The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[Mortimer]

I never read LOTR and never watched the shows, i watched maybe a little bit of the LOTR trilology, it was usually always on Christmas on TV the past 10 years by now. But I didnt even watched the whole trilology or movies. It is just not something i really like, i dont know.

[Todesritter]

Noldors also have military traditions, such characters like Glorfindel was one of the greaterst fighter of all time, he defeated 2 balrog. A noldor army is the strongest military force in Arda, they are better than any dwarfs. Basically elves are better warriors than others, and the main reason is their very long life, they can get more experience during their life. If you have very long life then you can train yourself in every aspect.
Galadriel had strong body, will, and mind, she participated in athletic feats etc. as Letter 348 says. Although Tolkien did not mention her as warrior in Sencond Age, this rebellious amazon type is not a strange from Galadriel, she also did care about evil at this time, so in RoP her characteristic is not against the canon, rather her actions are against it like her sea adventure.

About elvish looking, elves looked very similar to humans, the only difference is their ears and beauty, this classic fantasy elvish portrayal doesnt exist in Tolkien's world, i mean the different skull type.



https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Elven_characteristics

"But Túrin was young, and only now reached his full manhood; and he was in truth the son of Morwen Eledhwen to look upon: tall, dark-haired and pale-skinned, with grey eyes, and his face more beautiful than any other among mortal men, in the Elder Days. His speech and bearing were those of the ancient kingdom of Doriath, and even among the Elves he might be taken at first meeting for one from the great houses of the Noldor."
from The Silmarillion

"In those days Elves and Men were of like stature and strength of body; but Elves were blessed with greater wit, and skill, and beauty; and those who had dwelt in Valinor and looked upon the Gods as much surpassed the Dark-elves in these things as they in turn surpassed the people of mortal race. […] Yet their bodies were of the stuff of earth and could be destroyed, and in those days they were more like to the bodies of Men, and to the earth, since they had not so long been inhabited by the fire of the spirit, which consumeth them from within in the courses of time."
from The Lost Road and other Writings

It goes against cultural traditions to let women fight for reasons I recall Tolkien citing to be more of a spiritual nature. I've only read the Silmarillion thrice and know Finwë's family tree in both Quenya and Sindarin, obviously you can't expect me to know and refer to anything about Noldorin culture or their military tradition...

Males and females have equal skill in all things, not concerned with the bringing forth of children; however, the females often specialize in the arts of healing while the men go to war.

In short, we have no attestations of elven women fighting outside of dire situations like Kinslayings, but we do have lines speaking out against the cultural practice. It's canon Galadriel didn't participate in the open conflict during the vast majority of the first age, regardless of which version of her arrival to Beleriand you accept. Given that Tolkien depicted her as a kind of moral paragon among the Noldor at times, with even saintly connotations, I find the choice to depict Galadriel as a sword-wielding action girl uncanonical and inaccurate when in canon the main focus lies on her discerning mind and her ambitions as a ruler. If you want an action girl, Lúthien and Éowyn exist and are canon.

Elves were often described as "fair", implying beauty; there is in fact nothing except for 2 lines in linguistic manuscripts implying or noting that elves had pointed ears, given how easily Men could be mistaken for them, but they were unable to grow beards into their 'third cycle of life' which is poorly explained. All attested descriptions of elves also describe them with long hair, and not susceptible to ageing the same way as humans do. My personal belief is that it's incorrect to depict elves with anything but predominantly gracile Nordic skeletal structure, but this is more of a personal belief stemming from the historical sources upon which their depictions are based; still it is inexcusable to depict elves as anything else but white (and not southern european white either), and elves with short hair are not fully in line with canon depictions (considering that Glorfindel actually gets killed because he wears his hair so long, a balrog grabs it and pulls him down a cliff to his death). RoP's Elrond (who is supposed to be dark-haired) doesn't look like he's the scion of all the noble houses of the Edain and the lines of Fingolfin and Thingol, he looks like an English roadman, Gil-Galad looks like he owns a seedy pizzeria and Celebrimbor, who's Galadriel's nephew, looks like a washed out high school English teacher. None of them, except Galadriel, look even remotely like elves. Not to mention that the costumes are also dogshit.

[Duke]

I am not Tolkien fan, so from neutral perspective, Rings of power were middling, mediocre flick, nothing to great or awesome, but not as bad as some people call it.

Best series in recent times is Mandalorian of course, and I think they made the best women warrior archetype, she is strong, brave, have motherly instincts, and yet not untouchable matrix shit where she never gets touched

[LaSentinelle]

Obvious stuff aside, I hated the uninspired nature of the costumes. Hobbits (who didn't even exist back then) look like hobos. All dirty, wearing rags and leaves in their hair, Numenorians look like a Greco-Roman mix to the point where when I was watching the show I sometimes thought I was watching some Netflix documentary on ancient Rome/Greece. Elves having short hair is another gripe of mine. Why would elves not have long hair? Out of practicality? Mate, they're literally immortal, they can't die even if their body is destroyed. Their spirit will still survive. Elves are supposed to be the fairest race of all. In the show they look... like random english people in fancy dresses. I could understand the decision behind giving some dwarves short beards (even though I didn't like it) to help the viewer to differentiate the characters (didn't really help because by the end of the trilogy I still couldn't remember half of the dwarves), but giving elves short hair? Nah. Also why on earth does Celebrimbor look so old in the show? Evles don't age like that. He looks like some guy with pointy ears and short hair, not a nobleman from an old elven house.
I liked the decision to make orcs pale as ghosts and give them blue eyes, I finally got some representation in Tolkien's works (considering he didn't use any slavic material when writing the books).

[Duke]

Hobbits represent their hunter-gatherer age, i believe it was Gandalf who civilised them

[Todesritter]

Obvious stuff aside, I hated the uninspired nature of the costumes. Hobbits (who didn't even exist back then) look like hobos. All dirty, wearing rags and leaves in their hair, Numenorians look like a Greco-Roman mix to the point where when I was watching the show I sometimes thought I was watching some Netflix documentary on ancient Rome/Greece. Elves having short hair is another gripe of mine. Why would elves not have long hair? Out of practicality? Mate, they're literally immortal, they can't die even if their body is destroyed. Their spirit will still survive. Elves are supposed to be the fairest race of all. In the show they look... like random english people in fancy dresses. I could understand the decision behind giving some dwarves short beards (even though I didn't like it) to help the viewer to differentiate the characters (didn't really help because by the end of the trilogy I still couldn't remember half of the dwarves), but giving elves short hair? Nah. Also why on earth does Celebrimbor look so old in the show? Evles don't age like that. He looks like some guy with pointy ears and short hair, not a nobleman from an old elven house.
I liked the decision to make orcs pale as ghosts and give them blue eyes, I finally got some representation in Tolkien's works (considering he didn't use any slavic material when writing the books).

Making orcs pale and blue-eyed is obviously a politically motivated move.

That aside, agree with everything you've said about the costumes. The armour is atrocious; a lot of knowledge had been lost, but I refuse to believe that the Noldor, who were superior metalworkers and engineers, after also acquiring knowledge from the Dwarves in the first age, couldn't produce a decent suit of plate? Or a decent fine brocade? (Also, why the fuck is Galadriel wearing a Fëanorian star on her cuirass? Finarfin's house had its own heraldic device and she hated Fëanor's guts)

On second thought, I should crowdfund to create an animated adaptation of the Silmarillion that's accurate to the lore and to practical conventions of arms and armour. Does anyone have at least five bucks?

[LaSentinelle]

Hobbits represent their hunter-gatherer age, i believe it was Gandalf who civilised them

They already have wheeled wagons, a writing system/record keeping and astronomy in the show, they're more than civilised by that point. I guess the writers just couldn't decide what they wanted to do with the show and put the Hobbits there to serve as a bait for LoTR and The Hobbit trilogy fans. I mean, for an average person LoTR is primarily about Elves and Hobbits. If Rangz of Powah didn't have hobbits they'd be losing half of the views (or so they thought).

[Vitez]

I loved the movies, they were so interesting and I will read the books soon.
For me it represented European honour, bravoury, brotherhood and love for the land.
I'm really glad they made the movies before all this mess.

[Duke]

They already have wheeled wagons, a writing system/record keeping and astronomy in the show, they're more than civilised by that point. I guess the writers just couldn't decide what they wanted to do with the show and put the Hobbits there to serve as a bait for LoTR and The Hobbit trilogy fans. I mean, for an average person LoTR is primarily about Elves and Hobbits. If Rangz of Powah didn't have hobbits they'd be losing half of the views (or so they thought).

Hobbits with Gandalf were the best part of Rings of power, at least to me.
It had most suspense, they could die at every step, you didnt really know if that guy was Gandalf or Sauron... etc

Everything else was narcissistic matrix shit

[Blondie]

...

Lúthien and Éowyn also proves that female warriors are not against the canon and its "tradition". This is what im talking about, not just the woke wants to influence this series but the alt-right also do that. They dont want to accept female warriors because of political reasons and most of them has no any idea about canon.

Hobbits (who didn't even exist back then) look like hobos. All dirty, wearing rags and leaves in their hair

Hobbits existed at this time and they were dirty semi-nomads.

Hobbits were considered Men. Nearly all scholars agree that Men were closely related to Hobbits, far more closely than Men were to either Elves or Dwarves. It was thus commonly assumed that Hobbits were among the Younger Children of Ilúvatar and were the result of the same act of creation as Men. This would imply that Hobbits had the Gift of Men to pass entirely beyond Arda.

It is supposed that Hobbits branched out from Men as a race in the Elder Days, but they don't appear at all in the chronicles of the Elves.[2] Their exact origin is unknown but in their early days they could have been primitive and "savage".[4] Apparently they survived in Middle-earth for millennia far from importance and the knowledge of stronger races; they come into the records not earlier than the early Third Age where they were living in the Vales of Anduin in Wilderland, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains. They have lost the genealogical details of how they are related to the rest of mankind. While they stayed there, the Northmen knew them. Their descendants, the Rohirrim, had that memory of the holbytlan and they remained an object of lore until they contacted them during the War of the Ring. Many old words and names in "Hobbitish" are cognates of words in Rohanese, so much so that even someone without linguistic training could make out the relation (Meriadoc Brandybuck would later write an entire book devoted to the relationship, Old Words and Names in the Shire).

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Hobbits#Origin

Hobbits lived a hidden life for very long time, its pretty normal that the big folks did not see them and they did not write them in the chronicles. And yes nomad hobbit were dirty hobos as well. If you live in the forest without any normal house, you will be dirty, just try it in real life. There is a scene in the episode 1, when two human hunter are talking about hobbits, and they dont exactly know who are they.

Numenorians look like a Greco-Roman mix to the point where when I was watching the show I sometimes thought I was watching some Netflix documentary on ancient Rome/Greece.

Because Numenor is based on Atlantis and Atlantis is based on greco-roman mythology. The RoP portrayed them correctly unlike the original trilogy.