New interview with showrunners

[kzer_za]

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... s-of-power

I've read some parts and skimmed others. They re-confirm their rights are limited to LotR and the Hobbit. Overall while I still have large reservations, this does make me feel a little better about the show than the other VF articles or trailer.

[kzer_za]

What’s Up With Warrior Galadriel? Is This in the Books?

Over the years, Tolkien adapters have had to get creative in order to include his female characters in the action. Liv Tyler’s Arwen making a riverbank stand against the Nazgûl in defense of Frodo and the very existence of Evangeline Lilly’s warrior elf, Tauriel? All invented by Peter Jackson. But Éowyn’s “but no living man am I!” showdown with the witch-king of Angmar in The Return of the King is straight out of the books and shows that Tolkien was at least somewhat interested in women who pick up swords. As does his description of Galadriel during the many thousand years of her long youth. Tolkien claimed young Galadriel could match strength with most male counterparts, and in a 1973 letter, wrote, “She was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats.” This is how she got her name, Galadriel, which means “maiden crowned with gleaming hair.” In The Unfinished Tales it says, “[Galadriel] looked upon the Dwarves also with the eye of a commander, seeing in them the finest warriors to pit against the Orcs.”

“She’s full of piss and vinegar and she’s got a sword that’s broken because she’s killed so many orcs,” McKay says of their version. “This young hot-headed Galadriel…how did she ever become that elder stateswoman?” What’s more important than Galadriel’s armor and weaponry is the turmoil of emotions we see raging inside her, having already survived multiple attacks by Sauron and his predecessor, Morgoth, and losing her brothers in the process. This internal conflict still lingers in the striking Fellowship of the Ring sequence where, tempted by the One Ring, a booming Cate Blanchett goes photo-negative. Tolkien writes her this speech: “In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

The Rings of Power makes a direct nod toward this moment when, as Galadriel first meets the human character Halbrand, he says a line that echoes what Tolkien had her say to Frodo: “The tides of fate are flowing.” In or out, Halbrand wonders. In the History of Middle-earth, Tolkien describes the One Ring as “all that Galadriel had desired in her youth.” She has a lifelong flirtation with the darkness inside of her, and even in her later years she remains one of the few people Sauron fears. It’s what makes her much more complex than a simple and serene lady of the woods. If you want to know if Morfydd Clark is capable of matching Blanchett’s terrifying turn, check out her blissfully unhinged performance in the horror film Saint Maud.

There's an Unfinished Tales citation. I get the feeling the Estate has given them bit of limited wiggle room within narrow parameters (even Jackson fudged the boundaries, like the Ring of Barahir). Like maybe they can use it "on background" without portraying anything directly.

As for this quote as a whole it's probably not the take on Galadriel's character I would have gone for, but it is justifiable (her backstory is so unsettled you could go in a lot of directions). It does feel like they've done their homework. The part about "this is how she got her name" is nonsense though right?

[Inanna]

I must admit, Galadriel sounds attractive enough for me to watch the show.

[kzer_za]

So this is the most hopeful thing I've seen so far:

In studying the language from the first three episodes Amazon let Vanity Fair screen, we found a mix of cleverly repurposed lines of Tolkien’s dialogue as well as a few snatches of Biblical text. “Both Patrick and I have religious backgrounds,” Payne says. “I spent a lot of time just reading those sacred texts. I was an English major at Yale and loved Shakespeare at the time and still go back and reread the various plays. I’ve also spent a lot of time studying Hebrew poetry and parallelism and inverted parallelism and chiasmus and all these cool rhetorical strategies that poets and prophets from thousands of years ago would use to communicate sacred material. And Tolkien, sometimes, will play in that kind of a sandbox.”

McKay explains that they tailored the dialogue to fit each kind of character. The harfoots speak with an Irish lilt whereas the elves speak in elevated British phrases. “We even came up with hero meters for each different race in Tolkien,” Payne says. “Some of them will speak in iambs. Some of them will speak in dactyls. Some of them will speak in trochees.” That in-depth approach might please Professor Tolkien, whose specialty was philology, a.k.a. the history of language.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I must admit, Galadriel sounds attractive enough for me to watch the show.

Some of what I am seeing about her is encouraging; some less so. But time will tell.

K_Z I agree that is the most encouraging thing I have seen.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... s-of-power

I've read some parts and skimmed others. They re-confirm their rights are limited to LotR and the Hobbit. Overall while I still have large reservations, this does make me feel a little better about the show than the other VF articles or trailer.

\

I was finally able to read through this by opening it in an "InPrivate Window." Interesting stuff. There's still a lot of major concerns that I have, but maybe it will be halfway decent.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

One interesting detail from the interview relates to the so-called Meteor Man:

In the footage that premiered in the Rings of Power Super Bowl teaser, audiences caught a glimpse of a tall, mysterious man who falls from the sky. Our immediate instinct is to wonder if he’s one of the wizards even the most casual fans might have heard of. In Tolkien’s text, they didn’t come to Middle-earth until the Third Age, but is the show taking some added liberties with the timeline? When asked if this might be Gandalf, Radagast, or Saruman, McKay answered cautiously, “Well, I would say those are not the only beings, those names, in that class. So maybe, but maybe not. And the mystery and the journey of it is all of the fun, I would say.”

That would certainly suggest that the character is either Sauron, or one of the Blue Wizards. And if the latter, they would have to make a name (or have them go nameless) unless FoF is correct about them having limited rights to things outside of LOTR and TH (despite this explicit statement: “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.”)

I would guess that it is Sauron.

[Alatar]

Likewise.

[kzer_za]

You don't even know the blue wizards are blue without UT right?

Meteor Man as Sauron is the safe bet, but it seems like it would be so obvious and telegraphed to even non-readers - having "I wonder what happened to Sauron?" and "By the way, who is this mysterious otherworldly being?" as your mysteries early on is just so painfully on the nose. So I wonder/hope if that could be a red herring so they can hit us with someone from left-field like, say, Halbrand. He tricks Galadriel early on and learns secrets from her because she's "young" and headstrong, maybe? This would be an early disguise before Annatar (a name they might not be able to use). Yeah I'm just spitballing.

There is a citation of Unfinished Tales in the article when talking about Galadriel and it's likely the author got it from the writing team...so I wonder if there's some limited wiggle room they're not disclosing. FOF is clearly right about some things at least.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Correct. Which means that they could in theory do whatever they want to with one of the other two wizards.

[kzer_za]

It could also be Glorfindel and they’re being coy about Maiar to misdirect. Then again, I don’t think it’s established that Glorfy died in the First Age in LotR right? Which again raises the question if they can get limited narrow exceptions on the rights.

Or Bombadil? Assuming it’s a canonical character Glorfindel, Tom Bombadil, or a Maia are the reasonable options. As “reasonable” as this plotline can be.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It ain't Glorfindel and it aint Bombadil.

ETA: in my opinion, of course.

[Inanna]

Glorfy???

[Galin]

[someone wrote] " . . . and in a 1973 letter, wrote, “She was then of Amazon disposition and bound up her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats.” This is how she got her name, Galadriel, which means “maiden crowned with gleaming hair.”

The part about "this is how she got her name" is nonsense though right?

The name does mean that, and the line quoted is correct too.

[Tolkien himself didn't always use the same exact English when explaining this name of course. In 1972 (letter 345) he just noted that it meant "Glittering garland" for example.]

Technically there's no "hair-word" in the name, as we have "glittering reflection (from a stem that meant "shine by reflection) + crown + maiden" -- but the name refers to Galadriel's hair.


"How she got it" could also include other details such as who gave it to her. Galadriel's parents named her Nerwende Artanis, and according to The Shibboleth of Fëanor, Artanis chose Galadriel as her Sindarin name, which itself was rendered from a nickname given to her by Teleporno (Celeborn), though as he gave it in Telerin form, the name was Alatáriel . . .

. . . but in this scenario Celeborn is a Teler in Aman (thus we have the Telerin form of both names), and personally I do not accept this detail, as it steps on Tolkien-published text (Celeborn the Sinda).

I could "imagine around this" I guess, for example, by switching out Teleporno for, say, Finarfin giving the nick to Nerwen (as Finarfin spoke Telerin according to the Shibboleth), and then we could still have Artanis choosing Galadriel later in Middle-earth.

Or maybe I could imagine that Celeborn gave the name to her when the two met in Middle-earth, rendering the name from Aman into Sindarin, and Galadriel still likes it best.

Or I could avoid parts of the question


In the 1973 letter (348) Tolkien doesn't actually say* who gave her this "secondary name" (as he calls it here), but he does note that it was given to her in her youth in the far past, because she had long hair that glistened like gold (also shot with silver), and as noted, she'd bind her hair as a crown when taking part in athletic feats.

[*although considering the late date of 1973, my guess is JRRT is thinking Tel(e)porno gave it to her, as a Teler of Aman, but as I said, I don't have Celeborn as a Teler in my Legendarium]

[Smaug's voice]

A new detailed interview with Payne & McKay at THR: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235233124/

Sources say HBO pitched the estate on retelling Middle-earth’s “Third Age” — essentially remaking Peter Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy, which grossed $3 billion and won 17 Oscars. The estate has its gripes with Jackson’s adaptations (the late Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son, said they “eviscerated” the books) but wasn’t interested in treading the same ground. Netflix pitched doing several shows, such as a Gandalf series and an Aragorn drama. “They took the Marvel approach,” said one insider to the talks, “and that completely freaked out the estate.”

Amazon’s team (at the time led by Albert Cheng, Sharon Tal Yguado and Dan Scharf) wooed the estate not with a specific pitch, but with a pledge of a close relationship that would give the estate a creative seat at the table so it could protect Tolkien’s legacy. There was also, of course, the money. Sources say the staggering number that’s been widely reported ($250 million) was actually Netflix’s bid and that Amazon’s number was tens of millions less (albeit, still staggering). “It was our collective passion and fidelity to Tolkien that really won the day,” says Amazon Studios TV co-head Vernon Sanders.

Criticism they can handle, and they’ve heard it all. Everything fans have debated, they say, they likewise argued among the creative team. They readily admit, for instance, that some of the first-season episodes lack the urgency fans expect from Tolkien adaptations.

“One of the big things we learned was even when it’s a small scene, it always has to tie back into the larger stakes,” Payne says.

“There are things that didn’t work as well in season one that might have worked in a smaller show,” McKay agrees. “It has to be about good and evil and the fate of the world or it doesn’t have that epic feeling you want when you’re in Tolkien.”

Which doesn’t mean the show won’t continue to embrace small moments. They point out that in The Return of the King, Sam sees a star through the clouds and says all the evil they’re facing is but a passing shadow, and there’s beauty above that it can never reach. “It’s a tiny personal moment, but it reflects the theme of the entire work,” Payne notes.

Given that their show’s master plan is about the rings gradually corrupting the leadership of men, elves and dwarfs, I briefly wonder if the storyline risks making their saga a bit of a bummer as the whole land falls into enslavement and chaos.

“That’s the secret sauce of Tolkien right there,” Payne explains, leaning forward. “The grimmer things get, the more those pops of light have a contrast to bounce off of. That’s what’s beautiful about Tolkien. Even in points of complete despair you can have two halflings look at each other and say, ‘I’m glad you’re here with me.'”

[Eldy]

That was a really interesting (and thorough) read! It's nice to hear more of the showrunners' perspective. I was already convinced by this point that they do, in fact, understand the legendarium, and this interview reinforces that. However, I did roll my eyes a bit at the claim, "It has to be about good and evil and the fate of the world or it doesn't have that epic feeling you want when you're in Tolkien." That's a reasonable if simplistic description of LOTR, but it fails to account for many of Tolkien's other works, including The Hobbit (where the Dwarves set out seeking merely revenge through thievery), The Children of Húrin (which is about the fate of a single family, and is far too morally ambiguous to be called a story of good vs evil), and his sole Second Age quasi-novel, Aldarion and Erendis (which is about the deterioration of a marriage, though vague whispers of Sauron occur in the background). I don't blame them for wanting to tell an epic fantasy adventure story, but this and other comments don't give the impression that they're really all that interested in the non-LOTR parts of the legendarium as stories with their own strengths and independent merits, as opposed to background material for Tolkien's most famous book. Then again, that's not an uncommon stance for Tolkien fans.

I recently said on TORn that I figure a 2024 release date for season 2 is the most likely scenario. Hopefully the comment that they'll be working on S2 for "another couple years" doesn't change that, but it seems 2025 is plausible.

I don't mean to be overly negative, because aside from those two points I quite enjoyed reading the article. The background details about the rights sale and pitch process were especially appreciated, since I spent so much trying to figure out what the hell was going on back in 2017 to 2019.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I just read that article and was coming here to post about it, and particularly that comment about working on Season 2 for another couple of years. Hmmm, I always assumed that Season 2 was going to be next year.

[Eldy]

At one point, I had vaguely hoped we might get similar turnaround times as the first six seasons of Game of Thrones, which premiered at about the same time in consecutive years, but >12 month season gaps seem to be a trend for Amazon's big speculative fiction series, like The Man in the High Castle and the currently ongoing The Wheel of Time (which still doesn't have an S2 release date, but has already been renewed for S3).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Are they really going to drag this out over a minimum of 10-15 years! Yikes!!

[Alatar]

Not necessarily. Now that they know what is resonating with the viewers they should be able to work faster, filming each season as the previous is in post production. I think its pretty clear they were waiting to see the reactions so they could course adjust as necessary.