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Utopia Talk / Politics / Lord of the rings tv series OT
habebe
Member
Thu Jan 14 16:48:04
http://www...s-series-synopsis-villain/?amp

Amazon is trying to go for the next Game of Thrones with a billion dollar budget. Could be cool though...
habebe
Member
Thu Jan 14 16:56:39
iption doesn’t exactly narrow things down, seeing as said age lasted for 3,441 years. However, its teasing of an unnamed villain has sparked some intrigue.

The synopsis, arriving via Tolkien fan site TheOneRing.net, affirms the earlier-confirmed idea of the series taking place during the Second Age, a time in which Middle Earth’s political—and geographic—infrastructure was different, starting with the statement, “Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-Earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.”

f-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

Interestingly, the ambiguous phrasing of “greatest villain” and “long-feared re-emergence of evil” has yielded a speculative debate over the identity of said character. Yet, there are only two candidates who feasibly fill that spot: Morgoth and Sauron. The former may not have had a presence in Tolkien’s main stories, but he is an integral figure in the elaborate, quasi-Biblical backstory mythology that the author crafted, as depicted in the 1977 posthumously-published chronicle, The Silmarillion. The text reveals that Morgoth—who began life as Melkor, an archangel-esque Valar and one of the earliest creations of deity Eru Ilúvatar—would eventually fall from grace into evil to become the mythology’s equivalent of Lucifer.


Indeed, Tolkien’s main novel appendices and array of non-novel stories—many of which were published posthumously under the editorial stewardship of his recently-passed son, Christopher Tolkien—depict Morgoth (as the character came to be known upon his evil turn,) as the original big bad of Middle Earth. Morgoth waged wars against the races of Elves, Men and Dwarves on an unfathomable scale, using the might of Orc armies and monstrous allies like Balrogs, Dragons, Trolls and Giant Spiders for many millennia until his final defeat and exile into the Great Void, which marked the end of Middle Earth’s First Age. That would be the last time Morgoth would ever inhabit Middle Earth, although ominous prophecies foretold his return, which never ultimately happened.

Consequently, barring an anachronistic direction from the series, Morgoth has to be eliminated from being the villain of The Lord of the Rings series. That’s where Sauron comes in, since the character—originally called Mairon, a Maiar (primordial spirits who serve the Valar)—succumbed to a desire for more power, and was thusly influenced by Morgoth’s evil, serving as one of his lieutenants throughout the malevolent lord’s epoch-spanning wars. However, after Morgoth’s final defeat, Sauron’s subsequent millennia of misdeeds would be—unlike his former master’s adherence to raw power—rooted in deceit. Yet, Tolkien left some of Sauron’s exploits open to interpretation about whether he was even truly evil—at least during certain eras—and there is room for the character to manifest in a nuanced manner on the Amazon series as a Loki of sorts for Second Age Middle Earth.


While Sauron’s own trickery in Middle Earth spans multiple millennia, his most infamous act was, of course, the ruse that inveigled the leaders of Middle Earth’s races to forge and utilize the Rings of Power, which he secretly controlled with the One Ring; a story that was famously told onscreen with powerfully pithy dialogue from Cate Blanchett’s narrating Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Rings’ prologue. However, said prologue doesn’t reveal that Sauron’s initial entreaty with the Rings came about by way of an insidious, slow-burn plot to befriend the high Elves of Middle Earth while disguised in a fair Elven-like form under the identity of “Annatar” the “Lord of Gifts.” Promising to teach forms of magic that would save the world—perhaps in case Morgoth would ever return—Sauron manipulated master Elven craftsman Celebrimbor into forging the secretly-tainted Rings of Power: three to the Elves, seven to the Dwarf lords and nine to the race of Men. You all know how that ended.

This seems likely to be the initial storyline for the series, especially since the show’s official Twitter account started early hype for the series by teasing Tolkien’s lines about the Rings of Power. Adding fuel to that notion is the fact that Peter Jackson originally had designs to utilize Sauron in his “Annatar” form for Return of the King’s climactic Battle at the Black Gate. Indeed, as you can see in the image immediately above (from a behind-the-scenes documentary), the original context of the scene—set after Aragorn appears entranced after seeing the Eye of Sauron—was that Sauron had become powerful enough to physically manifest onto the battlefield, first in his old fair form, after which he transforms into the armored figure we saw in the prologue, and starts directly attacking. However, Jackson eventually had to digitally replace Argorn’s opponent with a towering armored troll.


The other viable Sauron story would be the fall of the island kingdom of Númenor, which occurred a few hundred years after the Elves, joined by the Númenoreans, waged a first war against Sauron. After the initial defeat of his armies, Sauron was taken as a hostage to the island kingdom, which was inhabited by a race of long-lived men (of which Aragorn is a descendant). There, Sauron, again under the disguise of a fair form, insidiously ingratiated himself to the corruptible King Ar-Pharazôn, eventually leading to the rise of Morgoth worshippers promised eternal life. This culminated in an attempted invasion of the Undying Lands that angered the Valar, resulting in the island being swallowed by the sea—and Sauron retreating back to Mordor, eventually setting up the culminating War of the Last Alliance, as depicted in the movie prologue.


With all that established, it’s probably safe to conclude that Sauron—presumably depicted as an anthropomorphic character with lines and not as a giant flaming eye—will be a prominent part of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings series, and might even be portrayed by one of the announced cast members (Maxim Baldry seems like a possible candidate). With a backstory mythology as rich as Tolkien’s, there should be plenty of fodder for compelling stories, with stakes high enough to exist independently from the massive literary and cinematic franchise from which they were spun.


Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings television series is set to commence production this month in New Zealand, picking things up from the pilot, which—upon a recent return from last year’s COVID-caused hiatus—was completed by director J.A. Bayona.
Rugian
Member
Thu Jan 14 18:13:02
Amazon's doing this? It will be garbage then.
Rugian
Member
Thu Jan 14 18:14:25
Anyway, it's Melkor and/or Sauron. We didn't need an entire essay to establish this.
Rugian
Member
Thu Jan 14 18:15:17
Oh they even specify its set in the Second Age. So yeah, Sauron.
Renzo Marquez
Member
Thu Jan 14 19:24:00
I've heard that the heroes will be part eggplant.
jergul
large member
Thu Jan 14 21:13:16
Noted that Ruggy does not approve of Expanse.
Im better then you
2012 UP Football Champ
Thu Jan 14 21:55:28
Deep down inside I always knew Rugian deserved to be raped and murdered in front of his family now I finally know why.

Anyways GoT has made Lord of Rings unwatchable unless there is nudity, cursing, and realistic fighting I will not approve.
CrownRoyal
Member
Thu Jan 14 21:57:55
Hobbits are going to be raped by dwarfs, in a couple of episodes, to better compete with GoT
Forwyn
Member
Fri Jan 15 00:10:29
"Anyways GoT has made Lord of Rings unwatchable unless there is nudity, cursing, and realistic fighting I will not approve."

And yet, LoTR can be re-watched several times a year, and no one in their right mind is dusting off the fucking shitshow that is GoT
habebe
Member
Fri Jan 15 00:26:13
CR, Meh, I'M so over dwarf rape porn its not even funny.

Rugian, This article is just how I found out this was a thing. Sorry for 73 paragraph lecture, I wanted a thread that was different from the only topic going on for the last week.
Dakyron
Member
Fri Jan 15 08:51:47
GoT was severely overrated. Once past the cursing, nudity, and violence, the plot left much to be desired and the characters were mostly unlikable.
Dakyron
Member
Fri Jan 15 08:52:09
I would give this series a shot, especially if it has a billion dollar budget.
jergul
large member
Fri Jan 15 08:57:04
Billion dollar budget? Its a tv series, not a computer game.
Renzo Marquez
Member
Fri Jan 15 10:20:19
Dakyron
Member Fri Jan 15 08:51:47
"GoT was severely overrated. Once past the cursing, nudity, and violence, the plot left much to be desired and the characters were mostly unlikable."

First 4 seasons were enjoyable. The source material for the rest (to the extent that it exists) was produced after GRRM decided to milk it. People rightly shit on seasons 7 and 8 but 5 and 6 were also pretty bad compared to seasons 1-4.
Sam Adams
Member
Fri Jan 15 11:41:45
Interested. So long as amazon doesnt gay it up with a bunch of annoying woke tropes and fat transgenders.
Paramount
Member
Fri Jan 15 11:55:00
I don’t know why there aren’t any black prople in Tolkien’s LotR. I don’t think Tolkien was a racist, it is possible that he just forgot about them. I think they should include at least one major black character, an Asian and an Arab, in this tv-serie, so that eveyone will feel included.
Paramount
Member
Fri Jan 15 11:55:29
*people, not prople
habebe
Member
Fri Jan 15 12:29:19
paramount, I guess it also depends on his life experience as well as, I mean when I think elves and dwarves, I don't think POC.

Where you live Id imagine you see fewer POC than say I do in SC where in certain nearby towns 75%+ are black.
Renzo Marquez
Member
Fri Jan 15 12:46:27
Paramount
Member Fri Jan 15 11:55:00
"I don’t know why there aren’t any black prople in Tolkien’s LotR."

Orcs.
habebe
Member
Fri Jan 15 12:49:04
^Hahahahahaha

I was thinking that bad guy was sort of black, or his armor was at least.
Dakyron
Member
Fri Jan 15 12:50:27
Its mostly based on Celtic and similar mythology, where black people where unknown.

Books are also 100 years old.

Sam Adams
Member
Fri Jan 15 13:24:27
Lulz renzo is correct.
habebe
Member
Sun Jan 17 02:25:23
We need a Legacy of Kain prequel tv show.
habebe
Member
Sun Jan 17 02:27:39
Vampires meet Lovecraft.Best video game story, possibly ever.
Seb
Member
Sun Jan 17 04:56:00
There are brown and dark skinned humans in middle earth. Faramir saves frodo and Sam by ambushing some that are allied to Mordor, and more are seen by frodo and Sam as they go into mordor - they are the ones with the elephants.

They are called Haradrim,I had to look up the name, and it turns out that in the second age they were split between Sauron and Numenor and later Gondor.

Interestingly the numenoreans are not very nice and take them as slaves, which is why Sauron is able to manipulate them to his service.

So I can see plenty of fertile ground for GoT style "there are no real unambiguously good factions" type stuff.

I suspect given this being in the second age and as per the DoG article, Sauron will not start off being the overt antagonist.

habebe
Member
Sun Jan 17 07:10:29
Supposedly another movie is in the works as well.
habebe
Member
Sun Jan 17 07:14:45
Seb is right though. There is plenty of base lore to explore for new story telling.

For that matter GoTs does too.

But I still long for Legacy of Kain over both of them.

I also worry that ASOIAF stories post Martin will suck.Ive always been interested in there " Asian" kingdoms east of Ashai, the lore is cage and basic, but tremendous potential.
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