Pretty sure the problem wasn't that Galadriel was a good fighter, it was that everyone else was incompetent. A whole group of presumably elite elven warriors couldn't handle a troll that she killed in seconds... And that is just one example.
@@scambammer6102 well.. The people behind the show intended to portray her as a good fighter, but they failed because of the choreography and the actress not practicing enough.
Another problem to add is that Galadriel is supposed to be the commanding officer of this group. She is the one responsible for their quality or lack thereof. Combining this with how she was willing to leave a troop behind on a snowstorm and there are some implications about her leadership skills. And the show tries to make her into someone to look up to.
Imagine making reservations a few years in advance, to eat at one of the best restaurants in the world, say, the French Laundry. You pay $900 for the tasting menu, and they serve you a microwave pizza, and half a cup of Top Ramen, and a quarter of a cold grilled cheese. The food would be bad in any setting, but it being served at a Michelin starred restaurant makes it extra insulting. The show is bad regardless, but pretending it's related to Tolkein insults both the author and the audience.
the number one problem with this series is that the writing is terrible. I have never seen a tv series with such bad writing. this show makes the Power Rangers seem like Shakespeare. My theory is that someone wrote the scripts the night before it was due and didn't even check it for spelling. So as a normy who only knows the trilogy i hated it.
@@aj7952 *"but it’s not bad."* It is, though. Elrond can't keep his word, forgets his friends and the first time he remembers his dwarven friend it's because he wants something. Somehow, jumping of a ship in the middle of the ocean, literally thousands of miles away from the next shore, is a good decision. A woman's previous hometown is destroyed, a town she knows well enough to remember people's houses and their names - but is she actually distressed about it? Not really. The Elven race, universally known to have keen senses, somehow can be snuck upon by lumbering orcs or smaller orcs within caves. Everyone is capable of teleportation, like two people who go on a trip that should take 2 weeks, but they don't even have a second set of clothes, a bottle of water or a mule for some supplies. And let's not even get started on the idea of a _naval empire_ that can't afford to replace 2 destroyed ships for their five-ship-expeditionary-force ... Or the question how 100 men, dozens of horses and supplies for several weeks if not months should fit on ships so small in the first place. Written "not so bad?" so that's why no one ever was surprised that Halbrand was Sauron, we knew it from the first scenes. There was no mystery about it, even if they tried to mystify it. And Not-Gandalf? Of course it's Gandalf, who else? And I as I have no option to say anything in response to _"And before you accuse me of not being a “real fan”, I’ve read all the books at least three times. I’m also a creative writing teacher and published author!"_ that isn't a direct insult, I won't comment on it. If you enjoyed ROP, good for you. But don't make the mistake of thinking "I liked it" means it's actually good. It's not.
My main issue with the show was that the male elves didn't look at all elvish. Not just the long hair, but the lack of long hair just made it obvious that the actors looked like regular people instead of supernaturally beautiful creatures. Moreover, dwarven women were too beautiful in a traditional human understanding of female beauty. So not just a lack of beards, dwarven women ought to look masculine the way elven men look feminine.
The male elves look like Vulcans on shore leave - except Gil-Galad, whose costume is garishly tacky. The Laurel wreath on his head looks very uncomfortable. This may not sound polite, but none of the elves are ethereal-looking or -acting, or even conventionally attractive except Arondir.
@@icewaterchrist yes, that is a very good description! They should be tall as well. Celebrimbor (especially) and Elrond are kind of weatherbeaten as well - in comparison to the Peter Jackson trilogy elves. I think PJ deliberately cast models (or model-looking people) for elf actors and elf extras. Dancers would be a great at playing elves because they have excellent posture and walk in a very elegant way unachievable by all of us non-dancers!
As a decades long fan of Tolkien’s legendarium, I have difficulty applauding the Galadriel storyline. I just don’t want this characterization of a 2-5000 yr old Galadriel. So the show is not for me. I also dislike the show’s portrayal of the Numenor culture. They made the culture look like a collection of ignoble and weak men. Hated the diminutive status given to Elendil.
Notice how every single other soldier in Galadriel's group (all of which are probably thousands of years old with tonnes of training and experience) get their asses handed to them by the troll but she just takes in out instantly? She is definitely a mary-sue. A pyroclastic flow couldn't even singe her hair despite the fact that they are usually about 700 degrees.
Galadriel wouldn’t be able to exist in a workplace because she’d threaten to kill someone over a mild inconvenience and get fired for it then get arrested for trespassing at the office and threatening to kill the boss who fired her
My problem with Halbrand / Sauron is that he is doing everything he can to NOT go back to the Southlands, to NOT be the Sauron that we see in the movies. I hate the "reluctant hero" archetype, but a "reluctant villain"? WTF???
@@Makkaru112 I don't think the problem was the storyline. They had plenty to work with, they are just some of the worst writers on the planet. I can't believe those hacks got a job writing anything above fanfic.
Well of course he doesn't want to go back yet. He's got to find the way to bind and dominate all the world first. Plus, now he wants to bang Galadriel, even though she tells him what a good friend he is, but he's such a "Nice Guy"!
I can only recommend the channel Tolkien Untangled. He rewrote the entire series. He has given himself the same limits the showrunners had and if you watch the videos you hate the Rings of Power series even more. Even though he had the same limits and there are differences between his videos and the Simarallion, he has created a masterpiece.
They wouldn't need to do all this nonsense if they just bought the rights to the silmarillion and other books so as to just follow the source material. It's all there. And then involve Tom Shippey and others of his ilk who can help explain so much, as to better bring to life our world of Arda.
I watched this and ignored House of Dragons for this. Then I watched the first episode of the other show and it told more and developed freshly introduced characters further than the Rings of Power did all season. I do like slow story progression and in depth characters but this show didn't have that. It was slow without any purpose and that made it so insanely boring. A show can be low, but then it has to develop something during that time. ROP did none of that. Man, I despise this show so much.
I was willing to forgive a lot (because I knew I would have to). But falling asleep several times in Ep2 and 3 just made it impossible to watch. Had a lot of fun with all the critics though.
Nawh, it actually IS as bad as they say. The first episode the heroine (villain?) jumped off a boat into the middle of the ocean and then dog-paddled around waiting for death. Yes, that's in the show. But the writers randomly put in a raft floating by with Sauron sitting on it. Yes, that's in the show.
The reaction to this show is 10% the show itself and 90% the gaslighting coming from the showrunners up to and after the show was released. Every time they said "we followed the lore as much as humanly possible" and "we kept going back to the books", you know they were lying. They had to be. Nobody is that deluded.
I don't think they were allowed to be faithful to the books - some licencing issue. Hence the 2nd age which is poorly defined in the books and hence a blank slate for the series. Wish it was 1st age though
This version of Galadriel feels like she was rerolled from a Neutral good sorcerer to a Lawful evil Paladin with all her stats put into Str, Dex, and Con and all her points taken out of Int, Wis, and Char.
They literally had the "racist backlash" tweets and articles pre written and released the same day the non-white characters were introduced in posters and trailers.
@@matthewroig2262 Yes, and the actress that plays Desa famously lied over and over bragging about being the first female dwarf on screen lol. Meanwhile there is multiple female dwarfs in the hobbit movies, ones name is Dis I believe. Yet in almost every interview she kept repeating the same line, and even after the show came out.
17:00 Nori grabbing his ice arm and starting to question whether he's good or not is like putting your hand on a obviously hot stove and calling your mother evil for turning it on.
Also, it's not that Galadriel is "hyper competent", it's that she faces no real consequences from all her stupid decisions. She gets an army, she gets a ring of power... She should have been locked in a dungeon until the end of time after all the stupid things she did in court.
It's all moot because none of it even happened in any of the books. No poppy. No adar, no nori, no Bronwyn, and Aerondir was a name they yet again stolen from the legendarium and sprinkled a few very atrocious plagerisms not only from the trilogy movies, not just quotes either. Literal plagiarism for example from Cate Blanchettes Elizabeth with the whole Tempest in me BS.
My biggest problem with the show is by far the character of Galadriel. Even ignoring that she’s nothing like Galadriel from lotr, she’s just a horrible protagonist. Here’s everything wrong with her: - She’s extremely overpowered. Whether it be killing an troll single-handedly or outperforming every single person around her, it makes it feel like she has no room to grow and that there’s nothing that can even pose a threat to her. - Her “diplomacy” throughout the show is either threats of violence or her completely dominating the conversation. It makes her come off as more of an villain that can’t be stopped if she just chose to hack up anyone who disagrees with her. - Despite being “always right,” she is incredibly stupid. On multiple occasions she puts her trust into a person who is a sole survivor from the Southlands who committed SELF-ADMITTED atrocities that he refused to explain to her. Even if she somehow didn’t realize he could be Sauron, why even trust him at all? This is only one of many examples of her incompetence. - Finally, the most glaring issue is her acting. Her emotional range seems to go from mild annoyance to pure rage with some glimmers of forced happiness. Her response to most emotional dialogue feels like pure indifference. She, again, acts more like a villain than the “warrior” the show paints her as. I understand your defenses of her character, but there’s a thin line between flaws and pure incompetence. So many of her actions don’t only affect her, and her lack of care or empathy is so jarring for a character that we know as wise. If she can fight like she’s thousands of years old, why does she act like a child? Edit: Also, the dwarf women not having beards bothers me more than it probably should.
This is all for the very simple reason that she is the villain. What is Sauron's evil? He exists and wants to live quietly, a thousand years after a military defeat? The scoundrel! Meanwhile she's been travelling the world murdering anything without pointy ears for millennia. She's all in on exterminating the orcs, which members of her own race created. And supposedly, because her brother died in a war a thousand years back. This is like a Morrocan going on a murder spree in Italy today because of the Carthaginian wars.
Oh, for heaven's sake, is this all you can conjure? Because they'd look bloody stupid with beards is why. As for Galadriel's character, its not at all far from how Tolkien portrays her in some versions of the story, at this stage of her life. She is proud, and self-willed and driven by the loss of her near-kin. This is not at all surprising, as Tolkien describes some elves as being extremely arrogant. For example, Feanor, his sons, Thranduil and Thingol (the latter got himself hacked up by dwarves, who were narked by his haughty behaviour). And they are all thousands of years old. The much calmer and wiser Galadriel we meet later has clearly gone through a change in character. But it is not years, but experiences that have changed her. I don't think btw this would be so much of a problem for some people if Galadriel were a male character. The cocky, reckless type of hero is very familiar, and often gets a pass on that behaviour, if the audience feels there is more to them than just the cockiness. Imagine if Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel was playing the lead role. As far as the acting goes, even this video shows the actress displaying quite a different range of emotions. Maybe its your opinion, but with respect to this show a lot of people seemed to have made up their mind even before seeing it.
@@cally77777 They wouldn’t look stupid with beards- it’s what makes them dwarves and not little people. It’s an easy detail that most people know about and that’s why it’s so egregious As for Galadriel, what show did you watch? Her acting is awful, and while I think the writers had a lot to do with that, it still doesn’t help that her emotional range for 99% of the show is anger/condescension. Going back to the writers, her character doesn’t make sense because she’s so one-sided. Even if they wanted to show development, how does it make sense that a 1000 year old elf (who’s already seen conflict) would resort to childish rage/violence for almost any issue? She comes off as psychotic and non-empathetic rather than “self-wiled” You’re also defending her on the basis of the “lore,” when the show butchers the lore in every way. My complaints about her character are more general because I understand that the show basically is a spin-off of lotr more than an actual prequel. Who cares how “accurate” she is when none of her actions in the show are accurate to the lore? You haven’t even responded to most of what I’ve said and simply say “Tolkien described her sorta vaguely this way.” Finally, I’m 100% positive that people would’ve hated this show if the main protagonist was a male. I know that because some of the most hated characters in the show are males- Elrond and Arondir. Elrond is also a blithering moron who’s only good scene, imo, is the emotional moment with the dwarves. Arondir could be played by an AI and I wouldn’t have known any different, and I even had to look up his name again because he’s that forgettable in this mess of a show. Why do you assume that people don’t like this show because “Galadriel a girl?” People absolutely love her in lotr and she’s one of the most important characters in pushing the narrative forward. She’s nearly god-like in her wisdom, and even though she had to learn that, the show never shows her “outsmarting” any situation. There wasn’t a single moment where I thought “oh, she learned a lesson through this.” Instead, she just does dumb thing one after the other but never faces any consequences for it (her jumping off the boat comes to mind). You can like the show if you want, but you can’t blame people for hating on it when it has such glaring problems. Certainly can’t say it’s because “people hate women.” Edit: To add, if vin diesel or Bruce Willis was the main protagonist, I would’ve hated the show even more. So yeah, I guess they got that part right.
@@joshuagrabow2437 That’s honestly a good point. I almost feel bad for the actor playing her because of how badly the writers fucked up her character. She basically had to act her way into “fixing” the protagonist, while having to perform actions that make her the villain of the story. It’s a nearly impossible task and god knows they didn’t give her enough time to prepare for it.
I don't think it's that galadriel is always right but she certainly doesn't suffer any meaningful consequences for being wrong, she doesnt agonise about her position, so when she does change her mind it rings hollow.
No she is not right, you forget that the sea is always right, I still cannot find anyone that knows why the sea is always right and what the hell has it got to do with anything
@@Ariaelyne I thought the image of the true Sauron in the water was Ulmo revealing the true identity of Sauron, the heir of his enemy Morgoth; but it was just Sauron. Ulmo doesn't seem to exist beyond the catchphase.
The problem is not if she's right or not, the problem is that she thinks she's always right. Her knowledge of being dislike for everybody is not an admission of wrong doing from her part.
They managed to make Sauron the most likeable character in the show, and made Galadriel (an unreasonable, demagogic, manipulative and childish character), SOO unlike Jackson’s and Tolkien’s Galadriel it might as well be a different person. Th
Overall, I think this video almost perfectly summarises how I, as a Tolkien fan, feel about the show. However, I would like to point something out about Galadriel that I haven't seen a lot of people discussing. The showrunners have directly stated that they wanted Halbrand/Sauron to act as a foil for Galadriel, i.e., she is incredibly driven and pursues her goal with reckless determination, while he has more or less given up at the start of the story and it's her belief in him that spurs him back into action. In the final episode, Halbrand/Sauron directly states that he would probably have died out on the ocean if he hadn't run into Galadriel. Now, while this sounds like a cool concept/looks good on paper, it has some deep implications for the whole history of Middle-Earth that I'm amazed the showrunners and writers seem not to have thought through. Because what they're saying is... Sauron has admitted defeat at the beginning of the story. He was close to death and/or was actually genuinely considering going into retirement as a blacksmith in Númenor (you might say that was just pretend, but the showrunners have also directly stated that the choices Halbrand makes are in line with him being Sauron from the beginning). Which means that he no longer poses a threat at the start of the season. Galadriel's determination and belief in him as a leader is what makes him reconsider that, what makes him wish to regain his power and start anew. Which essentially means that every single person who dies, who suffers, who is corrupted by the Ring, who experiences loss and tragedy due to Sauron's actions for thousands and thousands of years to come will be partly Galadriel's fault. From the destruction of Númenor and the deaths of almost all its habitants, to the deaths of Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad, Elendil and thousands of others, to the thousands of years of warfare and devastation, to the torture of Galadriel's own daughter at the hands of orcs, to the kings of Men who become the Nazgul and the corruption and fall of their kingdoms, to the "burning of the Westfold and the children who lie dead there", to the corruption of Isildur, Gollum, Boromir... the list goes on and on and on, and Galadriel now carries at least part of the blame for all this suffering. And since she's still a powerful political leader up until the destruction of the One Ring, we know that she never takes full responsibility or has to face the consequences. Which means that everyone is either weirdly okay with her staying in power despite her essentially being the cause of the re-appearance of the Dark Lord or that she keeps this knowledge to herself, which would make her a morally reprehensible, powerhungry, manipulative despot. So while you can definitely have flawed heroes, to me, this is just not salvageable as a heroic character. No matter what she may or may not do to try to set it right in seasons to come, the showrunners have created a situation where every atrocity Sauron is responsible for from now until Frodo destroys the One Ring thousands of years from now is partly on Galadriel. Any hero arc they try to go for with her is going to be marred by this in my eyes. There's really no coming back from it.
I'm not a big Tolkien fan, and only knew of Galadriel's character from the movies. This is also exactly what truly bothered me about the show, and I feel like I don't see enough people talking about it either. To me, her character wasn't just written badly because she didn't receive consequences, etc... but MAINLY because it makes her culprit to the thousands of years of suffering that happens in Middle Earth. That's a big change in someone's character and history. It's like saying that Isildur's actions regarding the ring was something to shrug off. I think the writers saw Tolkien's work as a launching pad for their own drama, and weren't concerned with whether or not it connected at all to the actual lore. Again, I'm not even a big Tolkien fan who read the books. I don't know much about the original stories, so I'm supposed to be their target demographic. But to me, it was atrocious.
I think such a background could work... if she was instrumental in ultimately defeating the evil she helped create. But we know she isn't. She's leading a bunch of isolationist elves, and leaves Middle Earth. There's no redemption. Nor is there really a fall. Which means there is no arc, one way or the other.
The Galadriel from the “books” is completely different from the one in this show. From Tolkien, we know Galadriel was from Aman. She walked, talked, and grew to full womanhood in Valinor, not necessarily maturity. Gil-Galad and Elrond should worship the ground she walks on. She is their elder, not subordinate. She was a student of Yavanna and Nienna, and later Melian. When a being who has fought Melkor / Morgoth, tells you that a minion of his, (Sauron,) who killed her brother Finrod, is not gone. You listen, you do not ignore. Compared to Galadriel, Gil-Galad and Elrond are puppies. Galadriel had personal contact with the Valar, but neither Gil-Galad nor Elrond has. The disrespect and gullibility this show attributes to Galadriel beggars belief. If the showrunners had created a second-age elf born, with the show’s Galadriel conviction that would be believable, calling her Galadriel II, would be an option. This is not.
@@brantregare wow, I was going to respond to some of the criticism here about how Galadriel has a growth journey and blah blah but you really put it into perspective and you're right - if Galadriel from RoP was ever like this, she would've been during the first age but I didn't consider all you pointed out - she did grow up in Valinor and fought against a freaking Valar demigod. Great context!
Considering the fact that she doesn’t tell Elrond or Celebrimbor who Halbrand is, just that he’s untrustworthy, at the end of the season I’m thinking she just quietly pretends that the return of Sauron isn’t her fault and nobody else finds out.
For me it has been 4 decades since my first reading of the Silmarillion, LOTR, Hobbit, Hurn's Son, etc. There have been several attempts to bring Tolkien's work to the big and small screens. Jackson took some liberties, but the intention and key themes of the books were preserved. Rings of Power has no interest in the world building, stories or characters created by the professor. Their focus is updating the material to suit modern notions and politics and ignoring the great storytelling of the original work. Failure...
The storytelling of the original work wouldn't have even worked as a tv show anyway since the Second Age is extremely long periods of scheming followed by short moments of violence and 'visually exciting' plot. Just the Annatar plotline itself occurs over 500 years then Miriel and the downfall of Numenor nearly 1400 years later and over 2 centuries of time. Compared to the much shorter periods for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings a heavy amount of adaptation would have been needed even without the character changes in Galadriel (who was barely a character in the Second Age, so I'm not exactly angry they decided to make her into a broken soldier instead).
I haven't seen the show yet but I do remember the showrunners being open about having a political slant. Bad move. No one wants to hear that stuff anymore. If you have a message you think you're trying to convey you're better off letting the show do that itself. From what it seems like though, the execution wasn't there to begin with so perhaps it wouldn't have mattered. Or you know what, maybe don't update revered and sacred material in the eyes of many, in the interest of making it 'better' it was already pretty great to begin with. Peter Jackson avoided this by making his films as close to Tolkiens vision as possible, with astounding success.
@@cally77777 Established worlds have established rules. If they aren't going to conform to tolkeins works, *Then why even "adapt" tolkeins' works?* your point seems to ignore that them ignoring the entirety of the lore and rules, negates the whole reason for even using tolkein.
Frodo was tiny and innocent so we feared for his character whenever danger approached. When he was stabbed, or the spider caught him, it showed that even he wasn’t completely safe from danger. Him being relatable, struggling and the bond he had with his friend’s made us root for him as the underdog. Galadriel is Overpowered and immature. There’s no point of rooting for her because we know she’s going to win. She’s never in any real danger. so it makes everything boring. It would’ve been more interesting if she was a villain honestly
I don't know, man; I kept wondering if her epic fucking stupidity was going to kill her, be it from drowning at sea, being butchered by the Numenoreans, or shredded by Sauron.
I've only watched the films, but true, Frodo never had plot armour. Nobody did (apart from Gandalf ... kind of). I didn't know whether all the protagonist would arrive in one piece.
I agree. Knowing the story from the books he obviously couldn't die, but his brushes with death were done so well that you legit feared for him. That's how a good narration is done.
The underlying problem with Galadriel, and much else, is the showrunners' dualistic conception of Evil as a force in itself, in eternal strife with Good. This is also called Manicheanism and it was a Christian heresy. As Tom Shippey points out*, Tolkien wishes to portray the orthodox view, called Boethian, that evil is the absence of good. His repeated metaphor is the Shadow i.e. the absence of light. E.g. in Unfinished Tales, History of Galadriel and Celeborn: "She did not perceive that a shadow of the same evil [Feanor's] had fallen on the minds of all the Noldor, and on her own." The shadow of AN evil, not Evil itself. It's a subtle distinction which they've entirely missed. To make it worse they contrived the encounter on the raft to dramatise the (imagined) personal element in her dynamic with Sauron. Thus McKay: “Very early in the writers’ room, we talked about how she and Sauron might have come into collision in an earlier life. We know he’s a deceiver and comes in disguise. If Galadriel were to bump into him in a Tolkienian chance meeting, that would be extremely unlucky for her and very lucky for him. How might he take advantage of that stroke of luck?” --Vulture 17 Oct 2022, via Bounding into Comics In Tolkien chance meetings generally turn out well, being the work of Providence; for example Aragorn with Eomer, Frodo with Faramir or Gandalf with Thorin (in The Quest of Erebor). Driving the plot from this one is therefore not "Tolkienian" and as it pans out, makes the heroine look extremely stupid. * "JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century"; Concepts of Evil
Beautifully said. I couldn't put into words why I was so against the depiction of evil in RoP. It really feels like they are spitting on Tolkiens idea of spirituality because it doesn't fit their worldview.
I must say "For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Seriously this argument makes about zero sense. So in Tolkien, all chance meetings are providential, are they? I don't think so, if you look at some of the bad coincidences that occur in the Silmarillion, with the story of Turin Turambar. Even in Lord of the Rings, the bad timing is often helping evil, such as Gandalf deciding to go and see Saruman before telling Frodo he should leave the Shire, and relying on Barleyman to send him a letter (which he forgets to). The argument about the same shadow of Feanor falling on all the Noldor is directly supported by the direction of the show. Galadriel shows the same arrogance and vengefulness as Feanor, and it leads to similar bad consequences. Its not stupidity however, as she is unaware Halbrand is Sauron.
@@cally77777 Actually these are quite good points. I'd forgotten that Gandalf goes to see Saruman because of a seemingly chance meeting with Radagast. The providential twist is that because it is Radagast, Gandalf is able to send out word to the Eagles who eventually rescue him. (Radagast was looking for him anyway, but Gandalf is shown to be fallible by reacting so hastily and not quizzing Radagast more about Saruman's doings). Absolutely, something of Feanor is grafted on to Galadriel, that's very clever. But Feanor's actions put him beyond redemption. And I do maintain, her half-hearted attempts to establish Halbrand's bona fides do leave her seeming incurious and well, stupid. But thanks for an interesting reply.
I think there's a lot that you're ignoring in the Galadriel is overpowered or a Mary Sue front. Issue is that her soldiers don't even seem like powerful warriors that are just less competent than her, they come off as completely untrained the way they stand around doing half asked guard poses until they get smacked away by the troll, or how the terrible choreography makes the Numenoreans seem absolutely useless. Then there's stuff like Gil Galad send her away because "she's so right that she WILL find Sauron" and in the last episode Elromd says "I'll never doubt you again" even though she hasn't proven anything- she found orcs led by a man who wasn't Sauron and even- without her knowing that Halbrand is Sauron- believably stated that he KILLED Sauron. Nothing happens and nobody proves anyone right or wrong, yet the show just treats her like she's right. If the show took her unlikable, impetulant nature and made her out as wrong, it would have started her at a place where she needs to develop and we'd care about her journey. I don't think that specifically was to push a political message- she's a Mary Sue because of bad writing. They thought they were developing her and so treated her developments as right, but no developments happened and she wasn't right about anything by the shows logic.
Even if your protagonist only looks superior, because everyone around the protag is dumb, doesn't make the protag less of a Mary Sue. The relative gap between the protag and others is, what makes this Galadriel a Mary Sue. And also the lack of personal consequences. If the soldiers around her were shown to be competent, she would just have been shown as hyper-competent and even more badass. Nothing is gained, unless you change the way she interacts with her world. I agree with the rest of your comment. She desperately needed an arc to make her an understandable and likable character.
@@Shabazza84 I think the issue stems to the fact that nothing is actually accomplished without her, as in she's the sole problem solver. The thing with the troll, her men were entirely useless until she got involved. It's not a matter of appearing above her peers, it's that her peers are portrayed as either ignorant or weak, and momma Galadriel has to solve the issue. If they showed that her men were able to keep the troll at bay using teamwork, but can't get a killing blow on it, and she comes in and takes it out as it's overwhelmed, it shows her as the power house of the unit, she is their leader, she would be better and that is understandable. It's the issue when trying to make people look smart by dumbing everyone else around them, by making them others dumber, you don't have to actually make the smart person intelligent.
Numenor is mess in the show too. Elandil and the men of Numenor are .... meh. Gil-Galad lacked the angelic nature of a nameless elf in the Peter Jackson films. In their effort to magnify Galadriel, all of the other characters were done dirty.
When a writer's idea of a strong female character is being physically strong, angry all the time, and with no flaws other than the aspects that end up making her succeed (impetuousness, stubbornness, etc), that's an incredibly bad sign.
@@moonie9000 Yes, even without the deviations from lore, Galadriel is an all to common "strong and independent" femake character who is utterly unlikable. Many writers in Hollywood can't write truly strong female characters as they feel compelled to remove all weakness and thus all humanity from those characters. Luke Skywalker was a far better character than Ray in Star Wars, and Tolkien's Galadrial was far better than Amazon's.
Accurate to rate “what it is” and “what it could have been” . I’m stuck on the “what it could have been” mindset. I was just so excited for this show from 2019 to Jan 2022. My expectations burst in Feb 2022 when the Vanity Fair interview was published and we learned about the rights purchased. I’m still disappointed.
“Many of these shots look like beautiful paintings” is 100% true in both good ways and bad. My main problem with them is they look like paintings with real people walking around in them because the cgi is super jarring most of the time. The total lack of set props on a good chunk of them make it painfully obvious that it’s all fake.
Cgi is awful, i hate it in most things, it can be good used a little bit in the correct way but i wish practical effects came back and the days of sitting there saying" oh wow that was amazing, i wonder how they did that" i miss those days of wonder.
I don’t agree. I like it. I grew up reading The Hobbit and LOTR. The movies mean a lot to me. It wasn’t perfect but I’m invested. I think a lot of fans are using Tolkien’s work to justify their personal biases.
@@aj7952 no the show sucks independent of tolkien. I wouldn't care how much lore they violated if the show was any good. The plot is so riddled with inconsistencies and implausibilities that nobody with a working brain can stand it.
@@aj7952 I do believe that as the audience of a TV show, people are completely entitled to their personal biases, since the measure of success for such piece of entertainment is its ability to engage the audience and turn bias into acceptance. If you're invested, that only speaks of your personal standards, and standards come in a very wide range. LotR RoP certainly managed to never even come close to the lowest level of standards of the majority of the viewers and trying to put the blame on the audience for it is a stupidly backward thinking.
The show makes a lot more sense when you realize that Galadriel is the villain, a genocidal monster bent on eradicating all those she considers "lesser races", while Adar is the martyr to the cause of the hunted orcs, and Halbrand/Sauron takes up the torch at the end. It's a truly groundbreaking show, in which the directors subvert our expectations of entertainment, dialogue, characterization, physics, basic logic and any tenuous connection to the old lore. Real film buffs will recognize the signs however. Galadriel robs her brother's grave, has spent thousands of years exterminating dumb creatures that no more remember the war in which her brother died than any chimpanzee today remembers the fall of Carthage. She is openly racist, genocidal, vicious. It is she who pushes Sauron to take up his mantle, in a bit of foreshadowing that will see her hatred and evil turned against itself in the end. And then she rejects his offer of an inter-racial partnership as a path to peace between their respective peoples, when she herself practically forced Halbrand to return to lead that land. Halbrand was always the fall guy, and once Galadriel has maneuvered him into associating with the orcs, she can turn her murderous anger on him as well.
I know from certain who individuals who have connections to the show that it was a knightmare behind the scenes. people were fired left and right, writers couldn't agree what story they wanted to tell, the show was originally about a young Aragorn, some wanted to adapt the Silmarillion but didn't have the adaption rights to the book, the Tolkien estate giving them a long list of things they could and couldn't do on the show such as referencing the movies (even though the showrunners wanted to connect ROP to the movies) writers being fired because they wanted to insert more woke elemets into the show and was met with disapproval, a Tolkien scholar being fired, COVID19 impacting everything, the originally being 10 episodes but somewhere being changed to 8 instead, Jeff Bezos allegedly visiting the set and was furious on what he saw and demanded changes to be made in the middle of shooting. All in all, this show was produced with everyone's hands tied behind their backs, not really knowing what they wanted to do and the clock was ticking, and the best they could come up with was fan fiction.
This is the dumbest, most hilariously amazing lie I’ve ever seen attempted in UA-cam comments. It’s a mish-mash of various rumors and some facts reported about the production, as well as flat out moron fanfic about “wokeness”. I applaud you. I mean it’s obvious to anybody who could form a coherent thought that it’s bullshit, but dude- you’ve got some stones to write this whole thing out and think everyone will believe you.
That’s exactly what one friend of mine told me. She is working on sets (not the ROP) but when a show looks like a mess, that is usually exactly how it is bts as well, it always shows on screen.
@@jmack8767 It's far more than a couple. Aside from Disa and Arondir, Tar-Miriel is black (despite being described as "fairer than ivory" in the books, and despite her father still being white in the show). The Harfoots have Sadoc, Marigold and a couple of others. Theo is dark-skinned (Indonesian-descent), clearly a different race to his mother (Iranian). The crowds are multiracial even in places that are supposed to be isolated. It's not two, it's more like nine speaking characters, and numerous background characters. And it's not just the casting that makes it woke, it's the messages. Arondir the black elf getting called "knife-ears" and told to stop complaining about historical grievances, later getting lots of close-ups chained as a slave. Or every relationship being interracial, with Arondir being told it's forbidden. Or Ar-Pharazôn giving an anti-immigration speech about elves taking Numenorean jobs, like a Middle-Earth Trump. Or Galadriel unrealistically besting men in combat. Or the obsession with protagonists rejecting their cultural traditions (eg Nori, Galadriel, Arondir). Or when Elendil says “the past is dead. We either move forward or we die with it", it's like the writers are saying that to the fans.
I think you are missing the point. After a long slog of creators fighting for the right to tell the story they had in their hearts, the true reward will be their quest to find the right people to blame.
No, people call her a mary sue, because she threatens a queen, opening acts like she would attack or hurt them. Get thrown in jail, and then is rewarded what she still wanted. As for her fighting skill, you are right, but side character's who are like her should have the same skills or similar to her own. In short, even when she does wrong, she is still rewarded with what she wants and needs.
You make an interesting explanation for Galadriel's character. I could see the writers thinking that was going to be Galadriel's arc. My problem then is that they do a terrrible job at executing on their ideas : ~ 46:50 She is wrong about everything else and her reckless actions unwittingly reactivate Sauron 1) The character flaw is not clearly identified as she doesn't suffer because of it. She is shown as reckless but the universe reacts to it half-heartedly, every time she is rewarded for her flaw. The audience then doesn't conclude that her recklessness is a character flaw that she needs to overcome, but that she is a Mary Sue for whom the universe's logic bends. a. When her troops complain after climbing that cliff, they still follow her into danger to serve as contrast for her greatness in comparison for their incompetence. They even said she was disobeying Gil-Galad's orders in pursuing that mission for that long. What if she was left all alone ? Would she carry on ? b. Gil-Galad sends her away. We have a dialogue that's supposed to convey that she is dangerous. It's not "she cannot command armies anymore, she risked precious lives for her capricious revenge, she cannot be trusted because her judgement is obscured by her grief". It's "she too dark". Can we cause and consequences please ? Then, in practice her "punishment" bears little consequences : she's supposed to go to Valinor and be away from the Middle-Earth affairs. She jumps off the boat, which should be to her death, and gets saved again and again by contrivances. Every poor decision she makes leads to some contrivance saving her and in the end she was right all along. c. She acts like a spoiled karen in Numenor in front of the effective ruler of the land. Yes sure they do forbid her to leave the palace (she escapes), mission Elendil to survey her (she befriends him), send her in jail (she escapes). In the end, Numenor goes to war against an unknown threat, in an unknown land, to fight an unknown army, with weird logistics, through a weird deus ex machina. 2) Since she doesn't suffer because of her flaw, there is no transformation. a. Was her being a genocidal sadist when talking to Adar supposed to be her lowest point (the abyss, death and rebirth from the hero's journey) ? Are we supposed to think that a dying Adar saying she's mean has enough impact on her to make her change ? If it had haunted her during several episodes, making her have nighmares, making her second guessing herself for several important decisions, then maybe, but there is nothing but her usual anger. b. Her talking to Theo is supposed to show her changed ? She's still walking in this apocalyptic scene and not caring about anyone or anything except Theo maybe. There are just these few lines of dialogue, still hard to understand for the audience. If she said something like "I thought like you Theo, but when Adar showed me I was bad, then I realized I was on the wrong path this whole time" then maybe we'd understand ok there is a character change because of this event. c. In episode 8 did she change ? She doesn't seem compassionate, she showed no remorse. She interacted with Elrond, there was plenty of opportunities to show that she had changed. If anything she gives orders (if they meet Halbrand they should not interact with him without an explanation, they should make 3 rings instead of 2). Worse than that it's Elrond that shows remorse and apologises : she was right all along, they should have listened to her... PS : 48:34 Being a Mary Sue is not about being hyper-competent it's about the decisions the characters make and how that impacts the world. Alright I can agree with your definition. You can spot a Mary Sue when the rules of the world are bending to help the character. Alright she does reactivate Sauron. But look at how many things turn out perfectly : Halbrand saving her, Elendil saving her, her findind the explanation for the Sauron sign, her convincing Numenor, them arriving at the perfect time in the Southlands, them surviving a volcano explosion. And in all of that, she suffers nothing of importance, she gets to where she wanted to be : she finds Sauron and confronts him. In this series alone, Elrond and Prince Durin have more relevant obstacles.
Or avoid all of this storm (if it wasn’t deliberate as it’s proven to be each passing day and week and month) by presenting him as bloody Annatar like it’s well described in the books and have her see right through him right away whilst he could never ever ever ever read her mind in turn “the door remains closed” he pretended to be an elf from Valinor. Emissary Of The Valar. The Giver Of Gifts, faking being a student of Aulë and she was too among many others as not many elves get the chance to study under the Valar directly etc. she sussed him out long ago but this was the key where she questioned him graciously about not recognizing him and left his company just as graciously as she remembered all she worked with under the Valar’s tutelage so she instantly gleaned that it was a big red flag. And Elrond and Gil Galad had enough of shinty objects thanks to the silmaril saga and Celebrimbor took a whole but he was the one who fell for it but he redeemed himself and later died for it. Though he was a student of Aulë like Curumo(Saruman) but as Maiar spirits.
“Rings of Power’s greatest crime is that it is boring.” That sums it all up so nicely. Even ignoring the botched marketing and attacking the fans, the biggest sin is that they somehow made Middle Earth feel boring and small.
Also, Galadrial isn't a Mary Sue because she's always right, but because she's universally loved by other characters despite being wrong much of the time.
And she has the worst plot amour I've ever seen. It's not unusual in story telling, but NO ONE should be able to survive the eruption on Mount Doom, at least not without being crippled for life. She is also a Mary Sue because she learns nothing from her mistakes, and makes no changes in her behaviors. No character development, since she was a strong woman with a righteous cause that justifies all behaviors since she was a young child.
Universally loved? By whom, exactly? Elrond yes. Elendil ... until she led an expedition that apparently killed his son. Halbrand ...well he's the Dark Lord, so one should be careful. Theo is a star-struck kid who knows very little. And Miriel is not really a friend, just a convenient ally. Pretty much everyone else looks at her with doubt (as Hal/Sauron says) or dislike. The idea that she's a Mary Sue is typical of the thoughtlessness of the typical comments on youtube at the moment. Basically people just jump on that bandwagon because they see so many more people on it. But quite a few people actually liked the show. They would say that Galadriel is not immediately likable, does not easily make friends and is causing all kinds of intentional and unintentional problems/disasters. That is the complete opposite of a Mary Sue. She may be considered an anti-hero, but there are plenty of those in very good films and literature.
My original issue was that they were making a supposedly 'Middle-Earth' story that straight up irreversibly SHREDDED Tolkien's canon and original story. And then STILL expected the Tolkien fans to accept it. But I was unprepared for just how bad the series actually was. They COULD have made a more faithful adaptation. The 'not enough source material' excuse is BS. They just wanted an (Amazon)Galadriel x Sauron 'romance' even if they had to completely destroy the lore to make it happen.
Even if they didn’t have the rights to some characters, they shouldn’t have set it in a time where those characters play crucial roles. If you don’t have the rights to represent the source material, then do your own thing. Slapping a lotr label on the bullshit fanfic you thought up is, at best, false advertising. Who is this show even for? There are so many scenes where you’d have to be a fan to sorta “enjoy” it, while they completely butcher Tolkien’s well-known original lore. Did they expect fans to want a show that was completely different from the world that it’s supposedly based on? I shouldn’t have to ask myself if Galadriel might fuck Sauron.
You are actually too kind to this show. It fails by just about every conceivable metric. Poor writing, ridiculous dialogue, weak acting, bad directing. The worst thing I can say about it is that it’s simply vacuous!
The thing that upsets me most is the blatant milking of older, succesfull franchises. It is so obvious that these shows were not made because the producers cared about the core material and wanted to create a genuinely good experience for their viewers, they just want to cash in on the franchises success. They don't care about the world they bought the rights to, they don't think about how their new characters / their actions affect this world with its established rules and limitations, they don't even care about the very characters they created themselves! All they care about is "hey look big, loud and good looking action sequence, now give us your money!", everything else is surface level at best and completely immersion breaking at worst. Rings of Power is just the most recent example of this, but they are not alone - just take a look at Disneys attempt of cashing in on the Star Wars franchise if you don't believe me. If you want to make your own fantasy show, go make your own fantasy show. But do NOT slap the name of a bigger franchise that has very little to do with what you actually want on top of it afterwards. This is such a dumb marketing tactic as well, because it's an easy recipe for disaster: People who didn't like the core franchise the name of which you used won't watch it, because they don't like the franchise anyway, and the people who do like the core franchise will be disappointed, because of how out of character your new series is. Netflix's new Resident Evil show is a great example for this. These companies need to realize that when they buy the rights to a franchise like this, they also buy a bunch of limitations and restrictions that this franchise comes with that they HAVE to respect. And if they don't like that, then go make your own freaking franchise in which you can establish your own ruleset.
Mary Sues are terrible because they effectively have no room to grow and are often insufferable and insufferably doted on by other characters. That said, there are other types of, let's call them quasi Mary Sues: Galadriel reminds me of Korra from Legend of Korra; An overconfident bent who fucks up while never really seeming to learn anything while also having wins given to her because of massive pot armor so that she never actually has to learn to get any better. I'm curious to see if Galadriel ends up feeling bad about effectively turning Sauron to the dark side of the force 🤣"Frodo, only you can fix my fuck up; Sorry about the whole 'evil ring' thing..."
Mary Sues can work quite well, If the goal of the story isn't character growth/development/depth - so usually in various forms of comedy. Rings of Power isn't funny, but the writing is so bad, if someone told me they tried to make a comedy I'd have no reason to disbelieve them
This is the biggest problem I had with the story RoP came up with, and what it meant for the stories they're supposed to be a prequel of. How is it that Galadriel in later years is this fair, compassionate, wise and perceptive woman who was just waiting around for Frodo when she was the source of Sauron's eventual return to evil? Why would they even think this was a good idea? I mean, I actually know why... they wanted cheap drama. Which would have worked in a different story, but definitely not this one.
In Korra's defense she does get her shit rocked later because all she has is the brute strength and none of the spirit. Like she later goes through a ptsd story line and works to regain her ability to walk.
@@Ashbrash1998 Ehh... Even when she screwed up, she still learned absolutely no patience and continued to bulldoze her way through the show, doing whatever she felt like, and often being rewarded for it. But yeah, the ptsd was the closest she came to being a character.
I'll be honest I never envisioned Galadriel and Elrond being as close as they are in this show. I'm not saying they would be unfriendly towards each other but they're both leaders and I doubt they would ever have the time for casual events with each other and it's also a little weird to be so overly friendly towards your wife's mother and someone who is centuries older than you. I really think a better way to connect both Galadriel and Elrond is through Galadriel's daughter Celebrian. A romance arc with Elrond and Celebrían is a perfect opportunity to get a bunch of characters together. No 1 A wedding will happen at some point in the show (S1+) so the dwarves could possibly be introduced at that point along with whatever other OC's they throw in. No 2 It gives a reason for Elrond and Galadriel to meet frequently like Celebrían inviting him to meet the parents etc. It would also be a good plot point to go through especially with what happens in lore to Celebrían. You could build up their relationship and get people invested in them before it all goes wrong. She should be one big connection between Elrond and Galadriel. Celebrían and Celeborn not existing is also a huge plot hole as she's mother to Arwen and he's required to make Celebrían. They're both not some side character you can drop as they have huge and minor parts to play in middle earths timeline. I also think by switching Elrond to a more romance arc will give him the valid reasons he needs to fight Sauron and it would give Celebrimbor an actual plot point as he's the one who is known for being friendly towards Dwarves so switch ROP storyline Elrond with Celebrimbor and it's closer to what it should be. I also don't like Elrond in ROP as he literally breaks his word every single time he makes a promise. Oh hey Dwarf I won't tell anyone about his mithril. Literally hands it to Celebrimbor and admitting to Gil-galad he knows something about the mithril by saying he made a pact to keep a secret. I also think the whole southlands story-line could be scrapped and instead use that time to give more time to Numenor. As Numenor should be a huge focus during this point in the lore. It's the greatest human Civilisation to exist in lore and yet it's portrayed in this story as completely useless and weak. It's military is nothing but weak and pathetic in this show. They had to get Volunteers for an army. It doesn't have the fleet it should do. For gods sake the reason of the downfall is the attempt of a literal invasion on Valinor and if it all that attempt was sending 3 ships than I doubt the Valar would do anything but piss themselves laughing. They wouldn't bother sinking the Island as what's the point if all they could muster is 3 ships worth. Edit : There are so many things I would just remove out of this show that honestly I would just rewrite the whole thing as the story is way too contrived as it is. Also I'm pretty sure someone on UA-cam has shown the story ROP could have using the exact same material Amazon has the rights to.
Putting Celeborn and their daughter in the show would at least give more of a reason for her desperation to find Sauron as Galadriel doesn't want her daughter to live in a time of fear and despair.
The channel "council of the rings" just released on December 30, 2022 a video called "what the rings of power should have been." This amazing creator has made a video of a second age show consistent with the lore. It is not consistent with what Amazon had available. It is a stunning achievement including dialogue and artwork. And this is just episode one! He will be doing several more.
Even Galadriel. I never see her and think "elf" she just looks like any other human in the show, whereas Cate Blanchett's rendition practically screamed elf onscreen
@@megan6867 Exactly both of you. Exactly. And their long hair is reflection of their connection to the earth itself and our hair is an antenna of sorts for many electromagnetic energies moving about from and around one another. It's also a sign of wisdom and so forth. They cut the hair just like how natives hair was forced to be cut and the show only shows its elf because the only way we could tell is by the "ears". They also strung their own bows and so forth with their hair.
Even the ACTORS playing the Elves LOOK MORE ELVISH than you. If you're like, too depraved to bear the idea of black elves you could always move to France, I hear they might be coming under Nazi leadership soon.
I like your optimistic perspective and suggestion of what may have been intended for the series. However, they didn't produce even close to what you've given, so any harsh criticism or mauling of the series is well deserved.
I absolutely agree. This review baffled me. Galadriel was mis cast and insufferable. Theo and the other Southlands characters and story line was horrible, boring and useless. Geez the least they could have done is hire a tall actress that can act. It is a stretch to find any redeeming character in the entire show. I made it until that utterly cringe horse scene, the cringe was just too much.
This show is bad. Bad writing, bad costume design, illogical behavior from the protagonists, contrived pseudo-profound dialogue (rocks sink because they look down, really?), absurd logistics, and garbage morality.
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
It wouldn’t be so bad if the handed the reigns to someone who actually love and respects the stories and lore. Instead, we get an inexperienced crew who it seems doesn’t give a hoot about them managing things. This show really could have been so much more. Just like with Star Wars … I’m just so sick of seeing things that I love get crushed under disrespectful, corporatized greed. MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN STORIES TO WRECK
I’m part of the volcano crowd you mentioned. I think that was the breaking point for me tbh. Before that we had so many characters almost dying and like… I was like „HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE“ and the volcano blew and THEY STILL SURVIVED! I could have seen Galadriel live. An elf? Sure. But all the human characters??? That just pulled me out SO badly. I really really wanted to enjoy the show. I didn’t want to dislike it. I’m not a huge Tolkien buff and I had almost no expectations except for maybe „yay Galadriel“, but it was just plain old bad storytelling. :( And that does sadden me.
Would be easier to replicate if the writers knew more languages than English, more mythologies than [current year] ideologies, and actually understood something about morality, philosophy, spirituality, and just simple storytelling. The Hobbit (book) was remarkably simple, but still rich because of the world, mythology and lore. Any imitation has to at least handle those competently, which RoP writers cannot.
At this point in time id rather see the silmarlarrion with a caveat, stay true to Tolkiens vision. But, some writers think they can do better and therein lies the problem
The problem with Galadriel's hypercompetence is the fact that it's basis (the war, the hunt) is the exact same basis all of her subordinates have, and yet none of them display anything close to her level of competence. I can see the one rookie getting smashed by the troll, but her entire squad getting smashed, only for her to steamroll it solo? Makes the disparity in skill extremely questionable. If they wanted her backstory to explain her abilities, it should have applied to all of the characters who went through the exact same backstory.
Sadly that's an easy way to write "strong" characters. You don't have to create highly intelligent, smart and strong characters (because that needs smart writing and a smart writer), if you just make everyone around them stupid, mentally challenged and completely useless. Because it's incredibly hard for a really incompetent and stupid writer to write intelligent characters and story. But making someone mediocre and everyone else around retarded is easy. Seems to be big trend ... StarWars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek ... They all suffer from this.
I am a long-time Tolkien nerd(50+ years), and I have just recently watched the first episode of "Rings of Power". It wasn't awful, but it could have been SO much better. My feelings are that the show runners don't understand the source matterial.
Follow what Galadriel said, not what you ascribe to her. She is not bemoaning her lack of judgment or wrong choices. She is bemoaning the fact that her command, her friend and her king had such bad judgment that they didn't believe Her Judgment. The NPC thing is apologetics, but we'll ignore that. All the Elves are playing pretend that immortal Sauron somehow just 'went away' and ONLY Galadriel 'knew better'. In literally two paragraphs, we had 'orcs were everywhere' to 'and she spent hundreds of years and couldn't find a single orc.' This is terribly bad writing and the character is extraordinarily dislikable.
>she is younger She literally was marching from the Aman alongside Feanor, and was there throughout war with Morgoth at this point. She is already ancient and stayed behind in the Middle Earth because he wanted to rule her own kingdom.
It's such a missed opportunity to cast an older actor as calabrimbor and reduced his screen time in forging the rings. I feel the biggest flaw of the show (aside from making galadriel extremely unlikeable, even for normie female fans like myself) is the showrunners needing to cramp all the storylines in 1 season. What HotD did right was to narrow down and focus on one story at a time. Fans would have been much more invested in the series if the showrunners focus on, say, the elves storyline in the first season - their backstory in fighting morgoth, and their meeting with a disguised Sauron (it doesn't have to be anatar if they have no rights to it). They should spend more time in building friendships and working together amicably to forge the Rings. In the later seasons, they could each focus on other races on middle earth (like the numenoreans, the Southlanders, the blue wizards, the dwarfs and even far away races like the easterlings) as Sauron's motivation is slowly unveiled. They could also do some time jump in between to make it more lore-accurate. All these ends with the forging of the one ring and the eventual big battle we knew from lotr. I think that would have been epic.
At the end of the day, Tolkien was a genius. He was the ultimate nerd, he was a real writer, his work is not just a history of a fantasy world, it also deals with so many concepts and themes that exist in our world while never making the comparison so ham fisted that we roll our eyes. Evil is represented as the destruction of nature, evil is industry, slavery. Trees are good, birds are good, little Hobbits who love to sing and dance and live in harmony with nature are good. That is one theme. Leaving home to go to a foreign land, being afraid of the unknown, that's another theme. And there's the ability of the ring to corrupt everyone it encounters. Why? Because of the selfish desires that exist in all of us. This concept, the idea that unbridled selfishness can only lead to evil, this is so relatable. Everyone can understand this, we follow the story wondering if it's possible for the characters to turn away from their own selfish desires in order to bring an end to evil. We see them choose self sacrifice, we know that at any moment they could give up, but they choose to fight evil even when it might mean their own death. And at the end, surviving a terrible trial and coming home to find that you have been fundamentally changed by your experiences. The story takes place in a fantasy world but every beat of the story is realistic, based on themes and ideas that anyone can relate to. Are there any of these concepts in rings of power? Do we see the characters struggle to choose good over evil, do we see the characters sacrificing themselves for others? No. We see them fighting about bullshit that we barely understand because so little information is given to us, that at every turn we are confused about why people do what they do. Good and evil aren't present in this show, there is no honor, no nobility, no respect. It's a bad fantasy show and it has nothing to do with Tolkiens work.
Perfectly summarized. This show lacks the “magic” mostly because it doesn’t have the themes that have defined Tolkien’s works. Tolkien was shaped by violence, spirituality, and the mythical tales of “good vs evil” that have come to define the human condition. He’s a storyteller above all who sought out a world of polarizing beauty and destruction. It’s almost an exaggeration of our world- with unbridled, beautiful nature against fiery pits of slavery and death. While his themes can appear “simple,” he delved into the heart of these concepts through characters that we relate to in their struggle against the temptations of power. Even Gandalf, the inspiration for all, begs Frodo to not “tempt him” with the ring. In the rings of power, there is none of this. Characters don’t express true faults within themselves past merely lapses of judgement. They don’t express any of the themes present within the lotr world and never are given the time to even contemplate the magnitude of what they face. It’s action sequence to action sequence, with none of the buildup or consequences that come from things that happen between the action. Personally, I just choose to not consider any of this part of Tolkien’s universe. Maybe Amazon should hire people who actually read the damn books.
THE RINGS OF POWER is like an expensive series created by Uwe Boll. The whole season could be cut down to one episode and it would still be slow and boring. Lack of plot and a terribly bad story full of stupid illogical events, contradictory unlikable characters with no depth and terribly bad dialogue. When they got hold of Sauron's sword, no one checked that it was the sword of Sauron that was wrapped. There is a similar incident in Uwe Boll's BloodRayne.
I`m not a Tolkien fan (not saying I don`t like his works but I`m eastern european, we got our own goblins and dragons and vampires and so on) so i don`t really care that much about lore changes since I`ve never bothered reading the books. The problem is there`s no believable story... I mean come on, a bimbo washes up on Numenor`s shores and 3 days later she walks out with their best army units? Seriously? The sea monster doesn`t eat blondes? Or is it just elves it dislikes? The mad king can find moments of clarity to show Isildur`s slutty sister around but can`t be bothered to tell his own daughter everything he`s seen? Darkness awaits you in middle earth? That`s all you`ve got? Shared location apparently is a thing, long forgotten wars are remembered like they happened yesterday, elf guy stops a punch like he`s Bruce Lee but can`t climb a lame ditch? Don`t think I need to continue, pretty much everyone pointed this stuff out. My point is a lot of people, normies as some would call us, wouldn`t care about the lore changes but brother... make a f.cking effort when writing the damn story, will ya? Like, I know it`s magic and sh.it... but a little bit believable would go a long way...
@@scambammer6102 would have been a bit believable if they would've made an effort to show off her magical skills bu naaah, let's have a shemale Duncan mcleod
"For a race based on science like the Ñoldor, they're really speaking strange stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
While watching this show I hated Galadriel. Not because of her many "woman" moments, but because Galadriel as a Tolkien character was not a fumbling idiot at this time (if ever). I think a part of it is also the way this show handles the race of elves. The Peter Jackson movies treated them as ethereal and nearly flawless (very similar to descriptions by Tolkein). And Jackson even said that hiring even background elves for the movies was painful because he needed to find supermodel-esque people. So, not only to they not look like elves they are not written or act like elves. Orlando Bloom took an entire class on dancing and choreography to just get how elves moved. Let alone the awful way that elves talk. Elves screaming and shouting should be a hit to the script. It should be like when the quiet kid loses it. But they are indistinguishable from the humans. Basically my big problem with Galadriel and the elves in general is writing. They are written poorly and casted oddly. They may have spent the most money but took absolutely no time to actually understand really craft what they were making.
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Thanks much for a great synopsis my friend. I agree with a number of points you've made but disagree with a few as well (perfectly normal, that). The only point of contention I thought to broach, was that although indeed, some did consider Galadriel's portrayal as that of a Mary-Sue/Karen, the majority us were simply upset with the severe character assassination she received at the hands of people whom should have known better. By making the lead protagonist of the story a cold, bitter, obsessed, deranged psychopath, they effectively removed not only the attributes that Galadriel, (a student of Melian in fact!) possessed but damaged their own show, by giving us a lead that we have zero empathy for. If we cannot invest in the actions of the lead character and in fact grow to despise her actions, what hope do any of the other characters have? Considering they are all either "red-shirts" or incompetent anyway, I guess they don't matter. I despise this show. Not just for its incompetence but for the damage it has done to the impressions young viewers may form regarding Tolkien's works. This show is Anti-Tolkien in every sense.
Do note the many inconsistencies with the characters, who declare things one minute and contradict themselves a few scenes later (or in later episodes. See the bland Harfoot story arc, for starters). It's infuriating. It's as if the writers assumed the audience were unsophisticated rubes who wouldn't notice the flaws and would simply give their mistakes a pass. Likewise, it also seemed there were different teams of writers on board, who didn't communicate with each other about what they wrote or even a general run through to see if the pieces fit seamlessly. But this problem should fall on the heads of the showrunners, no? What a total misfire.
The Hardfoot were shown through long episodes the lengths to which they survive and are considered dangerous. But comes the time to face an enemy and they don't use nothing of all that sadistic training. All those minutes of television were useless.
The Hardfoot migration makes sense if you think of them as a nomad tribe moving from food source to food source as the seasons change. The depiction doesn't make that clear, but if you are aware of nomadic hunter gathers it does make sense. But like most of the show it's weakly imagined, badly written and poorly manifested. As to Galadriel, this character has nothing in common with the character Tolkien created. Key character traits of Galadriel were compassion and insight, the RoP Galadriel displays none of this. Galadriel, Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad and Elrond are all family; this is ignored. Galadriel may be the oldest, Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad are the children of her first cousins. She is literally older than the sun since she was born in the light of the two trees and was already a leader of the Noldor before the trees were poisoned. This makes her at the time of the RoP at least 2,500 years old, probably over 3,000. The immature revenge monster in RoP is not compatible with Tolkien. The writers seem to have chosen to ignore Tolkien's character in order to give themselves a lazy redemption arc to hang their story around.
One thing I see a lot of comments about is the writing of the show. It is terrible no doubt because it came from inexperienced showrunners. However another point that I must bring up is that they thought that they could write a better story than Tolkien, hence why they diss on Annatar. This shows that they do not understand parts of tolkiens works but they also have the ego to believe that they can write better than the father of modern fantasy.
I miss youthful and beautiful looking elves with high cheekbones and luxurious long hair. I was looking forward to watching female dwarves with beards interacting with their men curious to see what male dwarves think is an attractive female dwarf. Instead I get a short human looking woman what a disappointment. I could go on with my list of complaints but this is just too depressing.😮💨😔😑
I do appreciate seeing a more rational analysis of this show, because I am very heated about. I feel betrayed and heartbroken by it. What I despise the most is amazon attacking the fans for having valid criticism and not liking the show. I think those unjust attacks enraged the fans even more and made us want to tear it apart even more. I do still disagree with what you said about Galadriel not being a Mary Sue. I think she still is. Mary Sues can be flawed. What makes them a Mary Sue is that they are the center of the universe. They warp everything around them. The story disregards reality to suit their needs, and characters act out of character to lift them up. This was a good video.
Galadriel, who was 2,000 years old at the time of the show, should be mature, wise and compassionate. The showrunners could have made Galadriel a little less wise than in LOTR to allow for a character arc, but instead they hammed up her shortcomings to the point where a 2,000 year-old elf behaved much less maturely than the average thirty year-old. ROP seemed like Dynasty In Middle Earth, a daytime soap fantasy. Not sure how you can make a show boring with immortal elves, gifted dwarves, orcs, Sauron, wraiths and a troll, but the showrunners managed it. The dialogue and characterisation were occasionally surprisingly amateurish for such a production.
@@AlmostEthical The whole show is not the story at all and the characters are all off base. Not to mention they don’t even have the rights to any of these things so it’s not even able to be called an adaptation. It’s simply an abomination. But little did they know a sleeping giant was being awakened in the process of their attempt at desecrating Tolkien and attacking and humiliating the “fanbase”. She’s definitely really amazing in the books and I’ve seen hundreds of amazing artworks of her and other characters from the legendarium they could have used for her design but they didn’t even try. Thank Eru Illuvatar that the showrunners have been fired and replaced.
@@AlmostEthical you’ll love Nazgol’s video about her and ROP. You’ll be amazed. Her take and the way she goes about things is quite refreshing. Plus. She has a real feminine power that I definitely respect! ua-cam.com/video/tPCnm_d6oG4/v-deo.html this is a great link too!
This is the fairest review I have seen!!! I abhorred it, being a Tolkien fanatic. I think this show was made with greed, not love. But you made some good points that are worth thinking about.
You think the armor looks good? Galadriel's armor looks like a thin sheet of tin. The Numenorians' looks like pieces of rubber! As for Galadriel, they present her as still young and lacking wisdom and social skills, despite of THOUSANDS of years of life experience! She proclaims her crusade to find and destroy Sauron, yet, after hundreds of years of obsessively searching, she gives up her crusade immediately upon finding Sauron stands before her. No matter that he has beguiled all the Elves involved, no matter that he professes his desire to rule them all. She just lets him walk away. Her character is so muddled by bad writing that her motivations seem frivolous.
Honestly, I never was much of a buff into the lore, I never even finished reading Two towers, but i love the movies, so at first watch I was okay with the series, however after watching Tolkien Untagled and their series reimagining the series I feel robbed by amazon, the second age has so much potential that the showrunners threw away with the compression of the time scale, I actually feel robbed
Compared to when she is around 10,000 years old, why wouldn't it be accurate for her to be younger, more raw, and more prone to making mistakes when half that age?
@@SoSoKayla then someone’s missed the entire premise on how elves age and mature. How they work. How they function in a very well developed mythology. Watch videos by GirlNextGondor and The Red Book (start with his 40 min deep dive into mouth of Sauron) then her necromancy video. It’ll give you the essence of how Arda and Middle Earth actually work. Then watch CluelessFangirl who did. A great video with GirlNextGondor regarding the Vanyar the most mysterious elven clan ever who in many ways play huge roles in middle earths history in many ways and plays out even through the bloodlines. Plays all the way into why Eärendil is even listened to due to his Vanyar Heritage as they stick close knit to eachother and anyone that’s even got some of their blood in them and thankfully due to his half maiar elf wife who helped him out too the plea was fully was accepted! Please watch these and enjoy ❤️
All of the High Elves of the Noldor lived for more than a thousand years in Valinor. And yet they made similar terrible mistakes, and did evil things, which led to them being cursed by the Valar. Clearly age is one thing, and having and learning the right lessons from experience is another.
@@cally77777 mistakes yeah, but certainly not raw. Imagine all the experiences you have had in your life. Now imagine how many you'd have by the time you were 5000 years old. And you definitely couldn't be considered young
You are far too kind To Galadriel's Mary Sue claims. It's not the small details like making her a superior fighter to all the men, it's the big decisions which drive the plot forward despite her should've been dead a dozen times over: the jumping overboard and not drowning, the getting a Numenorian army after threats of murder, assaulting the king's guard and breaking into the king's chamber, the surviving a pyroclastic flow to the face, and much more. When a character can do video game stuff because she has maxed out her stats and has cheat codes enabled, then that's a Mary Sue
I'm sorry but the music isn't memorable at all, made me feel nothing. Also Durin, like the other characters, annoyed me with his emotional blackmail, everything on his terms, then shows his arseholeness by stealing the table. If someone stole his table he'd cry about it for years. I am Scottish and I find the accent from the Welsh actor forced and cringy. I also don't respect a character who allows himself to be manipulated by his wife to go against his own blood, he is a simp. Also Theo's "pretty cool sequence". He jumps into a well with barely any chance of escape, makes a noise, the orc hears it and he hides under the water. Before the orc is even far enough away he makes enough noise re emerging from the water to wake up a horde of elephants and nothing happens. Just awful.
I'd never seen the showrunners before this. A soft looking man with a very angry looking woman, both of whom look too young to have any real life experience. Figures!
Even before the show was coming out, I was overrun with thinkpieces and video essays on how Galadriel is a Mary Sue and a girlboss and that new 'overpowered female character who's never wrong' archetype that everyone loves to crap on these days. To me, Galadriel comes off as a stereotypical gritty cop who's so bent on catching the bad guy that she leaves behind friends, family and anything that isn't related to 'the case'. She's Vince Vaughn in The Cell or John Travolta in Face/Off. She's every chain smoking, alcoholic, red-eyed cop obsessively chasing after a criminal they have personal beef with. In nearly every scene, it looks like she's been told by the director to 'look intense' or 'you're simmering with rage, but need to not blow up at the person you're talking to!'. Which gets pretty old pretty fast, and is a spectacular waste of a good actress.
This show is hardly a lightning rod, it came and went largely unnoticed by the public. I watched almost 4 episodes of it, it was complete garbage. Terrible writing, bad acting and lousy direction. Completely forgettable.
If I were to be charitable, I'd say it could get away with a lot if it wasn't linked to Lord of the Rings in any way. A great deal of backlash came from them openly having no respect for the source material, and making very little attempt to stay within canonical lines. That was always going to annoy a proportion of the fan-base whom they were banking on for support. That's not to say it's a good series in isolation, but it would have had less to deal with as a completely original work.
Hey Silver! Wanted to take up your challenge on the leading elven characters and give you my quick thoughts for a "pitch". I would start the Elven storyline centered around the Capital of Lindon, making it a sort of "melting pot" created by the different Elven groups and cultures who survived the War of Wrath in the First Age. Of the leading Elven figures of the Second Age, we have a curious division between them. One group I will call the "Elders": Galadriel (Proud daughter of Finarfin and magically trained), Celeborn (A Lord of Doriath), and Cirdan the Shipwright (Oldest Elf alive). The second group I call the "Youngsters": High King Gil-Galad, Elrond (Half-elven and son of Earendil), and Celebrimbor (Grandson of Feanor and greatest smith alive). The main character of this storyline are going to be Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor. Gil-Galad is relatively young and green for an elven king, and is very hard put trying to keep unity among such esteemed figures in his court. His arc is learning to be a more assertive king who will one day co-lead the Last Alliance in the war against Sauron. Celebrimbor meanwhile is going to be the "apple of discord" among the Elves who, with his own ambitions, will lead to their division and fracturing. Certain members of his court (Celebrimbor and Galadriel) are interested in leaving Lindon as they are certain that there are no more enemies left in Middle Earth and they want to create realms of their own against Gil-Galad's wishes, advised by Celeborn and Cirdan who remember too well how vulnerable they are when divided. The biggest proponent of leaving for new lands is Celebrimbor (deliberately echoing how Feanor was the main voice of strife in Valinor). Celeborn meanwhile is privately courting Galadriel and Celeborn will eventually choose to leave Lindon together with Celebrimbor and Galadriel to the future site of Eregion. Meanwhile Elrond is more interested in studying lore and healing arts after the trauma he's witnessed during the First Age (the third kinslaying) and eschews any involvement in politics.
Thank you for explaining this so calmly and rationally. My feed has been inundated with vulgar rants about the show and insults make for a poor explanation.
I think something that better demonstrates how Galadriel is a mary sue is that she never learns from her mistakes. The few times she has consequences for her actions she magically gets what she wants later. She is denied an army at Numenor, and instead of learning how to properly ask for one, the queen gets a premonition that Numenor will fall should she not help Galadriel after which the queen agrees to her request. The times Galadriel reflects on what she does are also too little, too late. The only time we hear about Galadriel being broken by war is during a single conversation, nothing is done with that trait after the conversation ends. But the worse moment of Galadriel's story is how she handled Halbrand's reveal. Instead of telling Celebrimbor that Sauron is back and the rings could be dangerous, she hides the fact and tells him to make more rings? This came to me as the writers wanting to make the forging of the rings the last scene of the season, which is why Galadriel has to magically make decisions that even in her character make no sense.
But then the real Galadriel from the legendarium is opposite of the women and men hating rang of gurl powah - The Curse Of “TheMessage”. She was actually very well developed and became more and more beloved to him as his writings expanded and augmented one another into his past writings etc. growing unexpected branches and so forth.
While I think the scene between Galadriel and Sauron where they’re in Sauron’s mindscape is super cool, I feel like it takes away from her moment in LOTR when she refuses the ring when Frodo offers it to her. It’s just not as impactful if this is actually the second time that she’s been offered immense power (and specifically Sauron’s power) and makes the exact same decision both times.
Yeah buuuut she sussed him out long ago as ANNATAR and even then it took him 300 years to put a dent in Celebrimbor’s host and his Gwaith Î Mirdain (the guild of smiths he worked with and some he trained. Aside from his pal dwarf Narvi. (They together made the doors of Durin. (where the watcher in the water was in fellowship of the ring was.) Note too though that it took that long for him to even cause any trouble within that cultural heartbeat of an Elven society.
My biggest problem with Galadriel is that she is completely underpowered and that her character is terrible as a main focus of the show. She is supposed to be as close to a god as you can get without actually being one. Like how she is in LOTR, she is inhuman, supernatural, sublime, terrifying and beautiful. That makes for a terrible lead character because we don’t relate with that, she is a 5-25 thousand years old, she is a mystical supernatural being, to make her mundane is to take away what gives her character. To me she would work far better as a side character that we rarely see and if we see her she is doing something extraordinarily powerful or intimidating. It has always been a personal gripe that the elves are way to underpowered in the movies. Like how Legolas kills that giant elephant thing, that is supposed to be more in line with what elves are capable of. Same for the kings and warriors of the humans. They have fought Belrogs and Dragons the size of mountains in the past, how is that possible when they have trouble bashing swords with some npc orcs? Like elves and men fought against belrogs and dragons, that makes no sense with the strength dynamics in the movies. Gandalf is an actual god and his physical body was completely destroyed fighting one. Smaug would’ve completely destroyed any main character the way he is portrayed in the movies. And he was a tiny dragon compared to the one men and elves fought in the previous ages, Glaurung was like 10x bigger than Smaug and was killed by a man. That makes no sense in the movie universe because the hero warriors have trouble fighting dumb orcs. I don’t get why the movies tried to be so reserved with it, overpowered hero characters is what the fantasy genre is made for. All that stuff is easily explained by some magical item they are wearing or using, some magical sword that is made of “insert cool word” that can cut through any material and never gets dull, we already have mithril armor, a necklace that gives it wearer supernatural strength, this stuff isn’t exactly far out there are entire game industries centered around this concept, most of them partially/significantly inspired by the works of Tolkien.
I would like to say that when you talked about how the show looked at the beginning of the video you did get one thing wrong. I feel the clothing for most of the show was bland and looked bad liked the numenorean armor or pharazons bland outfits. I agree the Harfoots are useless and wish people would stop saying that the wizard is Gandalf, in no way is he even close to what Gandalf is. The Khazad-dum story-line was fine although it definitely could have been a lot better. I think the south Kand storyline was unneeded or more specifically it should have been about Adar and not some random elf and villagers. The Numenorean storyline is of course needed for the show. Galadriel you argue is not a Mary Sue and I will have to disagree. A Mary Sue has the plot bend to their wants and needs and I don’t think you can convince me that the plot was not always in favor of Galadriel and what she wanted.
why is rings of power so hated? its not due to them having to alter storylines due to licensing constraints, its not due to adding black elves, or female dwarves, there is a very simple reason. the writing is HORRIBLE, its not subpar, or a bit bad, it is disastrously bad, like they intentionally wrote it as badly as they could. the actors for many of the roles are totally not suitable or fitting, the actor playing galadrial is bad, she is incapable of emoting, or expressing mood, or feeling & it shows. they should have never chosen to make her a all powerful warrior, genius, & over all infallible being. On top of these mistakes, the actor playing galadrial is 4 feet tall, she is tiny, its ridiculous, like having gary coleman playing conan the barbarian. they shouldve treated the project with respect, & they didnt. they hired a pair of dunces to work on it, who hired a team of clown to write it, and that standard of work was passed down through the show
I think that, with the fall of quality of many pop culture icons now, the LOTR series always stood out as one that we could look back on with happy memories, untarnished by the tropes of modern media production. I think many people saw Rings of Power as a breach of that security, and hate the show because of it. I dont think this show is any worse than any other stuff that has come out recently, like recent marvel or star wars, star trek, terminator. I just think the fact that this "immunity" of tolkien's world from modern tropes and idealogoy being broken is what caused this show to become so hated beyond, for example, Thor: Love and thunder, even though i think that film was of a much lower quality than this. The fact that I'm even comparing something from middle earth to a marvel work shouldn't happen.
Yeah, it comes from the basic misunderstanding what Tolkien's Legendarium was suposed to be. It was never supposed to be post-modern style fantasy story. It was ulitmately a love-letter to the important texts of old. To Trojan war. To chivalric romances. To the "Epic of Gilgamesh". To the Bible. To the Platos telling about the Atlantis. While it was ultimately written from the modern perspective, it's love wasn't directed towards modern, but towards things that are fading away, because of modern. What they did was going directly against the work itself on a fundamental way.
Honestly, it's not the accuracy to the canon that bothers me, but to the themes. After a single episode, I was convinced that these writers would probably side with Fëanor simply because he was a viewpoint character.
Another thing is that the Elven race - 'learns' up towards 100 years old. I had thought that Galadriel was about 3500 years old at the time of the show - anyways - with basic teaching spanning 100 years, and 'further' teachings according to each elves' interest - can lasting longer/much longer - she should know better! For me also with Galadriel - the show is trying to shove her down our throats. For me I would have preferred that we see more of the High King Gil Galad and Celebrimbor. As for the Harfoots - I feel that the show makers thought that 'everyone loves Hobbits' lets throw a Hobbit storyline in and everyone will love it! That's the ticket! Again - trying to shove the Harfoots down our throats...
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff”. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Theoretically with 4 of the 5 seasons remaining, it is possible for the show to become something decent to watch. I just think the people at the helm (executives, show-runners, writers) lack the self awareness, humility, and ability to do so. If there is major overhaul in leadership and trustworthy people say season two is really good I may consider watch it somewhere other than Amazon Prime, but I doubt it. They took too much of my time with this crap already. Had they accepted the criticisms of the show with grace and not insulted and gaslit the people they were counting on to make their investment bear fruit, I’d be more charitable.
Galadriel is a Mary Sue in rings of power, not because she is a good fighter but for all the other reasons. Every time she seems to make a mistake it was the right mistake to make for her to get exactly what she wants. Everyone loves her, EVEN SAURAON LIKES HER. She is best at everything always and can not be thought nothing new, except for the one time with her brother who thought her she is the best, and everyone else is dogshit for sinking her magic paper water dragon ship.
Rings of Poop is an abomination. Horrid writing, stupid plot, dull uninteresting characters, abysmal dialogue and poor acting all on top of the fact that it is a mockery of Tolkien's stories. Yes, Rings of Poop is atrocious.
There is an insane amount of valid criticism that can reasonably be leveled against RoP, but the only that really matters - because it comes first, and if it's valid the rest becomes irrelevant - is that it absolutely RAPES the lore. RoP massacres and mutilates every single existing known character from the Tolkien universe, and it even manages to make whole peoples appear cruel, stupid and just plain small. Virtually everyone is evil except Sauron. It is a sign of the times and modern storywriting that the RoP showrunners genuinely don't see or recognize this. I understand they had to write around the copyright issues, but they were in no way compelled to change Galadriel into a diametrically opposed character, or Celebrimbor, or Elrond, or Gil-Galad, or... etc, etc. All the other criticisms leveled against the show are mostly valid as well, but they don't even matter much. RoP basically has nothing to do with Tolkien other than using the names of places and characters from the Tolkien legendarium. It is a complete shit show, and THAT is why it is so hated.
Just want to thank you for a review that isn't annoyingly misogynistic for no reason. I've been watching reviews for this show and it just bugs me how deep the vitriol for female characters goes. I get it, they're not great but some of these reviewers really love to let their incel side shine while talking about them. It just feels unnecessary and betrays a lot about where the reviewer is coming from. So truly, thank you for an approach that actually makes a point of not hating the women character for being women but for their flaws from a writing perspective.
Haven't seen your channel before, with over an hour of video I thought this would just be "a guy reacting" to the scenes of the show. But it was a great analysis with objective views (for the most part) on why the show does and does not work. You got yourself a subscriber, I even clicked on that like button REALLY hard (UA-cam algorithm can tell).
I'm a musician, and I find the score for RoP to be completely unmemorable. I can remember nearly every part of the score of the Peter Jackson movies which is vastly superior.
yeah, that was my biggest issue with the show. the music was subpar. All the nerds whining about how it wasn't faithful to the original (coming from someone who loves the original book), whatever. Give me good music Amazon!
Oh, I totally agree with your analysis of the Galadriel character - she *did* basically create the whole reappearance of the Sauron problem. I mean, sooner or later he probably would have come back to causing trouble on his own, but in point of fact he's presented as wanting to disengage from the world at the beginning of the show - to just quietly fade into some plain vanilla life on Numenor. And Galadriel TALKS HIM INTO picking up his old agenda again. That really IS the biggest foul-up one can imagine. All this said, I'll be honest - I'm shallow about this sort of thing, and she's just so nice looking that I can't help but like her.
They need to do a complete reboot for season two. Fire the showrunners and writers. Scrap everything that happened in season one as galadriel’s bad dream. And start fresh. With galadriel waking up from bad dream next to celeborn. The show season one was absolutely garbage!
Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy has shown that you CAN ADAPT the books written by Tolkien, but only if you do it whilst respecting the original literary works. And all ROP has shown is that the fandom will not tolerate butchering their beloved stories and worlds just for the sake of inserting modern agenda. And, for the record, the most badass gal in all of the Middle-Earth is still Eowyn, followed closely by Arwen (who wilfully gave up her immortality for love - that takes some serious cojones) and not the watered down woke version of Galadriel we saw in this joke of a show. Christ, she even took down an ogre all by herself in, like, 15-30 seconds, whereas the Fellowship (Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Boromir and Gandalf included) had to spend at least 5 minutes to topple one of these things AND STILL it almost managed to take out Frodo! Correct me if I'm wrong, but Galadriel in the books (Silmarillion included) and Peter Jackson's movies was more of a politician than a freakin' fighter with no leading competence whatsoever (insert the shots where the ROP Galadriel abandons her subordinates in the snowstorm for a certain death - the mark of a real leader FOR SURE). And that's only one of the characters in the show! And don't even get me started about Elrond, or the hobbits, or the dwarves or that peasant woman with a child for crying out loud!
I feel like I should've prefaced my rant with the fact that I'm not even the biggest fan of Tolkien's works. I've read LOTR and The Hobbit a couple of times, and barely trudged through Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin, but even I know that this show is nothing but a pile of garbage that tries to make as much money as possible off of the franchise by setting it in the Lord of the Rings' universe.
Pretty sure the problem wasn't that Galadriel was a good fighter, it was that everyone else was incompetent. A whole group of presumably elite elven warriors couldn't handle a troll that she killed in seconds... And that is just one example.
she wasn't a good fighter. Her fight scenes are laughable, and the actress needed therapy afterward. So did I.
@@scambammer6102 well.. The people behind the show intended to portray her as a good fighter, but they failed because of the choreography and the actress not practicing enough.
Classic Mary Sue
@@besseljm1 Mary Sue characters are actually better than Guyladriel
Another problem to add is that Galadriel is supposed to be the commanding officer of this group. She is the one responsible for their quality or lack thereof. Combining this with how she was willing to leave a troop behind on a snowstorm and there are some implications about her leadership skills. And the show tries to make her into someone to look up to.
Imagine making reservations a few years in advance, to eat at one of the best restaurants in the world, say, the French Laundry. You pay $900 for the tasting menu, and they serve you a microwave pizza, and half a cup of Top Ramen, and a quarter of a cold grilled cheese. The food would be bad in any setting, but it being served at a Michelin starred restaurant makes it extra insulting. The show is bad regardless, but pretending it's related to Tolkein insults both the author and the audience.
I love this comment! Very well said!
this sums it up nicely i would say. pretty accurate.
i click like button..me likey
the number one problem with this series is that the writing is terrible. I have never seen a tv series with such bad writing. this show makes the Power Rangers seem like Shakespeare. My theory is that someone wrote the scripts the night before it was due and didn't even check it for spelling. So as a normy who only knows the trilogy i hated it.
You clearly haven’t seen Batwoman.
Hyperbole. There are plenty of badly written shows, some of them are actually popular shows.
I'm with OP here, I know no show in the last 10 years that's as shitty in it's writing than ROP
@@aj7952 *"but it’s not bad."*
It is, though.
Elrond can't keep his word, forgets his friends and the first time he remembers his dwarven friend it's because he wants something.
Somehow, jumping of a ship in the middle of the ocean, literally thousands of miles away from the next shore, is a good decision.
A woman's previous hometown is destroyed, a town she knows well enough to remember people's houses and their names - but is she actually distressed about it? Not really.
The Elven race, universally known to have keen senses, somehow can be snuck upon by lumbering orcs or smaller orcs within caves.
Everyone is capable of teleportation, like two people who go on a trip that should take 2 weeks, but they don't even have a second set of clothes, a bottle of water or a mule for some supplies.
And let's not even get started on the idea of a _naval empire_ that can't afford to replace 2 destroyed ships for their five-ship-expeditionary-force ... Or the question how 100 men, dozens of horses and supplies for several weeks if not months should fit on ships so small in the first place.
Written "not so bad?" so that's why no one ever was surprised that Halbrand was Sauron, we knew it from the first scenes. There was no mystery about it, even if they tried to mystify it. And Not-Gandalf? Of course it's Gandalf, who else?
And I as I have no option to say anything in response to _"And before you accuse me of not being a “real fan”, I’ve read all the books at least three times. I’m also a creative writing teacher and published author!"_ that isn't a direct insult, I won't comment on it.
If you enjoyed ROP, good for you.
But don't make the mistake of thinking "I liked it" means it's actually good. It's not.
Agreed the writing sucks
My main issue with the show was that the male elves didn't look at all elvish. Not just the long hair, but the lack of long hair just made it obvious that the actors looked like regular people instead of supernaturally beautiful creatures.
Moreover, dwarven women were too beautiful in a traditional human understanding of female beauty. So not just a lack of beards, dwarven women ought to look masculine the way elven men look feminine.
The male elves look like Vulcans on shore leave - except Gil-Galad, whose costume is garishly tacky. The Laurel wreath on his head looks very uncomfortable. This may not sound polite, but none of the elves are ethereal-looking or -acting, or even conventionally attractive except Arondir.
@@dronesclubhighjinks Most of the male elves look like they just walked out of an 19th century tuberculosis ward.
Elrond's face... i just can't , hate to pick up on someone's look but... he look like he got a garage door slammed on his head when he was a child.
@@icewaterchrist yes, that is a very good description! They should be tall as well. Celebrimbor (especially) and Elrond are kind of weatherbeaten as well - in comparison to the Peter Jackson trilogy elves. I think PJ deliberately cast models (or model-looking people) for elf actors and elf extras. Dancers would be a great at playing elves because they have excellent posture and walk in a very elegant way unachievable by all of us non-dancers!
you should be happy they didnt made BALD ELFES ;D
As a decades long fan of Tolkien’s legendarium, I have difficulty applauding the Galadriel storyline. I just don’t want this characterization of a 2-5000 yr old Galadriel. So the show is not for me.
I also dislike the show’s portrayal of the Numenor culture. They made the culture look like a collection of ignoble and weak men. Hated the diminutive status given to Elendil.
The Books didn't do Galadriel the Great justice.
@@Wadzillia lol wut? the books invented the character.
@@scambammer6102 Yes, but only the genius minds at Amazon could could correct Tolkien's failure.
Notice how every single other soldier in Galadriel's group (all of which are probably thousands of years old with tonnes of training and experience) get their asses handed to them by the troll but she just takes in out instantly? She is definitely a mary-sue. A pyroclastic flow couldn't even singe her hair despite the fact that they are usually about 700 degrees.
Maybe you have difficulty applauding her storyline, because it is not? 🤷♂️
Galadriel is that person who, when she walks into the break room at work, causes everyone to remember they suddenly have to go do something.
Don't worry, she'll do all the office work, since the other coworkers have no talent or skills.
Galadriel wouldn’t be able to exist in a workplace because she’d threaten to kill someone over a mild inconvenience and get fired for it then get arrested for trespassing at the office and threatening to kill the boss who fired her
My problem with Halbrand / Sauron is that he is doing everything he can to NOT go back to the Southlands, to NOT be the Sauron that we see in the movies. I hate the "reluctant hero" archetype, but a "reluctant villain"? WTF???
They should have just bought the rights to the Annatar storyline.
@@Makkaru112 I don't think the problem was the storyline. They had plenty to work with, they are just some of the worst writers on the planet. I can't believe those hacks got a job writing anything above fanfic.
Well of course he doesn't want to go back yet. He's got to find the way to bind and dominate all the world first. Plus, now he wants to bang Galadriel, even though she tells him what a good friend he is, but he's such a "Nice Guy"!
@@rcslyman8929 He must be evil if he wants to bang Galadriel. Or desperate. I mean, she's cute, but what a bitch!
@@dienekes4364 To be fair, catch and release is a thing.
I can only recommend the channel Tolkien Untangled. He rewrote the entire series. He has given himself the same limits the showrunners had and if you watch the videos you hate the Rings of Power series even more. Even though he had the same limits and there are differences between his videos and the Simarallion, he has created a masterpiece.
It's biggest flaw isn't being boring. It's the contrived and idiotic writing. Also that it's boring.
They wouldn't need to do all this nonsense if they just bought the rights to the silmarillion and other books so as to just follow the source material. It's all there. And then involve Tom Shippey and others of his ilk who can help explain so much, as to better bring to life our world of Arda.
And insufferable. So cringe and boring and dumb.
I watched this and ignored House of Dragons for this. Then I watched the first episode of the other show and it told more and developed freshly introduced characters further than the Rings of Power did all season.
I do like slow story progression and in depth characters but this show didn't have that. It was slow without any purpose and that made it so insanely boring. A show can be low, but then it has to develop something during that time. ROP did none of that.
Man, I despise this show so much.
I was willing to forgive a lot (because I knew I would have to). But falling asleep several times in Ep2 and 3 just made it impossible to watch. Had a lot of fun with all the critics though.
Nawh, it actually IS as bad as they say. The first episode the heroine (villain?) jumped off a boat into the middle of the ocean and then dog-paddled around waiting for death. Yes, that's in the show. But the writers randomly put in a raft floating by with Sauron sitting on it. Yes, that's in the show.
Yeah but that's because of the force ... oh wait, wrong franchise.
@@LipziG3R no it fits you can use that no-one cares anymore. I like it, more creative than the writing team.
The reaction to this show is 10% the show itself and 90% the gaslighting coming from the showrunners up to and after the show was released. Every time they said "we followed the lore as much as humanly possible" and "we kept going back to the books", you know they were lying. They had to be. Nobody is that deluded.
not for me it isn't. I don't know or care what the showrunners or cast said. But the show is garbage.
@@scambammer6102 the show is crap, but the marketing of the show seemed determined to get fans to hate it months before it was released.
If the show was actually well written and good, no one would care what the showrunners were blabbing about.
Don't forget, anyone who thinks the show is shit is a racist.
I don't think they were allowed to be faithful to the books - some licencing issue. Hence the 2nd age which is poorly defined in the books and hence a blank slate for the series. Wish it was 1st age though
This version of Galadriel feels like she was rerolled from a Neutral good sorcerer to a Lawful evil Paladin with all her stats put into Str, Dex, and Con and all her points taken out of Int, Wis, and Char.
😅
Its scary how spoton this statement is
its Con not def
Just wait until she gets magic the instance she get's Nenya.
You're right, I was thinking in more of a video game standard than D&D for that stat.
Well, attacking and insulting their potential fan base certainly didn’t do them any favors.
LMAO, after all this - What fan base are you talking about? There's nobody.
@@VG-fk6nk I believe he was talking about fans of Tolkien... Who the show runners called racist and out of touch.
They literally had the "racist backlash" tweets and articles pre written and released the same day the non-white characters were introduced in posters and trailers.
@@johns1625 and funnily enough desa was probably one of the best characters in the show despite how insufferable the actress is.
@@matthewroig2262 Yes, and the actress that plays Desa famously lied over and over bragging about being the first female dwarf on screen lol. Meanwhile there is multiple female dwarfs in the hobbit movies, ones name is Dis I believe. Yet in almost every interview she kept repeating the same line, and even after the show came out.
17:00 Nori grabbing his ice arm and starting to question whether he's good or not is like putting your hand on a obviously hot stove and calling your mother evil for turning it on.
Also, it's not that Galadriel is "hyper competent", it's that she faces no real consequences from all her stupid decisions. She gets an army, she gets a ring of power... She should have been locked in a dungeon until the end of time after all the stupid things she did in court.
It's all moot because none of it even happened in any of the books. No poppy. No adar, no nori, no Bronwyn, and Aerondir was a name they yet again stolen from the legendarium and sprinkled a few very atrocious plagerisms not only from the trilogy movies, not just quotes either. Literal plagiarism for example from Cate Blanchettes Elizabeth with the whole Tempest in me BS.
Galadriel was the exact opposite of competent. Maybe except in hand to hand combat.
She should've drowned before ever getting close to the court.
The ultimate priveleged mary-sue with an uttery hateable personality to go with it, pretty much sums it up.
She is a worse leader and should´nt be in charge on an army.
My biggest problem with the show is by far the character of Galadriel.
Even ignoring that she’s nothing like Galadriel from lotr, she’s just a horrible protagonist. Here’s everything wrong with her:
- She’s extremely overpowered. Whether it be killing an troll single-handedly or outperforming every single person around her, it makes it feel like she has no room to grow and that there’s nothing that can even pose a threat to her.
- Her “diplomacy” throughout the show is either threats of violence or her completely dominating the conversation. It makes her come off as more of an villain that can’t be stopped if she just chose to hack up anyone who disagrees with her.
- Despite being “always right,” she is incredibly stupid. On multiple occasions she puts her trust into a person who is a sole survivor from the Southlands who committed SELF-ADMITTED atrocities that he refused to explain to her. Even if she somehow didn’t realize he could be Sauron, why even trust him at all? This is only one of many examples of her incompetence.
- Finally, the most glaring issue is her acting. Her emotional range seems to go from mild annoyance to pure rage with some glimmers of forced happiness. Her response to most emotional dialogue feels like pure indifference. She, again, acts more like a villain than the “warrior” the show paints her as.
I understand your defenses of her character, but there’s a thin line between flaws and pure incompetence. So many of her actions don’t only affect her, and her lack of care or empathy is so jarring for a character that we know as wise.
If she can fight like she’s thousands of years old, why does she act like a child?
Edit: Also, the dwarf women not having beards bothers me more than it probably should.
The lack of beard bothered me too.
Give us back bearded dwarves women!!
Free the Beards!!
This is all for the very simple reason that she is the villain. What is Sauron's evil? He exists and wants to live quietly, a thousand years after a military defeat? The scoundrel! Meanwhile she's been travelling the world murdering anything without pointy ears for millennia. She's all in on exterminating the orcs, which members of her own race created. And supposedly, because her brother died in a war a thousand years back. This is like a Morrocan going on a murder spree in Italy today because of the Carthaginian wars.
Oh, for heaven's sake, is this all you can conjure? Because they'd look bloody stupid with beards is why. As for Galadriel's character, its not at all far from how Tolkien portrays her in some versions of the story, at this stage of her life. She is proud, and self-willed and driven by the loss of her near-kin. This is not at all surprising, as Tolkien describes some elves as being extremely arrogant. For example, Feanor, his sons, Thranduil and Thingol (the latter got himself hacked up by dwarves, who were narked by his haughty behaviour). And they are all thousands of years old. The much calmer and wiser Galadriel we meet later has clearly gone through a change in character. But it is not years, but experiences that have changed her.
I don't think btw this would be so much of a problem for some people if Galadriel were a male character. The cocky, reckless type of hero is very familiar, and often gets a pass on that behaviour, if the audience feels there is more to them than just the cockiness. Imagine if Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel was playing the lead role.
As far as the acting goes, even this video shows the actress displaying quite a different range of emotions. Maybe its your opinion, but with respect to this show a lot of people seemed to have made up their mind even before seeing it.
@@cally77777 They wouldn’t look stupid with beards- it’s what makes them dwarves and not little people. It’s an easy detail that most people know about and that’s why it’s so egregious
As for Galadriel, what show did you watch? Her acting is awful, and while I think the writers had a lot to do with that, it still doesn’t help that her emotional range for 99% of the show is anger/condescension.
Going back to the writers, her character doesn’t make sense because she’s so one-sided. Even if they wanted to show development, how does it make sense that a 1000 year old elf (who’s already seen conflict) would resort to childish rage/violence for almost any issue? She comes off as psychotic and non-empathetic rather than “self-wiled”
You’re also defending her on the basis of the “lore,” when the show butchers the lore in every way. My complaints about her character are more general because I understand that the show basically is a spin-off of lotr more than an actual prequel. Who cares how “accurate” she is when none of her actions in the show are accurate to the lore? You haven’t even responded to most of what I’ve said and simply say “Tolkien described her sorta vaguely this way.”
Finally, I’m 100% positive that people would’ve hated this show if the main protagonist was a male. I know that because some of the most hated characters in the show are males- Elrond and Arondir. Elrond is also a blithering moron who’s only good scene, imo, is the emotional moment with the dwarves. Arondir could be played by an AI and I wouldn’t have known any different, and I even had to look up his name again because he’s that forgettable in this mess of a show.
Why do you assume that people don’t like this show because “Galadriel a girl?” People absolutely love her in lotr and she’s one of the most important characters in pushing the narrative forward. She’s nearly god-like in her wisdom, and even though she had to learn that, the show never shows her “outsmarting” any situation. There wasn’t a single moment where I thought “oh, she learned a lesson through this.” Instead, she just does dumb thing one after the other but never faces any consequences for it (her jumping off the boat comes to mind).
You can like the show if you want, but you can’t blame people for hating on it when it has such glaring problems. Certainly can’t say it’s because “people hate women.”
Edit: To add, if vin diesel or Bruce Willis was the main protagonist, I would’ve hated the show even more. So yeah, I guess they got that part right.
@@joshuagrabow2437 That’s honestly a good point. I almost feel bad for the actor playing her because of how badly the writers fucked up her character. She basically had to act her way into “fixing” the protagonist, while having to perform actions that make her the villain of the story.
It’s a nearly impossible task and god knows they didn’t give her enough time to prepare for it.
I don't think it's that galadriel is always right but she certainly doesn't suffer any meaningful consequences for being wrong, she doesnt agonise about her position, so when she does change her mind it rings hollow.
No she is not right, you forget that the sea is always right, I still cannot find anyone that knows why the sea is always right and what the hell has it got to do with anything
@@mistybehaviours Ulmo probably?
@@Ariaelyne I thought the image of the true Sauron in the water was Ulmo revealing the true identity of Sauron, the heir of his enemy Morgoth; but it was just Sauron. Ulmo doesn't seem to exist beyond the catchphase.
@@mistybehaviours but the sea brought blandlariel to Elindil
The problem is not if she's right or not, the problem is that she thinks she's always right.
Her knowledge of being dislike for everybody is not an admission of wrong doing from her part.
They managed to make Sauron the most likeable character in the show, and made Galadriel (an unreasonable, demagogic, manipulative and childish character), SOO unlike Jackson’s and Tolkien’s Galadriel it might as well be a different person.
Th
I'd need a 10,000 word essay to get through all the bad stuff in this ghastly mess of a show.
Why would you waste your time?
@@williamdalrymple3775 quite
Because the show is such a waste of time that it’s wastage has spread to how people spend their time in response to its existence.
why so many words?
i summarized it in a simple youtube comment.....
@@sabin97 I do like a good waffle though
Overall, I think this video almost perfectly summarises how I, as a Tolkien fan, feel about the show. However, I would like to point something out about Galadriel that I haven't seen a lot of people discussing. The showrunners have directly stated that they wanted Halbrand/Sauron to act as a foil for Galadriel, i.e., she is incredibly driven and pursues her goal with reckless determination, while he has more or less given up at the start of the story and it's her belief in him that spurs him back into action. In the final episode, Halbrand/Sauron directly states that he would probably have died out on the ocean if he hadn't run into Galadriel. Now, while this sounds like a cool concept/looks good on paper, it has some deep implications for the whole history of Middle-Earth that I'm amazed the showrunners and writers seem not to have thought through. Because what they're saying is... Sauron has admitted defeat at the beginning of the story. He was close to death and/or was actually genuinely considering going into retirement as a blacksmith in Númenor (you might say that was just pretend, but the showrunners have also directly stated that the choices Halbrand makes are in line with him being Sauron from the beginning). Which means that he no longer poses a threat at the start of the season. Galadriel's determination and belief in him as a leader is what makes him reconsider that, what makes him wish to regain his power and start anew. Which essentially means that every single person who dies, who suffers, who is corrupted by the Ring, who experiences loss and tragedy due to Sauron's actions for thousands and thousands of years to come will be partly Galadriel's fault. From the destruction of Númenor and the deaths of almost all its habitants, to the deaths of Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad, Elendil and thousands of others, to the thousands of years of warfare and devastation, to the torture of Galadriel's own daughter at the hands of orcs, to the kings of Men who become the Nazgul and the corruption and fall of their kingdoms, to the "burning of the Westfold and the children who lie dead there", to the corruption of Isildur, Gollum, Boromir... the list goes on and on and on, and Galadriel now carries at least part of the blame for all this suffering. And since she's still a powerful political leader up until the destruction of the One Ring, we know that she never takes full responsibility or has to face the consequences. Which means that everyone is either weirdly okay with her staying in power despite her essentially being the cause of the re-appearance of the Dark Lord or that she keeps this knowledge to herself, which would make her a morally reprehensible, powerhungry, manipulative despot. So while you can definitely have flawed heroes, to me, this is just not salvageable as a heroic character. No matter what she may or may not do to try to set it right in seasons to come, the showrunners have created a situation where every atrocity Sauron is responsible for from now until Frodo destroys the One Ring thousands of years from now is partly on Galadriel. Any hero arc they try to go for with her is going to be marred by this in my eyes. There's really no coming back from it.
I'm not a big Tolkien fan, and only knew of Galadriel's character from the movies. This is also exactly what truly bothered me about the show, and I feel like I don't see enough people talking about it either. To me, her character wasn't just written badly because she didn't receive consequences, etc... but MAINLY because it makes her culprit to the thousands of years of suffering that happens in Middle Earth. That's a big change in someone's character and history. It's like saying that Isildur's actions regarding the ring was something to shrug off.
I think the writers saw Tolkien's work as a launching pad for their own drama, and weren't concerned with whether or not it connected at all to the actual lore. Again, I'm not even a big Tolkien fan who read the books. I don't know much about the original stories, so I'm supposed to be their target demographic. But to me, it was atrocious.
I think such a background could work... if she was instrumental in ultimately defeating the evil she helped create. But we know she isn't. She's leading a bunch of isolationist elves, and leaves Middle Earth. There's no redemption. Nor is there really a fall. Which means there is no arc, one way or the other.
The Galadriel from the “books” is completely different from the one in this show. From Tolkien, we know Galadriel was from Aman. She walked, talked, and grew to full womanhood in Valinor, not necessarily maturity. Gil-Galad and Elrond should worship the ground she walks on. She is their elder, not subordinate. She was a student of Yavanna and Nienna, and later Melian. When a being who has fought Melkor / Morgoth, tells you that a minion of his, (Sauron,) who killed her brother Finrod, is not gone. You listen, you do not ignore. Compared to Galadriel, Gil-Galad and Elrond are puppies. Galadriel had personal contact with the Valar, but neither Gil-Galad nor Elrond has. The disrespect and gullibility this show attributes to Galadriel beggars belief. If the showrunners had created a second-age elf born, with the show’s Galadriel conviction that would be believable, calling her Galadriel II, would be an option. This is not.
@@brantregare wow, I was going to respond to some of the criticism here about how Galadriel has a growth journey and blah blah but you really put it into perspective and you're right - if Galadriel from RoP was ever like this, she would've been during the first age but I didn't consider all you pointed out - she did grow up in Valinor and fought against a freaking Valar demigod. Great context!
Considering the fact that she doesn’t tell Elrond or Celebrimbor who Halbrand is, just that he’s untrustworthy, at the end of the season I’m thinking she just quietly pretends that the return of Sauron isn’t her fault and nobody else finds out.
For me it has been 4 decades since my first reading of the Silmarillion, LOTR, Hobbit, Hurn's Son, etc. There have been several attempts to bring Tolkien's work to the big and small screens. Jackson took some liberties, but the intention and key themes of the books were preserved. Rings of Power has no interest in the world building, stories or characters created by the professor. Their focus is updating the material to suit modern notions and politics and ignoring the great storytelling of the original work. Failure...
And ironically Tolkien was deeply against allegory.
The storytelling of the original work wouldn't have even worked as a tv show anyway since the Second Age is extremely long periods of scheming followed by short moments of violence and 'visually exciting' plot. Just the Annatar plotline itself occurs over 500 years then Miriel and the downfall of Numenor nearly 1400 years later and over 2 centuries of time. Compared to the much shorter periods for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings a heavy amount of adaptation would have been needed even without the character changes in Galadriel (who was barely a character in the Second Age, so I'm not exactly angry they decided to make her into a broken soldier instead).
I haven't seen the show yet but I do remember the showrunners being open about having a political slant. Bad move. No one wants to hear that stuff anymore. If you have a message you think you're trying to convey you're better off letting the show do that itself. From what it seems like though, the execution wasn't there to begin with so perhaps it wouldn't have mattered.
Or you know what, maybe don't update revered and sacred material in the eyes of many, in the interest of making it 'better' it was already pretty great to begin with. Peter Jackson avoided this by making his films as close to Tolkiens vision as possible, with astounding success.
You are criticising the show for not conforming to your old-fashioned notions and politics. Failure ...
@@cally77777 Established worlds have established rules. If they aren't going to conform to tolkeins works, *Then why even "adapt" tolkeins' works?* your point seems to ignore that them ignoring the entirety of the lore and rules, negates the whole reason for even using tolkein.
Frodo was tiny and innocent so we feared for his character whenever danger approached. When he was stabbed, or the spider caught him, it showed that even he wasn’t completely safe from danger. Him being relatable, struggling and the bond he had with his friend’s made us root for him as the underdog. Galadriel is Overpowered and immature. There’s no point of rooting for her because we know she’s going to win. She’s never in any real danger. so it makes everything boring. It would’ve been more interesting if she was a villain honestly
I don't know, man; I kept wondering if her epic fucking stupidity was going to kill her, be it from drowning at sea, being butchered by the Numenoreans, or shredded by Sauron.
I've only watched the films, but true, Frodo never had plot armour. Nobody did (apart from Gandalf ... kind of). I didn't know whether all the protagonist would arrive in one piece.
Yeah, the LOTR Galadriel was mystic, beautiful but terrifying, warm and cold, stoic and supernatural, that is like the worst character as the lead.
I agree. Knowing the story from the books he obviously couldn't die, but his brushes with death were done so well that you legit feared for him. That's how a good narration is done.
The underlying problem with Galadriel, and much else, is the showrunners' dualistic conception of Evil as a force in itself, in eternal strife with Good. This is also called Manicheanism and it was a Christian heresy. As Tom Shippey points out*, Tolkien wishes to portray the orthodox view, called Boethian, that evil is the absence of good. His repeated metaphor is the Shadow i.e. the absence of light. E.g. in Unfinished Tales, History of Galadriel and Celeborn:
"She did not perceive that a shadow of the same evil [Feanor's] had fallen on the minds of all the Noldor, and on her own."
The shadow of AN evil, not Evil itself. It's a subtle distinction which they've entirely missed. To make it worse they contrived the encounter on the raft to dramatise the (imagined) personal element in her dynamic with Sauron. Thus McKay:
“Very early in the writers’ room, we talked about how she and Sauron might have come into collision in an earlier life. We know he’s a deceiver and comes in disguise. If Galadriel were to bump into him in a Tolkienian chance meeting, that would be extremely unlucky for her and very lucky for him. How might he take advantage of that stroke of luck?”
--Vulture 17 Oct 2022, via Bounding into Comics
In Tolkien chance meetings generally turn out well, being the work of Providence; for example Aragorn with Eomer, Frodo with Faramir or Gandalf with Thorin (in The Quest of Erebor). Driving the plot from this one is therefore not "Tolkienian" and as it pans out, makes the heroine look extremely stupid.
* "JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century"; Concepts of Evil
Beautifully said. I couldn't put into words why I was so against the depiction of evil in RoP. It really feels like they are spitting on Tolkiens idea of spirituality because it doesn't fit their worldview.
I must say "For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Seriously this argument makes about zero sense. So in Tolkien, all chance meetings are providential, are they? I don't think so, if you look at some of the bad coincidences that occur in the Silmarillion, with the story of Turin Turambar. Even in Lord of the Rings, the bad timing is often helping evil, such as Gandalf deciding to go and see Saruman before telling Frodo he should leave the Shire, and relying on Barleyman to send him a letter (which he forgets to).
The argument about the same shadow of Feanor falling on all the Noldor is directly supported by the direction of the show. Galadriel shows the same arrogance and vengefulness as Feanor, and it leads to similar bad consequences. Its not stupidity however, as she is unaware Halbrand is Sauron.
@@cally77777 Actually these are quite good points. I'd forgotten that Gandalf goes to see Saruman because of a seemingly chance meeting with Radagast. The providential twist is that because it is Radagast, Gandalf is able to send out word to the Eagles who eventually rescue him. (Radagast was looking for him anyway, but Gandalf is shown to be fallible by reacting so hastily and not quizzing Radagast more about Saruman's doings).
Absolutely, something of Feanor is grafted on to Galadriel, that's very clever. But Feanor's actions put him beyond redemption. And I do maintain, her half-hearted attempts to establish Halbrand's bona fides do leave her seeming incurious and well, stupid. But thanks for an interesting reply.
I think there's a lot that you're ignoring in the Galadriel is overpowered or a Mary Sue front. Issue is that her soldiers don't even seem like powerful warriors that are just less competent than her, they come off as completely untrained the way they stand around doing half asked guard poses until they get smacked away by the troll, or how the terrible choreography makes the Numenoreans seem absolutely useless. Then there's stuff like Gil Galad send her away because "she's so right that she WILL find Sauron" and in the last episode Elromd says "I'll never doubt you again" even though she hasn't proven anything- she found orcs led by a man who wasn't Sauron and even- without her knowing that Halbrand is Sauron- believably stated that he KILLED Sauron. Nothing happens and nobody proves anyone right or wrong, yet the show just treats her like she's right. If the show took her unlikable, impetulant nature and made her out as wrong, it would have started her at a place where she needs to develop and we'd care about her journey. I don't think that specifically was to push a political message- she's a Mary Sue because of bad writing. They thought they were developing her and so treated her developments as right, but no developments happened and she wasn't right about anything by the shows logic.
Even if your protagonist only looks superior, because everyone around the protag is dumb, doesn't make the protag less of a Mary Sue.
The relative gap between the protag and others is, what makes this Galadriel a Mary Sue. And also the lack of personal consequences.
If the soldiers around her were shown to be competent, she would just have been shown as hyper-competent and even more badass.
Nothing is gained, unless you change the way she interacts with her world.
I agree with the rest of your comment. She desperately needed an arc to make her an understandable and likable character.
@@Shabazza84 I think the issue stems to the fact that nothing is actually accomplished without her, as in she's the sole problem solver. The thing with the troll, her men were entirely useless until she got involved.
It's not a matter of appearing above her peers, it's that her peers are portrayed as either ignorant or weak, and momma Galadriel has to solve the issue.
If they showed that her men were able to keep the troll at bay using teamwork, but can't get a killing blow on it, and she comes in and takes it out as it's overwhelmed, it shows her as the power house of the unit, she is their leader, she would be better and that is understandable.
It's the issue when trying to make people look smart by dumbing everyone else around them, by making them others dumber, you don't have to actually make the smart person intelligent.
Numenor is mess in the show too. Elandil and the men of Numenor are .... meh. Gil-Galad lacked the angelic nature of a nameless elf in the Peter Jackson films. In their effort to magnify Galadriel, all of the other characters were done dirty.
When a writer's idea of a strong female character is being physically strong, angry all the time, and with no flaws other than the aspects that end up making her succeed (impetuousness, stubbornness, etc), that's an incredibly bad sign.
@@moonie9000 Yes, even without the deviations from lore, Galadriel is an all to common "strong and independent" femake character who is utterly unlikable. Many writers in Hollywood can't write truly strong female characters as they feel compelled to remove all weakness and thus all humanity from those characters.
Luke Skywalker was a far better character than Ray in Star Wars, and Tolkien's Galadrial was far better than Amazon's.
Accurate to rate “what it is”
and “what it could have been” .
I’m stuck on the “what it could have been” mindset. I was just so excited for this show from 2019 to Jan 2022. My expectations burst in Feb 2022 when the Vanity Fair interview was published and we learned about the rights purchased.
I’m still disappointed.
What it is: An absolute steaming pile of shit.
What it could have been: Not that.
Your mindset is fine, it's the show that's fucked. Never forget.
“Many of these shots look like beautiful paintings” is 100% true in both good ways and bad. My main problem with them is they look like paintings with real people walking around in them because the cgi is super jarring most of the time. The total lack of set props on a good chunk of them make it painfully obvious that it’s all fake.
The original LOTR trilogy didn't look fake because most of it was real.
RoP looks fake because most of it is fake.
Cgi is awful, i hate it in most things, it can be good used a little bit in the correct way but i wish practical effects came back and the days of sitting there saying" oh wow that was amazing, i wonder how they did that" i miss those days of wonder.
The show didnt fail at ''some people'', the majority of people watching it rejected it.
It had so much potential. Thats so sad.
I don’t agree. I like it. I grew up reading The Hobbit and LOTR. The movies mean a lot to me. It wasn’t perfect but I’m invested. I think a lot of fans are using Tolkien’s work to justify their personal biases.
@@aj7952 no the show sucks independent of tolkien. I wouldn't care how much lore they violated if the show was any good. The plot is so riddled with inconsistencies and implausibilities that nobody with a working brain can stand it.
@@aj7952 From basic storytelling, to pacing, to characterization, to internal consistency the ROP had SERIOUS issues.
@@aj7952 Eww
@@aj7952 I do believe that as the audience of a TV show, people are completely entitled to their personal biases, since the measure of success for such piece of entertainment is its ability to engage the audience and turn bias into acceptance. If you're invested, that only speaks of your personal standards, and standards come in a very wide range. LotR RoP certainly managed to never even come close to the lowest level of standards of the majority of the viewers and trying to put the blame on the audience for it is a stupidly backward thinking.
The show makes a lot more sense when you realize that Galadriel is the villain, a genocidal monster bent on eradicating all those she considers "lesser races", while Adar is the martyr to the cause of the hunted orcs, and Halbrand/Sauron takes up the torch at the end. It's a truly groundbreaking show, in which the directors subvert our expectations of entertainment, dialogue, characterization, physics, basic logic and any tenuous connection to the old lore. Real film buffs will recognize the signs however. Galadriel robs her brother's grave, has spent thousands of years exterminating dumb creatures that no more remember the war in which her brother died than any chimpanzee today remembers the fall of Carthage. She is openly racist, genocidal, vicious. It is she who pushes Sauron to take up his mantle, in a bit of foreshadowing that will see her hatred and evil turned against itself in the end. And then she rejects his offer of an inter-racial partnership as a path to peace between their respective peoples, when she herself practically forced Halbrand to return to lead that land. Halbrand was always the fall guy, and once Galadriel has maneuvered him into associating with the orcs, she can turn her murderous anger on him as well.
I know from certain who individuals who have connections to the show that it was a knightmare behind the scenes. people were fired left and right, writers couldn't agree what story they wanted to tell, the show was originally about a young Aragorn, some wanted to adapt the Silmarillion but didn't have the adaption rights to the book, the Tolkien estate giving them a long list of things they could and couldn't do on the show such as referencing the movies (even though the showrunners wanted to connect ROP to the movies) writers being fired because they wanted to insert more woke elemets into the show and was met with disapproval, a Tolkien scholar being fired, COVID19 impacting everything, the originally being 10 episodes but somewhere being changed to 8 instead, Jeff Bezos allegedly visiting the set and was furious on what he saw and demanded changes to be made in the middle of shooting. All in all, this show was produced with everyone's hands tied behind their backs, not really knowing what they wanted to do and the clock was ticking, and the best they could come up with was fan fiction.
This is the dumbest, most hilariously amazing lie I’ve ever seen attempted in UA-cam comments. It’s a mish-mash of various rumors and some facts reported about the production, as well as flat out moron fanfic about “wokeness”. I applaud you. I mean it’s obvious to anybody who could form a coherent thought that it’s bullshit, but dude- you’ve got some stones to write this whole thing out and think everyone will believe you.
That’s exactly what one friend of mine told me. She is working on sets (not the ROP) but when a show looks like a mess, that is usually exactly how it is bts as well, it always shows on screen.
@@jmack8767 It's far more than a couple. Aside from Disa and Arondir, Tar-Miriel is black (despite being described as "fairer than ivory" in the books, and despite her father still being white in the show). The Harfoots have Sadoc, Marigold and a couple of others. Theo is dark-skinned (Indonesian-descent), clearly a different race to his mother (Iranian). The crowds are multiracial even in places that are supposed to be isolated. It's not two, it's more like nine speaking characters, and numerous background characters.
And it's not just the casting that makes it woke, it's the messages. Arondir the black elf getting called "knife-ears" and told to stop complaining about historical grievances, later getting lots of close-ups chained as a slave. Or every relationship being interracial, with Arondir being told it's forbidden. Or Ar-Pharazôn giving an anti-immigration speech about elves taking Numenorean jobs, like a Middle-Earth Trump. Or Galadriel unrealistically besting men in combat. Or the obsession with protagonists rejecting their cultural traditions (eg Nori, Galadriel, Arondir). Or when Elendil says “the past is dead. We either move forward or we die with it", it's like the writers are saying that to the fans.
I think you are missing the point. After a long slog of creators fighting for the right to tell the story they had in their hearts, the true reward will be their quest to find the right people to blame.
@@kennethmacalpin7655 would you say you were more bothered with them changing the ethnicity of a lore character or changing the lore about mithril?
No, people call her a mary sue, because she threatens a queen, opening acts like she would attack or hurt them.
Get thrown in jail, and then is rewarded what she still wanted.
As for her fighting skill, you are right, but side character's who are like her should have the same skills or similar to her own.
In short, even when she does wrong, she is still rewarded with what she wants and needs.
You make an interesting explanation for Galadriel's character. I could see the writers thinking that was going to be Galadriel's arc.
My problem then is that they do a terrrible job at executing on their ideas :
~ 46:50 She is wrong about everything else and her reckless actions unwittingly reactivate Sauron
1) The character flaw is not clearly identified as she doesn't suffer because of it.
She is shown as reckless but the universe reacts to it half-heartedly, every time she is rewarded for her flaw. The audience then doesn't conclude that her recklessness is a character flaw that she needs to overcome, but that she is a Mary Sue for whom the universe's logic bends.
a. When her troops complain after climbing that cliff, they still follow her into danger to serve as contrast for her greatness in comparison for their incompetence. They even said she was disobeying Gil-Galad's orders in pursuing that mission for that long. What if she was left all alone ? Would she carry on ?
b. Gil-Galad sends her away. We have a dialogue that's supposed to convey that she is dangerous. It's not "she cannot command armies anymore, she risked precious lives for her capricious revenge, she cannot be trusted because her judgement is obscured by her grief". It's "she too dark". Can we cause and consequences please ?
Then, in practice her "punishment" bears little consequences : she's supposed to go to Valinor and be away from the Middle-Earth affairs. She jumps off the boat, which should be to her death, and gets saved again and again by contrivances. Every poor decision she makes leads to some contrivance saving her and in the end she was right all along.
c. She acts like a spoiled karen in Numenor in front of the effective ruler of the land. Yes sure they do forbid her to leave the palace (she escapes), mission Elendil to survey her (she befriends him), send her in jail (she escapes). In the end, Numenor goes to war against an unknown threat, in an unknown land, to fight an unknown army, with weird logistics, through a weird deus ex machina.
2) Since she doesn't suffer because of her flaw, there is no transformation.
a. Was her being a genocidal sadist when talking to Adar supposed to be her lowest point (the abyss, death and rebirth from the hero's journey) ?
Are we supposed to think that a dying Adar saying she's mean has enough impact on her to make her change ? If it had haunted her during several episodes, making her have nighmares, making her second guessing herself for several important decisions, then maybe, but there is nothing but her usual anger.
b. Her talking to Theo is supposed to show her changed ? She's still walking in this apocalyptic scene and not caring about anyone or anything except Theo maybe. There are just these few lines of dialogue, still hard to understand for the audience. If she said something like "I thought like you Theo, but when Adar showed me I was bad, then I realized I was on the wrong path this whole time" then maybe we'd understand ok there is a character change because of this event.
c. In episode 8 did she change ? She doesn't seem compassionate, she showed no remorse. She interacted with Elrond, there was plenty of opportunities to show that she had changed. If anything she gives orders (if they meet Halbrand they should not interact with him without an explanation, they should make 3 rings instead of 2). Worse than that it's Elrond that shows remorse and apologises : she was right all along, they should have listened to her...
PS : 48:34 Being a Mary Sue is not about being hyper-competent it's about the decisions the characters make and how that impacts the world.
Alright I can agree with your definition.
You can spot a Mary Sue when the rules of the world are bending to help the character. Alright she does reactivate Sauron. But look at how many things turn out perfectly : Halbrand saving her, Elendil saving her, her findind the explanation for the Sauron sign, her convincing Numenor, them arriving at the perfect time in the Southlands, them surviving a volcano explosion. And in all of that, she suffers nothing of importance, she gets to where she wanted to be : she finds Sauron and confronts him. In this series alone, Elrond and Prince Durin have more relevant obstacles.
Or avoid all of this storm (if it wasn’t deliberate as it’s proven to be each passing day and week and month) by presenting him as bloody Annatar like it’s well described in the books and have her see right through him right away whilst he could never ever ever ever read her mind in turn “the door remains closed” he pretended to be an elf from Valinor. Emissary Of The Valar. The Giver Of Gifts, faking being a student of Aulë and she was too among many others as not many elves get the chance to study under the Valar directly etc. she sussed him out long ago but this was the key where she questioned him graciously about not recognizing him and left his company just as graciously as she remembered all she worked with under the Valar’s tutelage so she instantly gleaned that it was a big red flag. And Elrond and Gil Galad had enough of shinty objects thanks to the silmaril saga and Celebrimbor took a whole but he was the one who fell for it but he redeemed himself and later died for it. Though he was a student of Aulë like Curumo(Saruman) but as Maiar spirits.
“Rings of Power’s greatest crime is that it is boring.” That sums it all up so nicely. Even ignoring the botched marketing and attacking the fans, the biggest sin is that they somehow made Middle Earth feel boring and small.
Also, Galadrial isn't a Mary Sue because she's always right, but because she's universally loved by other characters despite being wrong much of the time.
The real Galadriel us far better than this abomination. Again. They hate strong women who don't need to act like men.
And she has the worst plot amour I've ever seen. It's not unusual in story telling, but NO ONE should be able to survive the eruption on Mount Doom, at least not without being crippled for life.
She is also a Mary Sue because she learns nothing from her mistakes, and makes no changes in her behaviors. No character development, since she was a strong woman with a righteous cause that justifies all behaviors since she was a young child.
She took a Mount Doom to the face, barely an inconvenience!
Universally loved? By whom, exactly? Elrond yes. Elendil ... until she led an expedition that apparently killed his son. Halbrand ...well he's the Dark Lord, so one should be careful. Theo is a star-struck kid who knows very little. And Miriel is not really a friend, just a convenient ally. Pretty much everyone else looks at her with doubt (as Hal/Sauron says) or dislike.
The idea that she's a Mary Sue is typical of the thoughtlessness of the typical comments on youtube at the moment. Basically people just jump on that bandwagon because they see so many more people on it. But quite a few people actually liked the show. They would say that Galadriel is not immediately likable, does not easily make friends and is causing all kinds of intentional and unintentional problems/disasters. That is the complete opposite of a Mary Sue.
She may be considered an anti-hero, but there are plenty of those in very good films and literature.
This show is a perfect example of when writers think they're more clever than they are.
My original issue was that they were making a supposedly 'Middle-Earth' story that straight up irreversibly SHREDDED Tolkien's canon and original story.
And then STILL expected the Tolkien fans to accept it.
But I was unprepared for just how bad the series actually was.
They COULD have made a more faithful adaptation. The 'not enough source material' excuse is BS. They just wanted an (Amazon)Galadriel x Sauron 'romance' even if they had to completely destroy the lore to make it happen.
Even if they didn’t have the rights to some characters, they shouldn’t have set it in a time where those characters play crucial roles. If you don’t have the rights to represent the source material, then do your own thing. Slapping a lotr label on the bullshit fanfic you thought up is, at best, false advertising.
Who is this show even for? There are so many scenes where you’d have to be a fan to sorta “enjoy” it, while they completely butcher Tolkien’s well-known original lore. Did they expect fans to want a show that was completely different from the world that it’s supposedly based on?
I shouldn’t have to ask myself if Galadriel might fuck Sauron.
Galadriel is 5000 years old. To make her " young " and naive is the single dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Yep, she never was that anyway ever.
You are actually too kind to this show. It fails by just about every conceivable metric. Poor writing, ridiculous dialogue, weak acting, bad directing.
The worst thing I can say about it is that it’s simply vacuous!
The thing that upsets me most is the blatant milking of older, succesfull franchises.
It is so obvious that these shows were not made because the producers cared about the core material and wanted to create a genuinely good experience for their viewers, they just want to cash in on the franchises success. They don't care about the world they bought the rights to, they don't think about how their new characters / their actions affect this world with its established rules and limitations, they don't even care about the very characters they created themselves! All they care about is "hey look big, loud and good looking action sequence, now give us your money!", everything else is surface level at best and completely immersion breaking at worst.
Rings of Power is just the most recent example of this, but they are not alone - just take a look at Disneys attempt of cashing in on the Star Wars franchise if you don't believe me.
If you want to make your own fantasy show, go make your own fantasy show. But do NOT slap the name of a bigger franchise that has very little to do with what you actually want on top of it afterwards.
This is such a dumb marketing tactic as well, because it's an easy recipe for disaster: People who didn't like the core franchise the name of which you used won't watch it, because they don't like the franchise anyway, and the people who do like the core franchise will be disappointed, because of how out of character your new series is. Netflix's new Resident Evil show is a great example for this.
These companies need to realize that when they buy the rights to a franchise like this, they also buy a bunch of limitations and restrictions that this franchise comes with that they HAVE to respect. And if they don't like that, then go make your own freaking franchise in which you can establish your own ruleset.
Don't forget the flaying of Halo's story and characters in the TV show "adaptation" for that growing list of milking a big name...
@@Vince5754Pro its so depressing to think about, but you’re 100% right.
_sigh_
Mary Sues are terrible because they effectively have no room to grow and are often insufferable and insufferably doted on by other characters. That said, there are other types of, let's call them quasi Mary Sues: Galadriel reminds me of Korra from Legend of Korra; An overconfident bent who fucks up while never really seeming to learn anything while also having wins given to her because of massive pot armor so that she never actually has to learn to get any better. I'm curious to see if Galadriel ends up feeling bad about effectively turning Sauron to the dark side of the force 🤣"Frodo, only you can fix my fuck up; Sorry about the whole 'evil ring' thing..."
Mary Sues can work quite well, If the goal of the story isn't character growth/development/depth - so usually in various forms of comedy. Rings of Power isn't funny, but the writing is so bad, if someone told me they tried to make a comedy I'd have no reason to disbelieve them
This is the biggest problem I had with the story RoP came up with, and what it meant for the stories they're supposed to be a prequel of. How is it that Galadriel in later years is this fair, compassionate, wise and perceptive woman who was just waiting around for Frodo when she was the source of Sauron's eventual return to evil? Why would they even think this was a good idea? I mean, I actually know why... they wanted cheap drama. Which would have worked in a different story, but definitely not this one.
In Korra's defense she does get her shit rocked later because all she has is the brute strength and none of the spirit. Like she later goes through a ptsd story line and works to regain her ability to walk.
@@Ashbrash1998 Ehh... Even when she screwed up, she still learned absolutely no patience and continued to bulldoze her way through the show, doing whatever she felt like, and often being rewarded for it. But yeah, the ptsd was the closest she came to being a character.
I'll be honest I never envisioned Galadriel and Elrond being as close as they are in this show. I'm not saying they would be unfriendly towards each other but they're both leaders and I doubt they would ever have the time for casual events with each other and it's also a little weird to be so overly friendly towards your wife's mother and someone who is centuries older than you. I really think a better way to connect both Galadriel and Elrond is through Galadriel's daughter Celebrian. A romance arc with Elrond and Celebrían is a perfect opportunity to get a bunch of characters together. No 1 A wedding will happen at some point in the show (S1+) so the dwarves could possibly be introduced at that point along with whatever other OC's they throw in. No 2 It gives a reason for Elrond and Galadriel to meet frequently like Celebrían inviting him to meet the parents etc. It would also be a good plot point to go through especially with what happens in lore to Celebrían. You could build up their relationship and get people invested in them before it all goes wrong. She should be one big connection between Elrond and Galadriel. Celebrían and Celeborn not existing is also a huge plot hole as she's mother to Arwen and he's required to make Celebrían. They're both not some side character you can drop as they have huge and minor parts to play in middle earths timeline.
I also think by switching Elrond to a more romance arc will give him the valid reasons he needs to fight Sauron and it would give Celebrimbor an actual plot point as he's the one who is known for being friendly towards Dwarves so switch ROP storyline Elrond with Celebrimbor and it's closer to what it should be. I also don't like Elrond in ROP as he literally breaks his word every single time he makes a promise. Oh hey Dwarf I won't tell anyone about his mithril. Literally hands it to Celebrimbor and admitting to Gil-galad he knows something about the mithril by saying he made a pact to keep a secret.
I also think the whole southlands story-line could be scrapped and instead use that time to give more time to Numenor. As Numenor should be a huge focus during this point in the lore. It's the greatest human Civilisation to exist in lore and yet it's portrayed in this story as completely useless and weak. It's military is nothing but weak and pathetic in this show. They had to get Volunteers for an army. It doesn't have the fleet it should do. For gods sake the reason of the downfall is the attempt of a literal invasion on Valinor and if it all that attempt was sending 3 ships than I doubt the Valar would do anything but piss themselves laughing. They wouldn't bother sinking the Island as what's the point if all they could muster is 3 ships worth.
Edit : There are so many things I would just remove out of this show that honestly I would just rewrite the whole thing as the story is way too contrived as it is. Also I'm pretty sure someone on UA-cam has shown the story ROP could have using the exact same material Amazon has the rights to.
Putting Celeborn and their daughter in the show would at least give more of a reason for her desperation to find Sauron as Galadriel doesn't want her daughter to live in a time of fear and despair.
The channel "council of the rings" just released on December 30, 2022 a video called "what the rings of power should have been." This amazing creator has made a video of a second age show consistent with the lore. It is not consistent with what Amazon had available. It is a stunning achievement including dialogue and artwork. And this is just episode one! He will be doing several more.
THE ELVES DON'T LOOK LIKE ELVES
Even Galadriel. I never see her and think "elf" she just looks like any other human in the show, whereas Cate Blanchett's rendition practically screamed elf onscreen
@@megan6867 Exactly both of you. Exactly. And their long hair is reflection of their connection to the earth itself and our hair is an antenna of sorts for many electromagnetic energies moving about from and around one another. It's also a sign of wisdom and so forth. They cut the hair just like how natives hair was forced to be cut and the show only shows its elf because the only way we could tell is by the "ears". They also strung their own bows and so forth with their hair.
@@Makkaru112 Pretty sure her hair is were her name comes from too , i may be wrong though
1980's elves Lol.
Even the ACTORS playing the Elves LOOK MORE ELVISH than you. If you're like, too depraved to bear the idea of black elves you could always move to France, I hear they might be coming under Nazi leadership soon.
I like your optimistic perspective and suggestion of what may have been intended for the series. However, they didn't produce even close to what you've given, so any harsh criticism or mauling of the series is well deserved.
I absolutely agree. This review baffled me. Galadriel was mis cast and insufferable. Theo and the other Southlands characters and story line was horrible, boring and useless. Geez the least they could have done is hire a tall actress that can act. It is a stretch to find any redeeming character in the entire show. I made it until that utterly cringe horse scene, the cringe was just too much.
This show is bad. Bad writing, bad costume design, illogical behavior from the protagonists, contrived pseudo-profound dialogue (rocks sink because they look down, really?), absurd logistics, and garbage morality.
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
It wouldn’t be so bad if the handed the reigns to someone who actually love and respects the stories and lore.
Instead, we get an inexperienced crew who it seems doesn’t give a hoot about them managing things.
This show really could have been so much more.
Just like with Star Wars …
I’m just so sick of seeing things that I love get crushed under disrespectful, corporatized greed.
MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN STORIES TO WRECK
I’m part of the volcano crowd you mentioned. I think that was the breaking point for me tbh. Before that we had so many characters almost dying and like… I was like „HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE“ and the volcano blew and THEY STILL SURVIVED! I could have seen Galadriel live. An elf? Sure. But all the human characters??? That just pulled me out SO badly.
I really really wanted to enjoy the show. I didn’t want to dislike it. I’m not a huge Tolkien buff and I had almost no expectations except for maybe „yay Galadriel“, but it was just plain old bad storytelling. :( And that does sadden me.
This shows writing truling made me appreciate just how much we take Tokien's for granted. I'm not saying it's easy to replicate that either.
Would be easier to replicate if the writers knew more languages than English, more mythologies than [current year] ideologies, and actually understood something about morality, philosophy, spirituality, and just simple storytelling.
The Hobbit (book) was remarkably simple, but still rich because of the world, mythology and lore. Any imitation has to at least handle those competently, which RoP writers cannot.
At this point in time id rather see the silmarlarrion with a caveat, stay true to Tolkiens vision. But, some writers think they can do better and therein lies the problem
Silmarillion
The problem with Galadriel's hypercompetence is the fact that it's basis (the war, the hunt) is the exact same basis all of her subordinates have, and yet none of them display anything close to her level of competence. I can see the one rookie getting smashed by the troll, but her entire squad getting smashed, only for her to steamroll it solo? Makes the disparity in skill extremely questionable. If they wanted her backstory to explain her abilities, it should have applied to all of the characters who went through the exact same backstory.
Sadly that's an easy way to write "strong" characters. You don't have to create highly intelligent, smart and strong characters (because that needs smart writing and a smart writer), if you just make everyone around them stupid, mentally challenged and completely useless.
Because it's incredibly hard for a really incompetent and stupid writer to write intelligent characters and story. But making someone mediocre and everyone else around retarded is easy.
Seems to be big trend ... StarWars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek ... They all suffer from this.
I am a long-time Tolkien nerd(50+ years), and I have just recently watched the first episode of "Rings of Power". It wasn't awful, but it could have been SO much better. My feelings are that the show runners don't understand the source matterial.
Follow what Galadriel said, not what you ascribe to her. She is not bemoaning her lack of judgment or wrong choices. She is bemoaning the fact that her command, her friend and her king had such bad judgment that they didn't believe Her Judgment.
The NPC thing is apologetics, but we'll ignore that.
All the Elves are playing pretend that immortal Sauron somehow just 'went away' and ONLY Galadriel 'knew better'. In literally two paragraphs, we had 'orcs were everywhere' to 'and she spent hundreds of years and couldn't find a single orc.'
This is terribly bad writing and the character is extraordinarily dislikable.
>she is younger
She literally was marching from the Aman alongside Feanor, and was there throughout war with Morgoth at this point. She is already ancient and stayed behind in the Middle Earth because he wanted to rule her own kingdom.
It's such a missed opportunity to cast an older actor as calabrimbor and reduced his screen time in forging the rings.
I feel the biggest flaw of the show (aside from making galadriel extremely unlikeable, even for normie female fans like myself) is the showrunners needing to cramp all the storylines in 1 season. What HotD did right was to narrow down and focus on one story at a time.
Fans would have been much more invested in the series if the showrunners focus on, say, the elves storyline in the first season - their backstory in fighting morgoth, and their meeting with a disguised Sauron (it doesn't have to be anatar if they have no rights to it). They should spend more time in building friendships and working together amicably to forge the Rings.
In the later seasons, they could each focus on other races on middle earth (like the numenoreans, the Southlanders, the blue wizards, the dwarfs and even far away races like the easterlings) as Sauron's motivation is slowly unveiled.
They could also do some time jump in between to make it more lore-accurate. All these ends with the forging of the one ring and the eventual big battle we knew from lotr. I think that would have been epic.
At the end of the day, Tolkien was a genius. He was the ultimate nerd, he was a real writer, his work is not just a history of a fantasy world, it also deals with so many concepts and themes that exist in our world while never making the comparison so ham fisted that we roll our eyes. Evil is represented as the destruction of nature, evil is industry, slavery. Trees are good, birds are good, little Hobbits who love to sing and dance and live in harmony with nature are good. That is one theme. Leaving home to go to a foreign land, being afraid of the unknown, that's another theme. And there's the ability of the ring to corrupt everyone it encounters. Why? Because of the selfish desires that exist in all of us. This concept, the idea that unbridled selfishness can only lead to evil, this is so relatable. Everyone can understand this, we follow the story wondering if it's possible for the characters to turn away from their own selfish desires in order to bring an end to evil. We see them choose self sacrifice, we know that at any moment they could give up, but they choose to fight evil even when it might mean their own death. And at the end, surviving a terrible trial and coming home to find that you have been fundamentally changed by your experiences. The story takes place in a fantasy world but every beat of the story is realistic, based on themes and ideas that anyone can relate to. Are there any of these concepts in rings of power? Do we see the characters struggle to choose good over evil, do we see the characters sacrificing themselves for others? No. We see them fighting about bullshit that we barely understand because so little information is given to us, that at every turn we are confused about why people do what they do. Good and evil aren't present in this show, there is no honor, no nobility, no respect. It's a bad fantasy show and it has nothing to do with Tolkiens work.
Perfectly summarized. This show lacks the “magic” mostly because it doesn’t have the themes that have defined Tolkien’s works.
Tolkien was shaped by violence, spirituality, and the mythical tales of “good vs evil” that have come to define the human condition. He’s a storyteller above all who sought out a world of polarizing beauty and destruction. It’s almost an exaggeration of our world- with unbridled, beautiful nature against fiery pits of slavery and death.
While his themes can appear “simple,” he delved into the heart of these concepts through characters that we relate to in their struggle against the temptations of power. Even Gandalf, the inspiration for all, begs Frodo to not “tempt him” with the ring.
In the rings of power, there is none of this. Characters don’t express true faults within themselves past merely lapses of judgement. They don’t express any of the themes present within the lotr world and never are given the time to even contemplate the magnitude of what they face. It’s action sequence to action sequence, with none of the buildup or consequences that come from things that happen between the action.
Personally, I just choose to not consider any of this part of Tolkien’s universe. Maybe Amazon should hire people who actually read the damn books.
Tolkien basically took everything he hated about WWI and put it into a fantasy story.
THE RINGS OF POWER is like an expensive series created by Uwe Boll. The whole season could be cut down to one episode and it would still be slow and boring.
Lack of plot and a terribly bad story full of stupid illogical events, contradictory unlikable characters with no depth and terribly bad dialogue.
When they got hold of Sauron's sword, no one checked that it was the sword of Sauron that was wrapped. There is a similar incident in Uwe Boll's BloodRayne.
WTF is the sword anyway? They didn't need a "key" to open the dam. A lever could do it.
WAIT THAT GUY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HUGO WEAVING'S CHARACTER??!?
I know, right? I guess it makes sense; the awkward teenage version of a person we know (albeit a teenager who is like a thousand years old).
Laughs!
I`m not a Tolkien fan (not saying I don`t like his works but I`m eastern european, we got our own goblins and dragons and vampires and so on) so i don`t really care that much about lore changes since I`ve never bothered reading the books. The problem is there`s no believable story... I mean come on, a bimbo washes up on Numenor`s shores and 3 days later she walks out with their best army units? Seriously? The sea monster doesn`t eat blondes? Or is it just elves it dislikes? The mad king can find moments of clarity to show Isildur`s slutty sister around but can`t be bothered to tell his own daughter everything he`s seen? Darkness awaits you in middle earth? That`s all you`ve got? Shared location apparently is a thing, long forgotten wars are remembered like they happened yesterday, elf guy stops a punch like he`s Bruce Lee but can`t climb a lame ditch? Don`t think I need to continue, pretty much everyone pointed this stuff out. My point is a lot of people, normies as some would call us, wouldn`t care about the lore changes but brother... make a f.cking effort when writing the damn story, will ya? Like, I know it`s magic and sh.it... but a little bit believable would go a long way...
we literally saw galadriel engulfed in flames and the next scene she isn't even singed. WTF?
@@scambammer6102 would have been a bit believable if they would've made an effort to show off her magical skills bu naaah, let's have a shemale Duncan mcleod
ua-cam.com/video/5WlQp9NYSBQ/v-deo.html
"For a race based on science like the Ñoldor, they're really speaking strange stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
ua-cam.com/video/WPwsVK2YdXY/v-deo.html
While watching this show I hated Galadriel. Not because of her many "woman" moments, but because Galadriel as a Tolkien character was not a fumbling idiot at this time (if ever). I think a part of it is also the way this show handles the race of elves. The Peter Jackson movies treated them as ethereal and nearly flawless (very similar to descriptions by Tolkein). And Jackson even said that hiring even background elves for the movies was painful because he needed to find supermodel-esque people.
So, not only to they not look like elves they are not written or act like elves.
Orlando Bloom took an entire class on dancing and choreography to just get how elves moved. Let alone the awful way that elves talk. Elves screaming and shouting should be a hit to the script. It should be like when the quiet kid loses it. But they are indistinguishable from the humans.
Basically my big problem with Galadriel and the elves in general is writing. They are written poorly and casted oddly. They may have spent the most money but took absolutely no time to actually understand really craft what they were making.
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff." That's when I thumbed this. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Thanks much for a great synopsis my friend.
I agree with a number of points you've made but disagree with a few as well (perfectly normal, that).
The only point of contention I thought to broach, was that although indeed, some did consider Galadriel's portrayal as that of a Mary-Sue/Karen, the majority us were simply upset with the severe character assassination she received at the hands of people whom should have known better. By making the lead protagonist of the story a cold, bitter, obsessed, deranged psychopath, they effectively removed not only the attributes that Galadriel, (a student of Melian in fact!) possessed but damaged their own show, by giving us a lead that we have zero empathy for. If we cannot invest in the actions of the lead character and in fact grow to despise her actions, what hope do any of the other characters have? Considering they are all either "red-shirts" or incompetent anyway, I guess they don't matter.
I despise this show. Not just for its incompetence but for the damage it has done to the impressions young viewers may form regarding Tolkien's works. This show is Anti-Tolkien in every sense.
Do note the many inconsistencies with the characters, who declare things one minute and contradict themselves a few scenes later (or in later episodes. See the bland Harfoot story arc, for starters). It's infuriating. It's as if the writers assumed the audience were unsophisticated rubes who wouldn't notice the flaws and would simply give their mistakes a pass. Likewise, it also seemed there were different teams of writers on board, who didn't communicate with each other about what they wrote or even a general run through to see if the pieces fit seamlessly. But this problem should fall on the heads of the showrunners, no? What a total misfire.
The Hardfoot were shown through long episodes the lengths to which they survive and are considered dangerous. But comes the time to face an enemy and they don't use nothing of all that sadistic training. All those minutes of television were useless.
The Hardfoot migration makes sense if you think of them as a nomad tribe moving from food source to food source as the seasons change. The depiction doesn't make that clear, but if you are aware of nomadic hunter gathers it does make sense.
But like most of the show it's weakly imagined, badly written and poorly manifested.
As to Galadriel, this character has nothing in common with the character Tolkien created. Key character traits of Galadriel were compassion and insight, the RoP Galadriel displays none of this. Galadriel, Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad and Elrond are all family; this is ignored. Galadriel may be the oldest, Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad are the children of her first cousins. She is literally older than the sun since she was born in the light of the two trees and was already a leader of the Noldor before the trees were poisoned. This makes her at the time of the RoP at least 2,500 years old, probably over 3,000.
The immature revenge monster in RoP is not compatible with Tolkien. The writers seem to have chosen to ignore Tolkien's character in order to give themselves a lazy redemption arc to hang their story around.
One thing I see a lot of comments about is the writing of the show. It is terrible no doubt because it came from inexperienced showrunners. However another point that I must bring up is that they thought that they could write a better story than Tolkien, hence why they diss on Annatar. This shows that they do not understand parts of tolkiens works but they also have the ego to believe that they can write better than the father of modern fantasy.
I miss youthful and beautiful looking elves with high cheekbones and luxurious long hair. I was looking forward to watching female dwarves with beards interacting with their men curious to see what male dwarves think is an attractive female dwarf. Instead I get a short human looking woman what a disappointment. I could go on with my list of complaints but this is just too depressing.😮💨😔😑
Would have been cool to see female Dwarf's in the show
I do appreciate seeing a more rational analysis of this show, because I am very heated about. I feel betrayed and heartbroken by it. What I despise the most is amazon attacking the fans for having valid criticism and not liking the show. I think those unjust attacks enraged the fans even more and made us want to tear it apart even more.
I do still disagree with what you said about Galadriel not being a Mary Sue. I think she still is. Mary Sues can be flawed. What makes them a Mary Sue is that they are the center of the universe. They warp everything around them. The story disregards reality to suit their needs, and characters act out of character to lift them up.
This was a good video.
Galadriel, who was 2,000 years old at the time of the show, should be mature, wise and compassionate. The showrunners could have made Galadriel a little less wise than in LOTR to allow for a character arc, but instead they hammed up her shortcomings to the point where a 2,000 year-old elf behaved much less maturely than the average thirty year-old. ROP seemed like Dynasty In Middle Earth, a daytime soap fantasy. Not sure how you can make a show boring with immortal elves, gifted dwarves, orcs, Sauron, wraiths and a troll, but the showrunners managed it. The dialogue and characterisation were occasionally surprisingly amateurish for such a production.
5000
You got that right.
@@Makkaru112 Whatever, she was old enough to know better than to behave like a selfish brat.
@@AlmostEthical The whole show is not the story at all and the characters are all off base. Not to mention they don’t even have the rights to any of these things so it’s not even able to be called an adaptation. It’s simply an abomination. But little did they know a sleeping giant was being awakened in the process of their attempt at desecrating Tolkien and attacking and humiliating the “fanbase”. She’s definitely really amazing in the books and I’ve seen hundreds of amazing artworks of her and other characters from the legendarium they could have used for her design but they didn’t even try. Thank Eru Illuvatar that the showrunners have been fired and replaced.
@@AlmostEthical you’ll love Nazgol’s video about her and ROP. You’ll be amazed. Her take and the way she goes about things is quite refreshing. Plus. She has a real feminine power that I definitely respect! ua-cam.com/video/tPCnm_d6oG4/v-deo.html this is a great link too!
This is the fairest review I have seen!!! I abhorred it, being a Tolkien fanatic. I think this show was made with greed, not love. But you made some good points that are worth thinking about.
You think the armor looks good? Galadriel's armor looks like a thin sheet of tin. The Numenorians' looks like pieces of rubber!
As for Galadriel, they present her as still young and lacking wisdom and social skills, despite of THOUSANDS of years of life experience! She proclaims her crusade to find and destroy Sauron, yet, after hundreds of years of obsessively searching, she gives up her crusade immediately upon finding Sauron stands before her. No matter that he has beguiled all the Elves involved, no matter that he professes his desire to rule them all. She just lets him walk away. Her character is so muddled by bad writing that her motivations seem frivolous.
Honestly, I never was much of a buff into the lore, I never even finished reading Two towers, but i love the movies, so at first watch I was okay with the series, however after watching Tolkien Untagled and their series reimagining the series I feel robbed by amazon, the second age has so much potential that the showrunners threw away with the compression of the time scale, I actually feel robbed
Love how they say shes is "younger, raw and making mistakes" ignoring her actual age is around 5,000 years old at this point in history
Compared to when she is around 10,000 years old, why wouldn't it be accurate for her to be younger, more raw, and more prone to making mistakes when half that age?
@@SoSoKayla then someone’s missed the entire premise on how elves age and mature. How they work. How they function in a very well developed mythology. Watch videos by GirlNextGondor and The Red Book (start with his 40 min deep dive into mouth of Sauron) then her necromancy video. It’ll give you the essence of how Arda and Middle Earth actually work. Then watch CluelessFangirl who did. A great video with GirlNextGondor regarding the Vanyar the most mysterious elven clan ever who in many ways play huge roles in middle earths history in many ways and plays out even through the bloodlines. Plays all the way into why Eärendil is even listened to due to his Vanyar Heritage as they stick close knit to eachother and anyone that’s even got some of their blood in them and thankfully due to his half maiar elf wife who helped him out too the plea was fully was accepted! Please watch these and enjoy ❤️
All of the High Elves of the Noldor lived for more than a thousand years in Valinor. And yet they made similar terrible mistakes, and did evil things, which led to them being cursed by the Valar. Clearly age is one thing, and having and learning the right lessons from experience is another.
@@SoSoKayla because in the show, she was 5000 years old.
@@cally77777 mistakes yeah, but certainly not raw. Imagine all the experiences you have had in your life. Now imagine how many you'd have by the time you were 5000 years old. And you definitely couldn't be considered young
Mediocre? I can watch mediocre. I can't even get through rings of power without falling asleep. That's a rare level of boredom for me.
You are far too kind To Galadriel's Mary Sue claims.
It's not the small details like making her a superior fighter to all the men, it's the big decisions which drive the plot forward despite her should've been dead a dozen times over: the jumping overboard and not drowning, the getting a Numenorian army after threats of murder, assaulting the king's guard and breaking into the king's chamber, the surviving a pyroclastic flow to the face, and much more.
When a character can do video game stuff because she has maxed out her stats and has cheat codes enabled, then that's a Mary Sue
I'm sorry but the music isn't memorable at all, made me feel nothing. Also Durin, like the other characters, annoyed me with his emotional blackmail, everything on his terms, then shows his arseholeness by stealing the table. If someone stole his table he'd cry about it for years. I am Scottish and I find the accent from the Welsh actor forced and cringy. I also don't respect a character who allows himself to be manipulated by his wife to go against his own blood, he is a simp.
Also Theo's "pretty cool sequence". He jumps into a well with barely any chance of escape, makes a noise, the orc hears it and he hides under the water. Before the orc is even far enough away he makes enough noise re emerging from the water to wake up a horde of elephants and nothing happens. Just awful.
We live in a world where KRATOS has more self-control than GALADRIEL. Think about that.
I'd never seen the showrunners before this. A soft looking man with a very angry looking woman, both of whom look too young to have any real life experience. Figures!
Even before the show was coming out, I was overrun with thinkpieces and video essays on how Galadriel is a Mary Sue and a girlboss and that new 'overpowered female character who's never wrong' archetype that everyone loves to crap on these days.
To me, Galadriel comes off as a stereotypical gritty cop who's so bent on catching the bad guy that she leaves behind friends, family and anything that isn't related to 'the case'.
She's Vince Vaughn in The Cell or John Travolta in Face/Off.
She's every chain smoking, alcoholic, red-eyed cop obsessively chasing after a criminal they have personal beef with.
In nearly every scene, it looks like she's been told by the director to 'look intense' or 'you're simmering with rage, but need to not blow up at the person you're talking to!'.
Which gets pretty old pretty fast, and is a spectacular waste of a good actress.
This show is hardly a lightning rod, it came and went largely unnoticed by the public.
I watched almost 4 episodes of it, it was complete garbage. Terrible writing, bad acting and lousy direction.
Completely forgettable.
If I were to be charitable, I'd say it could get away with a lot if it wasn't linked to Lord of the Rings in any way. A great deal of backlash came from them openly having no respect for the source material, and making very little attempt to stay within canonical lines. That was always going to annoy a proportion of the fan-base whom they were banking on for support.
That's not to say it's a good series in isolation, but it would have had less to deal with as a completely original work.
This show is an insult to JRR Tolkien and PJ's LOTR Trilogy
If you wanna change everything, just make your own story that fits whatever your agenda
Hey Silver! Wanted to take up your challenge on the leading elven characters and give you my quick thoughts for a "pitch".
I would start the Elven storyline centered around the Capital of Lindon, making it a sort of "melting pot" created by the different Elven groups and cultures who survived the War of Wrath in the First Age. Of the leading Elven figures of the Second Age, we have a curious division between them. One group I will call the "Elders": Galadriel (Proud daughter of Finarfin and magically trained), Celeborn (A Lord of Doriath), and Cirdan the Shipwright (Oldest Elf alive). The second group I call the "Youngsters": High King Gil-Galad, Elrond (Half-elven and son of Earendil), and Celebrimbor (Grandson of Feanor and greatest smith alive).
The main character of this storyline are going to be Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor. Gil-Galad is relatively young and green for an elven king, and is very hard put trying to keep unity among such esteemed figures in his court. His arc is learning to be a more assertive king who will one day co-lead the Last Alliance in the war against Sauron. Celebrimbor meanwhile is going to be the "apple of discord" among the Elves who, with his own ambitions, will lead to their division and fracturing.
Certain members of his court (Celebrimbor and Galadriel) are interested in leaving Lindon as they are certain that there are no more enemies left in Middle Earth and they want to create realms of their own against Gil-Galad's wishes, advised by Celeborn and Cirdan who remember too well how vulnerable they are when divided. The biggest proponent of leaving for new lands is Celebrimbor (deliberately echoing how Feanor was the main voice of strife in Valinor). Celeborn meanwhile is privately courting Galadriel and Celeborn will eventually choose to leave Lindon together with Celebrimbor and Galadriel to the future site of Eregion. Meanwhile Elrond is more interested in studying lore and healing arts after the trauma he's witnessed during the First Age (the third kinslaying) and eschews any involvement in politics.
Thank you for explaining this so calmly and rationally. My feed has been inundated with vulgar rants about the show and insults make for a poor explanation.
I think something that better demonstrates how Galadriel is a mary sue is that she never learns from her mistakes. The few times she has consequences for her actions she magically gets what she wants later. She is denied an army at Numenor, and instead of learning how to properly ask for one, the queen gets a premonition that Numenor will fall should she not help Galadriel after which the queen agrees to her request.
The times Galadriel reflects on what she does are also too little, too late. The only time we hear about Galadriel being broken by war is during a single conversation, nothing is done with that trait after the conversation ends.
But the worse moment of Galadriel's story is how she handled Halbrand's reveal. Instead of telling Celebrimbor that Sauron is back and the rings could be dangerous, she hides the fact and tells him to make more rings? This came to me as the writers wanting to make the forging of the rings the last scene of the season, which is why Galadriel has to magically make decisions that even in her character make no sense.
But then the real Galadriel from the legendarium is opposite of the women and men hating rang of gurl powah - The Curse Of “TheMessage”. She was actually very well developed and became more and more beloved to him as his writings expanded and augmented one another into his past writings etc. growing unexpected branches and so forth.
While I think the scene between Galadriel and Sauron where they’re in Sauron’s mindscape is super cool, I feel like it takes away from her moment in LOTR when she refuses the ring when Frodo offers it to her. It’s just not as impactful if this is actually the second time that she’s been offered immense power (and specifically Sauron’s power) and makes the exact same decision both times.
Yeah buuuut she sussed him out long ago as ANNATAR and even then it took him 300 years to put a dent in Celebrimbor’s host and his Gwaith Î Mirdain (the guild of smiths he worked with and some he trained. Aside from his pal dwarf Narvi. (They together made the doors of Durin. (where the watcher in the water was in fellowship of the ring was.) Note too though that it took that long for him to even cause any trouble within that cultural heartbeat of an Elven society.
Well said.
2:21 im already crying. I love those books so much. I haven't watch the show and now I don't think i will
My biggest problem with Galadriel is that she is completely underpowered and that her character is terrible as a main focus of the show. She is supposed to be as close to a god as you can get without actually being one. Like how she is in LOTR, she is inhuman, supernatural, sublime, terrifying and beautiful.
That makes for a terrible lead character because we don’t relate with that, she is a 5-25 thousand years old, she is a mystical supernatural being, to make her mundane is to take away what gives her character.
To me she would work far better as a side character that we rarely see and if we see her she is doing something extraordinarily powerful or intimidating.
It has always been a personal gripe that the elves are way to underpowered in the movies. Like how Legolas kills that giant elephant thing, that is supposed to be more in line with what elves are capable of. Same for the kings and warriors of the humans. They have fought Belrogs and Dragons the size of mountains in the past, how is that possible when they have trouble bashing swords with some npc orcs?
Like elves and men fought against belrogs and dragons, that makes no sense with the strength dynamics in the movies. Gandalf is an actual god and his physical body was completely destroyed fighting one. Smaug would’ve completely destroyed any main character the way he is portrayed in the movies.
And he was a tiny dragon compared to the one men and elves fought in the previous ages, Glaurung was like 10x bigger than Smaug and was killed by a man. That makes no sense in the movie universe because the hero warriors have trouble fighting dumb orcs.
I don’t get why the movies tried to be so reserved with it, overpowered hero characters is what the fantasy genre is made for. All that stuff is easily explained by some magical item they are wearing or using, some magical sword that is made of “insert cool word” that can cut through any material and never gets dull, we already have mithril armor, a necklace that gives it wearer supernatural strength, this stuff isn’t exactly far out there are entire game industries centered around this concept, most of them partially/significantly inspired by the works of Tolkien.
I would like to say that when you talked about how the show looked at the beginning of the video you did get one thing wrong. I feel the clothing for most of the show was bland and looked bad liked the numenorean armor or pharazons bland outfits. I agree the Harfoots are useless and wish people would stop saying that the wizard is Gandalf, in no way is he even close to what Gandalf is. The Khazad-dum story-line was fine although it definitely could have been a lot better. I think the south Kand storyline was unneeded or more specifically it should have been about Adar and not some random elf and villagers. The Numenorean storyline is of course needed for the show. Galadriel you argue is not a Mary Sue and I will have to disagree. A Mary Sue has the plot bend to their wants and needs and I don’t think you can convince me that the plot was not always in favor of Galadriel and what she wanted.
why is rings of power so hated? its not due to them having to alter storylines due to licensing constraints, its not due to adding black elves, or female dwarves, there is a very simple reason. the writing is HORRIBLE, its not subpar, or a bit bad, it is disastrously bad, like they intentionally wrote it as badly as they could. the actors for many of the roles are totally not suitable or fitting, the actor playing galadrial is bad, she is incapable of emoting, or expressing mood, or feeling & it shows. they should have never chosen to make her a all powerful warrior, genius, & over all infallible being. On top of these mistakes, the actor playing galadrial is 4 feet tall, she is tiny, its ridiculous, like having gary coleman playing conan the barbarian. they shouldve treated the project with respect, & they didnt. they hired a pair of dunces to work on it, who hired a team of clown to write it, and that standard of work was passed down through the show
I think that, with the fall of quality of many pop culture icons now, the LOTR series always stood out as one that we could look back on with happy memories, untarnished by the tropes of modern media production.
I think many people saw Rings of Power as a breach of that security, and hate the show because of it.
I dont think this show is any worse than any other stuff that has come out recently, like recent marvel or star wars, star trek, terminator. I just think the fact that this "immunity" of tolkien's world from modern tropes and idealogoy being broken is what caused this show to become so hated beyond, for example, Thor: Love and thunder, even though i think that film was of a much lower quality than this. The fact that I'm even comparing something from middle earth to a marvel work shouldn't happen.
This is absolutely part of it.
Yeah, it comes from the basic misunderstanding what Tolkien's Legendarium was suposed to be.
It was never supposed to be post-modern style fantasy story. It was ulitmately a love-letter to the important texts of old. To Trojan war. To chivalric romances. To the "Epic of Gilgamesh". To the Bible. To the Platos telling about the Atlantis. While it was ultimately written from the modern perspective, it's love wasn't directed towards modern, but towards things that are fading away, because of modern.
What they did was going directly against the work itself on a fundamental way.
strong woman only ever means an angry woman. who speaks to every person like they hate them and asks for favors everywhere they go?
Honestly, it's not the accuracy to the canon that bothers me, but to the themes.
After a single episode, I was convinced that these writers would probably side with Fëanor simply because he was a viewpoint character.
Another thing is that the Elven race - 'learns' up towards 100 years old. I had thought that Galadriel was about 3500 years old at the time of the show - anyways - with basic teaching spanning 100 years, and 'further' teachings according to each elves' interest - can lasting longer/much longer - she should know better! For me also with Galadriel - the show is trying to shove her down our throats. For me I would have preferred that we see more of the High King Gil Galad and Celebrimbor. As for the Harfoots - I feel that the show makers thought that 'everyone loves Hobbits' lets throw a Hobbit storyline in and everyone will love it! That's the ticket! Again - trying to shove the Harfoots down our throats...
"For a race based on science like the Noldor, they're really speaking strange by stuff”. Others have noticed that the Elves speak too often in sententious aphorisms that do not bear close scrutiny, but this failure to recognize that the Ñoldor understand the natural world even better than we do was jarring. This is a sign that the writers do not have a natural feel for the 'higher register in which Elvish dialogue must be written, and so throw in these bits of philosophy as a substitute. Edit: Also, they seem to think that it makes the Elves sound wiser when they say these fortune-cookie lines... very…. very.…. slowly. That is a directorial issue, not a script issue, so perhaps this will change in later
Theoretically with 4 of the 5 seasons remaining, it is possible for the show to become something decent to watch. I just think the people at the helm (executives, show-runners, writers) lack the self awareness, humility, and ability to do so. If there is major overhaul in leadership and trustworthy people say season two is really good I may consider watch it somewhere other than Amazon Prime, but I doubt it. They took too much of my time with this crap already. Had they accepted the criticisms of the show with grace and not insulted and gaslit the people they were counting on to make their investment bear fruit, I’d be more charitable.
Galadriel is a Mary Sue in rings of power, not because she is a good fighter but for all the other reasons. Every time she seems to make a mistake it was the right mistake to make for her to get exactly what she wants. Everyone loves her, EVEN SAURAON LIKES HER. She is best at everything always and can not be thought nothing new, except for the one time with her brother who thought her she is the best, and everyone else is dogshit for sinking her magic paper water dragon ship.
Rings of Poop is an abomination. Horrid writing, stupid plot, dull uninteresting characters, abysmal dialogue and poor acting all on top of the fact that it is a mockery of Tolkien's stories. Yes, Rings of Poop is atrocious.
There is an insane amount of valid criticism that can reasonably be leveled against RoP, but the only that really matters - because it comes first, and if it's valid the rest becomes irrelevant - is that it absolutely RAPES the lore. RoP massacres and mutilates every single existing known character from the Tolkien universe, and it even manages to make whole peoples appear cruel, stupid and just plain small. Virtually everyone is evil except Sauron. It is a sign of the times and modern storywriting that the RoP showrunners genuinely don't see or recognize this.
I understand they had to write around the copyright issues, but they were in no way compelled to change Galadriel into a diametrically opposed character, or Celebrimbor, or Elrond, or Gil-Galad, or... etc, etc.
All the other criticisms leveled against the show are mostly valid as well, but they don't even matter much. RoP basically has nothing to do with Tolkien other than using the names of places and characters from the Tolkien legendarium. It is a complete shit show, and THAT is why it is so hated.
Just want to thank you for a review that isn't annoyingly misogynistic for no reason. I've been watching reviews for this show and it just bugs me how deep the vitriol for female characters goes. I get it, they're not great but some of these reviewers really love to let their incel side shine while talking about them. It just feels unnecessary and betrays a lot about where the reviewer is coming from. So truly, thank you for an approach that actually makes a point of not hating the women character for being women but for their flaws from a writing perspective.
Haven't seen your channel before, with over an hour of video I thought this would just be "a guy reacting" to the scenes of the show. But it was a great analysis with objective views (for the most part) on why the show does and does not work. You got yourself a subscriber, I even clicked on that like button REALLY hard (UA-cam algorithm can tell).
Plain and simple Galadriel is a boring badly written Mary sue.
Also I love being gaslit
I'm a musician, and I find the score for RoP to be completely unmemorable. I can remember nearly every part of the score of the Peter Jackson movies which is vastly superior.
yeah, that was my biggest issue with the show. the music was subpar. All the nerds whining about how it wasn't faithful to the original (coming from someone who loves the original book), whatever. Give me good music Amazon!
@@givepeaceachance940 and my package, its been 4 days now!
Oh, I totally agree with your analysis of the Galadriel character - she *did* basically create the whole reappearance of the Sauron problem. I mean, sooner or later he probably would have come back to causing trouble on his own, but in point of fact he's presented as wanting to disengage from the world at the beginning of the show - to just quietly fade into some plain vanilla life on Numenor. And Galadriel TALKS HIM INTO picking up his old agenda again. That really IS the biggest foul-up one can imagine.
All this said, I'll be honest - I'm shallow about this sort of thing, and she's just so nice looking that I can't help but like her.
They need to do a complete reboot for season two. Fire the showrunners and writers. Scrap everything that happened in season one as galadriel’s bad dream. And start fresh. With galadriel waking up from bad dream next to celeborn. The show season one was absolutely garbage!
Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy has shown that you CAN ADAPT the books written by Tolkien, but only if you do it whilst respecting the original literary works. And all ROP has shown is that the fandom will not tolerate butchering their beloved stories and worlds just for the sake of inserting modern agenda. And, for the record, the most badass gal in all of the Middle-Earth is still Eowyn, followed closely by Arwen (who wilfully gave up her immortality for love - that takes some serious cojones) and not the watered down woke version of Galadriel we saw in this joke of a show. Christ, she even took down an ogre all by herself in, like, 15-30 seconds, whereas the Fellowship (Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Boromir and Gandalf included) had to spend at least 5 minutes to topple one of these things AND STILL it almost managed to take out Frodo! Correct me if I'm wrong, but Galadriel in the books (Silmarillion included) and Peter Jackson's movies was more of a politician than a freakin' fighter with no leading competence whatsoever (insert the shots where the ROP Galadriel abandons her subordinates in the snowstorm for a certain death - the mark of a real leader FOR SURE). And that's only one of the characters in the show! And don't even get me started about Elrond, or the hobbits, or the dwarves or that peasant woman with a child for crying out loud!
I feel like I should've prefaced my rant with the fact that I'm not even the biggest fan of Tolkien's works. I've read LOTR and The Hobbit a couple of times, and barely trudged through Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin, but even I know that this show is nothing but a pile of garbage that tries to make as much money as possible off of the franchise by setting it in the Lord of the Rings' universe.