I liked the idea that Sauron manipulated Celebrimbor with a time loop, and that he then found out about it. It's always good when the magic is at least a little explained.
26:36: Here's the most relevant passage, from _Unfinished Tales,_ "The Istari": *"Of this Order the number is unknown; but of those that came to the North of Middle-earth, where there was most hope (because of the remnant of the Dunedain and of the Eldar that abode there), the chiefs were five."* Other passages throughout the writings, though, make it sound much more like there are strictly five. Also, Sauron turning into a black sludge might be inspired by Durin's Bane doing the same after plunging into the waters with Gandalf, after his flames are extinguished. On the rationale that Sauron and balrogs are both of a similar Maiar order, except that Sauron isn't flame-based.
@@GaryCrant Yep. Sadly Adar was not blameless. He repeatedly sacrificed the orcs because of his zeal to destroy Sauron. He had a tragic arc, and I thought it was pretty great.
I seem to remember an early scene where he was telling the orcs that they now had a home and could live there in peace. But he soon changed his tune. Those orcs can't catch a break.
I still want Grandelf to be multiple Istari (either with or without Mance Rayder). Either he gets split five ways, or he becomes Gandalf and Saruman while Mance turns into the other three. (Radagast can go either way.)
What I don’t really get with the Dark Wizard is he has a staff that basically looks like the Eye of Sauron, but he says he wants to destroy Sauron. Like any idiot knows The Eye and they would be like “no you’re full of shit”. If he is Saruman and he’s already bad, it makes zero sense.
I think they want to keep Isildur separate from Sauron atm because they seem to be setting up him up to liberate Pelargir next season. Perhaps he'll lead an army of Ents. It would be cool
As HotD S2 was not that good, compared to RoP it is great for me. I am currently reading the Silmarillion again and what Amazon does with RoP is for an abomination.
Are three people really going to talk about ROP for over an hour and pretend like it wasn't obvious from the start that the show was going to be absolute toilet bowl tier?
Rings of power is so bad (S 1&2) it made GoT S 7&8 look good. Even if you leave aside the carnage done to Tolkien's lore, it's a steaming pile of crap on its own. And the fact that they barely adressed or improved on flaws from S1 in S2 and even managed to get some of the limited good stuff worse in 2 bloody years, speaks volumes. RoP is the zenith of of Hollywood pumping tons of money into a project they don't care about with hopes that the name of the project alone will turn the investment into huge profits. There is no care whatsoever about telling a good story. And no I will not shut up and let people enjoy it. In this case it's too much, and very sad to see everything going wrong.
I’ve reread the Fall of Númenor and the fall of Gondolin before watching season 2. The series has its low points, I agree. But there is also a lot of care and a lot of lore details that went into the season. It’s a mixed bag.
@@GaryCrant well afaik they've only got the rights to hobbit & lotr + appendices. they may have put a lot of care here and there but it's completely submerged under the changes they've made. making galadriel a dumb and manipulative brat, like how do you come up with that? they're trying to shuffle around the events of like 5000 years or so into what feels like 6 months?
Having only suffered S1 of RoP I came to the conclusion it's little more than hate fiction. The hate is in it's portrayal/betrayal of the character's, the lore and the general theme of Tolkien's work. Plus it's so dull and boring it's tough to tolerate as it's dumb as F**k too!
Why would you believe that "hate fiction" is a thing? The only example I can think of quickly is the _Starship Troopers_ movie being made by someone who hated the book. Why would people hired to do a headliner show on a Netflix competitor make it an exercise in "hate fiction"? Sounds paranoid.
@@coreyander286 "Why would you believe that "hate fiction" is a thing?" *Proceeds to give one of the preeminent examples of hate fiction, Starship Troopers the movie, proving that one should believe it is a thing*
I've never heard a better way of describing ROP, it's so much worse than 'fan fiction,' simply dismissing it as bad fan fiction wouldn't be sufficient to describe the depths of deliberate disrespect directed towards Tolkein's lore.
