UKC

I thought I had the Rings of Power sussed! but I did not see the true identity of Sauron coming. Now I am beginning to think that The Stranger character played by Daniel Weyman might not be Gandalf at all! Could it be one of the Blue Wizards? This would be a smart move by the creators allowing for a whole new and unknown story line. This is possibly hinted at in the scene where The Mystics realise that he is not Sauron and say something like " he is the other". The other Blue Wizard? or just my wishful thinking?

Frankly, someone needs to get Tulkas to rip off the head of whoever created this abomination.

I have given you a down vote. It's not that bad! Far better than the abomination that was the film of The Hobbit. Also I have looked up Tulka. Something about a Llama who can reincarnate. 

 I thought Daniel Weymans performance was one of the best in this series. It's still early days. Prepare for the worst but hope for the best!

I will put my money on him being a Blue, The Big G arrived by sea and was greeted by Cirdan...but I suspect directorial and creative shenanigans are at play

I hope he is a Blue and I wish directorial and creative shenanigans wouldn't stray too far from the original feeling of the book. The LOTR films were excellent but as I mentioned in my earlier response to Dr.S The Hobbit was ruined by such things

apologies - Tulkas, not Tulka’s - mostly he just dropped in to kick Morgoth’s butt.

The Hobbit was spectacularly bad, tLotR great but marred with pointless plot changes.

I have given you a thumbs up this time as I am in agreement.

The new series is beautiful but marred by terrible script writing, the characters come across as petulant and stupid. 
 

We watched this alongside The Wheel of Time which was surprisingly good by comparison.

Been a lover of all things Lotr but by no means a huge lore geek, ( most of my knowledge came from reading the books and spending way way too many hours wondering around Lord of the rings online video game over 15 years ago). I have really enjoyed this series. And hope they keep it up, the script may have been abit wooden in places, but it was beautifully shot and I have really enjoyed the plot. 
roll on season 2!!

I agree. Also I like it so much better than the Game of Thrones stuff. 

I'm no LOTR nerd but wasn't there a nod to the Stranger potentially being Gandalf with the "if in doubt always follow your nose" line in the last episode. Doesn't Gandalf say that to a hobbit in LOTR? At least, in one of the films, I can't remember quotes from the book.

Yes if I remember correctly it’s whilst going through the mines of Moria. 

Good lord. If Rings of Power makes Wheel of Time look good then it must be bloody poor. My o/h and I both thought WoT was really pretty bad in it's own right. The books may not be Chaucer but it deserved better than being reduced to a teen fiction series.

Have yet to see RoP though so can't really comment on that itself.

Yes he does... but maybe it is just trying to throw you off the scent?

Yes, don’t let the (inconsistent) prehistory of the Silmarillion get in the way of a key motivational device.  This is meant to show the origin of Gandalf’s fondness and respect for the frequently ignored and underestimated hobbits.  

I thought they were mediocre. The first one was decent then they went downhill.

Still a country mile better than the big, steaming, pile of shite that was The Hobbit films.

This is the curse of lots of fantasy adaptations. They're aiming for gravitas but hit petulance instead.

I agree with you on The Hobbit films bit but I still think the LOTR films were great considering the scope of the adventure they had to convey. 

 They could have built on what they learned from making LOTR and created something fantastic in The Hobbit, but they went in a completely different direction. What a wasted opportunity.

The big difference is that LOTR is three chunky books with loads of extra backstory prewritten and so making a trilogy of films is essentially faithful to the format of the original.  The problem is squeezing it all in and so few liberties need to be taken.
The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a slim volume of a children’s story.  Once you’ve decided to make another big trilogy the problem is how to pad out the story.  It never really was a prequel to LOTR except that it was set in Middle Earth.  The films are ok but they have a different atmosphere.  The book as written would make a terrible film (it’s not a very good book - have you tried reading it aloud?)

Yes, the Hobbit should have been one long film. Unbelievable what they did with it really.

On the Rings of Power, the reason it looks so good (which it does) is probably something to do with the $500m odd budget. 

off topic,but still nerdy Tolkien went to my school in Edgbaston Birmingham, where there are the two towers which are thought to be the inspiration for the lotr versions. Our old boys club was in the base of the one called Perret’s Folly.

Other than all being towers, I can’t say I’m seeing the likeness!

I read the Hobbit when I had measles and was bed ridden - loved it!. When I got to big school we read some of it aloud in the first year and it was a bit stodgy. Oddly enough, I got it out last night and re read a couple of chapters and it was surprisingly ok. 

Not sure what that proves other than (a) context is everything, (b) measles was really sh1t, and (c) an indifferent teacher can ruin anything, if they put their mind to it

this does not sound like source material

I was taught Middle English/Chaucer by MGR Tolkien

There are also some towers near Oxford that are contenders.

He's giving off Gandalf vibes. I found the  series is disappointing overall, Some good characters some decent strory potential but the elves look too much like people with silly ears, the Numenorians are mostly people for your local pub and the fighting scenes are just far too small scale.  

There's a bit of a boring answer about what rights they have access to, you assume it's the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, but it's not. I think they're restricted to the appendices to the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, so there's a lot of stuff they haven't been allowed to add, which is a real shame. Presumably that forces them to stick to the second age only and cuts source material to the lore pretty significantly, and why timelines feel a bit off. 

I've enjoyed it and thought there were some incredible scenes. The Dwarves were great.

Also, in response to the differences between Hobbit and LOTR films, I like the angle that you should take them as being told by different people. The Hobbit told by Bilbo Baggins who likes to embellish a tell a good story, the LOTR by Frodo who is had a very different experience of adventure. That excuse is good enough for me when I watch them anyway.

I am going to give the Hobbit (films) a bit of support. Yes the first film was dire Waaaay too much journey, travelling over endless fields, mountains etc. and yes I did feel that the decision to expand a slim book into three films was a case of let's see if we can milk this like LotR? However I found I did enjoy the expansion of the politics of Middle Earth in the latter films

I also really hated WoT - I wasn't expecting a classic but thought it might be a fun show and I was looking forward to seeing some favourite scenes on the big screen.  It's almost a textbook case of how not to adapt a series of books.  

I gave up on 'Rings of Power' after a few episodes.  It just didn't feel like Tolkien and wasn't good enough in it's own right to stick with.  

For my money the George RR Martin adaptations are still the only really good fantasy TV adaptations, mostly because they're not that fantasy focussed and the world is much closer to our own.

GoT could be further reduced to the good bits where always about a midget and a eunuch (e.g. series 3) or the Tits & Wine policy that kept it together.

I preferred the Hunt for Gollum.  Much better value for money.

http://www.thehuntforgollum.com/player_film-hd.htm

I still think the best Lotr adaptation I have seen was the animated version that I think came out in the late 70’s early 80’s, we had it on vhs and I was absolutely mesmerised by it, however it finished on the bridge of Khazad-dum. I never knew if my parents had stopped recording it then or if the animated film actually did continue past it . 
I just remember it being very dark, eerie & scary but I was hooked! I think I was around 6 / 8 when I first saw it.
 

All I remember of that film was the red eyes of the dark riders' horses. I suspect it wasn't that good in all honesty, but we all have different ideas on what's good.

I struggled with the use of accents in the Rings of Power:

Home Counties accent = Good Guys

Honest Yorkshire accent = Good Guys

Skanky Lancs accent= Bad Guys

Cockney Scoundrels = Very Bad Guys

Pithy Scots = Good but inbred and overly insular Guys.

Irish accent = travellers

Feels a bit like we've all been. Pigeon-holed....

Wey man ah was reely upset like thet tha wes ney a Geordie in sight ye kna hinny?

 Where ah cem  frem we all luck like hebbits anyway. Sum ah mor like dwarfs tho which meks it eesier workin doon the pit.

Whist man. 

Divvn' taak kett.

Yell mekkum think wah all clayped ad ragie gadgies wha wh cum frum

If anyone's interested, this video provides a succinct account of the events of the second age as Tolkien actually wrote them:

youtube.com/watch?v=a2a7pF0T_XY&

Wow.  Deep geekery indeed!

No, it was intended as a trilogy, I think, but the rest was never made.  There was a radio version of LOTR made by the BBC as well, and an album of half decent music - I don't recall whether it was for the animated film or the the radio version. 

There was Bo Hanson's 'Music inspired by the Lord of the Rings' which was related to neither film nor radio. I discovered that around the time I read LOTR as a teenager. Found it fitted really well for me. I recorded all the radio 4 episodes to cassette, still have them somewhere.

Which was excellent, and a fairly accurate adaptation. And starred Ian Holm as Frodo (which, I imagine, put him in good stead to play Bilbo in the films), Michael Hordern as Gandalf, John le Mesurier as Bilbo, and Bill Nighy as Sam (in a most un-Bill Nighy performance).

You've brought on an urgent need in me for a fix of that series!

I've got original recorded cassettes off air of Earthsearch (James Follett) from that era

Crackly analogue is a slur given the fragility of CDs

Anyone remember Hordes of the Things?

Or the Bored of the Rings parody?

No, but I remember Bored of the Rings, the National Lampoons take on LOTR. Think I have a copy of that somewhere still.

I have the BBC LOTR series on CD, bought ages ago. It wasn't cheap (£70?)... 14 discs.

I picked up a cassette copy of HHGTTG some years ago. When I came to digitize it over lockdown, I found that every cassette had its leaders detatched from the magtape.

Well look what I found...

https://archive.org/details/the-lord-of-the-rings-bbc-radio-drama/J.R.R.+To...

Introduction to track 1 confused me, because it's not on the CD version.

seeing as I am still playing CD's I bought in 1989 I was just wondering when this fragility is supposed to kick in?

Provided they weren't made by Philips DuPont Optical in Blackburn, you're probably okay. I've got nine PDO CDs that will not play or rip at all, due to 'bronzing'. The other 3000 or so are okay..

Music CDs are prob okay. I wonder about the old files back-ups I never use though

There was news perhaps late 80s or early 90s that there was some kind of degradation going on with some CDs sold early on - was  it the label layer that was eating away the recording layer or something?

did you manage to overcome that?

from memory I always allowed a leader section of magnetic tape to run before pressing Record so there would have been some spare tape to attach to.

One of my Earthsearch tapes had a 300 baud screensave from 1981 at the end - from a Microtan 65 for which I had just bought the expansion board Tanex that had the cassette interface (with no firmware) - you had to enter a program to save data or programs.

I built a replica on veroboard and in early 2011 I built the cassette bit and I tested it by loading the 300 baud screen from 1981.  It was creepy as I saw the screen load successfully accompanied by the 300 baud CUTS burbling, complete with my keystrokes to run the save routine at the bottom.  My spine was tingling as I saw something happen back from 1981!  Shows how good tapes can be (BASF ferric)

Sellotape splice...

But some suggested a better way of just attaching the magtape to the spools.

LOTR nerds want absolutely nothing to do with the abomination on Amazon that has taken a gigantic steaming dump on the legacy of JRR Tolkien.

What, all of us? Or if I enjoyed it I'm out of the club or something?

Ah that's interesting I didn't know that. I haven't come across it myself.

As mentioned above: PDO CD 'bronzing'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_bronzing

You do realise that the sainted Tolkien just made it all up?  Some of it even contradicts itself.  RoP is a fantasy based on a fantasy, it’s not even the Crown!  There are bits I wasn’t convinced by (mostly the elves, except Galadriel, who is excellent) but it’s still interesting.  

Series 1 suffers from a lot of scene setting and character introductions, I’m prepared to at least see some of the next series before judging it too harshly.

Of course. But LOTR nerds like Tolkien's fiction, and don't like other people messing with it, whilst claiming it is Tolkien's fiction.

Just played my oldest CD - 1991.

Hmmmm, I don't think anything comes close to Tolkien's works themselves but I like the world he created so much I'm really glad other people are exploring it, admittedly with varying results.

I bought a few cds in '82 when they first came out; all still fine.

Not sure why people are reporting their continued CD operation to me; I've never disputed CDs are pretty reliable. As I said, I've got 3378 at the last count, of which ~2600 are secondhand. All ripped. But during lockdown, I re-ripped 550 that had originally ripped either with errors, or under WMP, which didn't report rip status (all the others rip with no errors at all). Here's the result:

• 550 CDs
• 525 re-ripped or corrected without error
  • 283 original rip under WMP
  • 145 original inaccurate rip due to old drive?
  • 17 original inaccurate rip
  • 89 original rip errors
  • 84 re-ripped with errors, but of these
    • 55 repaired with CueTools
    • 12 replaced with downloads
    • 12 badly scratched, but re-ripped okay
• 25 failed to rerip or correct
  • 9 PDO bronzed (5 completely unreadable)
  • 6 scratched
  • 3 metal scratch or holes
  • 5 80 minute compilations
  • 1 dented
  • 1 no obvious damage

So, out of those 3378 discs, only 25 failed to rip accurately, with 52 tracks ripping with errors, and 18 tracks not ripping at all. Of those, only five PDO discs are completely unreadable.

Not sure how we got from LoTR to CD error rates, but...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hordes_of_the_Things_(radio_series)

has been repeated a few times on Radio 4 Extra

I've wondered if that was the same Bill Nighy - though as I recall it's spelled a little differently on the BBC's LoTR credit slip in the tape box (as well as being 'William, I think')

He was credited as William, yes. But if you believe Wiki, then, yes, it was him

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nighy

You can get it on Audible. If you are a memebr you get one free download a month, regardless of price.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/calling_all_lotr_nerds-753750?v...

I think you're being over critical.

If it wasn't for the extremely high bar set by the films I think most would say the series is pretty good which makes it better than many of the series that I've watched recently.

If you were only going to be content with something comparable to the films then you were almost certainly set to be dissapointed.

I'm not sure if it's already too late, but hopefully they'll take some of the feedback on board and we'll get a great second season.

These were the films that turned Legolas into some sort of extreme sports teenager, missed out huge chunks (bombadil and the scouring of the shire), added huge chunks (faramir being a bit of a dick) and changed loads?  Not sure High bar is an expression I'd use.  Enjoyable sure but then so were the hobbit movies and so is (to a certain extent RoP.

For me the films are a very high bar. It won't be the same for everyone. For me it's irrelevant how closely they match the book. The films stand on their own and easily make it into my top 5 (they count as one).

I can't compare the LOTR films to the Hobbit tho'. Completely different league.

Cutting stuff I'm fine with. They were already very long films. Although Saruman taking over the Shire would have been a great ending. But hey. I can live without.

There's a lot of places I guess that try to shoehorn in a connection. My parents' village in East Yorkshire (Roos) was visited by Tolkien during WW1 when he was stationed nearby and sits in the middle of the so-called 'Tolkien Triangle' containing places he supposedly got inspiration.

https://www.visiteastyorkshire.co.uk/blog/read/2020/09/the-tolkien-triangle...

Personally I've always been divided on LOTR - enjoyed the films, then read the books which I found a bit of a chore to be honest (skipped all the singing) which reading a fiction book shouldn't be.

Maybe I'm just not into it enough, or didn't study all the backstory stuff, but I find the lack of characterisation difficult. The evil characters are just 'evil' and just want to do 'evil things' for no specific reason (other than they're evil).

That was excusable, I think; the BBC radio series did the same. Bombadil is a bit of a story within a story, really. Traducing Faramir, on the other hand, unforgivable.

But i think we're going over old ground...