DON'T LET THEM FOOL YOU! Rings of Power Trailer Breakdown

The worst thing with all this for me(especially with seeing the Balrog) is that the lore of Tolkien’s world has some utterly amazing stories. With a budget like what Amazon has, if they would have been faithful to Tolkien and his vision, I think this show could have been something incredible. Morgoth was such an oppressive and terrifying force. There was a great dragon who blackened the whole sky with his wings. So much epic stuff. Romance, drama, heroism, tragedy. All there and ripe for adaptation! But instead we are getting a modernized fan fiction which seems to go out of its way to ignore Tolkien in order to tell its more current, far inferior narrative.

They are holding their swords like they are aiming with guns. Maybe they are using the same shooting sword the guy in the Dungeons and Dragons movie uses.

That mound of helmets doesn’t look like a memorial. It looks like a trophy collection Obelix made after he and Asterix had some fun with a bunch of Romans.

What I can't get over is the dialogue in this series, Tolkien would never have his characters say these things or act in this way. Tolkien himself says it best in letter 210 : "I do earnestly hope that in the assignment of actual speeches to the characters they will be represented as I have presented them: in style and sentiment. I should resent perversion of the characters (and do resent it, so far as it appears in this sketch) even more than the spoiling of the plot and scenery." -J.R.R. Tolkien

Sauron was well known, he was the lieutenant of Morgoth, Lord Of Werewolves, and he’s a master of dark arts. However, Sauron, to trick the Elves, made himself into a being known as Annatar, or the Bringer Of Gifts as Sauron is an incredibly wise and intelligent being, and the Elves hunger for knowledge and so he quickly integrated himself, but avoided certain Elves because they’d know he was Sauron. He tricked the Elves into forging the rings, for he wanted to control them, he wanted the Elves, Dwarves and Men under his dominion. The final ring, the One Ring, the Master Ring, he forged himself in Mordor. Once he put it on, the Elves immediately knew they were tricked and took them off and hid them away, the Dwarves were too stubborn to succumb but gained a gold lust from the rings, and the Men were corrupted into the Ringwraiths.

Totally agree on the male characters and female characters flip. In the stories, it was Elrond and Gil-galad who very early on saw right through the deceits of Sauron, and it was they who sent word to warn against Annatar (one of Sauron's corporeal forms) who appeared fair and wise. Galadriel ALSO saw right through the deceits immediately. But the key thing is, BOTH male and female characters were wise enough to know. There was no "only the men knew things." If they wanted equality, well, it's IN THERE in Tolkien's writing. But looks like they're making it UNequal by giving all the wisdom to just the females here. At least, judging by the teasers and trailer we've seen

The comically large pile of helmets represents the hopes and dreams of Tolkien fans that were slain by manspreading warrior Galadriel.

Average Tolkien fan: "This show is going to devastate Tolkien's legacy." Shadiversity: "THIS ARMOR IS ATROCIOUS, AND THAT SWORD LOOKS FAKE!"

I just started reading Silmarillion to refresh my Middle-earth knowledge for when this series are out and I want to encourage everyone to do so. If this series is be good for anything it is to remind about how great Tolkien's world is and to read his works.

Galadriel's real power: endurance, finally revealed in making that pile of helmets. She was definitely there for hours

When I saw the first few seconds of the trailer I was like “hey, that looks like it could be The Battle of Unnumbered tears, even if that happened during the first age” but then I was like “the people in charge probably don’t know what that is”

I think what pisses me off the most, on the very FIRST pages of the Fellowship of the Ring is a Foreword by Tolkien. In which he states that NO PART of his story is ALLEGORICAL. And remember, this man experienced WW1, and was around for WW2. But he states explicitly that the story he has created does not have any deeper political meaning behind it, because in his eyes Allegory ruined stories and literature. I remember he specifically says he prefers "history" to "allegory". It's the first god damn thing you read in the trilogy. Deciding to use his stories and add your own allegory to it is spitting in the face of that brilliant man. I pray the show isn't as bad as people are presuming it will be, but man I have to say my hopes are not getting any bigger.

I never met a bigger LOTR geek than myself in my life. As a wee boy I read LOTR books religiously before the movies even came out. I've won countless LOTR knowledge contest, have been ever since I was a kid. I've written my own fanfiction follow-ups to Silmarillion and LOTR when I was 10. I've played every single LOTR-themed computer game that came out in the early 2000s without bias. I've given myself my own elvish name using Tolkien's languages when I was 12 and I can even write them down in his runic language. I've been participating in fictional battle forum debates representing LOTR characters for years, and I proved once and for all that Gandalf can beat both Darth Vader and Dumbledore with one hand behind his back. Even though Hobbit disappointed me, I've still seen all of the movies back to back out of my loyalty for Jackson, including extended editions, and till this day I enjoy an occasional re-watch, even though I watch the fan-edits like the "Cardinal Cut" which is a cropped version of the Hobbit that removes most of the stuff that wasn't in the books and cuts it all down to one 4 hour long movie, which it should've been from the start. I must've watched Jackson's LOTR trilogy hundreds of times, and I'm not even kidding. Extended Fellowship loop used to be my background noise throughout the whole middle school. I know every line from those movies. Rings of Power? Yeah... I will be skipping this one. If some corporation wants to make Tolkien fan fiction from the ROTK footnotes and dance on Tolkien's grave as they do it, they're gonna have to do it OUT OF MY FUCKING SIGHT.

I think the guy holding the torch and sword is immitating a modern gun and flashlight (torch) combo. Source of light under the armed hand, helping aim. The people making the show may be clueless beyond belief.

Love you guys. I’m only 6 minutes in, and I need to clear something up. It’s beyond obvious how Galadriel made the helmet pile so high… she used The Force. She is, of course, the first Jedi.

18:10 Sauron's main Gift as Annatar WAS the very Ringlore that was needed to forge the Rings of power, it all came from him first. He had courted various Elven kings before finding an audience in Celebrimbor, the Elf-lord of Lindon. But all the Ringlore came from him and it's actually the reverse; Celebrimbor forged the Three Elven rings without Sauron's knowledge, but when Sauron finally forged the One Ring and put it on, they felt his presence and realized his deception immediately, and took them off until he was slain.

My favorite thing about the 'diversity' being wedged into the first age is that it implies that in all the races 'diversity' was evolved to extinction by the time of LOTR

Lore Dump: Numenor shouldn't encounter Sauron until almost 2,000 years after the rings are made. Galadriel has a husband who was a leader among the elves in the battle against Sauron and a daughter who later marries Elrond. Numenor is founded right at the beginning of the Second Age (32). The aesthetic is supposed to be the Great Byzantine (as far as I know) with extremely Anglo-Saxon features. 1500 years later, Sauron (In the guise of Annatar) introduced the concept of the rings to Celebrimbor (The greatest of the elf smiths). They crafted most of the rings together, but Celebrimbor became suspicious and forged three in secret (The Elf rings). In the meantime, Sauron forged the one ring. When he put the one ring on, he learned of the presence of the three elven rings. Sauron goes to war with the elves (1693) They fight for 1,500 years before Miriel (The Queen of Numenor) is even born... a little later (SA 3261), the Numenoreans actually get involved in the war with Sauron (Which lasted about a week). It isn't until the Third Age that the Balrog of Moria is even found...

Shad of course the Don Lemon elf can jump higher than Legolas. Everyone knows white elves can’t jump.

The Orcs piled up the Hill of the Slain. It was a memorial of their victory. If this is supposed to remind us of it, NOT a good idea to have Galadriel fix/build it. I as a reader find it weird.