I just finished Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, saw an earlier thread discussing earlier episodes, figured it’s worth discussing now that it’s all out.
Obviously spoilers for season 2.
(I’ll dump my thoughts in a comment below.)
I just finished Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, saw an earlier thread discussing earlier episodes, figured it’s worth discussing now that it’s all out.
Obviously spoilers for season 2.
(I’ll dump my thoughts in a comment below.)
That’s exactly how it feels. I was thinking about Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon, and why those feel so much more connected.
In Game of Thrones all (except Dany) meet in Winterfell in the first episode. In House of the Dragon it’s similar, but generally everyone meets in the beginning. I guess technically Galadriel & “Halbrand” met almost everyone in season 1, but they just sorta wandered through and didn’t set the stakes.
It’s also uneven when we do visit our storylines. Almost like we spend too long with them, and then forget the other ongoing stories.
It might be the „fault“ of the material as it is based on books like the Silmarillon which in itself is a collection of (not very exciting) stories. It might have been more fitting to have multiple limited series or movies about each story. On the other hand, that’s how Star Wars became such a mess that no one cares about anymore…
No, they butchered the creation of the rings for example. The order is wrong. Tolkien has the rings for the elves created last without Sauron’s presence or collaboration. It’s a major point that they remain untainted by Sauron’s hand.
The story of the Numenor and also the rings takes place over almost two thousand years and many generations. The rings are forged over a period of 90 years.
Of course telling a story over such a long time on a tv show isn’t easy, so they compressed the timeline. The show makes no real attempt to show how much time passes or how long the distances they travel are. People seem to teleport around. The seasons haven’t changed once over the whole show. That implies everything happened over the course of a few months.
Adar, the black elf, Durin’s wife, the hobbits, and all southlanders are completely made up for the show. The stranger’s (Gandalf) and dark wizard story are also inventions of the show.
Multiple shows or a long running animated show might have been a better fit, I agree. Possibly make the first season only about the elves and dwarves. Then the second season about Numenor. Third season brings them together in the war of the last alliance.
Your point about teleporting is so true! I haven’t thought about that but noticed how small this world seems. I had the same feeling in the last seasons of Game of Thrones but there it was very noticeable because earlier seasons really managed to give a sense of time and distance and then it changed.
I don’t mind the sped up timeline as long as the story is told well. The rings taking a couple of months to be made versus 90 years is fine. I suppose if you had a story that had to be told over 90 years, then do that, but if it’s just 90 years for the sake of it, I prefer the smaller timeline.
Sure, it makes sense to compress the timeline for a tv show.