elf who was more Fingolfin like, for a longer period?

Am I just too out of touch?

After multiple watches, I'm feeling that Adar was the best written character. And that's not a comforting thought.

[Frelga]

I finally got around to watching the final two episodes. The show has done a fantastic job. Not only was it excellent TV, but I would say they did a better job at being a Tolkien adaptation than PJ did. And that's not a slight of PJ.

LOTR movies had source material with fully fleshed out characters and plot lines, and they still felt compelled to put in absurd plot twists and reversals, even at the cost of butchering characterization. And the books end on a traditional happy note, with the good guys defeating the bad and two weddings.

The show really captured that "fighting the long defeat", but also that the emphasis is on fighting, not on defeat.

It did occur to me that one thing that most Tolkien fans agree was done well - Sauron - is arguably the least faithful to the spirit of Tolkien's writing. He wasn't that interested in exploring the villains.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That is much truer in The Lord of the Rings than in The Silmarillion (and associated works) or even {i]The Hobbit[/i]. There is a reason one of the books of HoMe is called Morgoth's Ring and Smaug is arguably the most interesting character in The Hobbit. Sauron himself is much more interesting in even the limited versions of the stories of the Second Age, in the essays in Morgoth's Ring discussing the differences between Morgoth and Sauron, and in Tolkien's letters, than he is The Lord of the Rings and it very clear that the showrunners and writers were familiar with all of that material and did a tremendous job of reflecting it in their presentation of Sauron. In my opinion, that was the most faithful part of the adaptation, not the least.