Tolkien didn’t know much about geology or geography and his maps etc. show it. Why should we care about the details of ship sailing?
They may need to rethink the time compression thing. It may end up taking an entire age for the series to come out.
The archetypal journey of Frito and Spam, who could forget it?
When sailing directly down wind. It would fly sternward when sailing into the wind (not directly toward the stern, though, since you can’t sail directly into the wind). But the ships in the series are always sailing directly with the wind.
OK, here’s a fanwank for the simple sailing ships. Middle Earth is flat until Numenor falls, so no coriolis effect. Permanent high-pressure system over Valinor causes wind to always blow from the west, so Numenor to Middle Earth is downwind. Harbors in Numenor are laid out for easy departure. The ships never have to sail into the wind on the way out. Coming home they row, we just never see that.
Question as a non-book-reader: Many of you here appear to have read the books. How come the identity of quite a few characters (the Stranger, those creepy wizards, etc) is a mystery to you? Have the TV writers departed from the books to such a large degree that they created new characters in addition to storylines?
Rings of Power is a totally new storyline. It’s set in the Second Age, and there are no books about the Second Age. The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books are set in the Third Age.
There are many tidbits of history from the SA, though, as well as notes, timelines, and other things. Supposedly, RoP is not allowed to outright contradict the established canon, but that still leaves lots of room for events that we would not know about.
Tolkien’s characters often used different names in different settings. So a new name does not necessarily mean that the character is a new invention. But, the series necessarily has a lot of new characters. Figuring out which characters are Tolkien’s, and which are new, is a fun parlor game.
I should correct this a bit: the Silmarillion (which I haven’t read) has parts set in the SA. But it’s more a collection of myths, not a story with a consistent plot like Lord of the Rings. So while it tells us a few things that happened, it isn’t the source of the story in Rings of Power.
Yes, a very major departure in fact.
Well, we knew it would be a major departure. It’s a new story, based on a lot of snippets in the appendices of the books. There are lots of completely new characters, and most of the details even of the stories we know have been added, embellished, or changed.
They are also playing fast and loose with the timeline, and adding stuff that really doesn’t fit well with the established canon. But even if they hadn’t done that, there’d be lots of stuff we don’t already know.
Fitting new stuff in is good.
Scrapping established stuff, not so good.
The Celeborn bomb is just depressing.
The latest speculation I’m seeing is that Celeborn is going to be the elf who fought the balrog atop the Misty Mountains in the battle that lead to the creation of mithril, and he’ll be taking Glorfindel’s place as the “elf who dies fighting a balrog and is so badass he gets to come back from Mandos” character.
I can live with that.
On a side note, The Fellowship of the Ring has climbed into the top 10 on the Amazon charts, so it sounds like this show is encouraging more people to read the books, and that’s a good thing.
That would be okay. I don’t love this mithril is magic that elves need thing, but if we have it, that’s an okay way to get there.
I mean, shafting Glorfindel in cinematic productions is a long-standing tradition…
Not Glorfindel:
Not Glorfindel:
Glorfindel:
(That’s him behind Elrond, mugging like an idiot)
That last pic is the finest Bro-Elf I’ve ever seen. You just know he played lacrosse in Valinor.
Who knew that mithril is the cure for seasonal affective disorder…
That…that would be terrible.
Bro even has a popped collar.
He wears a diadem like Elrond but you can’t see it because he wears it backwards, bro-style.
Actually looks like he wears it around his neck.
Reminds me a bit of Naruto, where it seems that no ninja knows how a head protector is meant to be worn.
As an aside, it really looks like Elrond has taken too long on his decision to take a shit.