I loved this season as well, and am very bullish on its future. I have read The Hobbit and the LOTR books but am ignorant of the lore beyond that. Haven’t felt the need to read through wiki on this show like I did House of the Dragon - just along for the ride and I loved it. Absolutely gorgeous.
Recommend reading the Silmarillion (or at least listen as audiobook). Has a lot of the backstory for characters you are seeing in RoP (Elrond Half-elven, Galadriel and her family, Gil-galad, Celebrimbor, Sauron, etc).
This. The story is there (obviously the TV show took huge liberties). The Silmarillion is a tough book to read though. Sort of like reading the beginning of Deuteronomy in the Bible (which I assume all FBG have done). Just a snoozer.
True, but the first part of the Silmarillion (Ainulindalë ) is among the best stuff Tolkien ever wrote. If you are a LotR fan and haven't read this at least, you should.
Just catching up on this thread because I wanted to re-read a bunch of the Tolkien legendarium before watching the show.
To the bolded, wow. You really mean "Ainulindalë" and not "Valequenta" or "Quenta Silmarillion?" I am as about as big of a fanboy Tolkien nerd as you can get and even for me it is my least favorite part of the
Silmarillion.
Anyway, as far as the show goes, I thought it was quite good but not great. Again, I'm a huge Tolkien nerd and have read
The Silmarillion at least 5 times,
The Hobbit and
Lord of the Rings more times than I can count, and even have read
Unfinished Tales,
The Children of Hurin,
The Fall of Gondolin,
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,
Bilbo's Last Song, a decent amount of The History of Middle Earth, and a decent amount of Tolkien's letters.
Messing with the timeline so badly annoyed me at first, but I got over it. I think since Tolkien himself compressed thousands of years of history into a few pages in his work, after the initial annoyance I became ok with compressing that same time period into a short period of screen time. Even though intellectually I know the timeline of the show doesn't make sense, it still doesn't feel that wrong.
Ultimately, while I would have preferred they do a lot of things differently, there wasn't anything in the series that I truly believed that if Tolkien saw it, he would think it was completely at odds with his vision of his world. So I was able to get past the parts I didn't like and appreciate the parts I did, which included several interesting characters and awesome production value.
I am excited to see what they do with Sauron. While I agree that Halbrand being Sauron was a little telegraphed, I still think they handled it very well and the way they set it up was consistent with how I always envisioned Sauron in the Second Age.
Regarding
@Psychopav's caution to not expect a good Sauron story arc, I'm not so sure. I think there are passages in some of Tolkien's stuff that would suggest that Sauron can be a more complicated character and not just a manifestation of evil. In fact, I would even say that about Morgoth to some extent. But it is more clear with Sauron. At the end of the First Age even Eönwë believed that Sauron had the potential for redemption, and I think we are led to believe that is because there actually is a little more depth to him.
@ using spoiler tags for a theory from the wanna be hobbits and then the guy directly underneath you gives away the biggest plot line of the story without them.
