The Hall of Fire

“Leaving behind” doesn’t only mean leaving them in the camp, it also means abandoning them if they fall behind on trail. Nobody besides Poppy (clearly a special exception from close family friendship) offers any help and they don’t ask for help because they know they won’t get it. Largo’s wife clea...

There were parts of this episode I thought were the best so far (outside possibly Khazad-dûm). Númenor was uneven (maybe I'll post more about my reservations later) but had some very good moments, especially visually. I like Elendil's family. There were also major parts I truly hated, unfortunately...

Per wiki , "The cast & crew have described them as several different tribes who have come together for mutual defense (explaining why different families look like different human races)." That would explain why they take secrecy and security very seriously (and also avoids the cousin ...

Halbrand’s backstory, if that’s what it is, earned the series its first serious eyeroll from me. I could tolerate the fact that the character looked eerily like Viggo’s Aragorn, but to give him nearly copy-paste history and motivations is too much. Hoping there’s a twist. Also, a king of men with e...

Some examples of great little sayings from the harfoots:

"A tongue-lashing, if you don't mind your own cartwheels."

"Mind your own fire, Malva."

"Have the wheels come off your cart?"

A large part of my criticism of PJ's alterations was that often, a better option was right there in canon. For example, the comically panicked eye vs. Tolkien's image of a great shadowy form stretching a menacing arm. That's not the case here. This show is built on the thinnest textual framework. I...

Fair. The truth is that it is almost impossible to divine how Tolkien would’ve reacted to this adaptation, and it’s folly (on my part) to try to appeal to Tolkien’s authority in that context. The only thing I can say for certain is that as a very hardcore Tolkien fan, and as a very harsh critic of P...

I think if we absorb Tolkien in a more poetic mode than we often do in the fandom, and don’t treat his words as legal texts, we can all find significant joy in this adaptation so far. If that is meant as a dig at me as an attorney, I think it is completely unjustified. To be too honest, perhaps, I ...

Leaving people behind comes across to me as a standard practice, not something they reluctantly do under extreme circumstances. They don’t make any real effort to accommodate Nori’s father even before the Stranger is discovered (I don’t remember if everyone knows about the injury, but regardless he...

I don't claim to be a historian, but I have a hard time believing there were (m)any historical nomadic peoples who had a custom of abandoning people to die because they had an ankle injury at a bad time. (Yes, Largo ends up not being left behind for that reason, but it's clearly a serious fear for ...

I'll put my answer in spoilers, since I realize we are not talking in the spoiler thread for the third episode. When I think of Hobbits, the last thing that I think of is "survival of the fittest." I think of a community that supports each other, particularly the weakest among them, not l...

Maybe, but it certainly seems to follow from his previous statement. In any event, I find the Stranger is one of the other things in the show that I find absurd. You’re much more of a literalist than I am about Tolkien adaptations. I am much more interested in the tone and tenor being in a Tolkieni...

After three episodes, I feel comfortable saying that this show is fantastic (literally and figuratively). One of my favorite elements is the anthropological depth being given to the cultures. The harfoots, for example, have deep and complicated nomadic customs, that can be both beautiful and brutal....

I think it's more likely to be something related to the Southlands (maybe Arondir's homeland), especially mentioned in the context of building up the orcs. I do not think we are very likely to get any substantial treatment of the First Age, but we'll see. Lindsey Weber's description of the first tw...

The showrunners say that the 4th episode opens “with the destruction of an entire kingdom.” A flashback, perhaps? The sacking of Alqualondë, the fall of Nargothrond, Gondolin, Doriath? If we see any of those things I will die after episode 4, and that’ll be OK. Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...

My favorite possibility re: the identity of Sauron is that none of the people fans are speculating about (Halbrand, the Stranger) are Sauron. The only person that is Sauron is the person who set the curious spring deadline for the construction of Celebrimbor’s forge. [emoji41] Inviato dal mio iPhone...

Has anyone considered that it might be Olórin? I did. I hadn't seen any publicity about The Rings of Power and hadn't read the discussions here or elsewhere, and so I hadn't heard about this character before seeing the first two episodes on Wednesday, and that was my first thought too (fireflies as...

Argh; but then "The Stranger" is back and sounding sinister again in both True Creation Requires Sacrifice and Where the Shadows Lie (I misidentified this theme until today, which is why I'm only realizing this now. It has a waltzy/dreamy quality the first time we hear it, but has turned ...

In the meantime, if you’d like to read my mid-stream thoughts, I chat about them in the spoiler section of the TORN Discord. I looked but it really is not very easy to pull out your relevant comments from that ... venue. Oh it’s not worth looking for past comments. It’s only useful as a real-time c...

Pick your poison! Sublime? https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/31/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-review-so-astounding-it-makes-house-of-the-dragon-look-amateur Or Ridiculous? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11164965/CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-Lord-Rings-Rings-...