Rings of Power - Bad Lore, Worse Writing

Growing up relatively poor meant watching your richer friends go to fantastic, remote places for their family vacations. Well, you have to go to the discounted equivalent of Disneyland Paris. Well, we can't afford that, but Blackpool Tower is pretty cool, right? and at least listen. There aren't any French people out there so you don't think I was about to compare the

power

rings

to a vacation coupon no, I actually had a lot of fun on those discount trips, much more fun than when I finally went to Disneyland, there's a honesty in the character the cheap vacations Gordy big budget tourist mega magnets although well, they are always at least a little heartless I'm sure they have the production value the costumes are great the attractions look impressive but there is desperation behind that Mickey Mouse costume the guy of desperation leading to wearing a Mickey Mouse costume well and prostituting oneself for children's entertainment for legal reasons no further link between Disney and prostituted children here will be drawn

rings

of

power

is a dazzlingly glamorous ignominiously expensive Disneyland production almost completely meaningless ve more characters than in a cheaper production, but much less real people, much less personality. your entertainment is a distraction, not entertainment as an educational edification of the Foundation.

You can get The Fellowship of the Ring for a couple of pounds on, well, Amazon, inevitably, but back to Disneyland we go for episode 3 of Rings of Power. The only thing I have left to say to close this introduction is thanks to those of you who responded. to the Call to Arms at the end of that previous video. Some of you emailed me and others got in touch via Twitter. Apologies to those to whom I have not yet been able to respond. A little more to say about this and specifically address where we go next at the end of this video, but I guess that means we can get on with the show, don't worry, there will be no more torturous analogies comparing Jeff Bezos to Satan in this.

And I'll also try to spread the law stuff a little more evenly, although there will be some law that the show references or borrows from or otherwise egregiously erases the main thrust of this video and this series of videos. To move on is to criticize the

writing

of the show because while the common argument deployed by Rings of Power Defenders is that people who cite violations of the law are just angry nerds and the show is actually good if you forget the fact that it claims to be an adaptation of reality. is that the show is as bad on its own terms as it is as an adaptation, it's not just the law that's polluting, it's the most basic standards of

writing

, the people who claim the show is good on its own terms are so in bad taste they should try it.

Check for kovit immediately or check their medical records to see if they have been lobotomized. We left episode 2 in about 50,000 places at once. Don Lemon has been bothered by some tunnel goblins, his beard and his son with the evil sword and I hate him. because Flaws has gone to seek refuge with the elves. Watchtower Steve, not Gandalf, just genocide a few fireflies at one point to persuade Brandy to raid Lenny Henry's Starbucks library. Young Ned Stark has just presented his case to Kaza Doom, leaving Harry and Megan to try. and persuade King Charles to show the elves what's inside Marcellus Wallace's briefcase and help them with their construction projects.

Keller Brimbor walked for several days or teleported instantly to reach the Kazakh. Doom presumably walked or teleported back from where he came from and transformed into a powerful power elf. along with probably the evil hunk survived the attack by Katulu's gay fish and were discovered drifting by a passing mass of semen. I missed something. I know the episode hasn't started yet, but I'm obligated to point it out now. We have a big problem with the narrative here, as I said in the previous video, Rings of Power has presented us with an abundance of people, but a serious deficit of characters, all so separated in geography and screen time that none of them have the Arguable exceptions of Brandy and Prince Harry have actually developed something resembling a personality, since B lacks that personality, it is not possible to invest more than a penny in either of them and see what happens for the plot of this show already been largely eliminated. for a thousand bits of loosely connected subplot to the effect that it feels tedious for long stretches and yet manages to feel rushed in its important parts, it feels thin like butter spread on too much bread where I took it upon myself to rewrite those first two episodes.

I would have introduced maybe half of these characters in episode 1 and spent a lot more time with each of them establishing enough personalities and backstories and relevance to the Elders world to make them memorable and intriguing and then left them entirely for the episode. 2. If I were there to take the same approach with the rest of the cast, I also wouldn't have made Mighty morphid power elf the frigid, overpowered, cold, uninteresting protagonist of the show, and maybe I could have given him something vaguely resembling a character, in fact, probably wouldn't have done it. He made her the protagonist to begin with, after all she can't die, not even the writers of this show would bother with the law to that extent, he's also too old at this point in the story for her character and personality are as immature as they are. presented as Being and Hell, if we were doing extensive rewrites, I wouldn't have attempted to condense thousands of years of history from the darkening of Falanor to the fullness of Numenor in the first season, a creative decision that more or less guarantees that we are incapable. of inhabiting any place or forming bonds with it before the sea unceremoniously drowns it, there are so many stories you could have accumulated in that span of time, even if you're just making it up, but as I was forced to point out so many times in The Writing from the last video is difficult, but continue with episode 3.

We start with Don Lemon as a slave who was captured in the deep, dark tunnels while searching for his journalistic reputation. In the previous episode, you'll remember that in that episode Don Lemon was used to commit the first injection of modern racial politics on the show when an angry young white man asked when black people I mean elves, but now they really mean black people , let's stop clinging to the past blaming white men's ancestors for historical wrongs and threatening the return of Donald Trump, I mean the real king to free Whitey from the tyranny of minorities, I mean the elves .

I have no intention of explaining again why that kind of blunt political allegory is such a massive betrayal of Tolkien and his works. If you're interested, watch the video above, but the inevitable problem is that once a show has committed this sin, you end up expecting it to do it again and again and again you look for allegories, sometimes finding them where they don't exist. Sometimes you find them where they place our first color elf. Do we have an official acronym for that? By the way, is it too late to suggest efoc L? Anyway, putting on our first L-chains automatically raises some big red flags, although this will seem like cleverly subtle compared to what we'll see later, but we'll get to that now, for now there's some more mundane stupidity to deal with and so In fact, there's quite a bit of mundane stupidity to deal with, first of all, the elves have been enslaved by a mafia.

From Orcs And here is a selection of questions and problems in the first place that should have captured Don Lemon is explainable, he made the mistake of going for his reputation in that last episode, but how did they come to capture so many other elves, including those from the Don Lemon Watchtower were stationed in the elves are the predominant military force in this region. They have guarded the towers for a reason. Did the Orc tunnel come up from under the tower and filter them into the night? Since Don Lemon, a nameless wench just tripped. through the burned village in the last episode and through the Orc tunnel, why didn't the elves in the tower or a nearby tower see this accumulation of evil?

We just forgot that elves are incredibly farsighted because that would be a drawback to the plot. Secondly, we are very afraid, since the Orcs have apparently already dug an extensive network of tunnels of their own. Why are they here forcing the elves to dig an extension for them? Third, why are they forcing the elves to build one? extension in broad daylight, while the rest of the tunnel network was firmly and sensibly underground, the Orcs have been digging tunnels because they hate sunlight, we'll come back to that in a moment too, but they have a large group of prisoners, the prisoners are In the sunlight, that's where they are working, the Orcs have to hide under their tents while the elves work as prisons.

This is not cold. Your guards cannot approach you without great pain and inconvenience. There are many of you. They are armed with tools, shovels, axes and so on, the elves are incredibly agile and light, as we will also see later, they have everything they need to escape, ample opportunity to escape and the Orcs are exceptionally incapable of stopping that escape, are they? Why since they can't go? in the sunlight, wouldn't the Orcs have kept the elves locked up during the day and forced them to dig at night and that's granting that the Orcs needed the elf to dig for them in the first place, which the latter episode seemed to suggest that they didn't?

Not all of this setup is completely ridiculous, but it has to happen, I suppose, because the plot demands it, so the episode has started with a big invention, not a promising start, don't worry, although I'm sure it will be a lot

worse

than this. and in the next shot, the powerful morphid power elf is seen waking up aboard the ship from the last episode. I think it's safe to say it's already

worse

. The gallant is already up and gives her some food that she does not have time to eat because They are interrupted and taken to the deck to meet these are men from numenor, the Kingdom of the island created in law by levala as a reward for deeds.

Men's. Something else, I'm sure we'll talk again for now and even though it may seem unlikely. To do so at this time I want to touch on the racial issue that I mentioned in the previous video but that I didn't have time to address at the time because the existence of Numenor and the Numenoreans invites you to look through a window into a world where people could Handle these things sensibly. I said in that previous video that Meghan Markle, uh, I mean diesel, the dwarf princess played by Sophia Nom vetsi, one of them actually proved to be one of the best, most likable, most characterful creations of the series.

I know a few others who are at least pleasantly surprised by it too, but the show has a problem with race and it has a problem with place and the interrelationship between the two. I apologize for breaking so quickly from the plot of the show, but I do. I think this part is important for directing since a lot has been said about it, after all the plot has to take place somewhere and when creating believable worlds it is important to understand what somewhere really is because the vast majority Most modern screenwriters and showrunners come from an incredibly small group of people and they all live in big cities.

They really don't have a conception of what differentiates places from their towns. Their idea of ​​diversity is what they see around them. A vast multicultural sea of ​​humanity. Everyone, from anywhere, mixes everywhere. Considering the extent to which they travel abroad, they will typically travel to tourist spots and other large cities rather than anywhere truly representative of the host nation. The so-called citizens of the world actually know very little about the world because wherever they go it looks like the international world. Throughout history, the city and the international city have been defined in relation to the character of the rest of the country in which they are located;

This is one of the many reasons why rebellious English peasants frequently took their pitchforks to London and, rightly, this kind of hyperdiversity is what these writers know, but it is not to reclaim one of the words they have stolen representative even in its own Western countries and certainly in other places and less developed parts of the world, what distinguishes a place is, among other things, its relative homogeneity. I have a houseboat in London, but I spend a lot more time these days in the town I grew up in, among its few defining characteristics is the fact that the population is almost without exception white and older, but that's another matter, it's a of the things that separate this Village from London that was separated in undeclared and anodyne, but quite defined, ways that werewould notice if it were not so, is what gives these places discreet characters.

This does not mean that one is better or worse than the other, but that they are profoundly different and the composition of their people and that is why the composition of their cultures marks them as such. My People is not an isolated case or rather their isolation is Overall this is what largely defines rural areas and rural areas make up most of the country, the kind of racial and color mixing you see in London and other big cities in the UK and US just doesn't operates on the same scale in most of either nation; even within large cities, ethnic groups tend to group together a country's immigrants.

They move in groups and largely migrate to the same regions of their new homes, this is always the case everywhere, cities are rarely representative of national patents, they are always outliers in terms of their population mix, but even Within the cities you see ethnic groups grouped together. In London, for example, there is a disproportionately higher proportion of the Jewish Tower. Hamlet is disproportionately Bangladeshi in the US. Minneapolis has a Sudanese foreign population that is largely responsible for the continued and regrettable existence of ilhanoma and so it continues. I mention all this because villagers, towns and city districts have a distinctive character that tells you where you are and that distinguishes those places from their neighbors, racial or ethnic conglomeration is an important part of that Game of Thrones, which was an incredibly diverse show, understood this point to a lesser extent because it was restricted by its narrative.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films did the same thing. Well, part of the reason these worlds seemed so well realized on screen is that you had immediate visual clues provided by the population separating Dawn from Winterfell in the first case and the Bree Shire in the second, for example, but now this is a rare approach. of power like the wheel of time before it has taken another and less effective one, this is partly because the writers do not have a real experience of those places in the real world that should serve as inspiration for their Creations in the fictional world , but it's also because the point of diversity and representation is that we've come to understand that today is not about reflecting the actual diversity of the real world as they say it is, but rather a select group of people's ideals about what should be diversity, the irony of those who say fantasy should look like the real world is that their fantasy depictions look much less like the real world than the older iterations they criticize for their perceived whiteness, among other reasons, the clear Jackson's film's delineation of the isolated homogeneity of the Shire and the gentle and definitively foreign band of Orientals is a much closer relationship. approximation of the real world divisions that the rings of powers attempts to claim the most isolated group, if not the hobbits, should have a Chicago-like racial mix again the differences between true diversity, which should include accurate group formation and the idealized and politicized idea of ​​a small group of people.

As for the meaning and desirability of a different kind of diversity, these two facts combine to explain why people have become so angry with the peddlers of the latter approach and is wary whenever you see minority actors cast in certain roles, it's not like Amazon would like you to believe that there is a toxic group of bigots who just hate diversity wherever they see it, no, it's not a useful counterexample, here they would call him Valerian in House of the Dragon, his casting raised some eyebrows, it didn't help when He gave, to my knowledge, the only white interview.

I can't stand to see black people in fantasy type. People looked at that casting. He recalled what activists have put pressure on them for too long and how they have slandered them. The activists themselves and the studios they supported weighed the casting decision against what they knew of the world in which the show was set and preemptively concluded that this would likely be another example of pushing diversity at the expense of realism and law enforcement. , but House of El Dragón has become very popular and those complaints have almost disappeared. There aren't many arguments anymore about the push for race and diversity within the Dragon house because the show was written well enough for the casting to fit. their world is explainable in-universe and not used as out-of-universe propaganda.

Wireless Valerian has come to feel like a fairly natural part of a well-written story, and as always, Arcana's well-deserved success is proof that audiences would love an incredibly diverse cast. Whether that cast fits the world it's set in, whether it's well-realized, and whether it's not used to push political points, I haven't seen yet, but I'm guessing the cyberpunk Edge Runners is seeing a similar effect. I raised the issue now because the rings of power had an opportunity to do exactly the same thing, it is a vast world of many regions populated by many peoples larger than even those in Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, bordering on the type of story that the show is trying to tell, we have or should have ample opportunity to exp

lore

these different regions in the towns, there is a way to achieve a realistic representation that accords with the known laws of both universes, ours and the shows, and the arrival of the Numenóreans is an example of how the show almost adopted this simple and popular approach. but then he abandoned it in favor of another less credible and less popular, the Numenoreans are an island people in tradition, in any case, they come from those men who opposed Morgoth and Lavada gave them the island as a reward for their fights, as it was expected. to see a degree of diversity in its beginnings, but that also happened a long time ago, in fact, the men who opposed Morgoth, but not all the men of Middle-earth from all the places in Middle-earth where they could be found men, were drawn from specific regions. the men of the Southlands, for example, sided with Morgoth, the show had the opportunity to represent the type of group called diversity that one would expect to see given the history, for example, a large number could have been chosen of Hispanic actors by geography rather than by specific nation. and ethnicity to populate numenor, then you would have represented if you insist on doing that, quite an influence in that the real world in your fictional world clearly delineates the men of numenor from the men of the Southlands like Hal Brand, who after all will become Mordor Mordor borders places like khand and harad, described in law as swathi with dark hair and eyes, dark skin in general, is still in farharad, given how many rings of power are concentrated in this region and how many of its key characters are in The Screen Comes From There, including several main characters.

You could have cast black and North African actors to play them. The contrast of Harford Spike and especially the elves and dwarves have closer analogues in the peoples of northern and northwestern Europe. If you take this approach, you would have achieved everything. They may want to achieve this if their goal is to achieve credible, story-relevant diversity. A large number of lead actors played by actors from different backgrounds, including underrepresented groups such as North Africans and Hispanics. A truly diverse range of people given prominent roles and a world that is automatically more genuinely unnaturally varied in its diversity than the pick-and-mix approach taken by many modern media, which seems to think there really isn't a demographic difference. genuine among an isolated tribe of non-hobbits, the Numenoreans, the elves, the dwarves, and the men of the Southlands. the crew of numenor's ship, which is our first introduction to them, what we get is more or less the typical smorgasbord of urban-minded origins and, although not fatally, it makes numenor itself much less contained, much less clearly delineated from any other group of peoples and much less so.

More loosely defined conceptually, this problem much more significantly undermines the description of non-hobbits, of course, and then to a lesser extent dwarves and elves also factor into what we know of non-hobbits and more. afternoon of the royal hobbits in The Lord. of the Rings are a small and highly isolated population who deliberately avoid contact with the wider world, they fear distrust and feel overwhelmed by the wider world, which they do not do at all out of custom and culture blend with the wider world. broad, this is what gives the Shire its definition, this is what makes it an entity in its own right and also familiar to the large proportion of the audience who are visited or who live in equally isolated and homogeneous places, equipped of character and color by a self-governing population if On the contrary, we decided to give the Shire the demographics of Islington; that effect is completely lost and the world becomes much less believable.

As a result, we can raise similar points in a similar way with elves and actually create opportunities for more diversity, not less for elves. after all, they are not one people, they begin as such in the Meridian cell at the point of their creation, when they are one people, the quandy. But as time goes on, they become divided culturally and geographically, so it's not too far a stretch for the imagination. to say ethnically also at the beginning of the Meridian cell the elves are summoned to valinor but not all of them go this is what is known as the division of the elves when different groups arise the noldor the Solari the Vanya and then those who remain behind in the Middle-earth became divided further, some of the Taleri becoming Nandor, for example, and others becoming Sindhar as they spread across Middle-earth and formed their own kingdoms and cultures at the point where the rings of power are apparently sad Centuries, if not millennia, have passed since then. all this happened, this gives the show a chance to do natural diversity, even more diversity, which I wouldn't be opposed to and I don't think many fans would be, you'd still find some people complaining that The Elves were described as universally fair , but you would greatly diminish the force and validity of that criticism if you made the rest of the diversity part of the edifice of the world.

Have black elves if you really think it's necessary, but then all the elves in their region. and the faction should be black because, like non-hobbits but to a lesser extent, elves are not great mixers, they don't reproduce quickly, they don't cross communities as easily, yes the existence of black elves still might have irritated the purists, but again. The reception of Quartus Valerian and the quick death of opposition to it proves that even law-minded fans are willing to forgive and forget this sort of thing if the world-building is honest, apolitical, non-allegorical, sensible, consistent, and faithful. to the foundations of its original material. he said that if you took the approach I just laid out you wouldn't need to have black elves because you could have cast several of your main Southland characters as black or dark-skinned anyway, that would also avoid the problem. very thorny issue of cultural appropriation that arises when you see traditionally white characters from traditionally white cultures recast as other races in ways that would not be accepted the day it happened like it happened before, the other way around, it's just a myth to say as some on both sides of the aisle argument have tried to say that Tolkien's world was always and uniformly white, that it was not the existence of the orientals, refutes that notion that it was vast and encompassing in its scope, but it was also written with a realistic mind. the towns were formed and located naturally and did not mix to the point where there is no difference between them anyway.

I think the approach I just laid out would be called a compromise. I would say that it is a principled objection not to diversity per se but Regarding the form and purpose of diversity as we are seeing it in the circles of power, the question is not whether black people can exist in Middle Earth, of course they can, the question is accepting that they can, in what way do you include them and where and in what? money, does it include any race and where does diversity and realism combine? Should representation be realistic or defined by the idealism of activist writers against that realism?

I just gave you my answer. I think it's pretty well supported, but it's the general point to keep in mind. What we have in mind is that it should be possible to ask these questions and present these arguments and look for at least compromised solutions without branding half of your audience or the other half as bigoted and racist bigots because they don't fit your political idea and ideological. diversity with a capital D, you can refute mySuggestion if you want to argue with me in the comments, if you want, I appreciate it, but otherwise I don't see the problem with having these conversations, these conversations are good and appropriate, they are comprehensive. to world-building and all these better conversations are integral to the story, these are not simply political matters, they are also artistic matters.

The quest for autistic wholeness is at stake, but now and we return to the show as it is presented to us in our first look. from the semen in the Numenorian ship we get the complete smorgasbord of modern metropolitan life and well, there goes the construction of Part of your world, there goes your natural diversity, we have to take those boxes and if you don't like it, let those boxes be checked. you're probably racist, isn't modern fandom wonderful anyway, we're introduced to probably the only reliable actor on the show who plays the ocean man aka alendil, father of isildur, we'll also see asilda shortly, worth it though point out here that they were the program faithfully adapts even that material to which alendel has the rights and asildo should not exist for I don't know 2000 years or so or at least for a couple of seasons of the program alendel is not born until after the forging of the Rings by Kelly Brimborough, memory serves and they have not yet been forged olendiel the seal gate does not have a major role to play until the fall of numenor under the corrupting influence of Sauron, which occurred centuries after the forging of the Rings.

Now I don't mention all this just to point out the contradictions with the law. The first video established that the show is not set in the spoken universe created. We don't need to go into too much detail to emphasize that point of the game. I was lucky enough to be on efap recently and the approach they take is to try to stick with the plot and the show on its own terms rather than criticize it because it was done better elsewhere and I agree with that approach but, paradoxically, that's why. Sometimes it is necessary to cite more contradictions in history, sometimes the program borrows historical events that depend on previous events, but the program is discarded or cannot be used, which we will often find in these videos in other places they are compressing the law in unnecessary and reckless ways and this makes reference to the law from time to time useful and exposes problems that Ali sui generis nature of the rings of power this condensation is one of those examples that are supposed to be the rings of power To running for what I think is five seasons, you have time to build toward momentous events and you need a series of momentous events to occur throughout this round of five seasons, but instead of being patient instead of spreading things out, it seems rush to several. immediate conclusions the return of sauron the forging of the Rings the numenian invasion of Middle-earth the fall of numenor the eventual Triumph of sauron not only cramming this stuff into later seasons deprived of brilliant material that they might otherwise have had more time to use means that each The event is diminished by its proximity to the others B that are further diminished by the speed with which we approach them and C we never have time to invest in the people and places in question because the spectacle despite being boring and empty for large portions of each episode still can't allow us the time to get to know them, understand them, or feel anything about them anyway, like I say, Ocean Man is perhaps the only reliable actor on the show, but the dialogue is as Unreliable or as trustworthy as ever, he begins by telling Mighty Morfido power elf and hunk that he will not answer his questions but will take them to his superiors, who will then proceed to half-answer two questions in rapid succession, so I.

I am glad to see that we have already begun to consider consistency as the enemy more seriously and this will become evident later. This gives us the strongest clue we've received yet as to exactly when this part of the show is set. in the mid to late stage, which means things are about to go very wrong for the world, although they will also go very wrong for the show due to the way the setup was discarded, as we will soon see that the man of the ocean has a powerful elven dagger of morphological power. which she wants back, but for now we get to see Numenor for the first time on screen and well, let's be balanced: there are good things and bad things in the bad things, there are technical challenges with both scenes set in green backgrounds because unless you have the scenery that can mimic the subtle natural movements of the boat in the water, increases The Uncanny Valley effect of green screen I have spent much of the last few years of my life living on boats and let me tell you, even the big ones move with the little ones Links move more, of course, for physical reasons, but even the largest ones move however subtly it may seem when the green screen in the background of your set is static.

Things don't look good at all. Everything is too still. The intestinal line no. it doesn't move relative to the background, i.e. the whole ship, which is supposed to be bubbling at least a little, just feels too still, it's a more subtle form of the moving car rear projection problem in old movies , you know where the car is. It's actually static, but the guy holding the steering wheel moves it as if he were steering and the windows are actually images of a moving landscape. It shakes because the little things don't add up. The guy who moves the steering wheel doesn't do it according to what we think.

I see through the window that I could be turning left on a straight road or driving straight around a sharp bend, something my mother does in real life quite often, hence the number of cars and pedestrians she has ruled out , this has the same jarring quality as the the intestinal line against the passing cliffs is absolutely still it looks like a landscape gliding past the stage not a ship floating past the landscape the other problem is really double edged numenor in law is spectacular It is powerful Advanced Rich Beyond dreams massive in size and scale there is an invitation for the program to do what it really wants to do, which is to impress you with its images and it is impressive as long as it is not extraordinary.

I mentioned one issue with CGI megascapes in the video above, but the other is a contrast issue. If you've taken the time and effort to create intimate, practical sets, the difference in texture tone and lighting between CGI views and establishing shots is stagnant, and not in a good way in The Lord of the Rings , Peter Jackson fixed this. problem with cleverly combining practical and CG effects, a lot of the backgrounds weren't actually CGI, they were often painted over. Scale models were built completely or showed the relevant part of the building intended for the shot, then the background was painted.

The rest of the building would be filled in digitally and they did this with several of the shots of Orthank the Tower in Eisenguard, for example, and this combination smoothes out the differences that would otherwise be clearly evident between the practical and digital shard power rings. hasn't been so clever, often combining completely practical sets on the ship's upper deck, for example, with completely digital Views immediately after and which actually invite us to notice the differences rather than encouraging us to overlook them when enough has passed time. From the last hands-on shot, you can forget about the difference, Numenor's digital panorama conveys its size and grandeur, although to really enjoy it you have to pretend you're watching a cutscene from a video game due to the lighting and textures. they're just not that photorealistic at all, the focus on the numenor is quite impressive, but you're frequently distracted by, most of all, a statue of one of Prometheus's precursors and otherwise quick jumps between shots that are so different in nature . that you could also be looking at completely separate productions, which in some ways is the case, since the numerical approach is a big set and big sets are either successful or not based on a number of different technical elements.

I guess now would be a good time to well, to mention the score again, I said in the last video that Bear McCreery had at times managed to capture the overall orchestral composition and therefore the overall sound of Howard Shaw's score, but that the soundtrack itself was rarely noticeable and simply wasn't integral to the show. Shaw's work was for The Lord of the Rings. Now I quite like Batman McCreary. He has been an excellent television composer. He has honed his talent by working with strict budgets and that forced him to be very creative. Look at the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, where the budget was so small.

He had to make do with a few drums and a dooduck, since then he's been doing bigger projects and I think he's been learning with John Williams recently and you can hear that creeping into his score for this show largely due to the way he that unfolds its um uh. his trumpet, I mean his horns, French horns, obviously, Williams has a very pronounced affection for the trumpet and uses them in ways that Howard surely doesn't understand, McCreary's occasional use of them in power rings, the band Sound sometimes sounds, although not for more than a few seconds. at one time slightly John Williams here what distinguishes Williams and Shore from most other composers is their use of the light motif.

The light motif is an idea popularized by Wagner for his ring cycle, but can be traced back to Monteverdi and other earlier composers. Furthermore, in short, it is a musical phrase or melody that accompanies a character, a place or a mood, and the best and most memorable soundtracks are those with the best and most memorable displays of the light motif. Most film composers have a very basic understanding of it. actually amounts to little more than a character's melody, that guy is on the screen, so the track plays, which makes the operatic and cinematic composition brilliant, it's a more subtle and flexible understanding, yes, The characters and locations have themes, but the motif must change and fluctuate depending on the mood you're in. the meaning of a scene and in a sense based on what the world itself thinks of the characters at a given moment.

The Lord of the Rings is a sublime example of the light motif done right, it's what makes the soundtrack so memorable, Shaw's basic melody. The motif of Rohan Gondor Eisengard and the Shire may be simple, the core of any good light. The motif tends to be because it is the melody we remember, but its deployment is complex and nuanced, for example, when we first encounter ederas in Rohan, it is on a civilization level. The point under Theoden is possessed by a serum and corrupted by grime, the nation itself is fraying, as we see represented visually by the torn flag that greets Aragorn Legolas Gandalf and gimry upon their arrival there, but is also represented by the score that plays the Rohan Motif for the The first time, but it is weak, it is thin and tremulous, but it is designed to convey weakness, fragility and sadness.

The theme itself does not change in either of the two films in which the two towers and the Return of the King appear, but the variations are marked. A different, larger and more sumptuous instrumentation greets Theodens. Rebirth after Gandalf breaks Saruman's spell. A gloomy feeling. A noble but tense variation is played when the Rahirim arrived to meet Sauron's armies on the Palanal Fields in The Return of the King. This is the same melody. It's the same reason. which makes him instantly recognizable, but is being implemented in very different ways to produce and portray very different emotions, Theoden's weakness under the influence of Saruman, his resurgence as he regains his former strength, his evocation of noble sacrifice in the perennial fields and the same is true.

With each of the many motifs Shaw deploys in The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, in contrast, McCreery hasn't really managed to encapsulate even the basics of the light motif in the two episodes we've had so far, this one being one of the biggest and most understated reasons we have so much trouble identifying the various places we see Shaw identifies Rohan in his many moods McCreery has been unable to identify Lindon or the Southlands or the path of advance. The mighty morphed power elf has his own motif, there's at least a hint of one, but it's not pronounced and it's not memorable partly because he hasn't punctuated it correctly, the instrumentation doesn't make the thing noticeable and partly because He doesn't seem to have conceptualized the character in his notation there's just nothing of the Mighty Morphin Power elf in what he's trying to convey musically,although this could be because there is no character in it to convey.

I mentioned it here because numenor is the first pronounced motif that really stands out in the show. We listened to it on our arrival here and we'll listen to it on our departure later and it's a start, the soundtrack generally improves over the course of these three episodes which is a positive, the theme itself is, I would say, too long. For its function, the numerical motif is actually not particularly safe, as in its instrumentation it owes something to John Williams himself, but it also fades in a way that his motifs would not. It is not repeated often enough to stick in the mind. a little too complicated to be completely memorable, although I think the opening is strong, it's something McCrary will need to do more of not only for the sake of his own soundtrack but also for the world he's tasked with representing, it's not just the melody that we remember. when we hear the Imperial March it is a character, it is not just a score that we feel in The Lord of the Rings, it is the people, places and ideas that score is attached to.

I think McCreary has this in him or maybe he does with more practice. and train, the power rings may come too soon for him and he is certainly not helped by the lack of strong themes, characters and ideas to express, but that's enough with the boring music, so we will return to the plot Ocean Man The Mighty power elf morphod and hunk arrive at the docks and the powerful power elf morpher does some essential but retroactive world building. She explains to the hunk that the Numenorians are not men like him because they sided with the elves against Morgoth while her people sided with Morgoth against the elves ah, okay, here is the angry young white man from the previous video. instructive, this is an unnecessary dialogue in the Universe, the heartthrob should already know all this, they are his direct ancestors, the argument could well be that it was a long time ago that he did it.

He didn't survive it, maybe his people have just forgotten him completely and yes, forgetting Vital Information is the norm on this show, the elves forgot about Sauron after all, which would be forgivable if the show didn't condense the timeline because thousands of years should have passed between them. The defeat of Morgoth and the current yet angry young white man from episode 1 hadn't forgotten any of this, he mentions it in his discussion with Don Lemon, apparently it's pretty common knowledge except when the show remembers that it isn't and he is. younger and further removed from these events than the handsome ones, if the young angry white teenager knows it, the hunk should know it too, so the powerful transformation of the powerful elf should have no need to explain any of this, there is another problem with this exchange that will become more pronounced as time goes on and that is the location of the information, this show tends to fill in the details retroactively, for example in episode 1 we learned that Morgoth killed the Trees of Light even though he didn't and the elves went to war with him and that's it.

It's not until episode 2 that the show decides to explain the existence of the Silmarils and the Goths' affection for them and that is vital contextual information for the events of the previous episode to make any sense because that is the cause of the fight in the first place. place, but then. The power rings still managed not to bind these two things together or haven't yet and then it's not until episode 3 that we hear the first mention of the morphological power elf Valor Mighty who is filling in information that the show left out of its own setup .

We were in Valinor at the opening. scenes from episode one Damn, there was an entire voiceover meant to set the scene and describe pivotal events in the past, but not once until the third episode have we heard anything about Courage, and yet without Courage nothing Actually, this point makes some sense: it would be like giving a lecture on the Crusades and describing in a couple of sentences how Jerusalem was conquered, but not telling anyone who the crusaders were, why they were crusading. , what religions they adhered to or even mentioning the existence of God compare the opening monologue of Rings of Power with that of fellowship in the ring and the difference is, once again, a rigid collateral in Fellowship that informs us about the history that gives meaning to our current condition.

It is brief, superficial, does not prolong or introduce unnecessary details. but it covers all the most relevant information, on the contrary, it brings an opening monologue from Powers with a short that was superficial but gave us almost nothing of the why of the events, in fact, it skipped the most important events and the program now it is filling us retrospectively in a forced way. Exposition, but while Galadriel's monologue in Fellowship also shows us the important events that the rings of power simply tell us in Exposition during Scene Transitions and that is a much less effective form of Storytelling, especially since it raises many more questions that it answers and throws out fragments of Law with enormous consequences and connotations that the program cannot adequately exp

lore

or explain to us.

You can repair some of this damage retroactively, and the program is trying to do that here, but the order of events, the way we gather essential information, is backwards. we see the consequences and then a couple of episodes later, if we're lucky, a character will have a couple of lines mentioning snippets of the causes of those same consequences. I made a nasty joke about the Jenga Tower in the previous video, but the nicer version is What we're going to implement here is that it's like trying to play Jenga by starting with the top layer and that's not how the game works.

We were also left with a series of questions that are not all what the show intends, for example, if the noun Valar exists in this universe, what role are they going to play because they are an integral part of the number glitch that this show will presumably represent? , but if they are so well integrated, then we have to wonder why they didn't do anything in the future? Above, the war mentioned in the first episode, if you've read The Silmarillion you'll know this of course, but most people won't have read it and even if they have the show it's thrown out so much that it's not really that reliable. but as a guide, save perhaps for a few key elements, the fall of numenor is one of them, while Valor is going to be invoked in the eventual destruction of numenor, they are being given an incredible amount of power and agency, but the only The way we can square that with their previous absence from the procedure is to simply forget about them at that moment and simply forget about them again.

I really don't think it would have been difficult to fix this, you could have actually added a couple of lines. to the opening monologue to explain that The Valor guards refused to help the elves in their fight against Morgoth and that's why the elves rebelled against them and went to fight, which establishes us with the existence of gods who could have helped and that's why they do it. have agency in the world, meaning that any subsequent mention, invocation, and potential action is based on established knowledge and answers the questions posed at the top of the program;

I could even have used it to at least hint at those passages of the law that the show presumably won't include. and or I can't use it directly, like the murder of relatives, it just refers to it as some kind of tragedy, some kind of rebellion or betrayal of the gods that occurred and that tarnishes the elves in a non-specific way, giving the impression of facts consequences without actually explaining what they were specifically, the story is built from its foundation rather than the writers hastily trying to fill in those foundations on the fly, but as it is, the clumsy exposition continues and the heartthrob is is reducing to the useful role of interrogator that his All contribution in this exchange is to facilitate the exposure of the powerful morphic power elf.

Since when did men like me build kingdoms like this? These men are not like you, the men were with the elves as a reward that the Valar granted them. This island has changed a lot since then. The sector was divided. finally I wasn't sad what happened Newman's order started rejecting our ships why we may be about to find out since when do men like me build kingdoms like this I detect a note of envy what happened why okay, let's try to put two and two together together and see how the show came to be with five powerful morphed power elves.

He begins by saying that Numenor is very different now than it used to be because he rejects Elvis' ships, so if that's the case, how could he regret that he's changed? I even know that she has really changed, she hasn't been here because the ships were turned away. The moving away of the ships is the only information we are given about the deep chain that she somehow knows the island has suffered, but when asked why that happened, she confesses that she doesn't know so no, you don't know that has changed profoundly in ways that generate sadness, you only know that you know nothing except that you are not allowed to enter?

That should create curiosity in the powerful morphid power elf. perhaps fear or at least foreboding should not create deep sadness because she has been prevented from knowing what she would need to know to feel sad in the first place. I think the show is trying to speed up numenor's character development, but it fails because it jumps to conclusions about the city having jumped to conclusions from the city it doesn't feel the need to really build the character of the place you could have achieved the desired effect with tired caution on the part of the powerful power elf morphod a belief that something is wrong in the nature of which she does not know is indeed her conclusion in this exchange that could turn into sadness once she learns the reason for the change and what that the change represents and what it entails could again be accomplished with a small change to just a couple of her lines, it wouldn't require us to rewrite her character or her reactions because, well, I mean, she would know that they both need to be redone, but not because this scene, they just need to be redone because she doesn't really have any of those things to begin with. she just moves through the world as if every day is her time of the month.

I could almost say that there is a storm in it. again resorting to the law could have been useful. We can deduce from this information that we are in the middle or late stage of the numerator. In fact, Numenor and the elves were once close allies, but they didn't really start fighting until the first war against Sauron, where Numenor sent a massive Force to repel him after the establishment of Mordor and his forces there beat him and captured him. . and they take him to numenor, which then allows him to corrupt the king's mind, which then leads to the downfall of numenor;

As far as we know, there has been no such war at this point in the show's history, Numenor under the influence of Sauron became vast and powerful, but also became warlike and tyrannical; The Numenoreans had already settled occasionally along the coast of Middle-earth, but now they did so en masse and became militaristic and dictatorial, leading to rifts with the elves whom they oppressed. The reason the Numenoreans settled in Middle Earth is that the Valar forbade them to travel so far west that they could no longer see their own island because if they did they might encounter Valenor and the Eternal Lands and unlike the Numenoreans elves who were blessed with eternal life, man was doomed to die. the elves told them this was a blessing, they didn't believe them things got complicated God got angry but we could get to that later but if any of that was the case in this show why would the ship have been in its place? rescuing the mighty elephant of morphed power in the previous episode, they were so far west that at that time they couldn't see their own islands, so they would have already broken the mandate within them and God would have killed them more pertinently and more.

Relevantly, for a later setup, we have absolutely no indication that the Numenoreans have settled in Middle-earth at this point in the show's continuity; in fact, they make us believe that they hardly ever visited us, so we're in this strange historical limbo that we're in. We're not given any setup, we're simply plunged into the middle or end point of Numenor's story, but we know nothing about Numenor itself or its relationship to the world, and in fact, as we'll see shortly, we don't actually has none. a problem the show has with selectively borrowing from the law because it's borrowing events that depend on things they've discarded, meaning they have to fill in substantial gaps in the world-building to make things make sense, but they haven't have made no serious attempt to do that yet and the attempts they have made simply reveal their shortcomings as Mighty Writersmorphod power elf and Sarah, I mean, howl.

Brands loses track of the Ocean Man during their conversation, but he appears again and tells them that they don't want to get lost. in this city with no escort except right behind them you can see the greetings are there the two who accompanied them from the dark yes they have an escort he is literally behind you open your eyes this uh this reminds me of a minor party MP British Labor Party whose name is David Lammy. He once gave an on-camera interview complaining that he hadn't seen a cop all day while there was a cop standing right behind him.

If it seems like the neighborhood police have disappeared, it's not around you, we haven't seen the police while I've been here and I've been here for a very funny, very embarrassing time, I'm glad to see that the writers of this show are delivering with high standards here, punk. then takes a look at a nearby blacksmith and gives us an enigmatic expression that is sure to be very relevant not only later in this episode, but for Sauron's question, the show thinks it's keeping us hard-pressed to answer, so we'll come back to that. At this point we enter the town hall or palace where they tell the ocean man that the queen regent is too busy to deal with them at this moment there are three main players that we are about to introduce ourselves to on our Whistle Stop tour by numenor the queen regent tar Muriel herself, who is the daughter of king tar palantir here decrepit bedridden and R farazan, there are actually several versions of her story written by Tolkien himself and it is not very clear if the show will use any of them.

I wonder how those changes will work. I wonder if they will be held to the same shockingly low standard as all the other changes that have been made so far. The general idea of ​​Tolkien's story is that our pharazone usurps Tar Muriel later. Tarpalanti's death by forcing her to marry him, thus taking his title as ruler, it is Arthurism who decides to embark on the Expedition against Sauron and brings Sauron back as his prisoner only then for Sauron to complete his corruption that already existed in the hearts of many. The Numenoreans anyway, the man who had settled in Middle Earth became jealous of the elf's immortality and thought that the death they had to suffer was a curse and even though the elves tried to tell them that the Oluvata and the gods They had given death as a kind of reward. men refused to believe them and it was this fear this longing this hatred this jealousy that Sauron plays when Arthurism brings him back to numenor and corrupts in Arizona corrupts the men of numenor turns them against Valor makes them worship morgoth and this part of the Meridian cell includes blood sacrifices and all that kind of lovely stuff, eventually prompts Arthurism to invade Valinor and that leads Manweh, the leader of Valor, to beg for help from Eluvita, who is God himself, and thus God breaks the world. makes the earth round for the first time, until now it has been flat, the curve, turns it into a sphere, the sphere that we know today and that changes much of the geography of the Numenor floods completely, buries our Pharisee under a mountain until it is liberated in Armageddon and much of Middle Earth is also damaged by this immense flood including Lindon that we saw in the previous episode the kingdom of gilgallad now I mention all this because I invite you to remember what I said before about the problems The show is compelling by bringing together so much history, not that they had to, there's a lot of numenor history that it could have explored even with its limited rights, its limited access to the law, the fact that it's voluntarily condensing its line of time means that you are equally voluntarily giving up fantastic stories that you could have told and even if you don't trust that the writers could have told fantastic stories, you are also giving up the amount of time that could have at least allowed them to tell fantastic stories.

Instead, we're walking through thousands of years of history and what we end up getting is a disaster in the palace courtroom once it becomes known that the powerful morph elf is in fact an elf and the queen regent decides against it. She's busy after all. It might seem more like a powerful elf introduces herself to Queenie with her typically offensive lack of charm and Grace, while the show has decided to make the heartthrob Brawn. Game of Thrones means it plays with its ornate and elaborate titles with simple quirky humor. and irreverent Galadriel of the Noldor daughter of the Golden House of Finarvin commander of the northern armies of the High King Gilgalat Albert this is the sugar son of Dolph Chieftain of the Stern Ravens timid son of the timid ruler of the burnt men this Fair Maiden is Chella daughter of the black eared Czech leader and here we have bronze your son I wouldn't know well I'm pretty sure even his bronze facial expressions everything about him in this scene is Bran, it's almost as if the writers and even the cast really They would like to make a Game of Thrones and uh, I know I said I would spread these things, but I am suffering in my laws, oh Mighty One.

Morphin Power elf is as offensive as can be by demanding passage back to Middle Earth. I have no idea why they decided to portray her this way, she is characterless, incredibly unpleasant, essentially requires a ship to take them back to Middle Earth, but a man with a big bushy beard is Farazan, who in this story is the chancellor of numenor, well, he tells her that it has been centuries since numenor's ship was allowed to make that voyage, much less in the name of an elf, but no, no, again the numenorians settled on Earth Media, at least according to Tolkien's account, of course it's established that we don't go by his account, but if they were going to tell us something like this, you'd think they could try to explain why it's okay, they'll get there and so will we. we'll get there and just wait, it's something really special.

They took our jobs because the powerful morphic power elf has as much understanding of decency and human interaction as Jimmy. Savile drunk in a morgue and of course it's not true except in the sense that the Numenoreans rescued the elves in the fight against Morgoth and Sauron or I guess just mogoth in this show, they haven't fought Sauron yet, I don't know. I don't think the program either. I don't think he cares. We also don't have a reason for the East's new hatred of the elves, as mentioned in the story. There are two broad factions among the Numenorians.

There are faithful who the name might suggest are loyal to the elves but mainly to Valor and then there are the King's Men who gradually come to resent it because they fear death as I have already mentioned and they resent that Valor has imposed it on them while Denying them access to the purchase lands is this fear that Sauron takes advantage of when he arrives, it is the reason he corrupts them so easily. The king at this time is tar palantir and tar palantir is one of the faithful, but he is an exception that proves the norm because the King's Men are the predominant force and have been for some time.

We're going to get mentions of both factions in this episode, but because unlike the law, the show says that the Numenorians have apparently already confined themselves to their island instead of colonizing. Middle Earth or mix with the elves or interact with other races at all. We have no history of interaction with the elves that could explain their hostile attitude. Here we do not have the history of any of the factions or their reasons for being us. We don't know or understand and they don't tell us the history of the faithful or the King's Men or their reasons for existing, all their reasons for opposing each other is one of those strange cases where the show relies on prior knowledge of the law. which is otherwise distorted or discarded, meaning it's impregnable by the standards and isn't even a good guide for Tolkien fans.

The program will have to invent a reason that one would think of or at least work on some variant of what is in the law and if past experiences are any guide, they will do it tactlessly and in bad taste and it will seem forced and superficial and horrible speaking stilted and superficial and horrible the dialogue the dialogue as so often on the show is abysmal Powerful morph power elf and Queenie have an argument in which, for no very good reason, the powerful morph power elf threatens to kill someone to leave the island, then, if luckily I will pay the price of the Passage, but one way or another I will leave, I invite you to try it.

I don't need your welcome. I guess idioms aren't a thing where she comes from because that was clearly a figure of speech, but having heard the similes of the elves before washing away the last remains of our enemy like a spring rain on the bones. from a spoiled one, I guess maybe it's too subtle and she didn't realize it, but now Queenie doesn't understand the idioms either because she calls Mighty muffin power elf and you're quickly wearing yourself out. Gods, what is happening? The reason for this instantaneous and mutually assured destruction is all so rushed and artificial.

Why have they decided to have the Mighty Morphin Power elf assume the final form of a frigid cow permanently? In my last video there has been absolutely no improvement, but it is such a strange decision to have been born in Valinor in the first age. The powerful Morbid power elf is thousands of years old at this point, she is much older than young Ned, and yet in the short time we spent with him he came across as more developed, reasoned, and mature than her. One of the reasons they didn't like her being cast as the lead is precisely that in order for her to actually go on an arc and grow, the show has to Pretend that she hasn't had Millennia yet to go on an arc and grow.

Here, she's the oldest bratty, spoiled teen drama queen ever devised, with the possible exception of Taylor Lorenz, and you know that somehow, without any self-reflection or improvement. the fact that she is queen will somehow allow her to brute force her way through plot hell, if people end up liking her for that we will have no choice but to call her Mary Sue, I mean Sauron , I mean a gallant who acts as a diplomat and asks questions. permission to stay, which immediately grants them a large bushy beard for three days, though on the condition that the Mighty Morphin Power elf does not leave the palace grounds, so she says she will not be a prisoner and he makes a joke about putting kneel the stallions and seek to imprison the powerful commander of the northern army and the extras were obviously told to laugh at this but I didn't, it didn't make any sense and it wasn't funny.

In any case, the birds' permission is granted and the show must move. So Mighty morphod power elf has just accepted the offer and despite having threatened to kill someone or even everyone to get what he wants, punk approaches Ocean man as the meeting disperses, everyone has simply stopped lending them attention because, well, we. You're about to see why and he hugs the ocean man to thank him for saving them on the raft as he hugs the ocean man. He steals the dagger from the Mighty Morphin Power elves. Now I'm not a magician, but like where is he hiding it?

He has no sleeves, he couldn't have hidden it in his tunic without moving his hands. There is no space. I could detect where off screen he might have done it. This ocean man is watching him the whole time and you'd think a seasoned warrior, like he'd guard his weapons a little more closely, then there's a strange, pointless exchange between the Mighty Morphin power elf and the hunk where the power elf Mighty Morphin scolds him to save the people of the Kingdom we learned he was banished from. last episode, but he just wants to stay here now because there are opportunities and peace.

Great character motivations here, lots of consistency, just reminds us how spectacularly rushed and contrived this whole setup is, as she jumps off a cliff, uh, wow, scripting error, but don't do it. we just wish they would jump off a boat thousands of miles from shore, they just swim next to a raft that has a hunkerboard on it, they just run away from gutudu's gay fish and immediately start having an argument that contains all the information. she needs to know where to go to find some Orcs and kill them. Please, she remembers that this becomes very relevant later and it turns out that he has the symbol that proves that he is exactly the person she needs to meet to get her there.

I guess his desire to stay makes sense if he's Sauron. Oh, as I think I mentioned at this point, I spent a great deal of hours discussing these episodes at EFAP and there has been some disagreement about how to interpret Hunk's stated desire for peace not only in this scene, but also in some later scenes, I think this Brew was among those who believed that what the show's writers were going to try to do is essentially have Galadriel force Sauron to turn evil again; In other words, his desire to stay and return. finding peace is genuine and it will be her fault that heturn evil again in the course of the discussion that became worryingly plausible.

I'm still sticking to my theory that he's subtly manipulating her to get him back there at the head of an army to give him what he wants. There will be some dialogue at the end of this episode that Ike maintained supports this point, but having developed this with EVAP guys, I'm not so sure how I'd really like to be the The show isn't going to try to tell us that Sauron was a really good, genuinely good guy in this scene, are they actually going to try to make Sauron an antihero or a character? tragic or someone who could be good if he wanted to because that breaks a lot of things, but I guess we'll find out when the hunk and the powerful morphin power elf come out of the room, with a big bushy beard, chat with Queenie about the Mighty Morphin Power elf.

They are both nervous about her being here and are cautious about giving. her too much freedom or even help of any kind, his big bushy beard deploys one of the show's least tortured metaphors when she says the pitch can begin with a shot. It may not be the best example with Rich to make this point, but since it happened. For me, I will now, it is acceptable, even understandable, for one or two characters to have a penchant for idioms, metaphors and similes. The problem with power rings is that anyone and everyone can come up with this kind of thing, even if it's a much more painful and complicated example, regardless of their location, age, background and natural speech patterns, and the problem with that it means that the writers shine through their characters.

Dwarves should not share speech patterns with the new minor nobility. Elves should not share speech patterns with no. Hobbits, when all your characters speak the same way or use the same overtly ornate devices, it is you as the writer who speaks through them and it is obvious to the audience that that is what happens when the characters are written so superficially. that you can see the writer under his skin, that's not a good thing, Big Bushybeard then explains to Queenie who Elendil is. I mean, shouldn't I know that he seems like a pretty important general in his army?

But he also explains that Lendl has a son in the army. Marina, which is our excuse to go to the ocean where we are introduced to a Sealed Door Sailor Boy and his Semen Gang who are training to earn the right to graduate and become a full-bodied, full-bodied, but Sailor Young Boy. . he gets distracted by a number from the west of the island that we will later learn is significant to his family and someone almost dies, but it's okay, no one scolds him, we just have a strange captain talking nonsense about the sea. I'd call it Mako tsunami, but I'm not sure there are enough Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged fans in my audience, at least the ocean will never leave me, ocean, why don't you ever answer me ocean?

Although I can't think of a better name for him. Do actions have no consequences for this Navy sailor? They almost killed someone because he was daydreaming. No one, neither he nor the rest of the crew, was reprimanded for that. Everything continues as if it were a massive violation of routine health, safety and discipline protocol. It didn't just happen. I wonder if that will also be relevant later. Mako Tsunami is full of repetitive ocean wisdom. There is no Master harder than the sea. Is all he says in response to one of his cum flying through the air for no good reason. and then once they are not sure which is the best, which is the best for being potential, the sea is always right.

How did you deliver it with a straight face? I do not know what it means. How could anyone write that? Look at it. on one page listen to it in rehearsals listen to it on set and don't think you know what you don't, that's bullshit, I'm going to have to do it again, although this guy seems to know the young sailors. The sailor friends have some tense banter and then because we don't already have enough characters on this show. A horse appears with the sister of a young sailor in tow and the horse is a better actor than her.

She is another invention of this program, so she will undoubtedly be a very useful and valuable addition. This already bloated cast is then trimmed to a fuller exposition as Queenie gives the ocean man a lesson in Numenorian history and philosophy the white tree that is the ancestor of the one we see in Minister Valor and the Faithful, so she has to do it clumsily Enter the show's dialogue to maintain the pretense that it's not just doing another of its many exposition dumps now. Is this the most significant or damning issue? No, but again, it is very lazy writing and it is much less fascinating for him and as I said in the last video that frequent laziness is indicative, it portends much bigger writing errors in the future, this episode will continue to give us a prophecy of the fall of numenor, which is the reason for this exposition, has only been placed here because the writers belatedly realized that they needed to hear clearly some of what happens.

This is a CW level. In writing, I think I've used this example in other videos, but there's an episode of Batwoman where she needs to take an amazing photo for the show, no matter how many episodes or even seasons there are in that moment, decide to tell us in the same episode that she is. a great shot that shows the audience, don't bother building that, never mind organizing it so that when the time comes we can see it as an extension of the knowledge we already have about them, no, it has to happen today, we didn't realize that. to this point, so I guess we better come up with some quick exposition so that, you know, you put it in there so it makes sense when you see it in a few minutes, a billion dollars, folks, a billion dollars went into this program.

Queenie questions the ocean. man about the origin of his name elandel and what that means elf friend according to a translation that conveniently allows him to interrogate him about whether he really is an elf friend and then inform us that elves have not been welcome in numenor since his grandfather's time. great-grandfather um well except his father is in law and I think it's already been established in this show that he likes elves uh is this a contradiction? I don't know if it's necessarily a contradiction because the show just hasn't done relevant enough world-building to contradict anything yet, but married to the little information the average viewer has, it's at the very least paradoxical, we know that his father he likes elves and we know he was, or if his title is to be believed, he is still king and is simply not on the throne because he is unwell and people do not like him now, although we are informed that his predecessors and her contemporaries hate elves and she, let's say, is not completely ambiguous on this point. to be clear I am not asking for a point by point explanation it is acceptable it is desirable to even leave the audience asking questions are the two problems that arise here number one the best way to encourage questions from the audience is to provide them with loose information Extremes of at least a partially formed tapestry that we don't have yet and then number two, given the pace at which we are flying through events, we are going to drop numenor again very soon, will the audience really have time to ask this? questions and consider the possibilities before they are no longer timely and then number three if events move forward based on conclusions the audience has not been able to reach how much of what follows will make sense is it supposed to make sense?

I have a strong impression. it's moving so fast hoping we'll overlook the fact that it doesn't make sense and then the dialogue again just continues in its horrible horrible way Queenie asks why the ocean man bought the Mighty Morphin Power elf back to numenor , says that the sea put her in her way and the sea is always working, this is always right to which she responds, the sea cannot commit treason, what does all this mean? Damn, I played that actual Galadriel clip. I'm not too worried about the apparent contradiction. These are two different groups of people, different attitudes, different upbringing, maybe the C did something bad to Collateral at some point in his past, but no, the interaction between the sea is always correct and the Sea cannot commit betrayal, the implications apparently are that the ocean man did or could have committed treason by obeying the sea which is always right, so in that case why is that treason?

If the Numenoreans believe that the sea is always right, it is the sea bribing betrayal, is this some kind of suspicious trap? How do these characters really reason? The path through these sentences or not is like all the rest of the dialogue is designed to give a vague impression of meaning and importance, but has no real substance because writing is hard. The ocean man tells him that he only did what he thought was right. to which she replies if that's really your desire. What if, oh my god, what is really her desire? Why don't these sentences intertwine?

He said he just did what he thought was right. You mean thinking he was doing something right was? his desire wanted to think he was doing something right, that makes dangerously little sense it's not that he wanted to do something he believed was right it's that he did something he believed was right this is clumsy since he's a drunk clown in a pogo stick dancing to through a written minefield she finds better words than hacks, but anyway she says that if what was really her wish was really her wish, she needs him to do her a service and that's the first Cliffhanger scene transition of this episode, these work when used. in moderation, they don't work when you use them excessively, which is what this program has done and will continue to do.

I guess he wants us to be intrigued, but I'm still stuck trying to unravel that dialogue, but it's probably for the best because otherwise I would. Being very, very, very bored, move on. You'd think that since we've just been introduced to a new, very important place with new, very important characters, the show might decide to stay here for a while to start building things up. past the bare scaffolding they've just started leading, but nope, we get another Indiana Jones map sequence and we're in the Southlands with Don Lemon and the Orcs who, for reasons known only to the show's writers, have decided to become vampires occasionally. vampires anyway, but sometimes they fry when exposed to the sun, this of course is not a precise law, the law is more subtle than this, orcs hate the sun because of the history they share with melkor, The Valar have been playing sun in the sky for quite some time. after the trees are destroyed and even Melkor in a sense fears it.

The orcs are then weakened by the sun, fear the sun and avoid the sun. Saruman's genius with the urukai was to create a genus derived from the orc that could nevertheless move in daylight with It's a relatively small problem, but Orcs are not incapable of moving in the sun. They are not supposed to fry as soon as it makes contact with your skin. They just hate him, loathe him, and fear him on this show, even though they get fried sometimes. they have a genie at work they wear clothes yes that's all it takes they wear clothes this has more problems than Ezra Miller in a nightclub if Orcs can walk in the sun wearing clothes they have no problem being in the sun just get dressed you cretins or They have one Orc out of 10 carrying an umbrella, as I think Morla suggested, the program is also quite selective about when and how they fry, sometimes they do it and sometimes they don't, they don't fry if there is a cloud over the sun. for example, but in that case just burn things and hide under the smoke, oh God, oh God, foreshadowing that there are many ways to limit the sum if all it would have taken to equip them for the sun was a hat and a poncho.

It would have made all the seniors' battles much easier. Sauron probably would have won and of course we have more problems. Don Lemon explains that the passages apparently pass beneath much of the Southlands and that this must be how the Orcs escape detection and then Because the show doesn't dress us to remember the events of previous episodes, it reminds us clumsily having an unnamed fellow prisoner explain that the Orcs are looking for something and Don Lemon's immediate response is some kind of weapon, maybe wow, how convenient. plot the relevant assumption to make the most convenient and relevant plot of all the assumptions they could make.

Hey guys, remember that sword in the last episode that's relevant. Remember, look, have some useful dialogue to refresh your memory of characters who have absolutely no connection to that sword, etc. There's no reason to jump to this conclusion immediately and so you can't help but leave any character talking for more than 20 seconds and they'll inevitably say something they just said. Remember how this guyhe literally just finished telling us that the Orcs had been tunneling. to avoid detection, they have now informed us that they have been looting village after village, which means they would have been detected.

You let his weasel. We have this problem in the last episode, incredibly foresighted elves with watchtowers scattered everywhere and no. I don't detect the tunnels, okay, you have to be nice to the writers, but you can make that make some kind of sense, but dozens of villages looted, the last one was on fire, there was smoke billowing in the air, don't you think? They may have realized that and, hell, the stretch of tunnel they're digging now is open air, they have to cut down trees to move through it. We get a panning shot where it turns out they have been burning the forest. along the tunnel line oh writing oh show oh no and now we have characters who magically meet the tower guardian from the last episode who you've probably completely forgotten about but who we're forced to remember because the show is about to finish. make us try to care about him, well he just shows up randomly with all the necessary plot information.

The Orcs are looking for something. They have looted villages. They have a successor to Morgoth. They adore him. They call him Ada, etc., etc.. and the warden thinks Adar is Sauron, who we were recently told the elves had completely forgotten about, but I guess we've forgotten that the elves had completely forgotten about him. Okay, so how does he know all this? How long have you been here? How can elves? Timelines work in this show, we have no idea how much time is going on based on our previous Don Lemon scenes, it's practically a straight line, maybe half a day between him dropping off the warden at the Village, flirting with his wife, He found the sick cow and he found the burned one.

Village enters the tunnel and is captured, assuming I'm right about that, how did they capture the guardian and discover all of this in that short amount of time? How many of these elves were captured in that short time? Apparently no one told the Orcs that careless speech costs lives. We are told that ADA, which is an elvish name, could well be Sauron because Sauron had many names. I have no doubt that the show will want us to think that dating is Sauron at least for a while, but no, my money is still there. piece for reasons we'll come back to, we have another fool, we just sweep the enemy off these lands like salt off a table, uh, but then thankfully they get interrupted by an orc before anyone can point out that that's pointless, the orc tells them to do it. cut down a tree the guardian doesn't want to cut down the tree because the writers know everything about elves except the most superficial things they decide to rebel to save the tree there is a tweet there is a tweet that says this is the most Tolkien, of all things, the accomplices just wade into the sea, the orc chief at random and then promises water rations, but why do I want to say it's obviously a trap?

Surely no one is going to be a fool, take the water, no, the guardian is a fool. and he takes the water, passes it, and someone random we don't know or care about gets his throat slit and the show goes in slow motion and the music gets really sad, like we're supposed to feel deeply sad for Whoever the guy is. problem, I'm pretty sure the only line we've exchanged between him and any other character until this episode is something about him sniffing out praise where it's due, the chorus music here is lovely, this is something McCrory has proven.

He's pretty good, there have been a few times where things have calmed down and he's deployed the chorus to good effect. The problem is that the music is trying to evoke emotions that we simply don't have for what we are seeing. We've just arrived, we barely meet our protagonist in this scene, Don Lemon is, for all intents and purposes, a wooden board with a face drawn on it. All we know about him is that he likes this woman who we don't yet know. We don't know his name, we don't know the warden at all, or we know as much about the warden as we know about Don Lemon.

This is the first time we've spent any significant time with him and we know absolutely nothing about the random guy they just decided to kill. I think we can see it once before. He basically he's just an NPC. He does not have an established relationship with Don Lemon. He has no relationship with the audience. He has no relation to the plot, except the plot. We need to sacrifice an NPC right now, but everything slows down anyway, we hear some pretty quiet music and Don Lemon is very sad and the show is shamelessly tugging at our heartstrings, but we haven't even gotten that instrument out yet.

I've had no reason for this, it's just things that happen, it's paint by numbers, it's completely undeserved, even compare it to the hammer in The Two Towers. The hammer is Ferdin's door, Ward, he's the guy who greets Aragorn Gimli Legolas and Gandalf and tells them to hand him over. his weapons we know more about him than about this elf Hammer is killed by a prankster on the way to Helm's Deep and the movie doesn't even stop to take a breath and dwell on what we are invited to I feel a little sad later when we meet his son but that's it, it's pretty subtle but then you make the connection and realize this is what war entails and no one really has time to cry, although the rings of power are a character with less . development that hammer and portraying it as if it were Boromir's death is just a very, very strange choice and doesn't even add anything to the show because we go straight back to the discussion about the tree and Don Lemon agrees to cut it down. falls and saves everyone's life, apologizes to the tree, cries a little, like Tolkien, the music tells us that all this is very significant and we are supposed to know that elves love nature, but absolutely nothing in this scene is has won. and then since the show can't resist their panoramic views it does decide to do more damage to its orcs by setting up tunnels of orcs to avoid detection, no, it needn't have bothered, they can just burn and desecrate entire areas of Woodland along the line from their tunnel, they can build a huge trench and, anyway, no one gave a Christ in the Prius in numenor.

Mighty Morphin Power elf. is running away from her, but it turns out that Ocean Man arrives at precisely the right place at the right time to catch her, and so she naturally threatens to kill him. This is just the default setting for it. I don't care about Ocean Man, on the contrary, I think he can act. He also gets some halfway decent lines, but here he's done something dirty because he's been used as one of the show's most dazzling gadgets. So far we learn that he speaks Elvish. She asks him how she knows. He says that he still teaches at the Hall of Law he returned to his hometown and for some reasons, I guess, because the writers couldn't think of any other way to make the plot move again, they left, they left through Numenor, immediately she knows exactly where they are going, she says.

It's a short ride, she says, you said ride and no, this is not an invitation for you to do so, but it is a prelude to our eyes passing through perhaps the most embarrassing slow-motion shot of the latest slow-motion shots. decade, that is. It's embarrassing, it gives one of McCurry's motives a chance to try to impress us, but we're quickly distracted by this unbridled self-indulgence. It kind of works for the horse. It kind of works for the dress. Categorically it does not work for human faces. They generally look a little weird in ultra slow motion anyway, but they look especially weird when they've been told they have to look very happy, but have no real idea how to convey that emotion.

The powerful morphological power elf doesn't look happy here. like a piece of the chair has gone up somewhere it shouldn't have and because we're in very slow motion she's stuck like this in pain wincing the same way the audience says there's absolutely no reason for this take again. I could have fixed it with a simple alteration to keep the slow motion for the horse in the dress to speed up again completely or close enough for the face shot. Also, I don't know, maybe get him a new face or at least ask him to try another expression.

I guess they had several takes of this one, it's really the best one they had. Jackson's films had their slow motion moments, of course, but they were rarely this slow and B rarely this slow in facial close-ups and I rarely see them. Deploying this pointlessly, they were mainly used to convey a point, the reaction to Gandalf's fool, which contrasts masterfully with the pace and frenzy of the previous Hunt and provides rewards that are still the tension of the fight with the balrog and then with boromirs Doom when we realize that he is going to die but has decided to give his life for his friends.

There are a couple that are only used for contrast purposes, like the Nazgul chasing the hobbits through the forest in Fellowship, for example, but overall they all add value to their scenes. and perform some kind of dramatic purpose in this shot, although well, it adds a bit to the face shot. The mighty, morphous power elf looks bad no less often, but here penises all over the world shrank and fell in great fear and suffering. The shot closes with a lingering, random focus on a chunk of rock that looks like the geographical embodiment of whatever she accidentally sat on to make that face, and then we cut back to the hunk who's trying to lock down a job as Smith. the path is evidence of his Sauron, that is, Sauron was known in his time as a master blacksmith.

He was also a shapeshifter with obvious ties to the Southlands, as they will eventually become Mordor. You also need to reach Númenor to corrupt it from within and give you Pancham of this program for speeding up the most relevant details. The fact that he is already here would be very convenient for the writers. There is also other evidence, some of which we will see later, such as his pawn shop for manipulation. The show is trying to bait us. To even distract us from Steve in the last two episodes, do you think he was designed in part to make us wonder if he could be Sauron?

After all, he lies in the crater of the fiery meteorite, for example, it looks like a burning eye. The fire that surrounds him is neither hot nor cold fire. is established in episode 1 as evidence of a great evil. His arrival on a meteor is not unlike his preferred mode of transportation at the end of The Hobbit, while he also appears to bring death along with the Blackened Blade in hand and then dead fireflies. in his, but Steve is obviously supposed to be Gandalf, even if the next episode is going to be exceptionally thick, but the show wants you to believe otherwise - the only argument against Tonka's Saron that has any merit, I suppose, at this stage of process.

If you haven't seen the following episodes, that would be Ada, who we will be introduced to shortly. Adar is in the right place, the southern lands at the right time. Sauron should have been there. The Numenóreans will leave Middle Earth to fight him, which could allow. them to capture him and bring him back, but first he would have to come into contact, or at least at some point, with Calibrombo to forge the Rings. If Adar were the Sauron of the law, which he clearly is not, if I were to place him My bet before watching the later episodes at the time I was drafting this first version of this script, my bet was that Adar would turn out to be a foil , a lieutenant of Sauron who can indeed be captured and bought in numenor, but the beau will still be Sauron and Well, we'll see if I'm right anyway.

Hung is not allowed to work as Smith until he has a special badge, so he gets into a fight with a young Brian Blessed who has said badge. Brian Blessed is a fat, stupid hobbit. I mean a man, he is very anti-immigrant. I'm looking forward to where this goes. I'm looking forward to him as much as I'm looking forward to a sulfuric acid enema, but the hunk turns brown again and can change shape. He apparently slips into characters from better shows and buys them all a round of drinks, allowing him to steal Brian's blessed badge. I was wondering where he got the money for the food and drinks he buys here, but I don't think it's a big tic of If he has the imagination to assume he stole someone's purse, he walks away with the badge, but again, conveniently, Brian Blessed and his gang of thugs know exactly which side streets he went on and corner him, at which point he decides that he knows Kung Fu and beats all of them, after which they arrest him in the library, it turns out that a powerful power elf Morphid wanted to go to the law hall that he was fortuitously told about before his horse's aneurysm to find the meaning of Sauron's symbol, but he thought it was artificial. he just waits, just waits, it will get much worse.

The library looks charming, by the way, its aesthetic is charming, but you will notice how crowdedthat is. Scrolls, shelves, shelves and shelves of things it will take the best library in a good long time to find any reference to a symbol as obscure as the one Mighty morphod power elf found because remember he searched for centuries and only found two of them even if the angry floor boy found one in episode 1 because the show exists in writing mystery boxes, but that the librarian politely waits long enough for the Mighty Morphin Power elf to have a cursory conversation about creating laws with the man of the ocean about Elrus, who built the library, whose brother is Elrand, and also managed to introduce some problematic law substitution, it is explained that the King was Forced to leave the throne because he was too kind to the elves in the law.

Indeed, he was kind to the elves, the only King taken from the ranks of the faithful in a long time and the last while Numenor stood, but in law he died, which paved the way for our pharizon to marry his daughter Muriel and will take the throne. The Rings of Power have a much rougher version of events here. Ocean Man explains that he was forced from the throne because he was kind to the elves and now spends his days in a tower in the palace but his daughter Tamiril rules in his place as queen regent, which poses problems in the first place.

I'm not sure it's typical to dethrone a king just to ennoble his daughter, his closest relative and closest to him personally, if his reasons for dethroning him were his perceived disloyalty to numenor, wouldn't he have deposed his entire house and his immediate relatives to install a rival claimant from his own faction in second place? Queen Regents instead of the typical Queen Ragnan rule conditionally. exercise power derived from another source, such as an heir who has not yet reached the age of majority. I don't think she has children in this show so who she acts as regent with surely can't be the Old King because he was eliminated except he still carries the title of King and later we will see a powerful morph power elf demand to negotiate with him over Queenie, which leaves you with the implication that she's acting as his Regent, but it can't be his region if he was dethroned because that would seem to have at least missed the damn point of getting rid of him to begin with.

Building the world, no one needs this kind of thing anyway. Powerful morphological power; otherwise, the exchange with the ocean man is much shorter than That legalistic speech and the librarian return to the scene. No more than three minutes have passed in Universe since he first saw the incredibly rare symbol she showed him, and yet he almost instantly found the one document in the entire library that they need to advance the plot and, my god, how They move it, get ready for this, it's fantastic, it turns out that the entire library has a sheet of paper on which that symbol has actually been drawn without apparently reading anything at all, explains the ocean man. which is the account of a human spy recovered from an enemy dungeon, but this must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago, but I assume the paper survived and there is a symbol drawn on it to record the location of the tower.

Morphid power elf looks at him looks at his copy of the symbol, in fact they are the same says wait a minute, I must be blind walks to the map under the image of elrond that he saw before places the symbol on the map and turns it and you wouldn't know it , is a symbol that represents Mordor, my God, but it gets worse, the inscription on the ancient piece of cloth is written in black speech, you may remember that elves find it painful to even listen to black speech, but If she OK, we're not because the speech is so disgusting and spontaneous that the sky darkens and we feel doom upon us.

The mighty elf Morphin Power translates and I quote directly, speaks not only of a place but of a plan by which to create a kingdom of His own or evil would not only survive but prosper, the plan would be implemented in the event of Morgoth's defeat, is his successor. Where did you start? Where can you start writing like this? To summarize, fortuitously, a human spy was locked in a tower in the Southlands thousands of years ago, somehow, while locked up, he overheard evil people laying out in every relevant detail their diabolical plan to create an evil kingdom where evil could prosper created by Morgoth's successor and the evil people exposed their diabolical schemes with an earshot of the human spy who happened to have quill ink and parchment on it or they wrote all of this themselves with all the information that the powerful and power elf morph would need thousands of years later to explain the plot to the audience. of power rings are more serious Bond villains than this this is fucking believable you thought the strange constipation shop in slow motion with City no no you don't know what's nonsense listen Mighty Morphin Power elf jumps off a ship gets picked up by a raft, that's an artifice, she means useful and probably evil piece, that's an artifice when they are then picked up by a ship that cannot legally sail where they are floating well, that's also an artifice when they are then brought in. to the only place he needed to be to get to the library, which he just learned about in a casual conversation, which is an invention where it turns out that they have a copy of the account of a millennia-old spy from the Southlands with a map of Mordor that she places because she saw a map before that it's a fabrication and this millennial spy account simply lays out all the essential elements of Sauron's Master Plan, what an absolute cognitive retard, the platypus with a Womble brain wrote this and to top it all off, out , it's irrelevant, it's all irrelevant, she already knew about the Southlands, she was already going to the Southlands, all this does is fast forward to the conclusion of a mystery that the show could have surprised us with or at least having surprised their characters with hell, making her go. to the Southlands and arrives too late, she makes her go there and realizes that what she faces is much bigger than she could have anticipated. anything but this, this is amazing, the horrible writing, the only thing that could make it worse is if when she arrives in the Southlands, it turns out that this whole sequence is irrelevant because all of that happens anyway and, well, we'll get to that . and you know what gets even better because this symbol is a map reference right, it's a map reference for the Orcs to follow you know what?

Know? I'll only give you three guesses. Three guesses. I'll give you like 10. seconds, you know what you generally need to make map references make sense? Maps, let's play a game here there is a random symbol, guess what it is, go ahead, try it, you have three more guesses, you will need it to get to the next Mystery Box because that's how well things are written, you know what this symbol is, it's pretty obviousI'm sure you know what it is, yes, exactly, you were right, let me open Google Maps, let me find the part of the map I was looking for, let me rotate that symbol and yes, you were absolutely right.

I'm sure you guessed that the island of Thera in Greece is where you're going and you knew you definitely figured it out, right? Yes, Orcs definitely have access to Google Maps. Everyone in Middle Earth has Google Maps, no. I didn't ask Google Maps either, this point on the map is so well known throughout Middle Earth that the Orcs know exactly where to go just by looking at it, in which case it is so well known that the Mighty Morphin Power elf didn't have to wait. until you saw the map in numenor to make this connection or you need the map, in which case the symbol is probably useless to the vast majority of Orcs because Orcs don't carry maps with them.

What is this you write? One billion dollars. It's a billion. Dora the Explorer is better than this. Lego Star Wars puzzles are better than this. Oh my god, she looked it up. We get more intriguing music, but it's strange. it doesn't fit at all with the scene this music represents it's sinister, it reminds you a bit maybe of dwarves but instead this strange and sinister soundtrack is just the transition to the office, I mean they're not hobbits prancing around singing a little cute. song What the hell is happening on the show? I wonder if the ominous soundtrack foreshadows some dark turn in their story, but then again, going back to my first draft of this script, I had no idea, I had no idea, but we're getting to that in a moment don't worry don't worry. worry we're going to get to Harvard that's um that's something special now I said in the last video that the non-Hobbits at least had some charm, but they're losing it pretty quickly in their first shot in episode 3, which decides what it wants to do a little pantomime dance with them, you may remember that this group is very cautious and fears that they have an urgent need to migrate because hunters have recently been seen in their vicinity.

You might think that prancing and singing your way through your secret little gypsy village might not be the best thing to do if your goal is to stay hidden and because things are quickly spiraling, remember the words no one goes off the path and no one walks alone because the show is about to turn this previously mild-mannered group of community Gremlins into monstrous Darwinian dwarves who probably eat their own dead, yeah, yeah, that's where we're going. Brandy's dad sprained his ankle last episode and is still feeling it, so he just heard that. no one goes off the trail or walks alone, we learn that they fear being left behind because they can't carry their caravan with their sprained ankle oh yeah, well if you're seeing this for the first time you might be thinking maybe it's an unfounded fear, maybe They are worrying unnecessarily.

Seriously, you wouldn't let your injured neighbors die, would you? But I would say they will be fine because they will stay at the front of the Caravan. that raises some logistical questions firstly, how if your leg is second, even if you started at the front of the Caravan, you wouldn't be so slow that you would eventually reach the back or you mean? that the people behind you wouldn't pass the slower person in front, but if they wouldn't pass the slower person in front, why would they leave the slower person in the back behind? What is the difference?

This is a strange poverty variant of the trolley problem where both answers are even packs of wolves traveling with the slowest member in front. Are you really suggesting? Are you really trying to tell me that this charming, affable bunch of proto-Jippos are any less civilized than Wolves At Night Brandy and Paj? an argument about helping Steve find Lenny Henry's Starbuck oh and guess why they're fighting, guess what the fight is because Brandy is dumb and naive and adventurous and just doesn't like blah but blah blah blah every time, stop, we know we know this in every scene. every scene has the same plot, you know, the rules weren't supposed to be so bad if we didn't do everything we weren't supposed to do, we'd hardly do anything, we can't believe I missed them, maybe artists.

You're closer to home that way you don't miss anything. Have you ever wondered what else is out there? I've told you countless times we have each other we're safe that's how we survive Brandy with your father's nose and always getting into trouble you're too curious and nosy to have been born in Harford what's that supposed to mean? I didn't go looking for this but you won't walk away because I can't that's because you won't why is it your problem to put on a different tune program we know all this now I'm bored of this I would like to have some character development please have had three hours well, you know, let's be kind, let's be kind these two characters have some chemistry, it's a shame they're given very little to work with.

Brandy finds the relevant page in the star book, but is interrupted and she has to happily hide. Lenny Henry stops to compose some poetry or perhaps another racist comedy that he won. He will never cancel and it gives him time to steal the page he needs when Podge shows up to distract him. The scene has its merits. The non-Hobbits are still generally charming if you forget that they are about to abandon their injured friends. just happily walks away, the show then borrows from Bilbo's party speech quite openly, in fact Randy and Parjo get married and so does Pippin, the show isn't afraid to borrow again from bigger and better productions, though I actually think well, okay, I have to break up. my mind here when I first wrote this script I thought it was a nice scene, it actually does a good job fleshing out their lives, their society, fills in their memories and their feelings, it's on your first viewing before you know what It comes after. a lovely scene, but well, well, what happens next?

They're about to kill their maimed and wounded, but they're lovely, but those Darwinian bags, but they're adorable, except they're about to eat the sick like they're roadkill, probably, but but them. Regarding cute boys,Things have gotten really weird and they're only getting worse. Lenny Henry delivers a warm, emotional, scripted scene remembering those in his community who have died and it's all quite charming until I can't believe it. Until you realize that many of these people were, well, should we say euphemistically left behind, meaning they didn't die suddenly, they weren't attacked, they weren't killed by outside strangers, many of them probably could have been saved, they just They left them behind on the road to defend themselves? themselves and die or or as we would later learn in episodes number five, maybe their neighbors brought them to their knees, just real sabotage and this makes this speech severely dark because after every name and cause of death there is a chorus of we'll wait for you miles bright it happened trapped in the snows of the mountain pass we are waiting for you as I said in efab this is this costume is trolling because you didn't wait for them that's why they are dead you are a little selfish well my prediction I have to oh yes, oh no, that's embarrassing.

My prediction in the last video was that Brandy's father's injury would impede her migration and lead to them staying in the camp longer, the camp would then be beset by some kind of evil. The community would be massacred and that would force Brandy Steve and probably Purge to hit the road together, she carrying a burden of guilt for this chain of events that was caused by the very adventure she once wanted but now has no more. remedy to be allowed. They've been a little formulaic, a little obvious, but I think it's a useful device, that's what I expected them to do, but every time I expect the writers to do something obvious but competent, well, they surprised me, they surprised me.

I never anticipated they would. He would migrate away and simply leave his wounded behind like the hell of the Savages. Ada, the big villain this show is teasing, is about to show more remorse for a dying orc than the show's non-Hobbits show for her close neighbors and relatives, oh no, oh, what have you done? to these people meanwhile Steve examines the page of the Starbucks that Brandy bought him and accidentally sets it on fire because I guess something had to happen this is something therefore this had to happen he panics he throws things on the floor cause However, he came in panicking instead of running away or slaughtering him like the brutal, awkward little savages they apparently now are, for some reason the non-Hobbits just hide, but then Steve found out Brandy's name, now good job, someone ask me if the I really remember. name and this prompts them to come out of hiding from her, although she also gets her into trouble, the group interrogates Brandy and this is another chance for you guessed it.

Same argument, could you stop? They proposed kicking him out, but Lenny Henry says, No, her caravan. You can come, but you have to be at the back of the line and this is bad of course because it means you will be left behind - these are the father's fears manifest, although I am still not sure about the logistics of overtaking or the morality of overtaking If they are allowed to be overtaken, they can still end up behind and fall behind anyway and then there is another problem because if they already know where they are going, what's stopping them from arriving later than everyone else, oh and you?

I remember, I'm sure the song above said that no one walks alone unless they apparently, they're obviously going to be left behind, what's the point of singing that song if you're just going to abandon your relatives anyway? Is a lie. a big lie, little liars, and for this to seem anything more than jarring, the show really needs to do more work to expand on this point, and oh no, I'm sorry I said that, because it will do more work later, it just makes everything worse, subtle hints of barbarism, although you could have included them earlier, at least it wouldn't have been as shocking if you unerringly portrayed the non-Hobbits as adorable, close-knit community dolls, but suddenly that assumption explodes by revealing that they are probably little cannibalistic murderous psychopaths, the viewer is left doing all the work on behalf of the writers in an attempt to justify it and hmm, can you come up with a justification?

I mean, if you're being incredibly charitable and I mean, incredibly charitable, you could say this is supposed to represent a more callous earlier time, a less civilized dog world, or a Hobbit eat Hobbit world, but again, daddy's viewer does one job on behalf of the writer which is to be charitable to writers who haven't earned charity if past experiences any guide, they are much more likely to be so dumb they didn't even realize what they were doing, same old argument about Brandy being abnormally bold and adventurous continues to develop, but this one at least has a flavor of Steve now I regret that choice of words Brandy thinks he's special but no one agrees with her apparently the law has determined that anyone who Viole will be a caravan, but Lenny Henry shows mercy and says that Brandy's caravan can still come, but as mentioned above.

It must be at the end of the line, which means the same thing, right? and then we have another argument and it's the exact same thing again, once again we will be forced to ask why everyone on this show talks the same way. Similes and tortured metaphors, but the tallest milkweed is cut down. Writing is very, very, very difficult in Numenor. The ocean man's young sailor boy and his generic sister are having dinner together. The young sailor says that he wants to postpone and return to his home on the western shores of Numenor. For reasons that were not adequately explored and will be forgotten in the next episode, Ocean Man, although he says that there is nothing there, that the past is dead, keep this in mind after he has just returned from a library where the past was actually useful, so okay, well-being.

It's fair to the writers that they're pushing for a deeper, darker reason for all of this, but once again the dialogue doesn't match previous events. That's why at the beginning of the first video I said that seemingly insignificant laziness in Small Things is worth noting that it really is often indicative of an approach that creates many more and many bigger problems, then a messenger comes and reminds us. what's the sister's name, but I mean, if I'm going to remember, there are too many of these barely relevant. First off, NPCs, I have a nasty feeling that this one will be forced to be relevant the next time the show attempts eight Game of Thrones because in later episodes she'll start flirting with Beardy Boy's son.

I don't know her name either and it's going to be unfailingly horrible to witness the relationship between the ocean man and the sailor twin. She has some promise, some potential. I'm not a romantic, no, it's not like Game of Thrones, I hope, but they actually seem to have a semblance of a life story and it is. It's a shame that we don't get to spend more time with any of them to develop these things and that the show keeps trying to distract us with more things, like what happens here with the Reveal in which the sister has been accepted. builder's gold um, will it be relevant later?

I don't know, I don't know and I don't care. The powerful morphological power elf is supposedly still being hunted because I remember she escaped from prison anyway, she finds her way to the prison where the hunk is kept, although I don't know how she knew that's where she was and it turns out that he found something else in the mystery box, another thing from the library with the seal of the king of the Southlands on it, the same seal that Hunk earned, which means hell comp. reading this reading this doesn't make sense anymore because he carries a symbol on Broach's thingy and she discovered it screen in the invention library that means that now he is the king of the Southlands, without a doubt, without a doubt, Although that's how this program works, it's logical, it makes a lot of sense, it's okay, there's nothing to criticize without reasoning well, I didn't accept that Of course, after discovering that the plot of the evil enemy is conveniently written on a piece of thousand-year-old cloth, waiting for her to go and read all about it and realize the mortal danger everyone faces, then she stayed a while, I guess. looking for another symbol that she just remembered seeing him use when they were together on the raft and having that discussion.

I think I have to repeat this just to understand it. She goes, she goes to a library, the library has the One thing is to decode the symbol of Mordor and the map that she needs, because it has a message from the evil guy and that message tells her what the evil plan is and what trouble the world is in. , but she doesn't rush back, she stays in the library, reads some more books, looks for the symbol maybe or just finds it by chance. I don't know because it's off screen, the symbol matches the brand used by the hunk.

Sauron makes him king of the Southlands because he wears a brooch that he could have picked up from anywhere and he tells her that he took it from a dead man, but she doesn't believe him, so no, I just don't get it. Maybe this program has this perennial problem with a flow of information. Do we really want to remember the Builders Guild stuff from before? Do you even remember the Builders Guild murder stuff? You know, I mentioned it like two scenes ago, but so much has happened in the five minutes of screen time that there's a gap since then. so the stuff with her sister, you know all, she joined the Builders Guild, she's flirting with some of the Chancellor, if that's important, why put it right before this much more important Revelation about the hunk's supposed royal lineage If you put secondary information for the auxiliary characters right before? huge info dumps relevant to the main plot, there's a good chance the audience will overlook or completely forget about the first thing and this is doubly unforgivable as the show doesn't really feel like it's its time, well there are long periods in which nothing happens.

The most competent Riders would have done it. Events shifted along the timeline, so to speak, allowing for a more even spread, a more constant flow of relevant information. The secondary characters are built without being overshadowed by the main plot and its protagonists. You've even placed the Builder's Guild's information directly towards the girl's sister. first introduction to us, she arrives at the beach to meet a young sailor, they have a brief conversation on the way back in which this information is dropped, nothing else notable happens in that scene, anyway, she is invited again to the Game of Thrones comparisons because Game of Thrones, at least for its first four seasons, was very good at spreading these things among its large and growing cast, but perhaps a more pertinent comparison is that of the two towers.

Remember the kids you see at the beginning while Saruman is talking? Sauron about how he will attack Rohan and we get a flash of a village where her mother is taking her children on horseback and sending them scrambling to escape the approaching Dunland army. These kids appear, I think, four times throughout the entire movie. They are scenes. I don't think any of those scenes last more than 30 seconds. You see them escape. You see them arrive at Ederas, which is how they realize that the villagers are being looted. You also know that it is not seen from a line of dialogue from the girl that their mother has not joined them there, then you see them again when they arrive at Helms Deep where they are reunited with their mother and finally I think you see them once again when all the men and boys are called to man The walls against the armies of Saruman four short scenes I don't think they take up more than three or four minutes of screen time in total, it's actually a little subplot on its own journey and perfectly builds up the stakes for that battle. scene because you have a broken family, you have the joy of them being reunited, and then you have this sudden, tragic realization that this boy that we've seen, who has been so brave until now, is probably going to die because he's being torn apart. away from his mother again in an attempt to save his mother and sister he is being recruited incredibly efficient really fills the world makes it seem like something is always happening is placed at a suitable distance between important scenes that requires all the weight place for it at least we notice it's not included two seconds before the next big fight scene it's a way to convey the deep emotion the world feels about the events taking place within this brilliant example of writing that is the direct antithesis of the writing approach taken by rings of power where there is nothing for vast oceans of time and then just random pieces of perhaps relevant information thrown in so soon before a major piece of plot relevant information that might as well not have been included at all because no one is going to pay attention to him, that driver gave up on him, we learned that the hunk doesn't want to be king, there is some hint of a backstory about the war with morgoth, that the elf from Mighty Morphin PowerIt seems to say that the noldor is from feyenoor.

House began Punk points out that his people sided with Morgoth and this leads Mighty morphod power elf to suggest that they can redeem both of their bloodlines, but again, this doesn't make any sense without the murder of kin, the Flight of the noldor and banishment that we. overlooked since episode one, it's not there if those things still exist in the Rings of Powers World, which will probably be explained retroactively if it does, everything else has been then, they couldn't have been sent back to Valinor in the episode 1 because they were banned from going. she returned due to the murder of relatives and that's why she couldn't end here for those of you who join this series in this video.

If you haven't seen the first part yet, the explanation is there, but the short version is when in episode 1 I learned that Morgoth destroys the trees, the elves take their swords to go to Middle Earth to fight Morgoth, that's what we says episode 1 in the royal event mongol destroys the trees the angodians is sheilob's mother at the behest of morgoth morgoth steals the silmarills that have been invented by feyenoor and kills feyeno's father fan or wants revenge courage tells him not to wow, he tries to leave anyway his fellow elves the taleri elves refused to let them use their ships so the massacre of the noldor, larry's elves, is the first massacre of kin and they leave on those ships for this they have forbidden to return to valenor is the ban of the noldor if this show says or suggests that there is a murder of kinsmen that seems to be granted The powerful morphod power elf is talking about redeeming both bloodlines, then she cannot have returned to Valinor, for so she can't have jumped ship, so she can't have gotten to Numinal, so she can't be standing here, so none of this could have happened, we learn that.

The big plan of the powerful elf of morphological power, part of this anyway is to elevate hunk as king and persuade the people of the Southlands to rise up against Sauron. She says theirs wasn't a chance encounter or a destiny for everyone. Fate was the work of something bigger, bigger, no. the word she would have chosen for this writing team, but it sure wasn't fatal. Destiny, it was desperation and the needs to write badly. Back at the palace, we find Queenie saying wonderful things to her father, apparently the moment they feared is here. the elf has arrived, apparently there's a prophecy, so now we're further compounding the problem of overloaded information in the last five minutes we've had the supposed character development for the young ocean sailor sailor and the generic sister, but that was quickly overshadowed by mystery. box Reveal that Hunt may be a king and that he and the elf Mighty Morphin Power will join forces to spark a rebellion in the Southlands that is at least competing for our attention with the new knowledge that there is some mysterious prophecy in numenor like the one Queenie tells.

We think she's talking to a vegetable because her King is paralyzed and this dialogue is really just meant for the benefit of the audience and then she returns to the non-Hobbits. Brandy's family, Caravan, is actually left behind because dad can't walk, although Podge is a friend of Brandy's so she stays with them one thing to keep in mind here parch doesn't have parents with her she's the only one in her card, which means her parents are some of those um Left Behind, which means in the scene where they're giving her dad's memorial speech, she agrees with Lenny Henry making fun of parents who were probably murdered. and eaten by the Harfords, she was probably forced to eat her own mother, it gives a really different tone to that scene, uh, anyway, they're fighting, but then, Steve, well.

If he was in the Caravan, it really looks like he's walking out of the Caravan here and that makes him much harder to transport, but I guess the alternative is that this is just bad editing of the film and he was hiding behind it the whole time. walk, but he emerges from behind anyway and fixes it and says dude um well how is he learning these words, I have no idea, it's not like anyone spent any time teaching him. Steve, by the way, appears to have abs in case anyone ever had a weird fantasy about a ripped body.

Gandalf, if you did, you are strange, but he will help you, this is the best you will get, although he makes you wonder why they didn't even try to get his help in the first place, why didn't they ask him to? take the Caravan for them and then return to the Orcs, everything becomes a bit Matrix since the elves rebelled against the slavers who are vampires in this show, when it is convenient for the show to have them as vampires, this time they do fry in the sun. an elf breaks free but takes an ax to the back as he jumps to the roots of the tree, the fight progresses, there is a complete complete and if I may say so, a rather entertaining breakdown of this in evap, it's long if you want complete , the link is in the description, my short version follows Don Lemon does a ridiculous move and knocks down the Orcs' tent, except he actually knocks down part of it, but it doesn't seem to have any effect at all.

The course of the fight partly because the show is once again whimsical with its Orcs and their sunburns so I guess the move was there just to look cool and I've heard some people mainly in response to the troll's defeat by part of Mighty morphod power elf in episode 1. pointing out Legolas defeating Muma or sailing on an urukai shield as if this means that any elf, for any reason, can do whatever they want because it looks cool, this is a silly argument, Turns out I don't like it very much. Mumma's murder scene, but is intended to serve as multiple payoffs Legolas is a silent character throughout the three films, having few lines, not being especially expressive, given few opportunities to truly show himself, and given few moments to shine. in conversation or an interaction so sparingly that Jackson gave him these amazing moments, part of the goal is to be funny because of the contrast if Legolas went around doing that kind of thing in every fight scene, it would have seemed implausible, it would have seemed objectionable, it would have been deleted every sense of menace and threat from any battle he is involved in with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He put a lot of time and effort into earning her two moments of what we might call Pure Rudeness, which in both cases are supposed to lighten the mood. a bit of what could otherwise have been an oppressively grim and intense battle, these are moments of character idolization that work in contrast to his normal strength and narrative pauses that interrupt the severity to prevent it from becoming monotony, which means they are also narrative payoffs and then of course in the mumikil sequence it serves as a payoff to one of the few and longest running gags in the trilogy, the death counting competition between Legolas and Gimli, I personally find that the death of Mumma is a bit embarrassing, but it's not thoughtless, it serves several purposes, and in some cases it has benefits for long-running builds if you have some elf, any random elf, who does implausibly brilliant things when the plot needs it or because the director has no talent and wants people to be superficially impressed by the show you're watching. they're doing something very different that's thoughtless not thoughtful it's laziness it's not an earned reward that has potential plot impacts down the road because we have to ask ourselves in any seemingly dangerous scene that any of these elves are involved in, well why We should do it?

We really bothered to invest in it and why should we feel any kind of tension when we know that they can just call on bullet time and get out of whatever corner they got caught in because this is all just lazy and meant to superficially impress us ? by a protagonist who still has no character to speak of after three hours of episode, accomplishes nothing in the fight scene itself, the Orcs unleash an absolutely horrible CGI job that looks like a pug with some kind of syndrome and by horrible I don't mean in-Universe this is some horrible creature I'm facing.

I mean in-Universe it looks incredibly, it looks cheap, which is not something you would expect to say. a show with this budget its movement is terrible at times it almost seems stop-motion compare it with the two towers Works from 20 years ago now it is surprising that they were so wrong I know Rags likes them but he has a strange taste in dogs Don Lemon hooks the pug with some chains and makes another one Matrix leaves starving the orc leader in the neck hits the almighty the Glorious with the wonderful stick and allows the guardian that we barely remember to escape he comes out of the well the joker goes after him but Don Lemon saves him with a spear huh, this was, this was this, actually stop motion, can you do mocap in stop motion?

His movements are so irregular, strange and amazing. Everyone involved in this should get some real bugs from 2002. Everyone's favorite recently. The demoted CNN anchor goes to go up after him, but discovers that the director was shot in the lower mid-abdomen with an arrow. Well, again, another argument about this in the Evap. I insist, this would not have killed him. No way, I mean shock. He could have stopped him just fine, but hell, Boromir went ahead with four of the things in him. Don, who remembers that he just used the powers of the Matrix to make incredible jumps?

He can't make the jump. We just saw the warden do. I love myself. You might think that even if he had gotten up he would have been shot, but oh no, no, in fact, just wait until you see what the next episode has in store for you, whether it's the Orcs being selectively terrible marksmen or Don Lemon having a suit of armor. weft so thick it actually folds. the air around him and we can see him catch an arrow mid-flight, so it would have been nice if the show had allowed him to climb to the top of the trench, but he still can't do it because we need our cliffhanger ending to grab him. , they tear it down and buy it sooner.

Well, the show wants us to suspect that this guy, Ada, is Sauron, for reasons they explained above. I'm still pretty sure this is a bit of a drift. It's still my bet on Sauron. He had bet pretty well, but again, I was wrong with my prediction about non-Hobbits because it turns out that what I consider the minimum level of competence that writers must meet is, in fact, well above their collective abilities. 90 of the time, but this brings us to the end of episode three. I think I've taken you enough time already, so I'm not proposing any lengthy preparation, although I will take this opportunity to issue a warning about efap.

They were asked to rank the episodes from worst to best and I'm pretty sure the conclusion was something like 867-54321, which means I've already covered the best this show has to offer and it's only going to get worse from here. Taking a short break from the series to recharge. This video has been a long nightmare and I will continue to cover Black Panther 2 Wakandan Boogaloo before returning to Rings of Power, in theory, because I am now a full-time YouTuber. It won't take as long to prepare the next installments, but I'm not going to set a deadline because setting deadlines is an invitation to miss deadlines.

My goal is to finish this series of reviews before Mauler is done with Game of Thrones. I have a couple of ads. before closing as mentioned and if you are a regular watcher, you will have heard all of this already. I just became a full-time internet person. If you would like to support my work here, there is a patreon link in the description. plus the usual Super Chat and super thank you options, and channel memberships are now open, giving you access to custom emojis, and these are primarily a means to donate. I'm still mulling over suitable reward packages.

I do a monthly thank you to the sponsors and that will complete this video, the small platoon is also expanding. I have a second channel and am currently planning to transition it to shorter review response videos and music snippets. My colleague who runs our substack has also just launched her channel, which is worth checking out if you like stylish English reactionaries talking about culture, politics and religion. The links for all of this are in the description. We are also planning to relaunch our weekly current affairs show on a new channel and there will be news on that when we finally get it.

As mentioned at the top, the response to the Call to Arms I made in the video above, an encouragement to create and share with other creators, has been literally overwhelming, hence the fact that I'm still working on responding to everyone those who sent me messages in the background, since I suspected thatThere are many of you out there with brilliant ideas and immense creative potential, unfortunately there are too many of you with all that for me to review everything that has been submitted. It would take about five parallel lives. to overcome it all, but that potential absolutely needs to be tapped, so the plan right now is to create a Discord server and then a website where we can all come together, share scripts, stories, artwork and ideas for the same offer feedback and criticism. collaborate and generally start building our own crowdsourced Myths to replace what we've lost at the hands of the barbaric imbeciles of Hollywood and the arts establishment.

The website will take longer to put together, but I hope to have the Discord server up and running in the next few years. weeks, some of you have already kindly offered your services. I still have no idea what I'm doing even if anyone else wants to give me a hand setting it up and modifying it please hit me up on the twitter link in the description like well all that's left for this video is the monthly thank you from patreon so my sincere thanks also go and here's the moment I butchered their names in silver Kur David Murphy disembodied Lego Head Metal Jazz disco Greg kleich Instinct Cole Bowman a shining sword Ethan zirkle ocella dragger drag Dre draggle job kirkich I think wolfbane Juno how Maki Kim Nexus slidebelts.com Tito obici JK Zach Connell Trevor Jerry French Daniel Zahn MLP Keith Holmes Jr Thomas Adams Ricardo rakis gabalduck Tristan Richardson Stephen Diaz Rayne Steinberg reverse flip PT d2012 Verner bital ATS 67 Paul F Dennis Michael envist Nick Shandy Joshua Rosenblum ghost pants Joe Schumacher Curious Panic Chicken Borg Todd Stone nexolius flopmeister Zachary Daniel Ronald kill Stephen Ralph Greg Kane Tobias linkholtz basso Matthew Coates Aaron Desk Hugo Nate Mallory Benedict Schneider Alex Sean ledden T Grimm now random Supernatural quote random character Sami Q dark broadcast music s Tony yes Brandon cartinelli John Cole and Jenny thank you all and see you in the next video