.webp?h=8 "Top Hat (black) - Traditional. Classy. Elegant.")
Season 2 begins with a flashback. After Morgoth's defeat Sauron is running for President and delivers a low energy speech to the orcs. Adar starts an insurrection by stabbing the Dark Lord with his crown followed by the orcs killing him. Years later Sauron becomes a symbiote like goo feeding from maggots and mice until he crawls outside the Mountain, kills a woman and becomes "Halbrand". Then Halbrand boards a ship with an old man, a big fish destroys the ship and Saubrand steals the man's sigil, later he finds Galadriel and season 1 events ensue.
Now Saubrand goes back to Mordor where Adar tortures him, and later lets him go because he promises Adar to find Sauron. I hace no idea of what was the point of Saubrand in Mordor. Then he goes to Eregion to meet Celebrimbor and convinces him he's a messenger of the Valar, finally we have an Annatar reveal.
This should have been in season 2 and is probably the only scene so far I thought it was kind of cool, but is sad they casted an old man as Celebrimbor, the elves are ageless god Darnit! After that they resume their work.
The moronic and gullible she-elf Galadriel tells Gil-Galad and Elrond that Halbrand is Sauron. There's a ridiculous scene with Elrond stealing the 3 elvish rings. He takes to them to Cirdan but it turns out Cirdan doesn't want to destroy them, he puts the rings and gives the other two to Gil-Galad and Galadriel which leaves Elrond pissed.
The dwarves of Khazad Dum are worried about the mountain not responding to the dwarven kween's singing so Durin and Disa go to Eregion where Celebrimbor and Annatar begin forging the 7 rings.
There's the totally not-Gandalf wizard and fem-Frodo along fem-Sam wandering through the desert where they meet Tusken raiders sent by totally not-Saruman (I swear if the Dark Wizard is Saruman than they will outdumb every other dumb change made before)
Not-Gandalf has visions with a staff, he's looking for it. The Tusken Raiders attack him and he summons a dust-devil with a provisory staff, it doesn't work well as the Hobbits as taken away like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
The Numenor shit continues to be boring. Donald Trump Ar-Pharazon coups Kween Tar-Miriel by EXPOSING her as an elvish lover. Isildur's sister shows up at Miriel's coronation displaying the Palantir and calls out Miriel, then an Eagle shows up for a photo-op and Trump goes toward the Eagle and becomes King after the crowd shouts and goes bananas!
As a Tolkien adaptation this slop is 2/10, it is very loosely based on the Legendarium. As its own thing it's like 4/10, very mediocre show, boring with few interesting moments and dumb plotlines.
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I liked it as a 7.5/10 non-Tolkein. I think it stands a lot better on its own than a lot of the IP stuff they've been turning out. The bad/mediocre parts were limited.
Overall, it doesn't feel like woke modernism is being lazily pushed into the writing other than the one and a half "elves are taking our jobs" scenes and Amazon's difficulty portraying physical features being genetic. Chuds really let me down on how much girlbossing galadriel does, because it's pretty clear she kept acting like a c*nt in season 1 and half the characters didn't like her and she fricked up. Had some bad choreography with her, but mainly a few second scenes.
The one thing that's gotten under my skin is the dwarf woman beards in season 2. Gross. They added more make up to galadrieal in season 2 and it looks weird too.
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I can see it being 7.5 if you're a woman who enjoys smut books
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There's no smut here (unless you count Elrond and Durin "give me the meat and give it to me raw"). The Halbrand/Galadriel 'romance' had no chemistry. The Bronwyn/Arondir 'romance' literally died. They look to be trying to set up Isildur and that bint he found in the forest, but again - no chemistry. Also Poppy and that Stoor, which is already irritating and they only just met and made googly eyes at one another.
Nearest we got to smut so far was (1) Annatar and Celebrimbor and (2) Voyeur Tom Bombadil singing about groping while Not-Gandalf is naked in the tub.
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Elrond is playing the beta orbiter best friend, trying to save Galadriel from her obsession with her bad boy Chad
Galadriel: Sauron used me. And under his hand I was played like a harp to a melody not of my choosing.
Elrond: It was entirely of your choosing.
Galadriel:
Elrond: Sauron looked INSIDE you, plucked the very song of your soul, note by note. Making himself out to be exactly what you needed. "The Lost King" who could RIDE you to victory. You gave him everything you wanted and then thanked him for it.
Galadriel: yes
i mean no 
Of course but nothing in this show had any.
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Elrond is going to be the Jacob of Galadriel's Bella. They'll kiss and after Celeborn returns and she gives birth to Celembrian he's gonna imprint on her baby.
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They should have just made an explicitly alternate lord of the rings where galadrial ends up a competing dark Lord to sauron.
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i disagree intensely
i did not interpret her girlbossing as being deliberately showcased by the story and writers as being cruel or foolish in character, as if her bad behaviviour would be a vehicle to a character arc to later become a better version of herself
instead it was a byproduct of the writer's poor morals, and them not grasping they actually wrote an butthole person - like a feminist misinterpreting that men look up to butthole authority figures, and only decrying "bossy" characteristics if a woman does it, when men despise these personality traits in both genders
No it was unintentionally the writers baring their souls, and being so wingcucked by gender views, that they are incapable of realizing they are projecting douchebag heroines and douchebag morality - and i personally see this within your morality as well
I once worked in a mine in Limpopo province of SA
, for my articles as a Land Surveyor where I had to accumulate a minimum of work days (example 30 days of mining-surveying, then 60 days of cadastral surveying), before i was deemed fully qualified as a Professional by the governing body for Surveyors in the country.
One of my immediate overseers who i was needed to be humble towards, because she was the authority whom needed to sign for my work diary end of each shift, was a Zulu black feminist woman, whom was very intelligent in my opinion.
She was 60 years old and for 40 years she had endured the bullshit of not just chauvinist men in a male-dominated industry and study field, but also had 2 decades of her life stolen by Apartheid separation of races, barring her Tertiary education. She overcame much opposition to become a mining engineer, and was truly a woman pioneer in her field
and she despised me - i was at times the only white face in a 20 kilometer radius in deep dark africa, in Limpopo province, the proportionally blackest province in the country, and i was subservient to her and dependent upon her for my work diary and article practicals.
She was never outright hostile or cruel to me, yet it became ubundantly clear that she had faced so much hostile discrimination in her life, from both black and white men, and ESPCIALLY from afrikaners from the apartheid era - and here was i, the perfect avatar for all the barriers she had faced inblife
the weird thing was that i was so emphathetic for her past struggles, i could clearly infer from all of her ramblings and outloud thoughts that sh had faced, and yet i had to bite my tongue and endure being the target of her ire and focus of her resentment - it felt like was being the magnet for punishment for my predecessors whom had fricker her over in life, all of them old afrikaners now dead and retiring, and now me a young strag boer coming in their place.
The sheer venom and contempt i see in Rings of power gives me a similar feeling in Galadriel, i cannot describe it in words, and only reflect how the emotion Galadriel evokes in me is similar to as that Zulu Lady, like all of the men fictional characters are magnets for the wrongs against her or other fictional women in the past by misoginest writers
As if Galadriel was getting back at the male fans and the male fictional characters, for ALLL of the scantily clad bimbo female trophies in James Bond or Conan the Barbarian 1930 magazine novelettes and books
There is venom there in the writing and portrayal of Galadriel which i have noticed for many Girlboss characters the past decade which is not deliberate but a byproduct of the author's hurt made manifest in some kind of literary revenge against past sexism against women
!bookworms
!ringbearers
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Interviews with Hollywood and games industry writers pretty much indicate that, where the writing is often intended to "correct" perceived wrongs instead of solely focusing on telling a good story. I said this in my previous comment but the real sin is the desire for self-insertion and wish-fulfillment commonly seen amongst various entertainment media writers.
I still think intensely feminist works that are even hostile to men can be written well, but it takes a lot of skill to include those themes without derailing the quality of the overall story as a result.
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Lol everybody hated and mistrusted her the whole show, even when they promised to trust her for being right, because she wasn't. She wouldn't have gotten anywhere without sauron getting her to add a little sugar with her vinegar. She also doesn't trust her own decisions, she doesn't spend the whole show unflinchingly believing in herself. The venom comes off as venom in the show, not girlbossing background venom. Wingcuckery has broken everyone. If this came out in 2010, it wouldn't get near the hate. It's nowhere near 10/10, and I admittedly added about .8 to the score to cause drama, but darn.
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thank you for standing up for the !ringbearers kaamrev
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He's the reason we're called ringbearers and not Fellows (an objectively better name) so don't give him too much credit.
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woman fighting in anything but most desperate situations is the biggest woke insertion here. It didn't happen in middle ages, and Tolkien was period realistic.
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Yes, and I'm not pretending it's Tolkien. But you are a bit glossing over him having some more active women roles in his books - a bit more hyped up in the movies, but Galadriel, that elf woman, and the horse woman did do stuff, weren't entirely feathery whiners.
Woke modernism is way worse. I did assume OP was making a reasonable joke, but that guy doesn't resemble Trump to anyone not suffering from TDS or TDSDS. The sympathy towards orcs is really gray area, more of a question. I'm not spiritually broken by Galaxriel knowing elf fu because twinky elves and dwarves have been fighting 8 foot tall orcpocs every movie since fellowship.
J.r.r. Tolkien is based wholesome neurodivergent, but all his worshippers are cute twinks, ESPECIALLY simillarion cute twinks. This show was never going to appeal to anyone too deeply and that's Amazon's frick up. But most heavy criticism towards this show is wingcucked and lorestragging. I was pleasantly surprised watching it.
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!kino
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Dem Orangz starts with a bunch of children playing freeze tag or something.
Also I just invented Dem Orangz.
!chuds
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Yup, I mentioned the bad choreography bit. This part is like 20 seconds of the whole show, and not an innately bad plot point. Waif fu can be done well enough, and this was not it.
Her training fight was a little iffy. I had no problem with the crouching tiger stuff at the beginning.
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Yeah god forbid they stay to the source material that made the franchies popular to begin with, just push pit name brand slop.
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Nothing wrong with caring about source material, but lorestragging is focusing on neurodivergent shit.
The problem is, all the source material for this show is neurodivergent shit. None of it made the franchise popular. Peter Jackson made watchable movies by condensing and cutting up the main books, which were already less neurodivergent than everything else Tolkien wrote about middle earth. The franchise is popular for fights and speeches and special effects. Even the books are popular for Tolkein's writing and the epic plot, as much as, if not more so than, neurodivergent world building footnotes he decided not to use about sun trees and fire spirits and elf etiquette and how innately evil an orc actually is.
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I believe in judging a show on its own terms (I think Rings of Power's biggest crime is being terribly boring) but complaining about lorestragging on an adaptation from a Lore book (The Silmarillion) written by a lore-obsessed neurodivergent (Tolkien himself) is rather weird.
The showrunners are not adapting LOTR, so I think complaints about lore are perfectly valid for Rings of Power. There's a difference between adapting and writing fan-fiction and Rings of Power falls on the latter !writecel
Being popular says nothing about quality, people watch shitty superhero movies en-masse. The Peter Jackson trilogy is about 80% faithful to the material but it's great on its own right and much better quality wise than the average slop with le cool fighting scenes. I would argue the franchise is still popular because it has a great plot and interesting characters, a lot of films with "cool fights and special effects" age like milk and end up being forgotten after 5 years and if that's the formula for success, then why acquire the rights instead of producing original IP?
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Arbitrary
Making a spectacle, like Michael Bay did with transformers.
No those are the movies. A franchies that started in the 60s doesn't get a movie trilogy 40 years later without being extremely popular.
Revolves around that neurodivergent world building
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If they had made this as an original fantasy show, I'd give it 6 out of 10. It's not great, it's not terrible on its own merits (though the pacing sucks, they try to cram too much stuff in and yet nothing really happens).
What is the grit in my oyster is when they (1) copy scenes and dialogue straight out of the movies and (2) throw in crumbs of lore to appeal to the book fans, then immediately piss all over that lore (e.g. Cirdan name-checking Rumil then calling him a drunkard. There's nothing in canon about that. Daeron was a pissy little b-word, but that is because he had a crush on Luthien and was jealous of some scruffy mortal Man coming along and getting the girl). "Let's do Old Man Willow but call it Old Man Ironwood because we're in the desert and there can't be willow trees here" is the level of dumb that insults both the book fans and the casual viewer who only wants an entertaining fantasy show.
They should just drop the Isildur story line. It's going nowhere and doing nothing. We know he has to survive to do all he does in canon, so there's absolutely no tension or sense of suspense when the show tries putting him in danger. Oh, a burning house fell on him! He's gonna be fine. Oh, Baby Shelob tried to eat him! He's gonna be fine. Oh, a bunch of Orcs attacked! He's gonna be fine. Oh, he got ambushed by Wildmen of Dunland! He's. Gonna. Be. Fine.
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My theory that will piss people off is that that Isildur is going to die, and that kid is going to take his name and title. And the kid is half elf, so he'll live as long as a numerian. Or maybe his father was a numerian. Or it's both somehow. Maybe numericals are just descended from half elves and that's the big reveal that blows the make numeria great again guys' minds. Some REAL lore breaking shit.
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Darn, you're really mad over this, but thanks for the effort you put into typing that all out! Sadly I won't read it at all.
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Wasn't there literally a scene with an orc family meant to look like syrian refugees?
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Did the show creators say that or something? It just looked like an orc holding a kid orc in a shitty orc camp. They were kind of scared looking, and orc dad had voiced previous apprehension at going out for another war. It's not Tolkien and that weirdness isn't everyone's bag, but seeing that and thinking "Syrian refugees" is wingcuck derangement.
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That was the intention they shot the scene with. Any other interpretation would be like watching an alt history show that just so happens to take place in the year 1945, and the leader of germany as an offscreen antagonist everyone hates called the 'Chancellor' and acting like it's not just a standin for Hitler. I hope you choke on the next peepee you smoke cute twink.
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It's The Facts.
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I don't really agree with your assessment of Galadriel. You are right that a lot of characters think she is a dumb b-word, but by the end of the season she's proven correct for being such a b-word the whole time. Not only is Sauron back but he's actively plotting to overthrow the world and cast it into darkness. If only all those misogynist men had listened to her from the start then maybe Sauron could have been stopped.
The thing is; the show is executed terribly. The scenes where it feels like Galadriel is an awful c*nt were not intended to be interpreted that way by the audience. You're actually suppose to think that she's a brave bad butt who refuses to give up in the face of hardship because she's knows the truth of Sauron and she will save everyone whether they believe her or not.
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You could have done crack instead of this shit
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