New Full Trailer

[Alatar]

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[Voronwë the Faithful]

This show looks terrible!

Just kidding. Actually, I liked that quite a bit, even the interactions between Galadriel and Elrond.

[Eldy]

I'm really looking forward to this! I'm confident I will enjoy the experience of watching and talking about it, regardless of whether I like the show on its own merits (which remains to be seen) or as an adaptation (which is extremely unlikely). This lives up to what I hoped for from a full-length trailer, and it looks like the show will be a wild ride.

[Inanna]

I really liked this. I still don’t like meteor man, but I really liked Galadriel.

As Eldy said, I will likely watch it for the pleasure of discussing it (here); less for the actual show.

[Snowdog]

Wow! One can actually talk about it here without being mobbed by the 'woke BS' crowd! I was just on Tolkien Forums and they are still carrying on about black actors and 'woke' Amazon sux and stuff.

I quite enjoyed this trailer, and am confident enough that the show will be entertaining. Is there things I think should be different? Yes, but overall it has a good feel to it. Will be nice to discuss it after a few episodes are out. I understand the first two eps will have bits of Tolkien Estate-approved first age background in them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hi Snowdog. I was going to say that I find the reaction to the diverse cast mystifying, but that would be a lie. I find it all too expected.

I'm looking forward to discussing the show here as well.

[Eldy]

Yeah, there are very few places I'm willing to discuss ROP anymore. It was really disheartening how, on the forum where I was most active in late 2017, the complaints about the presumption of diversity started rolling in before we even knew for sure if the show would exist. I've complained about plenty of ROP stuff myself, but I've resigned myself to this being another Star Wars Sequel Trilogy type situation, where liking the show becomes a political shibboleth in many corners of the Internet, not a question of personal enjoyment. Good to get away from that on here, though.

Like Snowdog, I'm curious to see what the First Age prologue and/or flashbacks contains. I saw someone speculate that the red-tinted scenes in the latest trailer might be from the War of Wrath. Having Noldor fight in that would be a change from the book, though hardly the most consequential ROP will make. Alternatively, it could be from one of the earlier Battles of Beleriand. It seems all but guaranteed we'll see the Dagor Bragollach, or something like it (depending on what the Estate gives them permission for), given the brief shot we previously saw of Finrod.

[Alatar]

Feels appropriate

22578B6F-4A5B-456E-8DC1-10C3C893400D.jpeg (288.05 KiB) Viewed 10472 times

[Anduril]

I'm one of the grumpier skeptics about the show and I've always tried to keep it apolitical, never using political buzzwords or meme-words myself even when show-associated-or-adjacent people themselves are bringing politics into it. A big gripe I have about the "not-pro" stuff that I can find online is that barely anyone seems to be on the same page as I am, and thus both pro and not-pro sides tend to go to extremes in making assumptions about either side, painting each other as opposing political extremists, and the ones who do probably qualify tend to be the loudest on at least the "not-pro" side, and the loudest voices go for "outrage farming". Heck even the TORC founder has a web show that dips into that kind of rhetoric they use from time to time, but mostly his critique is lore-based.

Even before the casting news came out, I've always maintained that such an approach for an adaptation that's aiming to construct world-building with verisimilitude etc. was short-sighted. As in, better to expand and perhaps focus more on the elements of the setting that could stand to be expanded rather than change what's already there. Like, this isn't a stage production where it's understood you have more leeway. They're trying to be one long movie divided into parts, as epic as the New Line movies (that I haven't rewatched for a long time) or more, but also tread on common or previously-trodden ground, so some are just gonna take issue with liberties, that's just how human brains work. Like why not approach it and the source material like a historical series. But it seems I barely see anyone else with this kind of nuanced take. ("I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me...")

[Alatar]

I'm pretty much the same. There's stuff I like, and stuff I don't like, but the extremes on both sides are making me want to just stop engaging. In fact thats exactly what I did during the peak of LotR. I left TORC and TORN from about mid '99 till about 2002 or 2003 cause I couldn't hack the division. IT was just annoying and I couldn't be arsed. Like, lets take black elves as an example. One one side you have ultra purists talking about Tolkien's (very infrequent and often conradictory) descriptions, assuming a homogeneously white Medieval Europe (it wasn't) as the basis for a homogeneously white Middle-Earth and talking about why Elves wouldn't have needed Mealanin (Who knows what the effect of the Two Trees had on skin colour!). Next you have PJ fanatics who pretty much ar represented by the Star Trek pic above. Then you have actual Racists. Then you have people who aren't Racist, but think making normally Black character White is Liberalism and Wokism. Then you have people who think that everything should be diverse and anyone who disagrees (All of the aforementioned) are RACISTS!!!

And I'm over here going... fuck it I don't have the energy for this shit.

[Frelga]

I don't know what the show is going to be like, but it's already entertaining to watch Those Guys froth at the mouth about it. I'm sad about TORC, though. We were just starting to get a new RP off the ground, but the place is just icky now.

The trailer looks awesome, though.

Could the meteor man be a Balrog?

[Dave_LF]

For me, the most interesting thing about the Star Trek article is the fact that, at the time, that kind of fan reaction was considered news.

[Alatar]

Similar issues happening with GoT and the writer is still alive to argue the toss!

https://www.indiewire.com/2022/07/game- ... 234743732/

“Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin further addressed the fan uproar over the end of the Targaryens after eight seasons in.

“The fucking toxic internet and these podcasts out there saying that season eight left such a bad impression that people say, ‘Oh, I’m never going to watch them again,'” Martin stated. “I don’t trust them anymore.”

Martin called “House of the Dragon” a “Shakespearean tragedy” with an even darker message and tone than “Game of Thrones.”

“There’s no Arya — a character everybody’s going to love. They’re all flawed,” Martin explained. “They’re all human. They do good things. They do bad things. They’re driven by lust for power, jealousy, old wounds — just like human beings. Just like I wrote them.”

[Frelga]

For me, the most interesting thing about the Star Trek article is the fact that, at the time, that kind of fan reaction was considered news.

I don't know, the media still reports every hissy fit like it's news.