Over on twitter I was sharing some first impressions on the first two episodes of The Rings of Power, which I had the chance to see in New York City last Tuesday. A guy asked me whether 'people who are super obsessed with lore accuracy [are] going to be happy or sad' after they see the show. So I answered it with a thread there, and I've put it all together here in a more coherent form. I haven't really changed anything, but some typos and punctuation and paragraphing, to make it a bit easier to read. So here's my reply:
Okay, that's a reasonable question. There's a couple of things to consider.
- Compared to the First Age and the Third Age there is precious little for the Second Age, which Tolkien basically invented as backdrop to LotR as he wrote it.
- That means that any extended narrative of the Second Age - and 50 hours is a very extended narrative - is going to have a lot of gaps to fill, and filling those gaps is going to require inventing all sorts of things.
- The show also has to deal with any extremely long timeframe. The Second Age is 3441 years long.
- The are two basic storylines: The Elves and Sauron, and Númenor, which really don't even begin to head converge until Númenor comes to the rescue of the Elves in SA 1700, and don't fully converge until Númenor is destroyed, and the Faithful escape to Middle-earth.
- Some of the characters are in effect immortal and others aren't.
- So you have this colossal story, covering three and a half millennia, the elvish strand of which is very sketchily told, and the mortal part of which is very focused on a few centuries towards the end. This is the task these guys at Amazon have set for themselves. This is the playing field they and we are on.
In view of all this, here's a question -- how do I feel about there being hobbits in the story? Because I am a big lore guy, and a big book lore guy. I haven't even watched the PJ films in years because I don't want my understanding of the books influenced by what PJ did in the films (good or ill, he changed things). There's no mention of hobbits anywhere before TA 1050. As Merry & Pippin told Treebeard, they got left out of all the old tales. So any inclusion of hobbits before that time is unsupported by the lore, and the show is starting a couple of thousand years before that. It's all completely fabricated from what we know of hobbits much later and then retrojected thousands of years. [Note: they aren't even called hobbits in the show, but Harfoots.]
Does that bother me as a lore guy? A whole lot less than Denethor being turned into a flaming nitwit (pun intended) in PJ's films. Or Elrond heading for the Grey Havens when everyone's back is turned. Or hobbits feet always being done wrong because One hobbit has exceptionally large and furry feet which he proudly displays on tables at parties.* Or, finally a whole lot less than if they had turned the show into game of thrones, a fantasy series which on both page and screen shares none of the heart of Tolkien's legendarium (and to be fair, that doesn't seem to be its goal).
Did I see anything in those first two episodes, which seemed to contradict established canon? Yes. Do I wish they had done it differently? Yes. Actually I saw more than one thing. Will I keep watching? Yes. But you know what I wouldn't watch? A show that got every last detail of lore 100% right, (as if that were even possible given what they are attempting) but missed the tragedy and joy and sorrow and pity that are at the heart of the legendarium from the Music of the Ainur to the Dagor Dagorath. So, there's my answer. Sorry it's so long, but, as a lore guy, you must have made it through the Council of Elrond, right? This isn't anywhere near that long. Hope it helps.
* I'll be putting up a post on hobbit feet soon, to follow up on this burning issue.
