The Second Age is quite clear. When the very first teaser appeared in the form of a map including Númenor, that was obvious. The image of the Two Trees is almost certainly by way of a flashback We have been told that the timeline is, with the Estate’s permission, going to be compressed so that actors playing Men don’t have to be constantly replaced as generations follow one another.
The first full trailer makes a good deal of what appears to be a meteor. It has been suggested that this is Sauron (as “Annatar”) making a dramatic entrance (we know it’s actually a re-entrance) to Middle Earth, and I’m inclined to agree.
Ya lost me, sorry. Isn’t the Second Age when Sauron returns to Middle-Earth and makes all the Rings and destroys Eregion and the Numenoreans fight him and there’s the downfall of Numenor and the Last Alliance? How was that not a sustained “attempt to bring the world back into darkness”? (Presumably) metaphorical, as you note, but still pretty dark darkness.
This is the part that bothers me. Wasn’t Morgoth the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen? He was the originator of all the evil in the world. Compared to him, Sauron is a jumped-up wannabe.
A question for you Tolkien-ians: in the LotR movies, Viggo Mortensen pronounces ‘Mordor’ with very guttural Rs, which seems to be different from the way Tolkien said it, so is that a thing Mortensen made up? I hear someone in the first trailer for this series doing it, maybe Galadriel.
Well, I hope there’s more to it than a mighty saga of big powerful folk. Most of the heart of LotR was the four hobbits and the Shire. They were the main reason, not for the events, but for us to care about the events. I fear Galadriel is too cold and mighty, even as a “young” elf, for us to care about all that much.
I did notice a hobbit or two in there. It made me wonder if there is any evidence that hobbits existed in the Second Age, and if they did, how much they had to do with these goings-on.
Finrod, I think I’ve read somewhere. Also the best known among them.
Hobbits in the Second Age are completely an invention of the series writers, which may be why they’re calling them “harfoots” instead of hobbits. In the preface to LOTR Tolkien says that there are no records of hobbits in any histories before the Third Age.
ETA: and this is the kind of thing that makes me nervous; that the writers are just taking some individual names and some plot points and fabricating a Second Age story out of whole cloth. I hope I’m wrong.
From what trailers I’ve seen and the MASSIVE amount of publicity Amazon’t is creating about the series’s diversity/inclusion etc., I get an impression of a social agenda more than a well-crafted set of tales from the 1st and 2nd Ages; I’m all in favor of inclusion and accepting all people for how they wish 2b defined and viewed by others but this series as that sort platform may not be the most effective choice. Perhaps because the showrunners only have rights to the appendices at the end of "The Return of The King’’ and not "The Silmarillion’’ or "The Book of Lost Tales’’ one shouldn’t expect too much from this show; what I’ve seen so far has totally failed to impress me as true to the spirit of Tolkien’s legendarium.
