The thing that's always seemed odd to me is that Tolkeins world seems set for NOT always doing major wars and epic quests. I really think The Hobbit is his best work because it's so much more...
The thing that's always seemed odd to me is that Tolkeins world seems set for NOT always doing major wars and epic quests. I really think The Hobbit is his best work because it's so much more interesting in its scope, and the manner in which it approaches it.
LoTR being the better known thing seems to have pegged all Tolkein stuff to be high epic prestige movies and TV, which of course Amazon wasn't ever going to do it any other way, but honestly somewhat like star wars I feel the potential of the world is for setting much smaller or local stories. It's wasted with the repeated over the top end of the literal world plots.
I love both The Hobbit and LotR, but I agree they have a very different tone. I think there's room for both. That said, my favorite part of LotR is definitely the Fellowship, and Book 1 in...
Exemplary
I love both The Hobbit and LotR, but I agree they have a very different tone. I think there's room for both.
That said, my favorite part of LotR is definitely the Fellowship, and Book 1 in particular. I love the quiet moments when its just a few hobbits journeying through the Shire and then through the empty beyond it with Aragorn. I know a lot of people complain of tedium of the descriptions of the plants, the songs and poems, etc., but I really enjoy the slow, quiet moments those scenes provide. (I also love the Scouring for showing the return back to the smaller world of the Shire after how the journey has affected them.)
That said, your comment makes me think of Elrond's line from Council:
The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
I think that also nicely summarizes a neat trick that Tolkein does in LotR. We have Frodo, the "great" in the Shire, socially, and Samwise, the humble gardener servant (the "small"). We start out from seeing things entirely from Frodo's point of view. Over the course of the story, we gradually transition more and more to see the story from Sam's point of view. At the end, the transition is complete and Sam is revealed to be the true hero of the story. Frodo has at last been overcome by temptation and it's Sam's "small" hands that do what they must. It's the world in a microcosm.
Funny you brought up Star Wars. I've mentioned this on Tildes before but this is exactly how I felt about the Mandalorian. Season 1 was incredible! Just a bounty hunter dude going around to...
somewhat like star wars I feel the potential of the world is for setting much smaller or local stories. It's wasted with the repeated over the top end of the literal world plots.
Funny you brought up Star Wars. I've mentioned this on Tildes before but this is exactly how I felt about the Mandalorian. Season 1 was incredible! Just a bounty hunter dude going around to different towns, trying to get a kid back home. He needs help/info but the people he meets all need something from him in return, which leads to lots of little plots and side missions, much like a video game...... then by like season 3 and 4 we're back to grandiose fate-of-the-world-deciding epic space battles and the whole good vs evil, jedi vs sith, light side vs dark side thing.
I feel similarly about most superhero movies and shows nowadays. It's always the whole world at stake. Rarely is it just one bad guy causing trouble in one city that needs to be slapped around. Seems like every superhero show/movie needs a villain capable of destroying/controlling the entire world that absolutely must be stopped.
Talk with my spouse, one of things that's come up is the theory that Star Wars has been a little too obsessed with the Skywalkers. Part of what made Mandalorian S1 fun for us was that there were...
Talk with my spouse, one of things that's come up is the theory that Star Wars has been a little too obsessed with the Skywalkers. Part of what made Mandalorian S1 fun for us was that there were absolutely no Skywalkers or Solos. (Rogue One was somewhat similar in this regard.) Just a guy in a dusty backwater with some interesting adventures. There's a huge friggin' galaxy! Show us some more of it, and show us some new well-drawn characters!
Could you explain what about the Star Wars fictional universe is so appealing to you that you would like to see stories that take place in it that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers? What I...
Could you explain what about the Star Wars fictional universe is so appealing to you that you would like to see stories that take place in it that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers? What I mean is, if you don't care about the Skywalker family, the Jedi, the Emperor, and so on, why do you need the connection to Star Wars at all? Why not a space fantasy story that's its own thing?
As /u/steezyaspie pointed out, there's a fair bit of room and I lean to towards the first. Basically, I see the Skywalker family story as essentially complete with the original trilogy, where Luke...
As /u/steezyaspie pointed out, there's a fair bit of room and I lean to towards the first.
Basically, I see the Skywalker family story as essentially complete with the original trilogy, where Luke Skywalker famously traverses the Heroes Journey. So don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the Skywalker arc. (And of course, the prequel trilogy provides some backstory there too, though I'm less enamored of it.)
I actually enjoy the world building and the setting of the Star Wars universe quite a bit. I'm a heavily visually oriented person and the design language that Ralph McQuarrie created for it still strikes a strong chord with me. As a kid, I loved ILM's work on Star Wars (especially the Death Star trench run) enough that I had a career involved with the VFX industry for a good while. That came full circle when one of my favorite personal anecdotes involved a bug of mine impacting a Star Wars production.
But I'm a little tired of the same families and (less so) the same planets always popping up. To me, that makes the Star Wars universe feel much smaller than it ought to be, given there's a whole galaxy. The Skywalkers and can't possibly be the only families there with any agency. Not everything has to be motivated by them. And on a timeline, there can only be so many save-the-galaxy type events; they should be vastly outnumbered by more mundane but still interesting stories. So I'm in favor of new characters but in the same overarching setting and aesthetics. I'd like to see stories, even if small, that expand the Star Wars universe in an organically coherent way.
The SW universe is unique (to me) for being a major visual Sci-Fi IP where tech is OLD and the world is clearly lived in and worn down. The Millennium Falcon is about 60 years old during A New...
Could you explain what about the Star Wars fictional universe is so appealing to you that you would like to see stories that take place in it that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers?
The SW universe is unique (to me) for being a major visual Sci-Fi IP where tech is OLD and the world is clearly lived in and worn down.
The Millennium Falcon is about 60 years old during A New Hope and on its third or fourth owner. It's basically a pre-owned space Winnebago with guns.
The rebel alliance ships are all dirty and used, their helmets clearly used and banged up, their droids also look old and worn down.
Luke's speeder is clearly also very old, but still functional. There is tech that can make ships float and run and it's common enough for a moisture farmer's son to afford, even though worn and used.
The universe also has centuries if not millennia of history where different factions were in power changing the flavour completely.
The Force Awakens starts with Rey digging through Imperial cruiser hulls looking for valuable parts, which was a great touch - fancy tech exists, but it's not cheap enough to throw away and just build new crap.
This is why I loved Rian Johnson's entry in the SW universe, he was clearly trying to move to a direction where every single protagonist didn't have to be related to the Skywalkers or Palpatines - anyone could be linked to the Force. But then, somehow, the Emperor returned and it all went to shit again...
Not the original commenter, but SW universe is extremely vast. I grew up playing games like Republic Commando or Knights of the Old Republic. They are both great stories that have nothing to do...
Not the original commenter, but SW universe is extremely vast. I grew up playing games like Republic Commando or Knights of the Old Republic. They are both great stories that have nothing to do with Skywalkers. KotOR is even set thousands of years before that plotline.
So, in my mind, it has never been about only Skywalkers. They are an important yet one part of a much greater universe. RC brought me a squad of commandos I cared more about than most characters in the movies, and KotOR brought me a story I enjoyed much more than the movies. Following this line, The Old Republic has provided some of the greatest stories I've seen in the SW universe, which -again- I enjoyed more than the movies. None of them had anything to do with Skywalkers.
Admittedly, it feels even weird to answer this question haha. A good portion of SW media and fandom have been doing their own thing for decades. There is a vast amount of worldbuilding that has surpassed anything Lucas had originally in mind. For example, KotOR brought us the Sith Code and the ancient Sith, which in my opinion made sith much more interesting and grounded. There's a lot of stuff like that. I'd even go as far as to say SW really shines when it's not about Skywalkers.
Not who you replied to, but I do want to point out that there’s a lot of room between “it’s great to see something with new characters in the same universe” and “I don’t care about the...
Not who you replied to, but I do want to point out that there’s a lot of room between “it’s great to see something with new characters in the same universe” and “I don’t care about the skywalkers/jedi/empire/solos”
A series set in ‘normal days’ in The Shire would basically just be Schitt’s Creek with Hobbits. I guess you could do Gondorian palace intrigue and end up with The West King.
A series set in ‘normal days’ in The Shire would basically just be Schitt’s Creek with Hobbits.
I guess you could do Gondorian palace intrigue and end up with The West King.
I have enjoyed Nerdwriter's content for a long time, it's always concise and to the point. Not that I dislike longer-form essays, but it's good to see a video essayist lean into highly-edited work...
I have enjoyed Nerdwriter's content for a long time, it's always concise and to the point. Not that I dislike longer-form essays, but it's good to see a video essayist lean into highly-edited work as well.
Discussion of the format aside, I think this is a good summary of why The Rings of Power isn't really working well to tell a Middle Earth story. It meshes nicely with a theory that a friend and I have that the epic Wagernian score of the original trilogy of movies does a huge amount of lifting to sell what is happening on screen, and TV shows are not as suited to that kind of musical scope. Not that the music in TRoP is bad by any means, but it is a far cry from the truly magical epic scale of Howard Shore's original score. You need epic score to underpin the epic story. The show struggles to do both, hence its flounder.
AFAIK the biggest issue in The Rings of Power series is that the Tolkien estate didn't license The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales for Amazon. Now they can just use appendices and random notes by...
AFAIK the biggest issue in The Rings of Power series is that the Tolkien estate didn't license The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales for Amazon.
Now they can just use appendices and random notes by Tolkien, but explicitly can't use the actual material for content...
I'd like to see the Silmarillion done as a season-per-age anthology series. That might have actually worked out, if they didn't over-embellish or outright trash the literary work in the process.
I'd like to see the Silmarillion done as a season-per-age anthology series. That might have actually worked out, if they didn't over-embellish or outright trash the literary work in the process.
As much as I want more Silmarillion (and Tolkien) content, they would have to take some serious liberties with the front portion of that book to make it into another medium. But, there are SO MANY...
As much as I want more Silmarillion (and Tolkien) content, they would have to take some serious liberties with the front portion of that book to make it into another medium.
But, there are SO MANY great stories in the Silmarillion (with strong female leads that weren't unnamed gals ripped out of the appendicies) that they could make several seasons of several different shows and have stuff left on the cutting room floor. I know they think we want characters we're familiar with (see also: Star Wars) but it's the world building that sucked most of us in. The characters, while important, aren't a make or break for viewership with that majority of an established IP's fans.
That would have been cool. Especially when you have the same elves showing up again and again, unchanging even as the world itself and its cast of mortal characters change.
That would have been cool. Especially when you have the same elves showing up again and again, unchanging even as the world itself and its cast of mortal characters change.
The thing that's always seemed odd to me is that Tolkeins world seems set for NOT always doing major wars and epic quests. I really think The Hobbit is his best work because it's so much more interesting in its scope, and the manner in which it approaches it.
LoTR being the better known thing seems to have pegged all Tolkein stuff to be high epic prestige movies and TV, which of course Amazon wasn't ever going to do it any other way, but honestly somewhat like star wars I feel the potential of the world is for setting much smaller or local stories. It's wasted with the repeated over the top end of the literal world plots.
I love both The Hobbit and LotR, but I agree they have a very different tone. I think there's room for both.
That said, my favorite part of LotR is definitely the Fellowship, and Book 1 in particular. I love the quiet moments when its just a few hobbits journeying through the Shire and then through the empty beyond it with Aragorn. I know a lot of people complain of tedium of the descriptions of the plants, the songs and poems, etc., but I really enjoy the slow, quiet moments those scenes provide. (I also love the Scouring for showing the return back to the smaller world of the Shire after how the journey has affected them.)
That said, your comment makes me think of Elrond's line from Council:
I think that also nicely summarizes a neat trick that Tolkein does in LotR. We have Frodo, the "great" in the Shire, socially, and Samwise, the humble gardener servant (the "small"). We start out from seeing things entirely from Frodo's point of view. Over the course of the story, we gradually transition more and more to see the story from Sam's point of view. At the end, the transition is complete and Sam is revealed to be the true hero of the story. Frodo has at last been overcome by temptation and it's Sam's "small" hands that do what they must. It's the world in a microcosm.
(Sorry, I'm rambling, but I love these stories.)
Funny you brought up Star Wars. I've mentioned this on Tildes before but this is exactly how I felt about the Mandalorian. Season 1 was incredible! Just a bounty hunter dude going around to different towns, trying to get a kid back home. He needs help/info but the people he meets all need something from him in return, which leads to lots of little plots and side missions, much like a video game...... then by like season 3 and 4 we're back to grandiose fate-of-the-world-deciding epic space battles and the whole good vs evil, jedi vs sith, light side vs dark side thing.
I feel similarly about most superhero movies and shows nowadays. It's always the whole world at stake. Rarely is it just one bad guy causing trouble in one city that needs to be slapped around. Seems like every superhero show/movie needs a villain capable of destroying/controlling the entire world that absolutely must be stopped.
Talk with my spouse, one of things that's come up is the theory that Star Wars has been a little too obsessed with the Skywalkers. Part of what made Mandalorian S1 fun for us was that there were absolutely no Skywalkers or Solos. (Rogue One was somewhat similar in this regard.) Just a guy in a dusty backwater with some interesting adventures. There's a huge friggin' galaxy! Show us some more of it, and show us some new well-drawn characters!
Could you explain what about the Star Wars fictional universe is so appealing to you that you would like to see stories that take place in it that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers? What I mean is, if you don't care about the Skywalker family, the Jedi, the Emperor, and so on, why do you need the connection to Star Wars at all? Why not a space fantasy story that's its own thing?
As /u/steezyaspie pointed out, there's a fair bit of room and I lean to towards the first.
Basically, I see the Skywalker family story as essentially complete with the original trilogy, where Luke Skywalker famously traverses the Heroes Journey. So don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the Skywalker arc. (And of course, the prequel trilogy provides some backstory there too, though I'm less enamored of it.)
I actually enjoy the world building and the setting of the Star Wars universe quite a bit. I'm a heavily visually oriented person and the design language that Ralph McQuarrie created for it still strikes a strong chord with me. As a kid, I loved ILM's work on Star Wars (especially the Death Star trench run) enough that I had a career involved with the VFX industry for a good while. That came full circle when one of my favorite personal anecdotes involved a bug of mine impacting a Star Wars production.
But I'm a little tired of the same families and (less so) the same planets always popping up. To me, that makes the Star Wars universe feel much smaller than it ought to be, given there's a whole galaxy. The Skywalkers and can't possibly be the only families there with any agency. Not everything has to be motivated by them. And on a timeline, there can only be so many save-the-galaxy type events; they should be vastly outnumbered by more mundane but still interesting stories. So I'm in favor of new characters but in the same overarching setting and aesthetics. I'd like to see stories, even if small, that expand the Star Wars universe in an organically coherent way.
The SW universe is unique (to me) for being a major visual Sci-Fi IP where tech is OLD and the world is clearly lived in and worn down.
The Millennium Falcon is about 60 years old during A New Hope and on its third or fourth owner. It's basically a pre-owned space Winnebago with guns.
The rebel alliance ships are all dirty and used, their helmets clearly used and banged up, their droids also look old and worn down.
Luke's speeder is clearly also very old, but still functional. There is tech that can make ships float and run and it's common enough for a moisture farmer's son to afford, even though worn and used.
The universe also has centuries if not millennia of history where different factions were in power changing the flavour completely.
The Force Awakens starts with Rey digging through Imperial cruiser hulls looking for valuable parts, which was a great touch - fancy tech exists, but it's not cheap enough to throw away and just build new crap.
This is why I loved Rian Johnson's entry in the SW universe, he was clearly trying to move to a direction where every single protagonist didn't have to be related to the Skywalkers or Palpatines - anyone could be linked to the Force. But then, somehow, the Emperor returned and it all went to shit again...
Not the original commenter, but SW universe is extremely vast. I grew up playing games like Republic Commando or Knights of the Old Republic. They are both great stories that have nothing to do with Skywalkers. KotOR is even set thousands of years before that plotline.
So, in my mind, it has never been about only Skywalkers. They are an important yet one part of a much greater universe. RC brought me a squad of commandos I cared more about than most characters in the movies, and KotOR brought me a story I enjoyed much more than the movies. Following this line, The Old Republic has provided some of the greatest stories I've seen in the SW universe, which -again- I enjoyed more than the movies. None of them had anything to do with Skywalkers.
Admittedly, it feels even weird to answer this question haha. A good portion of SW media and fandom have been doing their own thing for decades. There is a vast amount of worldbuilding that has surpassed anything Lucas had originally in mind. For example, KotOR brought us the Sith Code and the ancient Sith, which in my opinion made sith much more interesting and grounded. There's a lot of stuff like that. I'd even go as far as to say SW really shines when it's not about Skywalkers.
Not who you replied to, but I do want to point out that there’s a lot of room between “it’s great to see something with new characters in the same universe” and “I don’t care about the skywalkers/jedi/empire/solos”
I completely agree. There and back again. That's it.
A series set in ‘normal days’ in The Shire would basically just be Schitt’s Creek with Hobbits.
I guess you could do Gondorian palace intrigue and end up with The West King.
I have enjoyed Nerdwriter's content for a long time, it's always concise and to the point. Not that I dislike longer-form essays, but it's good to see a video essayist lean into highly-edited work as well.
Discussion of the format aside, I think this is a good summary of why The Rings of Power isn't really working well to tell a Middle Earth story. It meshes nicely with a theory that a friend and I have that the epic Wagernian score of the original trilogy of movies does a huge amount of lifting to sell what is happening on screen, and TV shows are not as suited to that kind of musical scope. Not that the music in TRoP is bad by any means, but it is a far cry from the truly magical epic scale of Howard Shore's original score. You need epic score to underpin the epic story. The show struggles to do both, hence its flounder.
I also love Nerdwriter for that same reason. I love that his content is whatever he's interested in at the moment.
AFAIK the biggest issue in The Rings of Power series is that the Tolkien estate didn't license The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales for Amazon.
Now they can just use appendices and random notes by Tolkien, but explicitly can't use the actual material for content...
I'd like to see the Silmarillion done as a season-per-age anthology series. That might have actually worked out, if they didn't over-embellish or outright trash the literary work in the process.
As much as I want more Silmarillion (and Tolkien) content, they would have to take some serious liberties with the front portion of that book to make it into another medium.
But, there are SO MANY great stories in the Silmarillion (with strong female leads that weren't unnamed gals ripped out of the appendicies) that they could make several seasons of several different shows and have stuff left on the cutting room floor. I know they think we want characters we're familiar with (see also: Star Wars) but it's the world building that sucked most of us in. The characters, while important, aren't a make or break for viewership with that majority of an established IP's fans.
That would have been cool. Especially when you have the same elves showing up again and again, unchanging even as the world itself and its cast of mortal characters change.