Internal consistency is to me a vital component of story telling, whether in books, movies, games, whatever. Anything goes as long as on its own terms it holds together. I’ve never had a huge problem with Tolkien’s approach, given that all that is necessary is that things aren’t glaringly out of place. I don’t need detailed treatises on pseudo-medieval agriculture and economics to ground the world effectively (goodness knows I read enough of that stuff in grad school). I just need things to not hit me over the head with inconsistencies and logical failings. And by and large, Middle Earth works fine; enough of the details are abstracted in a way that allows for everything to fit together well enough.
The Rings of Power show I do think has some issues in this regard.
Firstly, how do you think agrarian societies survived in the middle ages? I’m no Tolkien scholar, but I doubt there is quite enough detail even in his notes to claim that Hobbit society is impossible. Secondly, you’re also wrong - the prologue of LOTR (“Concerning Hobbits”) makes it quite explicit that the Hobbits used to be a part of the Dunedain kingdom (until the Witch King destroyed it’s capital during the events of the Hobbit), and it’s first chapters makes it clear that Bree is a trade town - and trade is clearly not difficult, considering that Bilbo can send for gifts to Dale and the Lonely Mountain and expect to receive them (as he does). That Hobbits are little known to the outside world, does not mean they’re isolated.
Also, you’re again confusing realism with consistency. And yeah - Bret ends up digging into the former as well, but it doesn’t invalidate the core of his critique.
I won’t go talking about Hobbit economics because the point wasn’t that Tolkien’s worldbuilding was as flawed as Rings of Power (it is probably much more believable overall), but that fantasy doesn’t require believable, consistent worldbuilding, least of all realistic material culture. If RoP fails, it’s for other reasons.
I did read at least parts of them. Fascinating history, just a poor metric to judge fiction by.
abrandt
1790
I’m still working through his critiques, but I’d agree the Harfoot complaining is a little over the top for me. I don’t really care that their society couldn’t really work as long as it was presented in a consistent manner(which it wasn’t really, but that’s a little beside Bret’s point). But I pretty strongly agree with the criticisms of the odd scales represented for the Southlands(no sense of this region being more than just two little villages) and the force Numenor sends. They had the budget for Numenor to send a fleet and a big army if they wanted, it’s not like the spectacle wouldn’t have been welcomed by viewers.
The travel stuff was important to Tolkien and I’d say is generally beneficial to fiction like this to have plausible travel times. Why? It’s a constraint on the writers that they have to find solutions for, which generally ultimately leads to better content. And also because stories focused on the journey seem to turn out better than stories that jump from place to place handwaving away the journey. This being a thing that GoT famously got fairly right early on and then threw away later to its detriment.
I’d also say that viewers have a pretty good innate sense of those two things. Three ships and fast travel ultimately gives the sense of a small world with only a few people. You’re never going to tell an epic story that way.
MikeJ
1791
I think some things like the fast travel will bother everyone and some others may ring false on a level that people can’t quite put their finger on. It all depends on how much relevant knowledge you’ve been cursed with. For someone like Bret the problems with the Harfoot economy will stand out just as much as if they were using smart phones. Note that if these seem like nitpicks, the true nitpicking post is promised as a follow-up!
abrandt
1792
Yeah, I don’t know that most people would even bother to give it enough thought to put words to why it felt that way, or that they even would end up there if they did stop to really think about it. But I do believe that both of those things would feel off just based on regular real life experiences. Getting your medieval economy wrong or military tactics wrong or whatever else probably wouldn’t. The comments to that ACOUP article were talking about Tolkien getting his geology and mountains wrong, and certainly the mountains around Mordor have always kind of bugged me because they feel “off”. But even with that feeling I wouldn’t be able to give you any detail as to why that is and I’m not sure it ever even consciously struck me before.
You might think the Mordor mountain range is “off” and yet I present to you Pluto’s moon Charon. The resemblance is uncanny.
strategy
1794
Exactly this. We’re nerds, we spend time thinking about this stuff. But you don’t need to actually think about this stuff to realize that something is “off” - even if one can’t necessarily put one’s finger on it.
I am the 63 percent. I watched the first two episodes and noped out.
Houngan
1797
Me too, just didn’t care about what was going on.
JD
1798
The second season, currently in production, will have more dramatic story turns, she adds.
Exactly what the show needed: more red herrings and bullshit twists.
I honestly don’t remember much about those two episodes either. Galadriel fought some people. Elrond visited a dwarf that didn’t like him for some reason. I don’t think a single remarkable thing happened in those 2 episodes.
Lurb
1800
I vaguely recall that the last episode was decent, which somehow felt even more infuriating.
JoshL
1801
I watched the whole thing and regretted it!
Some genius heard Bezos likes Seinfeld and LotR and pitched him the idea of “What if we make a Lord of the Rings show, about nothing?”
The Chinese restaurant episode, but it’s the Hobbits at the Prancing Pony? I’d watch that.
One of my co-workers said he watched the first two episodes then bailed.
I don’t blame him. The show just wasn’t that good and almost nothing happens until like…the sixth episode, then there’s a really boring penultimate episode followed by a weird sprint of a last episode that felt totally rushed.
Yeah, I managed to get through 3.5 episodes before deciding it was too dumb (about where Sauron has to explain diplomacy and tact to Galadriel, a thousands-of-years-old elven noble), and then watched the last episode just to see if they stuck the landing. They got through way too much in that final episode. There are major events that take place over decades, centuries, or more than a thousand years, and for some reason they decided to do more than one of them in like 20 minutes of screen-time.
This seems to be about where they are in the timeline:
Note that Sauron meeting Celebrimbor, helping him with forging, and then the forging of the 3 Rings takes about four hundred years. Also Galadriel is already married to Celeborn and a ruler, not some elven special forces weirdo that Gil-Galad wants to (and can) get rid of.
Oh also Gandalf is on the continent way before he shows up in Tolkien’s writing. Will that have an impact? Probably not because the main story still has to happen fifteen hundred years from now, so good luck making that interesting, writers of season 2!
