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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I watched the first episode last night to have a more informed take on it. I don't care about the deviations from lore, and the casting choices don't bother me. It's pretty.

The big issue is that... it's boring. Aside from Galadriel, all the characters are completely flat, and there's nothing that makes me want to keep watching. It's probably unfair to compare it to E1 GoT, but it's weak compared to HoD or even WoT. My GF (who has watched the Peter Jackson films half a dozen times but has no other connection to Tolkien or fantasy lit) checked out and went to bed halfway through. I persevered but won't be watching further episodes. I'd probably get more out of generating hobbit images on Stable Diffusion for hours.

The first episode was super slow, but it speeds up a lot after that. I'd at least give the 2nd episode a chance, that's where I decided I liked it.

Also, how dare you compare it to WoT lol, that show was a dumpster fire. Tbf it didn't really get terrible until the 5th episode or so though.

Okay, but was WoT worse than "Legend of the Seeker"? Because if so, that's Plan 9 from Outer Space, so-bad-its-good territory.

I think the WoT comparison is spot on. Both shows have people running them who don't in the least care about the source material, and who lash out at anyone who criticizes their work as being a bigot. Both shows are also, by most accounts, not good even on their own merits. Seems like a pretty apt comparison to me.

I'll throw my 2c in the ring with "While it commits a number of the same flaws, RoP is way better than WoT". I'd give RoP a 5 or a 6 / 10 -- it looked very good (except for the armor, which, except for Galadriel's, looked like fake plastic armor you buy for your kids, IMO), and had some nice scenes (Adar, Elrond & Durin). I hard the Harfoots though, and for me the main problem is nothing really had consequences -- we just flowed from one set piece to the next. Also, the diverse casting wasn't too damaging for RoP, in my opinion, except for the Harfoots, where it really makes no sense.

WoT was a 2 or 3 / 10, where a number of "The Message" things really destroyed the whole story (and underlying system of magic and source of tension in the book).

I don't think I'll be watching Season 2 of either, unless the family makes me.

If Amazon is smart, they hurry Season 2 out, as I think otherwise most people will turn their back on RoP.

Nothing RoP did comes anywhere near some of the BS WoT pulled, like making race non-genetic (except for red hair for Plot Reasons), or Rand's journey throughout the whole season essentially boiling down to being sad but accepting and supporting his potential wife's decision to be a Career Woman rather than letting him be a homemaker for her. At least in WoT the white character's black mom is her stepmom.

I'll give it another shot, based purely on the recommendation.

It's pretty.

The wide CGI shots are pretty. Get into the sets, and it's all cramped: Númenor has five ships for their grand fleet to the Southlands? The main square can hold sixty people max? There isn't a barracks to train the recruits, we do it on a set of stairs in a side-street where the shopkeepers have stalls set up?

CGI and the New Zealand Tourist Board wet dream vistas can only do so much.

With the disclaimer that I haven't watched RoP at all: isn't "cramped" a pretty good description for medieval Europe? Most commercial activity had to fit within the city/town walls, and the manpower needed to build the walls was proportional to the square root of their area. The old European cities I'm familiar with don't really have "squares" in the modern sense so much as they have random areas where buildings are set back and these became public areas or markets. For example, in old Vienna the only space I can think of is in front and to the sides of the Vienna cathedral, and in the City of London the only green space is around St. Paul's. Presumably these were staging areas for construction when the cathedrals were built, after which they became public spaces.

Ships were very expensive in the middle ages, too, but I think you are right about the number being far too small: well after what we would consider the medieval period, the battle of Trafalgar (1805) only involved 73 vessels, and we think of it as the breaking point of the Spanish fleet. But according to this website, the British navy of 1650 had 74 vessels. Wikipedia says that "In the 11th century, Aethelred II had an especially large fleet built by a national levy." but Aethelred II opted to pay Danegeld following the Battle of Maldon in 991, at which the total strength of the Norse was supposedly 2000-4000 men. That would have been at most 100 longships. And the Norse King Canute the Great is said to have had 1,200 Snekkja (41-man longships) in Norway in 1028.

It didn't feel cramped that way -- full of life and stuff. It didn't actually feel cramped at all, just that it was filmed on a stage (especially Numenor), which is not good for your sense of immersion.

Even cramped, dirty, pop-history mediaeval Europe managed to find somewhere better to train raw recruits than "go down that alley there and hope a Super Warrior Elf turns up to show you which end of a sword is the pointy bit".

This is meant to be Númenor, the greatest realm of Mortal Men that ever existed, not a village in darkest Berkshire in 1289. Since they're showing Pharazon and Miriel, this is the period in its history in which Ar-Pharazon was able to mount such a huge invasion force that Sauron's armies ran away without even engaging them, just from the terror they inspired upon seeing them.

Instead we get "We're sending out five ships - oh no two burned down - we're sending out three ships to fight a war to liberate the Southlands against an unknown number of Orcs, but Galadriel assures us that hordes of them have infested Middle earth so probably more than fifty".

With the disclaimer that I haven't watched RoP at all: isn't "cramped" a pretty good description for medieval Europe?

Lotr is not medieval Europe. It is mythological Europe and Numenor is Atlantis. And there is grandeur everywhere in Tolkien's world. The white city of Minas Tirith was small outpost of the Numenorean Empire.

Tolkien's world can be viewed a bit like fragment of fragment compared to previous ages. Sauron is but a shadow of Melkor, Godor is but a shadow of Numenor, Elves themselfs are shadows of glory past ...

... And thus am I outed as a non-Tolkie.

Godor is but a shadow of Numenor

But that hit home. The RoK makes Gondor out to be comparable to imperial China in its constructions, and so Numenor was presumably vaster and richer than Rome. For an island nation presumably richer than Rome and presumably with magic to only be able to swing together five ships... yeah, that would break the immersion.

Thank you for the explanation.

The way I think about it: If Rohan had the state capacity of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Numenor was Rome at its height, or mythological Trojan-War era Greece, complete with a thousand ships.

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