The Rings of Power Season 2 starts this week

[svalbard]

I must say that I am enjoying S2 immensely, more so than S1.

I think they have got the Annatar and Celebrimbor relationship perfect, timelines aside. Charlie Vickers is brilliant as Sauron.

The scenes in Khazad Dum are excellent. Gets across the majesty of the kingdom


The Adar storyline is not great. But overall the Season is very well done. The sense of impending doom for Middle Earth is there.

 

[farntfar]

And so, after my comments on Episode 5 were so negative, Episode 6 has picked it all up again.
Action and interest on all froms.: Numenor, the Stranger, the Hobbits, Khazad Dum, Celebrimbor, even the Uruk have all moved steadily forward.

The characters have become interesting once more. (Even Pharazon)
What's more, the lights seem to have started to work, and you can actually see what's going on.

Old Tom remains the most interesting character of them all, without actually doing anything. (Wasn't Tom much the same in LOTR?)
And I've started to have a little bit of a crush on Nori.

 

[farntfar]

And on to Episode 7.

A decent balance between the battle bits and the story bits.

I tend to find battle bits uninteresting. I accept that they have to be there, but I don't generally enjoy them.
They seem to be either too broad. Loads of people rushing about waving things and running at each other.
Or too limited; one hero and one villain having at each other and all the other combatants leaving a big space for them to do it in.

I found that these battles avoided too much of either and were quite engaging.

I also found the episode well balanced with personal interactions off the battle field.
Sauron / Celebrimbor / Galadriel with also Elrond / Durin / Durin etc
Also the Numenorian story Elendil / Miriel / Pharazon etc plus Adar and the Uruks being intelligently done.
And of course, Tom and the Stranger; Nori and the Harfoots all providing interesting stories.

The Dwarven bits have been very interesting, since we know so little of their internal workings from Tolkien. The character of Disa I have particularly enjoyed.

So all together a good episode

 

[AE35Unit]

I was watching it each week but then I got bored with it. Found myself not caring what happens next.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

All through the last episodes I was hoping that they were building up for a big pay-off at the end—not that there was (in my opinion) any indication that this would be the case, but because I had thought the Season 1 Finale was so good, and maybe they could pull off something of the sort again.

Unfortunately, having just seen the final episode, I remain disappointed in the season as a whole. Though I liked the scene between Galadriel and Adar, it wasn't good enough to redeem the episode, much less the season.

So I can't say that I hated it—because it wasn't actually awful—but part of me feels that I ought to—because the writing and the plotting were so relentlessly mediocre.

 

[AE35Unit]

Didn't see the last episode, but I'm guessing The Stranger is Gandalf?

 

[farntfar]

Teresa
Please don't answer that. (You can send AE message if you like.)

People should not ask for spoilers to be published publicly

 

[AE35Unit]

Speculation, so not a spoiler (though to me it seems pretty obvious)

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I won't say who he is, but I will say that the reveal, the way it was handled, was anti-climactic.

 

[BAYLOR]

It all sounds very unpromising.

 

[farntfar]

A better episode, again, in terms of pace, and characterising, story advancement and lighting, than the low of episode 5. But as Teresa said, no great resolutions, and what was resolved was hardly dramatic.

Some things were resolved, however. Some conflicts which were simmering before, are now properly established, as are some identities and relationships. I suppose it has to leave things to be resolved in series three (assuming they do it), so that we can spend another year or two desperately waiting for its release. (I don't think.)

It's clear, just from this forum, that they have lost some of their followers during the early part of the series, and it remains an expensive production. So for my part, I hope they do continue. Didn't they talk, before it started, of several more series to come? I may have misunderstood. I suppose, as always, it depends how much money it made.

On the whole, I'm glad I watched it all the way through, but series 1 was definitely better.

 

[Elckerlyc]

I am still watching, but at a somewhat slower schedule. Which is telling. What I watched didn't make me waiting impatiently for the next episode nor make me drop it entirely from my watching-schedule.
Where there were some intriguing plot-lines or scenes in season 1, which then helped me writing extensive synopses, seems to have been replaced with blandness. Anyway, I am now arrived at episode 6. We'll see how it goes.
I wonder though, to do the exceptional world of Middle-Earth justice you need exceptional writing. Someone who thinks and writes like Tolkien did. Who can?

Didn't they talk, before it started, of several more series to come? I may have misunderstood. I suppose, as always, it depends how much money it made.

I read in an Amazon ad that Amazon Prime claims The Rings of Power was the best watched series. Which is, in more than one way, not saying much in and on itself. It says 'the' best watched, but should probably be read as 'their' best watched series. It could be an outright lie or an unintended reveal that Amazon's other series aren't being watched at all.
With the money spent on it you they might expect it to become the best watched series ever. And when it is not... unfinished series are epidemic in the land of streaming services.

 

[HareBrain]

Didn't they talk, before it started, of several more series to come?

The intention was for five seasons, though it seems to be unclear whether these are contractually obligated.

I don't have Prime so haven't watched it, but as a fan of Tolkien's creation I've watched quite a lot about it (mostly from a YouTube channel that feels fairly even-handed, if sometimes pedantic). It seems to have been written in a way that makes everything smaller than in the source, such as distances, time-spans, size of armies etc. The first two in particular are things Tolkien paid great attention to. Even if I was able to watch it gratis, nothing I've seen has convinced me I'd want to.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm not a massive fan of Tolkien - not that I think he's bad, just that he hasn't had the near-religious effect on me that he had for a lot of people. But, like Harebrain, there's nothing that makes me think I'd like to watch this, just as there's nothing that makes me want to watch the Hobbit films. It sounds like fanfic.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm not a massive fan of Tolkien - not that I think he's bad, just that he hasn't had the near-religious effect on me that he had for a lot of people. But, like Harebrain, there's nothing that makes me think I'd like to watch this, just as there's nothing that makes me want to watch the Hobbit films. It sounds like fanfic.

When I see clips or Rings of Power , I don't see Tolkien or LOTR . What I see is more along the lines Mystic Knights of Sir Na Nog .

 

[farntfar]

It sounds like fanfic.

When I see clips or Rings of Power , I don't see Tolkien or LOTR .

Oh no. I don't think for a moment that, if only he'd had the time, this is what JRRT would have written for the Second Age.
As Harebrain said, the scales, and particularly the timescales are all very truncated, and the main characters seem able to jump from one place to another with no relationship to the distances involved.

This is definitely Fan fiction, and not of a very dedicated fan. But I still find it fairly amusing.

 

[BAYLOR]

Oh no. I don't think for a moment that, if only he'd had the time, this is what JRRT would have written for the Second Age.
As Harebrain said, the scales, and particularly the timescales are all very truncated, and the main characters seem able to jump from one place to another with no relationship to the distances involved.

This is definitely Fan fiction, and not of a very dedicated fan. But I still find it fairly amusing.

Tolkien would be spinning in his grave.

 

[HareBrain]

Tolkien would be spinning in his grave.

Maybe not. He was prepared to sell movie rights on the basis of "either quality or cash" (to paraphrase). Given how much money has been acquired by his grandchildren in this deal, he might have been very happy. (Having said that, he might not have approved of them becoming quite so rich.)

 

[Toby Frost]

I've got this theory that, unless prevented, every story eventually becomes soap opera. A Game of Thrones got pretty close to this, and the kind of mock-historical "history of kings" that you get in epic fantasy feels inherently to carry that risk. I think one of the strengths of The Lord of the Rings is that it doesn't do this: while it's clearly got a load of backstory, it also has a clear start and end point.

 

[AE35Unit]

There's also the Rhohrimm, which is an animated series I think