I’m assuming both those digging and those at the tower would become the farmers of Nurn.
I’m with @MrDibble . I felt like they finally advanced the plot a little.
I’m disappointed by the scenery. I don’t know anything technical about scenery, but this felt right:
For the amount they spent, i feel like it could look more real and more epic.
Some of it looks great, like the Numenor ships. The backgrounds when Elrond was speaking to the other elf before he left to visit the dwarf mines looked a lot like the drop down backgrounds from 1970s Sears portrait galleries. Very disappointing.
I enjoyed it very much. I think the weakest episode was the first. I also think Galadriel was better in this episode. Still can’t quite figure out my issue with her but she didn’t bug me as much this episode.
I think Adar is going to be a very interesting character. I don’t know anything about Dragon Age and Corypheus, but Adar already seems to be a tragic figure to me. I picture him being taken by Morgoth straight from the elven awakening before he was ever given any agency to choose. Morgoth tortured him but he didn’t go full orc. He’s just a tortured elf.
It wouldn’t have been straight from the awakening if he had a chance to wander around Beleriand’s flowers by the river Sirion, as that’s quite a distance from Cuiviénen, where they awakened.
I’m guessing the implication here is that tortured elves don’t become orcs, they just get broken and then used as breeders to create actual orcs.
That seems like a solid and educated guess. It is not like the Professor left us anything close to a definitive answer anyway.
Unless he was in Beleriand as a bad guy (a spy or during the war of wrath). On the other hand, he seemed pretty wistful when speaking about Beleriand. On the other, other hand, the orcs are calling him “Father” which makes me think he was with Morgoth when orcs were first being made.
Or just tortured and molded by “dark sorcery”. He only got the torture part.
Either way, he’s going to be an interesting character and I like Benjen Stark, I mean, Inspector Jedediah Shine, I mean, Joseph Mawle.
I don’t personally think Morgoth’s spies or soldiers stopped to smell the flowers, but it’s certainly possible he was there for any of the various wars in Beleriand. Or captured there.
Maybe making orcs from elves wasn’t a one-and-done deal, but an ongoing endeavour.
That doesn’t explain the “Father” part, though.
I’m still waiting for Galadriel to start developing some of the wisdom that she had in the third age. Maybe she got a lesson from Halbrand, but it’s not clear that it took. She still seems single-minded and half-blinded by it. Will she have to endure a more severe lesson at some point?
No appearance of the Stranger in this episode. I thought after the mention of the star-fall we’d have a scene showing how he’s doing amongst the Harfoots.
As for the scenery, I’m not going to criticize the producers for how they chose to spend their money, as long as the story works.
These orcs do look “fresher” than the ones in LOTR. How long do orcs live apart from violence?
By far the most important item is how the story works. FX serves that end well or it does not. Good FX is artistry that serves storytelling. It is not there just to look pretty as a set piece like a solid gold toilet seat, something clearly expensive but not adding any actual value.
Are the timelines in the different plot threads supposed to be roughly lining up? It seems like a fair amount of time is being shown as having passed in the dwarf/Elrond line (now progress made building) during which little time has passed on the Galadriel one?
There are hints full Orcs live a very long time indeed. They just probably don’t enjoy it.
Being partly Elven or unholy Supernatural creations lends to the theories they can live ages.
Bolg or Azog or Moria was at Least 140 years old and probably older.
And this fx bothers me because i keep thinking it looks like star trek, it the wizard of oz. When i watched game of thrones, or the mandalorian, i was never pulled from the story to think, “gee, this looks weird.”
Huh, in…d&d, maybe, they were shorter-lived than humans.
I think in early editions of D&D Orcs, Goblins and Half Orcs were all shorter lived than Humans.
We really don’t know how long Trolls and Orcs live in Middle Earth. There is a decent chance the Trolls Bilbo & Co. encountered were at the sacking of Gondolin back in the First Age and thus over 6000 years old.
I’ve got to go looking, but I feel like when the Orcs fought in the Tower of Cirith Ungol over the Mithril Chainmail, one made reference to an ancient battle.
I reckon I’m not as sensitive to the quality of effects as some folks, who say they are jarred enough in some cases to be pulled out of the story. It probably matters that I am watching this on a computer screen, and not even full screen.
Well that was how I felt reading complaints about the FX of She-Hulk. They seemed fine to me! A few others were jarred.
These though seem to sometimes be grand vistas that are not really there to serve the story but as “Look at all the computer power we used on this grand vista! Waterfalls! Leaves blowing! Aren’t you impressed!” meanwhile the artistry is not there. And if anything these vistas are pauses from the actual story, interrupting any possible the flow of it, rather than serving it.
I’ve mentioned movements a few times. The contrast I have in mind is Primal - straight up animation. The compositions of the scenes were beautiful, often sparse and simple, and the way the characters moved generally gave a sense of their weights and what they were.
Still the overall point probably is that if the story was otherwise good enough, the characters engaging enough, the uninspired and distracting but showy spending of FX dollars (or even commenting about how pretty it is for those who like it) would not be what anyone would be talking about. Thus I am not sure that the FX are being better done on the harfoot storyline or I just find the characters and story more interesting …
It makes the orc hatred for elves much more tragic if they’re connected in that way.
When is the next Episode out?
Thursday nights at midnight eastern, 9 PM Pacific.