Not only have you been immensely entertaining in your endeavour to prove unequivocally that this show is somewhat substandard, but your video clips from random superior shows and films gives prompts to watch something worthwhile, while waiting for the next instalment. Kudos chap.
@@Mitsoxfan And he got that degree while working two union jobs and taking care of Glugwife, who was pregnant with glugling at the time. Respect to Glug 🫡
Never have I ever waited with so much anticipation, impatience and general need for a coverage of a TV show, movie or any other work of fiction that I cared so little about, to the point of not once watching a single episode of. Thank you Random for your amazing work.
Atleast your doing it right by not watching the show. Half of these morons are actually watching the show - thus incentivizing them to continue to produce this crap as long as people are watching.
Can we talk about the guards in this show? Specifically how they're all useless all the time *except* for the 12 Eregion guards who transformed into absolute chads successfully holding off a non-stop human wave style assault from respawning orcs along what looks like a mile-long section of wall for something like 30 hours. Truly, they were the best of us.
I think the Orcs just constantly ran up to the wall, forgot the did not have ass-ladders as in Total War Warhammer, and ran back. The few ladders werent used due to pathfinding issues
I imagine the elves on the citywalls reacting like the French on the castle walls in “Monty Pythons Search For the Holy Grail”. Just bewildered and befuddled at the construction noises coming from the forest….but not at all alarmed. 😂
I sure loved how Elrond managed to stop his dollar-store charge of the Rohirrim from crashing into the orcs after Adar reveals he's got the insufferable tempest locked in a cage when they're about 5 seconds from impact. RoP doesn't abide by any rules, cool pictures on screen with brain-meltingly illogical shit happening.
Wouldn’t you think the elves are exactly the type of race to be able to stop a cavalry charge on a dime? That’s right in line with peter Jackson’s elves who are flawless in their movements.
@@jessiefroese5591 i mean, no, because horses can't stop on a dime. They're not machines, they're living creatures. You can't just stomp on the brakes and expect it to just stop moving This is kind of why cavalry charges are so damn effective, even if you kill the horse you still have nearly half a ton of animal traveling at up to 40 miles an hour that then comes crashing through your lines.... momentum is a bitch that even an elf has to obey.
Let's not forget that Elrond tells them to look to the north where the camera cuts to the north as you see the sun rising. Not only is it a pathetic "remember that?" moment but the sun rises in the east, not the north which so dumb. We do not know which direction they are facing so Elrond could have just as easily have said to look to the east and it would have been fine(even tho slightly more on the nose) but instead they picked north. So the writers either do not know where the sun actually rises or they are suggesting that the sun rises from directions whenever it feels like it or third, Elrond is so dumb that he doesn't know where north is and is looking east.
That happened in season 1 too. The Numenorians had the rising sun behind them when they charged the Orks from the west. I think Random mentioned that in his review of that episode.
> Let's not forget that Elrond tells them to look to the north And he should've said "west". > but the sun rises in the east, not the north which so dumb > We do not know which direction they are facing so Elrond The capital city of Eregion was Ost-in-Edhil. Apparently its location is not known or properly mapped. The road from the West gate of Moria , you'd think, would lead east. Supposedly the road from Moria to Ost-in-Edhil followed the course of the river Sirannon. Which AGAIN, is not perfectly known or properly mapped, but apparently the river Glanduin is nearby; for the Sirannon to empty into the Glanduin, the Sirannon would be heading west-south-west. So by ship or by road, Prime Durin would be (should have been) fast-travelling from the West gate of Moria, travelling east-south-east. Prime Durin should've been arriving from the west. (By the way, I'm not a Tolkien scholar and the above just took me less five minutes to verify.) Which means the only people in existence dumber than Prime Elrond or Prime Durin would be... John D. Payne and Patrick McKay. ... even the Wikipedia page for those two clowns, the first paragraph ends: "They are best known for developing [...] The Rings of Power, *vaguely* based on the history of Middle-earth".
I say somebody grab Payne and McKay, give them the same treatment Prime Elrond asked Prime Cirdan to give those three lolly ring pops. Then we'll see if the sea is always right.
@@exantiuse497 Nicee, I didn't reach that part yet. Just pointed it out to give this detail emphasys because it was one of the first things that came to my mind when I saw the whole battle thing, and it was very odd 😅
This is Rings of Power’s fault for how they’ve portrayed *Elrond, but in the lore he is certainly a capable warrior and a commander in every battle. He fights in and survives pretty much all the major conflicts on middle earth.*
Part of the problem with their world-breaking initial draft. Elrond should have been the one to lead armies, as he is both young (relatively) and motivated to drive out evil. Galadriel would have been the king's council, the politician. Far older, far wiser. Elrond could have even gone to Numenor (giving him more reason to explore their culture and cause conflict as he is the only elf alive with a good reason to be invested in their development). Alas.
@@JackChurchill101 I agree 💯 - especially with Galadriel being on OG Noldor elf. I mean, Elrond does take over as leader after Gil-Galad passes in the last alliance and was close to Gil-Galad (though he never declares himself king), so he’s definitely a politician of sorts, but Galadriel would be more into the Noldor elf business than Elrond.
@@JackChurchill101 plus didn’t Elronds brother build the library on Numenor where Galadriel finds the magic plot device map that tells her exactly what she needs to know?
If that rock was balanced so precariously, why wasn't it dislodged by the earthquakes when the volcano exploded, like the rocks in Khazad-dûm next door?
Yes but you misunderstand, it's only there because IT WAS dislodged! It just balanced there precariously dooming Eregion to first a drought and then a flood when the water finally overcomes the dam without anyone noticing or doing anything about it until Adar comes in!
dont forget, they are fighting on a riverbed, that at time is shown as incredibly muddy, and then at times rocky that people can easily move through. The orcs also drag a giant siege weapon through a freshly emptied river. We have Legolas at home has like 3 or 4 arrows in his quiver when Damrod shows up, and no matter how many times he shoots, always has more
Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron. Galadriel and Elendil. Galadriel and Adar. Galadriel and Elrond. Galadriel is not just Mary Sue, she is Femme Fatale - breaking men's hearts and men's arms and legs. Not just men, but elves, orcs, saurons, dwarves (remember Gimli): if you are male, you are powerless before our heroine. Maybe she even start conquering women one of these episodes, after all this show is all about diversity. Beware Disa! "All shall love me and despair!"
The wig was so bad early in season 2 that I noticed bits of long and short hair sticking out - they literally didn't give the wig a haircut after they chose it for the actor, they just stuck it on his head straight out of the packet. But they did take the time to fashion the top layers into an absurd girly little bow at the back of his head. The mind absolutely boggles.
Related to my previous comment, Rings of Power's weird obsession with recreating cavalry charges from LOTR has put them in the position of portraying both Numenor and Lindon -- nominally two of the most advanced factions in the setting -- as fielding armies composed only of moderately armored melee cavalry. Meanwhile in LOTR, Almost every faction fields combined arms. Gondor fields infantry, cavalry, archers, artillery and irregulars (via Faramir's rangers). Saruman does as well. Mordor fields infantry, artillery, archers, monsters, allied elephants, and technically air power. Even Rohan, which is defined by being a nation of horsemen, still has infantry and archers. The Hobbit movies do this a lot worse, but they at least gave the Iron Hills dwarves artillery and some limited chariot/cavalry support. If a pell-mell cavalry charge is a bad idea, an unsupported cavalry charge is a worse one. Cavalry-only armies are exceedingly rare in history. Even the Mongols were a combined arms army. Not that 500 horsemen is an army anyway. Depending on the time period it's not much more than a raiding party. In LOTR both the big cavalry charges have the same justification. They're relief columns which actively chose to leave their infantry behind in order to move faster, and they're intending to make a surprise flanking attack on an enemy that's pinned down in a siege. RoP tries to make that same situation happen, but the Numenoreans didn't know that's what they were doing. Maybe the Lindon elves did, but the show doesn't seem to give any reason to believe they left a contingent of infantry or archers behind somewhere.
Because there's no contracts in the world as controlling and binding than marriage. And so Sauron wants the rings to bind every leader of all races into his own harem.
Charles Edwards's acting in this season is a main, if not the main, reason for which I continued to watch this insult to entertainment called Rings of Power. I wish he and every other actor had been given good material AND DIRECTING. If they can muster this acting with the refuse of script and screenwriting they were given, the heart weeps at the beauty of what could be.
Some things I noticed while watching your break down. 1. There is a massive opening in the wall on the other side of the bridge that the earth damn did not block that they could have just walked through at 1:05:31. So no need to try and break down the wall we already have a massive hole in the wall for some reason. 2. During the episode Elrond says to look North, this is where the sun appears to be rising guess the sun doesn't rise to the East even though it has been shown to rise in the East and set in the West throughout the series... 3. The catapults can now shoot higher and further to reach the top of the rocks so that a landslide can happen... 4. Based on how much material moved into the river, even if the river was flowing at a snails pace, this river is absolutely overflowing, this is why you have to make sure dam bypasses are in place before you even start blocking the flow of the river. The amount of water would instantly wash out your construction side. Once a little water starts flowing through an earthen damn it rapidly washes out. The destructive power of water is on par with taking a volcanic eruption to the face... 5. Gil showed up with a grappling hook just for the boss fight... 6. The time lines get so much worse when you think about how long it would have took to build not only the forge but the walls around the city. 7. Arondir's timeline of moving on foot from where he encountered the Ents to showing up to save Galadriel... Riding non-stop on super horses took a week... Unless we are saying that these series of event took place non-concurrently... We are not shown this though... I am sure there is more, but I forgot the premise of this show... "Shut up, and don't think about it..."
Sauron's journey through all of this is kind of sad. Tried to become king of orks, got stabbed in back. Found a father figure, he died in a ship wreck. Avoid getting eatten by a fish, got stuck with a annoying elf. Tried to get a honest job, got arrested. Got convinced to become a king, got stabbed again. Tried to help the elves save their race, got chased out of town. Returned back to the ork, got tortured. Returned to the elves, wasn't let in and left standing in the rain.
Can we talk about how Celebrimbor finishes the 9, apparently to save the city, but then immediately tries to destroy the 9 because he doesn't want to use them to save the city anymore, I guess...? Can we also talk about how Elrond's strategy depends entirely on Durin, someone who has just told him that he's going to overthrow his father, potentially starting a civil war in Moria. And then he is surprised when Durin isn't coming... really, that should always have been expected, and plans should have been made accordingly.
I just want to emphasize 33:40, because I am sick of people saying Galadriel's actress isn't awful. She is. Even with bad writing, good actors act good. Their characters may make no sense but at least they're acting out the nonsensical part as it is written.
and how does she as an actress thinking rrrrrrolling herrrr 'r's is such "great acting"? It drives me crazy!!!! I have to mute her whenever I hear her *cries*
@@GeraltofRivia22problem is all numenorians feel as weak as Gondor soldiers from the third age. They all should be really tall and mighty. Elendil should already be wise. Same as Isildur because Isildur should be in his 90ies already if we assume Numenor goes down in the next year or two.
@@blackwolf4653 You can't assume Isildur is in his 90s for you must understand the greater the distance the less time makes sense in rings of power and Numenor is mighty far away! Either way I can see Isildur being a useless Idiot leading into him failing to destroy the ring because he alone is the human conceited enough to think the ring would save them. The character is horrible but the character being horrible can be used to set up his failings. It'd be a departure from his character in the books but oh boy, that'd be the smallest departure yet.
@@verySharkey Well if we talk about the Lore and not Jeff Bezos mess. Isildur is a hero and one of the greatest Men who ever lived after Elendil. Numenor was at it‘s most powerful state under Ar pharazon. Isildur died when he tried to bring the one ring to Rivendell and debating with Elrond what to do with it. So even P.Jackson did him kind of dirty wich is not to bad because LOTR is not isildurs Story. Under great personal risk it was isildur alone who saved the Seed‘s of the White Tree in Numenor wich offspring we can see in Minas Tirith in the third age. My point is Isildur should already have a backbone and wisdom. Not to Mention what Elendil should be at this point. It‘s sad to see how Numenorians are depicted here. Even elves are less mighty than the human armies in the third age. The show isn‘t made for fans of Tolkien and for casual viewers it‘s just boring as hell. Nobody talks to each other like you would expect. And how should we feel tension for isildur and galadriel when we know they survive anyway.? Why trying to make drama around them? Gosh this show is so bad.
ROP writers are dropping silmarillion refs willy nilly now with no context, and it is very entertaining to see how RFT interprets these nuggets without the book knowledge. Highlights the absolute incompetence of the writers and gives me a delightful chuckle
This is some of the highest quality film analysis on UA-cam. Random is undoubtedly a highly intelligent man and I’d love to know if he’s ever put that mind to creating his own literature.
Remember when Elrond said he’d place defeated Sauron above all other concerns, even Galadriel’s life? The fact that he stops the charge during this episode demonstrates he consistently will violate any promise he makes to anyone. Do the writers even remember writing this?
Now, now, Random. Concerning Durin the elder and his solitary digging to the mountain depths, have you forgotten the great Waldreg so quickly? You *know* the power of a single old man to change the very geological face of Middle Earth. This is absolutly a crisis!
1:17:52 Indeed. The mountain of Kazad-Dum is apparently in-universe made out of styrofoam and paper mache, so he'll dig to the bottom in a matter of hours.
Just a reminder of why this show made by Amazon was doomed: - Warner Bros has the rights for The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books. - Amazon has the rights for the Appendices. - In the Appendices you can find many of the NAMES of the characters, locations, family trees and items written in the works of Tolkien. - Amazon can only use the NAMES because all the stories belong to Warner Bros. - The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings has already been done, so any story from the Third Age is off the table for Amazon. - The story of The First Age is a spiritual fever dream that is IMPOSSIBLE to be made into a movie or a show. You could try but good luck with that. - The only thing left for Amazon is to tell the story of the Second Age. It hasnt been done yet but the rights for the story still belong to Warner Bros. - So Amazon takes all the NAMES and LOCATIONS that it has the rights to, throws in some original characters and makes a story that resembles the events of the Second Age just enough as to not get sued to oblivion by Warner Bros. - And so we get a Galadriel that bounces all around Middle Earth like a fucking pinball when in fact she never left Lothlorien being by the side of Celeborn throughout the Second Age, hobbits that didnt exist yet and wizards that didnt come until way into the Third Age. This is the ultimate definition and the ultimate form of fan-fic. A monstrosity born out of IP rights and 500 million dollars. Just because a bald psychopath wanted a show like Game of Thrones. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's and Christopher Tolkien's corpses are spinning so fast that they could power Amazon's servers for the next millenia. Go fuck yourselves.
Amazon have the rights to use any 2nd Age details to be found in The Hobbit and LOTR. Add that to the Appendices and you actually have an astonishing amount of 2nd Age story. They also have rights to details from every other book on a case-by-case basis. They just aren't allowed to remake The Hobbit or LOTR. The problem is that, rather than using the details available and their own imagination to expand on the bullet point plot in the Appendices, they have kept what they took from the Appendices as bullet points, scattered those bullet points around in whatever order the show-runners felt like, and devoted the rest of the time to their own invented filler, leading to the odd dichotomy of a show with ridiculously quick pacing while still feeling slower than molasses in January.
So first season we had the trench that connected the weird dam to a hidden mount doom and now we have a rock that looks like Wile E Coyote placed and it dams a river. If we don't see Numenor flood this season, that will definitely be the big event next season.
And it will be the worst contrived bullshit ever. Probably adar will sink 10 ships into the ocean to make the water level rise above numenor level or something
What pains me so much about it is that it could work, give us 5 minutes of dialogue and establishing shots showing a mountain flank that looks about ready to crumble along with the narrow crevice that the river seems to worm it's way through before splaying out and surrounding eregion and it'd work. Much less hard to believe for them to hit either when all they need to hit is a wide mountain flank to cause a massive rockslide, not a singular massive idiot rock. A mountain slide could definitely block the river, albeit not forever.
Not gunna lie, my current life is shambles and I cannot wait for the E8 S2 breakdown. Charlie, you propel life-force through your very poignant barf. Never stop.
I want to point out that Celebrimbor DOES NOT TELL GALADRRRRIEL that the Nine are fully corrupted by Sauron when he hands them to her. So that means: A) Galadrrrriel will figure this out intuitively and toss them in the Middle Mariana Trench B) Keep the Nine on her until she is captured and they are stolen C) She meets up with Sauron again and he mind controls her into handing them over D) She keeps them and takes them into Lindon and the chosen Men are given their Rings
I'm not sure their intention was that Sauron was manipulating time, but moreso that the candles/rat/etc were ALL illusions. An illusion of a candle will never burn down because its just an illusion. IF that is the case though, then that makes Sauron seem stupid to not make the candle just APPEAR to melt over time. Its all a mess...
@@GeraltofRivia22 The one ring looks so fcking weak right now. The thing he poured his every dark emotion in to? It can what sway or tempt only a few people within a very short distance? Meanwhile Sauron can just bend people to kill themselves and others. Why couldn't he do that to Celebrimbor, just force him to make the rings? Force him into believing nothing is wrong without any illusion at play. See this is the problem with ROP, the elves are humans with pointy ears. There is no sense of magic about them. Meanwhile in PJ elves you can feel them being different. They hold their heads higher, their coordination is close to machine like, they fight with amazing skill and near perfect accuracy. You also see them use magic to heal and save Frodo, and offer gifts that are beyond anything we see with the men kingdoms.
All other episodes have been released with one week between them, but episode 8 is now on 10 days... I sense a storm brewing, it might even be furious enough to be called a TEMPEST, and I am very much looking forward to it!
Amazing work as always. I don’t know how you keep track of everything. Especially all of the little details. Your videos are among the most well thought out of any I’ve watched on UA-cam over the years. I truly look forward to them. So very entertaining. Thank you so much for all the effort you put into these.
28:00 the inconsistent time issues in this show are more evidence for my theory that this was written by ai as an investor stunt. That's also why they hired 2 nobodies, so they could reasonably say that any success wasn't theirs.
Ngl the Elrond, Galadriel and (especially) Isildur loving their horses is the most relatable thing about this show. I can 100% see me running into the woods to save my (hypothetical) horse.
@@exantiuse497 The events that RoP are supposedly portraying are a bastardized version of the second age. While I agree with your sentiment, I disagree with your statement. Elrond and Celebrian marry in the Third age TA 109. Elrond would not even have known Celebrian at the time of these events. Celebrian was born in SA 300 and the rings of power weren't forged until SA 1500. Celebrian first met Elrond in SA 1701. But another point I would add to bastardization is that if Elrond did not meet Celebrian until she was 1,400 years old, I would venture to guess that Elrond and Galadriel were not "dearest of old friends" like the show repeated states.
I found it crazy how the river simply STOPPED and didn't overflow, making the riverbed completely dry. But, then I remembered this is Amazon ROP's laws of physics, where a full-blown pyroclastic flow hits you like a breeze and you can trigger a volcano eruption just by throwing water in it.
I think you might be giving the show too much credit with the “pocket dimension” idea. I suspect that it’s just a looping illusion and the ring making process is simply accelerated by bad writing. Also, I think Sauron force pushes Merdania to coincide with Celebrimbor’s angry flailing, rather than mind controlling him.
I like how we're dealing with artillery that can dismantle entire geographic features when a modern nation would have to expend a billion USD of munitions to achieve the same result, but they can't use it to blast through Eregion's fortifications from a safe distance in one go.
After having followed the war in Ukraine and having seen war footage daily I was thinking the same thing. Besides the big bombs dropped by russian aviation the orc artillery seems more effective than anything going on over there. Russia would waste much less equipment if they had those catapults. Not just men and elves who have diminished after the second age. Apparently 2nd age orcs were also better at artillery than 21st century orcs.
I fucking *love* that the showrunners are literally thinking they are creating history right now, filming the most expensive TV show based on a timeless masterpiece and they are, in fact, behaving *exactly the way the depicted Celebrimbor* . They either don't realize yet, or are just now realizing they ruined everyone's career and go through the same rude awakening as that poor fella 😂
@@joelpenley9791 Hopefully, no one will remember this perverted pile of nonsense in a few years, just like people will always come back to the original trilogy, without connecting it with the hobbit trilogy.
@@luckylarry71 I understand why you want everyone to forget, but I think we need to remember (and ridicule) this so that it never happens again. An example needs to be made:
@@joelpenley9791 Fair point. The inversion of values and piss-poor television making, hiring activists instead of actors should not just go over everyone's ears like it's no biggie.
Which some of the elven horses actually do. But only those 2 horses because fuck them. Trolls, orcs and siege engines are of course not affected in any way.
Great work. One thing you skipped over though: trebuchet cannot hurl a projectile anywhere near as far as they do in this battle, even if it was a reeeealy big one - which the ones depicted are not. In order for “The bit where they shoot the cliff” to be a feasible thing, you’d need to attach rockets to the boulders (RPBs?). There’s also the fact that if they can hit the cliff by the river, then why not that bloody obvious and much closer cliff behind the city? Or the even more bloody obvious and even closer Forge Tower, the destruction of which IS THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE 🤦♂️
This. Times 100. Forget the time to build the trebuchets and find and move the massive projectiles the arc is wrong and the distance just an insult to gravity and physics.
@@M-Bison1992 Well they can't make them too accurate because they have to keep the biggest tower in the city standing for weeks of constant bombardment
Hey random. On some of the shots from the back of the archers on the wall, you can see a bridge to the right hand side.. and we assume that leads to a gate in the wall.😬. it's about 100ft if that, to the left of Adars army, and even closer to the right of the archers.. in which case.. its even worse that they bothered to block the river.🤦♂️ Watching the Premier and loving it so far. Great job my guy. 😁 💯
@@Jonjon13Jonjon13 yes I heard. And I noticed. 👍 but a drawbridge is alot easier to bring down than a mountain.. they could've destroyed it and thrown some trees across that they cut down episodes ago for no reason. 🙄
@@stlawstlaw7585 your right it totally does. Almost like they realised they wanted a siege.. and had no other choice than to magic them into existence.. either that or sauron is just deceiving all their brains (since apparently he can do that now) so it looks like there's walls.. but actually there's just a small fence around the city. 🤣
Think the only thing more enjoyable than Random tearing this series a new one is wondering what Wacky outfit R-Alter ego will be dressed as. that alone should get it's own tier list personally. Also I would love a spinoff of Glug and goblin boi going on a set of adventures together. I mean it would be better than this show.
I hope the ending is LoTR's Galadriel coming out of gazing in her mirror in some panic. Celeborn is there and asks in some concern if she's alright. Galadriel nods to him and says she saw a past that *could* have been, one of darkness without Celeborn.
I didn't interpret the Sauron illusion as Sauron bending time and giving Celebrimbor weeks while only hours pass in the real world. I thought he's literally just doing an illusion, actual weeks pass both in the illusion and in reality and it's yet another case of the writers not acknowledging the passage of time in any manner.
My problem with it being just a illusion is the fact that the forge is kinda destroyed. How did he work in it like that? He never kicked a piece of ruble accidentally? Never got up in the week that passed to go to the bathroom or just flex his legs a bit?! Nothing makes sense in this show.....
but if i saw correctly the actual forge has rubble and shit on it. how would he be able to continue working and not interact with any of that? not to mention the incredible luck of the actual tower never being hit by the heat seeking, gravity defying trebuchets and killing him outright unless sauron can keep towers from falling but the end of the peter jackson trilogy makes that seem a little silly.
@@tilervonbiscuitbrown4393 agreed, he should have been stumbling on things he couldn't see. But I think the correct conclusion is 'the writers meant for Celebrimbor to be trapped by Sauron in an illusion and were very bad at accounting for the logistics of it' and not 'Sauron can manipulate time'
Original post didn’t say it was a good or effective idea but yeah I agree cause of how disheveled ring maker looks, plus the forge. Not well done of course cause this show is this show but yeah time has passed
Celebrimbor has 9 rings that turn people invisible and several tools made for cutting metal. So what does he do? He uses the metal cutting tool to cut his thumb off rather than cutting the brass handcuff, and then he kinda just walks out slowly. Sauron is offscreen so he doesn't exist, so it totally works when you don't think about it. Even Sauron Lord of the Earth and Master of spirits and of phantoms wouldn't expect Celebrimbor to do this. Or did he? We all know that at the end of this season everything that happened will be force fit into Saurons plan the whole time, so who cares?
if king Durin was so greedy he would've asked money for his army to show up in eregion. Imagine having a private army and when someone at war ask you for your help you say no, because they'll come back next year for helmets, at a higher price 🤣, like WTF if they loose the war nobody's gonna buy the helmets 🤣
You know what is most infuriating about all this? Many news outlets claim that this episode is brilliant because it "subverts our expectations". For example, Elrond's dollar store charge is just like Gandalf or Theoden's charges, but unlike them, he fails. Elrond was counting on Durin to save the day, again like Gandalf at Helm's Deep, but it doesn't happen. Damrod was built up to be a big deal, but he dies like a bitch. Apparently all of this is good writing because it subverts what audiences expect to happen in the battle... I hate that we live in a world where media sites will defend trite like this.
Celebrimbor: "go, Galadriel, my friend, carry these very dangerous rings that i cannot destroy away from the Enemy of all free people. I will buy you whatever time i can" also Celebrimbor: "hey Sauron buddy, the Nine arent here in the tower actually"
I feel that we aren't talking enough about the river bottom being near-impossible to traverse even for infantry, let alone machinery and siege devices. The bottom wouldn't only be slippery and rocky, with no foot hold, but it would be full of very deep and very liquid mud. A group of men who would try to traverse it are at a great risk of injuries even without any threat from enemy archers. It would probably take several months for the river bottom to stop being a perilous trap on its own. Yet a literal army traverses this river with no effort at all.
It would have made more sense for the garrison of Eregion to have weeks of forewarning of the orcs coming. Time enough for them to prepare and the story to build tension while Celebrimbor frantically tried to finish the rings. It didn't all need to happen over like a weekend. Also, why not just have the catapults break through the wall and then have the big troll be the first to break through. Would have been an awesome scene even if he died. Rather than have our heroes kill him have like the captain of the guard, battling him and showing that all elves are badass in their own right. Not just our plot armour main characters. Having the captain defend the steps of Celebrimbors tower with the last of his men while their master dies at saurons hands anyway would have been so much more tragic and imo cooler.
Everyone knows you can stop a cavalry charge in an orderly fashion like that. Of course even human beings can't all immediately start or stop moving at the exact same time when a traffic light changes, but horses surely can. All you have to do is have the guy at the front stop their horse, and literally every horse behind them will also stop in the same instant. It makes perfect sense! What great writing! 😂😂
Normally movies have continuity errors regarding movement and objects but an entire CGI wall around a city that is going to be a focal point of filming? Kings new clothes of Bezos is amazing
In Lindon, we were told "Eregion is protected by two rivers with miles of curtain wall of dwarven stone, ten-foot thick." So, this was built some time ago. Seemingly with help from Khazad--dûm at least in the quarrying of the stone. Of course, we don't know why it was built, and why the Dwarves were involved at all. Nor how Gil-Galad knew of it, because the lines of communication from Lindon to Ost-in-Edhil are… whatever they need to be. For all the, um, deliberate pacing of the show's action, they constantly leave gaps, in the expectation that the audience will piece out their imperfections for them.
dropping rocks that large into the water from that height would do two things. One, slightly increase the volume of water they need to get past for a few months due to displacement. Two, create a rather large wave that could possibly be detrimental to this Orc army's equipment and personell (the potential damage depending on the water level of the river at the time).
The kiss was shipbait like a lot of shit in this show is. Unless they showed that elves (or rather these two) show platonic affection through kissing, then the kiss showing up now is significant from a meta standpoint. Hell, from a story standpoint you’d think Adar would take notice. He seemed to know about Elrond’s family so it wouldn’t be surprising if he also knew that Galadriel (one of the most famous elves) is married. Given how he and Galadriel are at odds, you’d think he’d point the kiss out for no other reason than to ruffle Galadriels feathers.
Thanks for this critique series. There was no way I was going to waste a second watching season two after the train wreck that was the first, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your tearing this shows multitude of inadequacies apart. Thank you for putting yourself through it for our entertainment. To be honest, I’ll be expecting a more interesting character arc for retarded alter ego in the next season than for anyone in the show.
He's mentioned in an earlier episode that the show really was just "not very good" at the start, but he's keeping the title for consistency and ironic understatement. Think it was in the final autopsy for season 1, but I can't remember for certain.
Here's a very simple and not $1 billion dollar writers thought: If all Adar wants is Sauron dead, then to go home in peace as the show flip flops on, then Adar should be very open to negotiations and even possibly working with the Elves to rid the world of their common enemy. Adar may fear that using Elves to extract Sauron out of the city is risky and may lead to him escaping, tricking them, or transforming into a Elf soldier to blend in, however he should know that the Elves are just as motivated to kill Sauron as he is, and should expect a thorough job, or as thorough as his Orcs at least. He could have negotiated Galadriel's life and the city for Sauron's capture and death, something the Elves would have instantly agreed to, so long as when Adar uses the rings to banish Sauron that they must be there to watch. Both factions in this story want the same thing, why they can't work together to rid the world of Sauron is beyond me.
Not only was there an inexplicable “thinnest part of the wall” but that thing the orcs use is completely wooden. Have they not heard of oil? Pitch? Fire? That was such an easy thing to stop
Not only have you been immensely entertaining in your endeavour to prove unequivocally that this show is somewhat substandard, but your video clips from random superior shows and films gives prompts to watch something worthwhile, while waiting for the next instalment. Kudos chap.
The kiss scene made me 100% convinced the writers are actively trolling at this point, there's no way they don't know who these characters are
SWEET HOME EREGION! Where the skies are so strange!
Galadriel has been with several men in this show, none of whom are her husband.
She don't need no man, if they wanted it they shoulda put a ring on it....wait @@GeraltofRivia22
@@GeraltofRivia22when it turns out her husband is actually Adar
Totally agree. I had a sneaking suspicion but that scene cemented it. They are taking the piss.
The writers can ruin any characters they want as long as they spare Glug, Glug-wife and the Glugling.
A german movie-site made a rant beginning with a fake campaign:
"I am an ork!"
They are the true heart of the show
@@CJAmara This show has no heart.
Maybe they are the spleen.
Glug did get his degree in Civil and Mountain River Damming Engineering and Surveying, so it makes 100% sense how Adar got that river all gummed up.
@@Mitsoxfan
And he got that degree while working two union jobs and taking care of Glugwife, who was pregnant with glugling at the time. Respect to Glug 🫡
Never have I ever waited with so much anticipation, impatience and general need for a coverage of a TV show, movie or any other work of fiction that I cared so little about, to the point of not once watching a single episode of. Thank you Random for your amazing work.
Me too, not only that I hope they continue to make this dreadful show just so I get more of these reviews
Atleast your doing it right by not watching the show. Half of these morons are actually watching the show - thus incentivizing them to continue to produce this crap as long as people are watching.
Can we talk about the guards in this show? Specifically how they're all useless all the time *except* for the 12 Eregion guards who transformed into absolute chads successfully holding off a non-stop human wave style assault from respawning orcs along what looks like a mile-long section of wall for something like 30 hours. Truly, they were the best of us.
They hogged all the expertise in the show. Which is why all other guards suck^^
I think the 12 elves use the same respawn cheat the orcs do, that explains it
Correction… Giga Chads
I think the Orcs just constantly ran up to the wall, forgot the did not have ass-ladders as in Total War Warhammer, and ran back. The few ladders werent used due to pathfinding issues
@@exantiuse497 That is my theory as well
I imagine the elves on the citywalls reacting like the French on the castle walls in “Monty Pythons Search For the Holy Grail”. Just bewildered and befuddled at the construction noises coming from the forest….but not at all alarmed. 😂
Ha ha ha now its stuck in my head that scene ... 😆🤣😂
@@notsure7060 🙃
Maybe the Orks should have tried a Badger!
@@nz_puddlehound1617 🤣😂🤣
I really like how his wig gets messier after every episode due to the stress, it’s really nice and funny detail! 😂👍
I need to mention that Adar waited until like 30 minutes before sunrise to use the troll… who would turn to stone when touched by sunlight 🤔
The writers told him that the troll dies before that
Whoopsie
i dont think all trolls do tho?
I appreciate your Kronk avatar becoming more and more dishevelled as these reviews came out.
I absolutely love the Frieren and Spock alter ego's. They made my day.
"It's all coming together"
I sure loved how Elrond managed to stop his dollar-store charge of the Rohirrim from crashing into the orcs after Adar reveals he's got the insufferable tempest locked in a cage when they're about 5 seconds from impact.
RoP doesn't abide by any rules, cool pictures on screen with brain-meltingly illogical shit happening.
One side perfectly in the light and the other is in the shadow. Later the orcs from the camp walk right across the river in the daylight.
RoP doesn't abide by physics or logic.
Wouldn’t you think the elves are exactly the type of race to be able to stop a cavalry charge on a dime? That’s right in line with peter Jackson’s elves who are flawless in their movements.
@@jessiefroese5591 i mean, no, because horses can't stop on a dime. They're not machines, they're living creatures. You can't just stomp on the brakes and expect it to just stop moving
This is kind of why cavalry charges are so damn effective, even if you kill the horse you still have nearly half a ton of animal traveling at up to 40 miles an hour that then comes crashing through your lines.... momentum is a bitch that even an elf has to obey.
@@petriew2018 they’re horses trained by elves though…
Let's not forget that Elrond tells them to look to the north where the camera cuts to the north as you see the sun rising. Not only is it a pathetic "remember that?" moment but the sun rises in the east, not the north which so dumb.
We do not know which direction they are facing so Elrond could have just as easily have said to look to the east and it would have been fine(even tho slightly more on the nose) but instead they picked north.
So the writers either do not know where the sun actually rises or they are suggesting that the sun rises from directions whenever it feels like it or third, Elrond is so dumb that he doesn't know where north is and is looking east.
The writers are as allergic to learning and thinking as they seemingly are to testosterone.
Their North is the East, as in the Map of Thrór.😅
I swear, this season in particular feels like a kid changing random things and hoping they don't get hit for the plagiarism they absolutely did.
That happened in season 1 too. The Numenorians had the rising sun behind them when they charged the Orks from the west. I think Random mentioned that in his review of that episode.
> Let's not forget that Elrond tells them to look to the north
And he should've said "west".
> but the sun rises in the east, not the north which so dumb
> We do not know which direction they are facing so Elrond
The capital city of Eregion was Ost-in-Edhil. Apparently its location is not known or properly mapped.
The road from the West gate of Moria , you'd think, would lead east.
Supposedly the road from Moria to Ost-in-Edhil followed the course of the river Sirannon. Which AGAIN, is not perfectly known or properly mapped, but apparently the river Glanduin is nearby; for the Sirannon to empty into the Glanduin, the Sirannon would be heading west-south-west.
So by ship or by road, Prime Durin would be (should have been) fast-travelling from the West gate of Moria, travelling east-south-east. Prime Durin should've been arriving from the west.
(By the way, I'm not a Tolkien scholar and the above just took me less five minutes to verify.)
Which means the only people in existence dumber than Prime Elrond or Prime Durin would be... John D. Payne and Patrick McKay.
... even the Wikipedia page for those two clowns, the first paragraph ends: "They are best known for developing [...] The Rings of Power, *vaguely* based on the history of Middle-earth".
The Sea Is always Right
This Show is always Shite
I say somebody grab Payne and McKay, give them the same treatment Prime Elrond asked Prime Cirdan to give those three lolly ring pops. Then we'll see if the sea is always right.
The She is always right so Galadriel and Miriel are girl bosses. 💪
😂
Now all I can picture is that stupid beach scene with the Numenoreans chanting "the show is always shite".
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I feel it is an upgrade.
Oh, if only Elrond had a magical ring that could heal wounds instantly... maybe he could have saved some lives...
@@anaclaraspm Bro... I didn't even think about that.
Why did they show that funkin ability.
Yeah, he literally points it out in the review...
@@willemwhite9016 Right? 🤦🏻♀️ They didn't need to.
@@exantiuse497 Nicee, I didn't reach that part yet. Just pointed it out to give this detail emphasys because it was one of the first things that came to my mind when I saw the whole battle thing, and it was very odd 😅
No, no, that is a girl-boss ring ability only you see.
This is Rings of Power’s fault for how they’ve portrayed *Elrond, but in the lore he is certainly a capable warrior and a commander in every battle. He fights in and survives pretty much all the major conflicts on middle earth.*
Part of the problem with their world-breaking initial draft.
Elrond should have been the one to lead armies, as he is both young (relatively) and motivated to drive out evil.
Galadriel would have been the king's council, the politician. Far older, far wiser.
Elrond could have even gone to Numenor (giving him more reason to explore their culture and cause conflict as he is the only elf alive with a good reason to be invested in their development).
Alas.
@@JackChurchill101 I agree 💯 - especially with Galadriel being on OG Noldor elf. I mean, Elrond does take over as leader after Gil-Galad passes in the last alliance and was close to Gil-Galad (though he never declares himself king), so he’s definitely a politician of sorts, but Galadriel would be more into the Noldor elf business than Elrond.
@@JackChurchill101 plus didn’t Elronds brother build the library on Numenor where Galadriel finds the magic plot device map that tells her exactly what she needs to know?
Gil-galad led the elves at the last alliance
@@hodgekim No one said he didn’t? You know there’s a difference between a commander and a general or king, right?
To be fair...Sauron did reward Mirdania. Now she does not have to be in Season 3.
You do have a point
If that rock was balanced so precariously, why wasn't it dislodged by the earthquakes when the volcano exploded, like the rocks in Khazad-dûm next door?
Yes but you misunderstand, it's only there because IT WAS dislodged! It just balanced there precariously dooming Eregion to first a drought and then a flood when the water finally overcomes the dam without anyone noticing or doing anything about it until Adar comes in!
Because rock wasn't on screen you dummy. It simply didn't exist at the time.
'- Hey, Random! - Ohh f... what now? - Merry Christmas! - It's October!!!' - the funniest bit I've heard in a while. Good content!
Interactions with Retarded Alter Ego are just perfect for this show
Imma be 'that' person, I've done MY Christmas shopping already
I really wanted Walreg to arrive late to the battle and do the Gandalf/Rohirrim charge by himself
dont forget, they are fighting on a riverbed, that at time is shown as incredibly muddy, and then at times rocky that people can easily move through. The orcs also drag a giant siege weapon through a freshly emptied river. We have Legolas at home has like 3 or 4 arrows in his quiver when Damrod shows up, and no matter how many times he shoots, always has more
Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron. Galadriel and Elendil. Galadriel and Adar. Galadriel and Elrond.
Galadriel is not just Mary Sue, she is Femme Fatale - breaking men's hearts and men's arms and legs. Not just men, but elves, orcs, saurons, dwarves (remember Gimli): if you are male, you are powerless before our heroine. Maybe she even start conquering women one of these episodes, after all this show is all about diversity. Beware Disa!
"All shall love me and despair!"
People watching this show already despair 😀
Everyone except her actual husband
no wonder her daughter deserted her and cut all ties...
The show sure is...
Also oh my god look at the wig
The wig is always right!
The wig was so bad early in season 2 that I noticed bits of long and short hair sticking out - they literally didn't give the wig a haircut after they chose it for the actor, they just stuck it on his head straight out of the packet. But they did take the time to fashion the top layers into an absurd girly little bow at the back of his head. The mind absolutely boggles.
@@vespenegas261🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂
give us the episode 8, can't wait! 😁
Related to my previous comment, Rings of Power's weird obsession with recreating cavalry charges from LOTR has put them in the position of portraying both Numenor and Lindon -- nominally two of the most advanced factions in the setting -- as fielding armies composed only of moderately armored melee cavalry. Meanwhile in LOTR, Almost every faction fields combined arms. Gondor fields infantry, cavalry, archers, artillery and irregulars (via Faramir's rangers). Saruman does as well. Mordor fields infantry, artillery, archers, monsters, allied elephants, and technically air power. Even Rohan, which is defined by being a nation of horsemen, still has infantry and archers. The Hobbit movies do this a lot worse, but they at least gave the Iron Hills dwarves artillery and some limited chariot/cavalry support.
If a pell-mell cavalry charge is a bad idea, an unsupported cavalry charge is a worse one. Cavalry-only armies are exceedingly rare in history. Even the Mongols were a combined arms army. Not that 500 horsemen is an army anyway. Depending on the time period it's not much more than a raiding party. In LOTR both the big cavalry charges have the same justification. They're relief columns which actively chose to leave their infantry behind in order to move faster, and they're intending to make a surprise flanking attack on an enemy that's pinned down in a siege. RoP tries to make that same situation happen, but the Numenoreans didn't know that's what they were doing. Maybe the Lindon elves did, but the show doesn't seem to give any reason to believe they left a contingent of infantry or archers behind somewhere.
Elephants are definitely the armor in the combined arms explanation
Superb comment! Thank you, this was really interesting context.
if Sauron was able to control anyone why did he need the rings? 🤣
Because...they are the things.
In the thing.
To let his minions have pretty things obviously
Because there's no contracts in the world as controlling and binding than marriage.
And so Sauron wants the rings to bind every leader of all races into his own harem.
because anyone worth mind controlling is worth putting a ring on
Charles Edwards's acting in this season is a main, if not the main, reason for which I continued to watch this insult to entertainment called Rings of Power. I wish he and every other actor had been given good material AND DIRECTING. If they can muster this acting with the refuse of script and screenwriting they were given, the heart weeps at the beauty of what could be.
He's a good actor, but definitely miscast as Celebrimbor.
you mean his oscar worthy turn as a village oaf with a sub 100 IQ? You are easily impressed
Random is slowly loosing his mind, and R-Alter Ego is slowly gaining sapience. The end is nigh.
Some things I noticed while watching your break down.
1. There is a massive opening in the wall on the other side of the bridge that the earth damn did not block that they could have just walked through at 1:05:31. So no need to try and break down the wall we already have a massive hole in the wall for some reason.
2. During the episode Elrond says to look North, this is where the sun appears to be rising guess the sun doesn't rise to the East even though it has been shown to rise in the East and set in the West throughout the series...
3. The catapults can now shoot higher and further to reach the top of the rocks so that a landslide can happen...
4. Based on how much material moved into the river, even if the river was flowing at a snails pace, this river is absolutely overflowing, this is why you have to make sure dam bypasses are in place before you even start blocking the flow of the river. The amount of water would instantly wash out your construction side. Once a little water starts flowing through an earthen damn it rapidly washes out. The destructive power of water is on par with taking a volcanic eruption to the face...
5. Gil showed up with a grappling hook just for the boss fight...
6. The time lines get so much worse when you think about how long it would have took to build not only the forge but the walls around the city.
7. Arondir's timeline of moving on foot from where he encountered the Ents to showing up to save Galadriel... Riding non-stop on super horses took a week... Unless we are saying that these series of event took place non-concurrently... We are not shown this though...
I am sure there is more, but I forgot the premise of this show... "Shut up, and don't think about it..."
also what happened to the wave that boulder generated?
Me: Kronk! Pull the lever!
Kronk: **starts Rings of Power**
Me: WrOnG LeVeR!
😂😂 I read this in Yzma voice
Sauron's journey through all of this is kind of sad. Tried to become king of orks, got stabbed in back. Found a father figure, he died in a ship wreck. Avoid getting eatten by a fish, got stuck with a annoying elf. Tried to get a honest job, got arrested. Got convinced to become a king, got stabbed again. Tried to help the elves save their race, got chased out of town. Returned back to the ork, got tortured. Returned to the elves, wasn't let in and left standing in the rain.
@@angrylemon1420Wait? Eaten by a fish?
Finally decides that he's had enough and goes full-tilt evil overlord, gets his soul thrown into a volcano with a mentally deranged homeless hobbit.
Sounds a bit like what happened to me a couple years ago when I lost my home 🤣🤣🤣🤣
To be fair, getting stuck with the annoying elf was probably karma for not helping his father figure. :P
This is how 50% of people see everything…
Absolutely lost it at “Gilgatron”
Can we talk about how Celebrimbor finishes the 9, apparently to save the city, but then immediately tries to destroy the 9 because he doesn't want to use them to save the city anymore, I guess...?
Can we also talk about how Elrond's strategy depends entirely on Durin, someone who has just told him that he's going to overthrow his father, potentially starting a civil war in Moria. And then he is surprised when Durin isn't coming... really, that should always have been expected, and plans should have been made accordingly.
It really needs to be mentioned that the rings arent used outside of a bit of healing so far
Unless he's transferring the pin with his tongue there's no need for a kiss!
"Hey Elrond is that a lockpick in your pocket or are you just happy to see me" 😀
Was that an A-team reference?
Southland sausage is what picks Galadriel's locks.
yes there is
To be clipped out of context as shipping bait for the wine moms that are the only demographic left who hasn't abandoned this show....
@@petriew2018the dozen or so wine moms actually interested in a show like this
Random is going to go mental on this one, can’t wait for it Lul.
yeah this episode has to be his worst f*cking nightmare come true, unless episode 8 tops this
The intro is everything 🤣 “a depressing day, a confusing day” and the hair 🤣🤣🤣💀💀💀
I just want to emphasize 33:40, because I am sick of people saying Galadriel's actress isn't awful. She is. Even with bad writing, good actors act good. Their characters may make no sense but at least they're acting out the nonsensical part as it is written.
and how does she as an actress thinking rrrrrrolling herrrr 'r's is such "great acting"? It drives me crazy!!!! I have to mute her whenever I hear her *cries*
The guy playing Elendil is a good actor.
@@GeraltofRivia22problem is all numenorians feel as weak as Gondor soldiers from the third age. They all should be really tall and mighty. Elendil should already be wise. Same as Isildur because Isildur should be in his 90ies already if we assume Numenor goes down in the next year or two.
@@blackwolf4653 You can't assume Isildur is in his 90s for you must understand the greater the distance the less time makes sense in rings of power and Numenor is mighty far away!
Either way I can see Isildur being a useless Idiot leading into him failing to destroy the ring because he alone is the human conceited enough to think the ring would save them.
The character is horrible but the character being horrible can be used to set up his failings. It'd be a departure from his character in the books but oh boy, that'd be the smallest departure yet.
@@verySharkey Well if we talk about the Lore and not Jeff Bezos mess. Isildur is a hero and one of the greatest Men who ever lived after Elendil. Numenor was at it‘s most powerful state under Ar pharazon.
Isildur died when he tried to bring the one ring to Rivendell and debating with Elrond what to do with it. So even P.Jackson did him kind of dirty wich is not to bad because LOTR is not isildurs Story.
Under great personal risk it was isildur alone who saved the Seed‘s of the White Tree in Numenor wich offspring we can see in Minas Tirith in the third age.
My point is Isildur should already have a backbone and wisdom. Not to Mention what Elendil should be at this point. It‘s sad to see how Numenorians are depicted here. Even elves are less mighty than the human armies in the third age. The show isn‘t made for fans of Tolkien and for casual viewers it‘s just boring as hell. Nobody talks to each other like you would expect. And how should we feel tension for isildur and galadriel when we know they survive anyway.? Why trying to make drama around them? Gosh this show is so bad.
ROP writers are dropping silmarillion refs willy nilly now with no context, and it is very entertaining to see how RFT interprets these nuggets without the book knowledge. Highlights the absolute incompetence of the writers and gives me a delightful chuckle
oh yeah, this time they picked Gondolin
This is some of the highest quality film analysis on UA-cam. Random is undoubtedly a highly intelligent man and I’d love to know if he’s ever put that mind to creating his own literature.
Remember when Elrond said he’d place defeated Sauron above all other concerns, even Galadriel’s life? The fact that he stops the charge during this episode demonstrates he consistently will violate any promise he makes to anyone.
Do the writers even remember writing this?
Now, now, Random. Concerning Durin the elder and his solitary digging to the mountain depths, have you forgotten the great Waldreg so quickly? You *know* the power of a single old man to change the very geological face of Middle Earth. This is absolutly a crisis!
Maybe Disa starts singing again, that would change the very geological face of Middle Earth... shattering mountains more than Orc trebuchets...
1:17:52 Indeed. The mountain of Kazad-Dum is apparently in-universe made out of styrofoam and paper mache, so he'll dig to the bottom in a matter of hours.
@@LateralTwitlerLT You were correct! Good work!
Just a reminder of why this show made by Amazon was doomed:
- Warner Bros has the rights for The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books.
- Amazon has the rights for the Appendices.
- In the Appendices you can find many of the NAMES of the characters, locations, family trees and items written in the works of Tolkien.
- Amazon can only use the NAMES because all the stories belong to Warner Bros.
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings has already been done, so any story from the Third Age is off the table for Amazon.
- The story of The First Age is a spiritual fever dream that is IMPOSSIBLE to be made into a movie or a show. You could try but good luck with that.
- The only thing left for Amazon is to tell the story of the Second Age. It hasnt been done yet but the rights for the story still belong to Warner Bros.
- So Amazon takes all the NAMES and LOCATIONS that it has the rights to, throws in some original characters and makes a story that resembles the events of the Second Age just enough as to not get sued to oblivion by Warner Bros.
- And so we get a Galadriel that bounces all around Middle Earth like a fucking pinball when in fact she never left Lothlorien being by the side of Celeborn throughout the Second Age, hobbits that didnt exist yet and wizards that didnt come until way into the Third Age.
This is the ultimate definition and the ultimate form of fan-fic. A monstrosity born out of IP rights and 500 million dollars. Just because a bald psychopath wanted a show like Game of Thrones. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's and Christopher Tolkien's corpses are spinning so fast that they could power Amazon's servers for the next millenia.
Go fuck yourselves.
I don't think anyone has the rights to the Silmarilllion.
Don't make excuses for the writers.
They have to be working with WB, they have the exact likeness of the Balrog as seen in The Fellowship of The Ring.
Amazon have the rights to use any 2nd Age details to be found in The Hobbit and LOTR. Add that to the Appendices and you actually have an astonishing amount of 2nd Age story. They also have rights to details from every other book on a case-by-case basis. They just aren't allowed to remake The Hobbit or LOTR. The problem is that, rather than using the details available and their own imagination to expand on the bullet point plot in the Appendices, they have kept what they took from the Appendices as bullet points, scattered those bullet points around in whatever order the show-runners felt like, and devoted the rest of the time to their own invented filler, leading to the odd dichotomy of a show with ridiculously quick pacing while still feeling slower than molasses in January.
COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF ❤❤❤BLESS YOU
So first season we had the trench that connected the weird dam to a hidden mount doom and now we have a rock that looks like Wile E Coyote placed and it dams a river. If we don't see Numenor flood this season, that will definitely be the big event next season.
Adar is an engineer! 😂
And it will be the worst contrived bullshit ever.
Probably adar will sink 10 ships into the ocean to make the water level rise above numenor level or something
The writers...water fetish on full display
What pains me so much about it is that it could work, give us 5 minutes of dialogue and establishing shots showing a mountain flank that looks about ready to crumble along with the narrow crevice that the river seems to worm it's way through before splaying out and surrounding eregion and it'd work.
Much less hard to believe for them to hit either when all they need to hit is a wide mountain flank to cause a massive rockslide, not a singular massive idiot rock.
A mountain slide could definitely block the river, albeit not forever.
@@verySharkey why not show one 5 seconds shot of orcs on the mountains loosening boulders or cracking a crank?
Not gunna lie, my current life is shambles and I cannot wait for the E8 S2 breakdown. Charlie, you propel life-force through your very poignant barf. Never stop.
E8 achieved a new dimension of disfunction; I'm really looking forward to the deconstruction:-)
i have laughed 10 mn about Elron catapulting the city he was supposed to rescue, its grandiose....
Elrond committing war crimes and friendly fire at the same time 😀
I want to point out that Celebrimbor DOES NOT TELL GALADRRRRIEL that the Nine are fully corrupted by Sauron when he hands them to her. So that means:
A) Galadrrrriel will figure this out intuitively and toss them in the Middle Mariana Trench
B) Keep the Nine on her until she is captured and they are stolen
C) She meets up with Sauron again and he mind controls her into handing them over
D) She keeps them and takes them into Lindon and the chosen Men are given their Rings
@@silverscorpio24 It was the C but with even more retardation lmao
I'm not sure their intention was that Sauron was manipulating time, but moreso that the candles/rat/etc were ALL illusions. An illusion of a candle will never burn down because its just an illusion. IF that is the case though, then that makes Sauron seem stupid to not make the candle just APPEAR to melt over time. Its all a mess...
Illusion, delusion, he can manipulate and mind-control all Elves in Errrrregion, but not a few Orcs who killed him.
@@stlawstlaw7585 and for some reason he's desperate for the rings despite already being able to mind control an entire city.
@@GeraltofRivia22 The one ring looks so fcking weak right now. The thing he poured his every dark emotion in to? It can what sway or tempt only a few people within a very short distance? Meanwhile Sauron can just bend people to kill themselves and others. Why couldn't he do that to Celebrimbor, just force him to make the rings? Force him into believing nothing is wrong without any illusion at play. See this is the problem with ROP, the elves are humans with pointy ears. There is no sense of magic about them. Meanwhile in PJ elves you can feel them being different. They hold their heads higher, their coordination is close to machine like, they fight with amazing skill and near perfect accuracy. You also see them use magic to heal and save Frodo, and offer gifts that are beyond anything we see with the men kingdoms.
Option four: the orcs found the catapults just sitting in the woods
Off-screen
All other episodes have been released with one week between them, but episode 8 is now on 10 days... I sense a storm brewing, it might even be furious enough to be called a TEMPEST, and I am very much looking forward to it!
"Random will come.. Random will come.. Random will come.." 🌄😥
@@sparkypack Awesome sparky.
@@Ragitsu thank you
I just realized, Adar is probably Celeborn. Him getting Galadriel's ring turns him back into a normal elf.
teleporno baby
This is both horrifying and quite plausible. I wouldn't put anything past this show at this point.
At this point i think celeborn just doesnt exist. Adar is just rando McEvilElf and thats it
"It's genius because Celeborn wouldn't want to kill Galadriel and Adar doesn't kill Galadriel!"
That would make Galadriel orcs' stepmom 😂
Amazing work as always. I don’t know how you keep track of everything. Especially all of the little details. Your videos are among the most well thought out of any I’ve watched on UA-cam over the years. I truly look forward to them. So very entertaining. Thank you so much for all the effort you put into these.
@1:26:42 It's definitely head-canon for me now that Sauron has a phobia for severed fingers. Makes the original work so much funnier.
When he has his finger cut off in the prologue of Fellowship he is internally screaming "Not again, NOT AGAIN!"
@@exantiuse497 "Why didn't I just make it a necklace or an earring?!?" 😭😖😣
28:00 the inconsistent time issues in this show are more evidence for my theory that this was written by ai as an investor stunt. That's also why they hired 2 nobodies, so they could reasonably say that any success wasn't theirs.
Ngl the Elrond, Galadriel and (especially) Isildur loving their horses is the most relatable thing about this show. I can 100% see me running into the woods to save my (hypothetical) horse.
Celebrian: "I love you so much, Elrond."
Elrond: "Oh? How much is so much?"
"I saved my first kiss for you." ❤
".....Oh."
Plot twist: Elrond is already married to Celebrian (which the show forgot to mention) so Galadriel IS his mother-in-law after all. Let that sink in...
@@exantiuse497 The events that RoP are supposedly portraying are a bastardized version of the second age. While I agree with your sentiment, I disagree with your statement. Elrond and Celebrian marry in the Third age TA 109. Elrond would not even have known Celebrian at the time of these events. Celebrian was born in SA 300 and the rings of power weren't forged until SA 1500. Celebrian first met Elrond in SA 1701. But another point I would add to bastardization is that if Elrond did not meet Celebrian until she was 1,400 years old, I would venture to guess that Elrond and Galadriel were not "dearest of old friends" like the show repeated states.
The drawing of the battle might be the funniest part of any video you have ever released. Well done, sir. Well done.
I found it crazy how the river simply STOPPED and didn't overflow, making the riverbed completely dry. But, then I remembered this is Amazon ROP's laws of physics, where a full-blown pyroclastic flow hits you like a breeze and you can trigger a volcano eruption just by throwing water in it.
Leave a like if you’re anxiously checking every day for episode 8’s breakdown.
Chilcotin River in my province of British Columbia , the landslide dam lasted about a week. Followed by a large flood.
You forget one thing about the catapults that make it 10 times worst. There are no catapults that can throw this far. Not even close.
this far and this high.... or this precise.
Yeah, I felt like I was taking crazy pills while those clips played. These writers are so unbelievably stupid.
@@XenomorphXIII I've watched children's cartoons that wouldn't do something this stupid even when they had heavy cartoon physics.
If you have trebuchets and catapults that effective, you build a palisade and pound your enemy to a pulp from a distance.
Oh they used the cheat in Age Of Empires Definitive Edition for the Rise of Rome LOL You can shoot balistia missiles from way across the map!
I think you might be giving the show too much credit with the “pocket dimension” idea.
I suspect that it’s just a looping illusion and the ring making process is simply accelerated by bad writing.
Also, I think Sauron force pushes Merdania to coincide with Celebrimbor’s angry flailing, rather than mind controlling him.
This video is a master class in showing what not to do in visual media--precisely what Rings of Power is doing (or not doing)
You draw a weak horse, but a strong, virile forge
good shape, good girth
@@NickiRusin no significant bending
Is that a forge or is Eregion just happy to see me?
Man, I cant believe this guy didn't riff on the dick jokes for a while haha
I like how we're dealing with artillery that can dismantle entire geographic features when a modern nation would have to expend a billion USD of munitions to achieve the same result, but they can't use it to blast through Eregion's fortifications from a safe distance in one go.
After having followed the war in Ukraine and having seen war footage daily I was thinking the same thing. Besides the big bombs dropped by russian aviation the orc artillery seems more effective than anything going on over there. Russia would waste much less equipment if they had those catapults. Not just men and elves who have diminished after the second age. Apparently 2nd age orcs were also better at artillery than 21st century orcs.
"Unga Bunga."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War.
😂😂😂
"No worries guys, we'll Unga bunga them" Quintillius Varus moments before the battle of Teutoberg forest
I also loved this. I scrolled down to see if anyone would mention it.
“Unga Bunga” - Captain Cave Man
@@robertbeck714 Captain Caveman was the first thing I thought of!😆
Great work again. Been following you since you first did this with only 50 subs. I look forward to each episode you make. Keep it up
I fucking *love* that the showrunners are literally thinking they are creating history right now, filming the most expensive TV show based on a timeless masterpiece and they are, in fact, behaving *exactly the way the depicted Celebrimbor* . They either don't realize yet, or are just now realizing they ruined everyone's career and go through the same rude awakening as that poor fella 😂
The secondhand embarrassment is too real
@@luckylarry71 they are creating history. Just not in the way they think. This will go down as the biggest failure in history.
@@joelpenley9791 Hopefully, no one will remember this perverted pile of nonsense in a few years, just like people will always come back to the original trilogy, without connecting it with the hobbit trilogy.
@@luckylarry71 I understand why you want everyone to forget, but I think we need to remember (and ridicule) this so that it never happens again. An example needs to be made:
@@joelpenley9791 Fair point. The inversion of values and piss-poor television making, hiring activists instead of actors should not just go over everyone's ears like it's no biggie.
Even if the river could be blocked, what would be left over would be an impassable amount of mud and silt that would be deep enough to drown in.
Which some of the elven horses actually do. But only those 2 horses because fuck them. Trolls, orcs and siege engines are of course not affected in any way.
The fact that you referred to Greasebag McMonobrow wistfully as "better times", well... oof.
Great work. One thing you skipped over though: trebuchet cannot hurl a projectile anywhere near as far as they do in this battle, even if it was a reeeealy big one - which the ones depicted are not. In order for “The bit where they shoot the cliff” to be a feasible thing, you’d need to attach rockets to the boulders (RPBs?). There’s also the fact that if they can hit the cliff by the river, then why not that bloody obvious and much closer cliff behind the city? Or the even more bloody obvious and even closer Forge Tower, the destruction of which IS THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE 🤦♂️
That plus it takes hours if not days to actually calibrate them for any real accuracy.
This. Times 100. Forget the time to build the trebuchets and find and move the massive projectiles the arc is wrong and the distance just an insult to gravity and physics.
A medieval catapult is somehow more effective than modern artillery according to this show.
@@M-Bison1992 Well they can't make them too accurate because they have to keep the biggest tower in the city standing for weeks of constant bombardment
"Forward, do not be afraid of whatever horrible orc they keep in that cage... oh wait, it's Galadriel... CHARGE!"
"This is our chance to destroy her! Charge!"
Hey random. On some of the shots from the back of the archers on the wall, you can see a bridge to the right hand side.. and we assume that leads to a gate in the wall.😬. it's about 100ft if that, to the left of Adars army, and even closer to the right of the archers.. in which case.. its even worse that they bothered to block the river.🤦♂️ Watching the Premier and loving it so far. Great job my guy. 😁 💯
adressed in the video: there's a drawbridge lifted too.
@@Jonjon13Jonjon13 yes I heard. And I noticed. 👍 but a drawbridge is alot easier to bring down than a mountain.. they could've destroyed it and thrown some trees across that they cut down episodes ago for no reason. 🙄
Eregion looked completely different in Season1, not even had walls.
@@stlawstlaw7585 your right it totally does. Almost like they realised they wanted a siege.. and had no other choice than to magic them into existence.. either that or sauron is just deceiving all their brains (since apparently he can do that now) so it looks like there's walls.. but actually there's just a small fence around the city. 🤣
Think the only thing more enjoyable than Random tearing this series a new one is wondering what Wacky outfit R-Alter ego will be dressed as. that alone should get it's own tier list personally. Also I would love a spinoff of Glug and goblin boi going on a set of adventures together. I mean it would be better than this show.
Its always a good indicator of how much of a shambles the episode was when Random's pulling a face like that 😂
I hope the ending is LoTR's Galadriel coming out of gazing in her mirror in some panic. Celeborn is there and asks in some concern if she's alright. Galadriel nods to him and says she saw a past that *could* have been, one of darkness without Celeborn.
I didn't interpret the Sauron illusion as Sauron bending time and giving Celebrimbor weeks while only hours pass in the real world. I thought he's literally just doing an illusion, actual weeks pass both in the illusion and in reality and it's yet another case of the writers not acknowledging the passage of time in any manner.
+1
Sauron is as much Master over time as the creators of this show 😬
My problem with it being just a illusion is the fact that the forge is kinda destroyed. How did he work in it like that? He never kicked a piece of ruble accidentally? Never got up in the week that passed to go to the bathroom or just flex his legs a bit?!
Nothing makes sense in this show.....
but if i saw correctly the actual forge has rubble and shit on it. how would he be able to continue working and not interact with any of that? not to mention the incredible luck of the actual tower never being hit by the heat seeking, gravity defying trebuchets and killing him outright unless sauron can keep towers from falling but the end of the peter jackson trilogy makes that seem a little silly.
@@tilervonbiscuitbrown4393 agreed, he should have been stumbling on things he couldn't see. But I think the correct conclusion is 'the writers meant for Celebrimbor to be trapped by Sauron in an illusion and were very bad at accounting for the logistics of it' and not 'Sauron can manipulate time'
Original post didn’t say it was a good or effective idea but yeah I agree cause of how disheveled ring maker looks, plus the forge. Not well done of course cause this show is this show but yeah time has passed
I cant explain just how much I enjoyed the little paint session.
Celebrimbor has 9 rings that turn people invisible and several tools made for cutting metal. So what does he do? He uses the metal cutting tool to cut his thumb off rather than cutting the brass handcuff, and then he kinda just walks out slowly. Sauron is offscreen so he doesn't exist, so it totally works when you don't think about it. Even Sauron Lord of the Earth and Master of spirits and of phantoms wouldn't expect Celebrimbor to do this. Or did he? We all know that at the end of this season everything that happened will be force fit into Saurons plan the whole time, so who cares?
if king Durin was so greedy he would've asked money for his army to show up in eregion.
Imagine having a private army and when someone at war ask you for your help you say no, because they'll come back next year for helmets, at a higher price 🤣, like WTF if they loose the war nobody's gonna buy the helmets 🤣
And then youre in deep shit cause you just lost a big trading partner. Also an army is a day away from you
Mad King Durin was distracted. He was secretly working on a plan to sell NFTs and start a cryptocoin.
I find it odd and absurdly funny that they portray Sauron as an abusive bf. That's literally the writing.
You know what is most infuriating about all this? Many news outlets claim that this episode is brilliant because it "subverts our expectations". For example, Elrond's dollar store charge is just like Gandalf or Theoden's charges, but unlike them, he fails. Elrond was counting on Durin to save the day, again like Gandalf at Helm's Deep, but it doesn't happen. Damrod was built up to be a big deal, but he dies like a bitch. Apparently all of this is good writing because it subverts what audiences expect to happen in the battle... I hate that we live in a world where media sites will defend trite like this.
Celebrimbor: "go, Galadriel, my friend, carry these very dangerous rings that i cannot destroy away from the Enemy of all free people. I will buy you whatever time i can"
also Celebrimbor: "hey Sauron buddy, the Nine arent here in the tower actually"
I feel that we aren't talking enough about the river bottom being near-impossible to traverse even for infantry, let alone machinery and siege devices.
The bottom wouldn't only be slippery and rocky, with no foot hold, but it would be full of very deep and very liquid mud. A group of men who would try to traverse it are at a great risk of injuries even without any threat from enemy archers.
It would probably take several months for the river bottom to stop being a perilous trap on its own.
Yet a literal army traverses this river with no effort at all.
It would have made more sense for the garrison of Eregion to have weeks of forewarning of the orcs coming. Time enough for them to prepare and the story to build tension while Celebrimbor frantically tried to finish the rings. It didn't all need to happen over like a weekend.
Also, why not just have the catapults break through the wall and then have the big troll be the first to break through. Would have been an awesome scene even if he died. Rather than have our heroes kill him have like the captain of the guard, battling him and showing that all elves are badass in their own right. Not just our plot armour main characters. Having the captain defend the steps of Celebrimbors tower with the last of his men while their master dies at saurons hands anyway would have been so much more tragic and imo cooler.
This show is making money for UA-cam. 😂
More than for Amazon for sure 😀
Everyone knows you can stop a cavalry charge in an orderly fashion like that. Of course even human beings can't all immediately start or stop moving at the exact same time when a traffic light changes, but horses surely can. All you have to do is have the guy at the front stop their horse, and literally every horse behind them will also stop in the same instant. It makes perfect sense! What great writing! 😂😂
They’re elves lol
@@jessiefroese5591they still obey the laws of physics.
@@GeraltofRivia22 they do not in peter Jackson’s movies.
@@jessiefroese5591 time stamp for the scene where elves make horse defy the laws of physics, please.
@@petriew2018 how bout that ultra steep hill the rohirim ride down to save helms deep. Totally unrealistic.
Normally movies have continuity errors regarding movement and objects but an entire CGI wall around a city that is going to be a focal point of filming? Kings new clothes of Bezos is amazing
In Lindon, we were told "Eregion is protected by two rivers with miles of curtain wall of dwarven stone, ten-foot thick." So, this was built some time ago. Seemingly with help from Khazad--dûm at least in the quarrying of the stone. Of course, we don't know why it was built, and why the Dwarves were involved at all. Nor how Gil-Galad knew of it, because the lines of communication from Lindon to Ost-in-Edhil are… whatever they need to be. For all the, um, deliberate pacing of the show's action, they constantly leave gaps, in the expectation that the audience will piece out their imperfections for them.
Eregion didn't even have walls in Season1 but they magically appeared in Season2.
Happy you did the "Gilgamesh" bit xD I was waiting for that!
Elrond is literally on the frontline in the opening battle in Fellowship. So he can fight.
Yeah, but this is RoP, and it has nothing to do with that movie besides stealing some names from it.
That guy that played Sauron for like 3 minutes was a much more compelling Sauron than the main one.
Nah, I like the actor. Several of the actors are doing their best with the crap their handed.
dropping rocks that large into the water from that height would do two things. One, slightly increase the volume of water they need to get past for a few months due to displacement. Two, create a rather large wave that could possibly be detrimental to this Orc army's equipment and personell (the potential damage depending on the water level of the river at the time).
This deserves an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy!!
The kiss was shipbait like a lot of shit in this show is. Unless they showed that elves (or rather these two) show platonic affection through kissing, then the kiss showing up now is significant from a meta standpoint.
Hell, from a story standpoint you’d think Adar would take notice. He seemed to know about Elrond’s family so it wouldn’t be surprising if he also knew that Galadriel (one of the most famous elves) is married. Given how he and Galadriel are at odds, you’d think he’d point the kiss out for no other reason than to ruffle Galadriels feathers.
Thanks for this critique series. There was no way I was going to waste a second watching season two after the train wreck that was the first, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your tearing this shows multitude of inadequacies apart.
Thank you for putting yourself through it for our entertainment.
To be honest, I’ll be expecting a more interesting character arc for retarded alter ego in the next season than for anyone in the show.
At this point, you really should change the title from "not very good" to "utter garbage".
Good luck keeping your sanity with this one !
He's mentioned in an earlier episode that the show really was just "not very good" at the start, but he's keeping the title for consistency and ironic understatement. Think it was in the final autopsy for season 1, but I can't remember for certain.
He is random, but gracious.
Can't wait for part 8. Do we have a drop countdown? Tonight maybe?
Poor Celebrian in some kind of love triangle with your own mother. Ew 🤢 wait it's square there's sauron...oh wait also Celeborn. Some freaky pentagon.
SWEET HOME EREGION! Where the skies are so strange!
Wait until they reveal that Atarrrr is Celeborn...
@@charliedulinthats if they have celeborn at all
If Damrod was so uncontrollable, how do Adar keep him out of the fight in the first place?
Here's a very simple and not $1 billion dollar writers thought:
If all Adar wants is Sauron dead, then to go home in peace as the show flip flops on, then Adar should be very open to negotiations and even possibly working with the Elves to rid the world of their common enemy. Adar may fear that using Elves to extract Sauron out of the city is risky and may lead to him escaping, tricking them, or transforming into a Elf soldier to blend in, however he should know that the Elves are just as motivated to kill Sauron as he is, and should expect a thorough job, or as thorough as his Orcs at least. He could have negotiated Galadriel's life and the city for Sauron's capture and death, something the Elves would have instantly agreed to, so long as when Adar uses the rings to banish Sauron that they must be there to watch. Both factions in this story want the same thing, why they can't work together to rid the world of Sauron is beyond me.
Not only was there an inexplicable “thinnest part of the wall” but that thing the orcs use is completely wooden. Have they not heard of oil? Pitch? Fire? That was such an easy thing to stop
Love how Arandir was sympathising with the Ents while literally wearing wood.