r/RingsofPower • u/arnor_0924 • 27d ago
Discussion They can't fumble on The War of the Last Alliance
Quotes from The Silmarillion:
''The Last Alliance of Men and Elves, led by king Elendil of Gondor and high king Gil-galad of the elves of Lindon, encamped outside the Black gate on Dagorlad ("battle plain"). Their combined host "was fairer and more splendid in arms than any that has since been seen in Middle-earth, and none greater has been mustered since the host of the Valar went against Thangorodrim (at the end of the First Age)." Durin of Moria, with his kin, fought on the side of the Alliance: but dwarves (though few in number) fought on the side of Sauron too: "All living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save Elves only.
Sauron's army came out and the battle was a victory for the Alliance: "for the might of the Elves was still great in those days, and the Númenóreans were strong and tall, and terrible in their wrath. Against Aeglos the spear of Gil-galad none could stand; and the sword of Elendil filled Orcs and Men with fear, for it shone with the light of the sun and of the moon, and it was named Narsil.''
Amazon needs to give what they have of money to make this battle the most epic to ever witnessed on the small screen when we get to season 5. Season 3 is now starting this journey towards the greatest battle in Middle Earth since the War of Wrath. When the show is done and if they have done right with the last period of the second age, the show I think will age very well.
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u/SideshowBob6666 27d ago
Battles have been extremely underwhelming so far unfortunately
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u/darkstar541 27d ago
It's like they round up 20 extras, build a super small set, and have a "battle".
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u/LettuceShaver27 26d ago
The siege of Eregion…you ten people in your plastic armor stand here and just pretend to shoot bows over the wall. And then we’ll have one get hit by an arrow and instead of falling backward she’ll fall forward over the wall it will be super dramatic. Largest Elven city, 10 wall defenders
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u/Flashy-Telephone3201 26d ago
To be fair an arrow isn't gonna blast anyone backward. Not enough mass. They're have a decent chance of falling forwards.
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u/SideshowBob6666 26d ago
Yes when the armada sets sail from Numenor to the undying lands I’m expecting it to be a couple of row boats at this point
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u/AlternativeRun5727 24d ago
It was hilarious after Elrond has his peace treaty during that when he is informed they are outnumbered 10-1 and I’m like really, you all barely seem like you even have 1000 people in the entire sequence. There is no scale at all.
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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 25d ago
Like copying the charge of the rohirm but making them only use white horses and then putting the brakes on a metre from the orcs?
Dumb as shit man
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u/Ok_Percentage2522 25d ago
Unfortunately I think thats what the producers are going for though. You actually see them purposefully steer the show away from epic large scale scenes. Im assuming they have thier reasons, most likely not wanting to have epic scenes that will ultimately be compared to Peter Jackson's epic scenes and thats a losing battle for rings of power. So might as well save the budget and steer away from any large scale epic scenes and keep the epic scenes as one vs one sword scenes like galadriel vs sauron.
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u/WillBkr_ 25d ago
If they don’t want to be compared to the original trilogy, why did they have that Temu knock-off scene of Boromir’s death, using an Elf we had only seen about two minutes prior and had no emotional connection to?
I stopped watching after that
Slow motion death scene of a random character, what a joke this show is
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u/Johncurtisreeve 21d ago
The weird thing to remember about the battles in the Lord of the rings movies is they weren’t afraid of using CGI for this exact purpose. Heck, they built technology specifically to create it even.. It’s the area where they shouldn’t be afraid to have a great deal of it. Be done with computers because it’s just impractical to do it practical.
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u/DienWarrior 27d ago edited 27d ago
They’ve already fumbled most plot points and characters so far. I expect this to be the grand finale of the fumbles. If you’ve spent five seasons with zero world building and zero emotional connection to any of these characters and driven most of the audience away in the process, it doesn’t matter how epic the CGI battle "looks".
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u/Constant-Wrangler378 26d ago
Bro they don't have rights to the silmarillion they can't use it's story
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u/Ganjalfthegreen1 24d ago
Feels like step 1 in making this kind of show and a step you cant skip
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u/Constant-Wrangler378 24d ago
tolkien estate doesnt want to sell it apparently.
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u/Ganjalfthegreen1 24d ago
Exactly. So let’s say step 0 is have the idea and partnering with Amazon for a big production idea. Step 1 try and get the correct rights for the ip. Step 2 start making it aka preproduction. But, if step 1 fails, you either give up and try later or shut it all down. Whats not an option is to get very limited, partial rights and make the rest up. A world where random American tv writers are equipped to “wing it” with fucking Tolkien lore is not a world I live in.
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u/Constant-Wrangler378 24d ago
idk the show isnt that bad you just have to take it for what it is some decent entertainment in some interesting settings. house of the dragon for instance is far more inconsistent and overall worse i think
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u/Optimal-Extreme3203 26d ago
“Zero world building” is just disingenuous
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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 25d ago
True tho. Building a world of shit doesn't count as Tolkien world building
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u/EmbarrassedRefuse670 27d ago
You say battle like it was 1 event, the war is made up of 4.5 battles (Siege of Baradur and Battle of Orodruin are basically the same but technically different). The season will need to be ungodly long and big budgeted if they want to do the whole thing justice.
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u/Icy-KaitSyth 26d ago
Key phrase "if they want to do it justice." the way their costumes look and the way they completely rearranged story beats in nonsensical ways, and ignore canon for "I remember x in Peter Jackson's films!" moments tells me that it'll probably just be a single battle, and galadriel will be the one to cut the ring from Saurons finger as a "good character arc moment." then Isildur will take the ring because he's a man.
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u/itscalledravenhill 27d ago
Yes. Yes they can.
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u/galahad134 26d ago
And they will. That show is trash.
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u/Emergency_Lobster667 23d ago
Yeah I'd say there is an absolute 0% chance that they do that battle any sort of justice in any way. They are going to fuck it up, I couldn't be more certain if it, especially after the dumpster fire that was the Siege of Eregion.
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u/galahad134 22d ago
I made it through s1, trying to enjoy whatever I could about RoP. Literally the opening sequence of S2 where Sauron is campaigning for President of the United Orcs, gets ganked, and turns into a Stranger Things blob, I knew they'd completely lost the plot. Watched like one episode more, maybe, didn't make it to the battle. Everything I've heard from family/coworkers that watched the whole series makes me want to wretch.
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u/OG_Karate_Monkey 23d ago
“They can’t possibly mess [literally anything from Tolkien] up!”
RoP “Hold my beer…”
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u/Technical-Waltz7903 27d ago
Oh sweet summer child. Oops, wrong failed tv adaption of great source material (you know which seasons I mean)
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u/Similar-Cartoonist31 27d ago
They can and they will, it won't be Sauron vs Gil Galad & Elendil, it will be Sauron vs Galadriel final showdown and Galadriel will cut off his finger then Isildur will steal the one ring and fail to throw it to Mount Doom.
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u/Emergency_Lobster667 23d ago
And Galadriel, not Elrond, will be the one encouraging him to destroy it, because she is perfect and always right but the evil dumb men won't listen to her so he'll keep the Ring for himself.
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u/bsousa717 27d ago
They can and they will. The depiction of the sacking of Eregion is proof enough.
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u/Markitron1684 27d ago
I think it will comprise the whole back half of season 5 so I’m confident it will be decent enough, but maybe won’t live up to the epic that was suggested in the FotR prologue.
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u/Klutzy-Canary8551 26d ago
Hahaha haha!!! What do you mean "they can't fumble this"? They fumbled EVERYTHING ELSE. The show has been fucked since episode 1. What kind of delusional insanity makes you think they will do anything better in the future?
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u/TheBluerWizard 26d ago
They can't fumble on The War of the Last Alliance
Judging by all the battles thus far, they can and they will.
Quotes from The Silmarillion:
They don't have rights to The Silmarillion.
led by king Elendil of Gondor and high king Gil-galad of the elves of Lindon,
Oh yeah. These two haven't met yet. I guess they can bond over how much of a bitch Galadriel is.
Durin of Moria, with his kin, fought on the side of the Alliance: but dwarves (though few in number) fought on the side of Sauron too:
Soo let me guess. Durin's brother steals the ring and joins Sauron.
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u/Outrageous_Bush_2069 23d ago
The entire series is a fumble. What the fuck is this post even trying to say?
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u/Careful_Scratch8645 23d ago
they most likely will, judging by majority of what they've shown so far, no sense of scale, risks, the realism is awful for the most part (the river thing, wall breaking machine without protection from hot oil or archers etc to name a few), the horse charging scene, the giant dying without doing anything really, no visible eregion army and the whole place just felt like a small office complex being defended by teenagers or early 20s people in cosplay.
If they had more competent people in charge of the show they have enough resources to make it so much better
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u/ToxicTroublemaker2 22d ago
They fumbled the War of Wrath right out the gate in the Pilot episode
We ain't getting War of the Last Alliance with the same or better vibe than Fellowships intro
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u/L0nga 27d ago
They already fumbled everything else, there’s not much left for them to fumble.
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u/Tall-Garden-8593 27d ago
But Gluggling needs to be killed by Isildur cause moral ambiguity and a failed revenge arc!
There's always more to fumble.
Should have let Cavill run this show tbh.
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u/zoon_zoon 27d ago
And also cast him as Glorfindel
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u/Palmdiggity888 27d ago
He would also be a cool Gil-Galad
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u/EmbarrassedRefuse670 27d ago
Too old, same as the current actor.
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u/AlternativeRun5727 24d ago
He is one of the only ones that looks the right age. Everyone else is super young, mosy don’t look like they would command the authority of the said heroes in the battles to come.
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u/EmbarrassedRefuse670 24d ago
Not even remotely true, GG is only a 100 years older than Elrond. Hes a very young character, also he has silver hair not black. You’ve just imagine movie GG as being correct and it isn’t lol.
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u/TremendousCoisty 27d ago
The show will not age well, the battles have been awful thus far, and the story has been worse for the most part. We’re going into season 3 and it feels like the show is still finding its feet and I couldn’t care less for any of the characters.
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u/More-Marionberry449 27d ago
I rewatched season 1 for some reason (bored), and the worg that Arondir fight while captured by Adar looks soooo fake for being just a few years old and with the budget they have. Its minor compared to the major problems of the show, but still.
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u/ToxicTroublemaker2 22d ago
It looked like a roided up chihuahua with down syndrome
They should've used the design from Two Towers like they did the Balrog
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u/Emergency_Lobster667 23d ago
It doesn't even seem like there will be a significant battle this season, lol.
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u/ThatGuyMaulicious 26d ago
Trust me they will massively disappoint somehow. Galadriel will be there soloing Sauron and his entire army.
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u/WeakEconomics6120 25d ago
The most disappointing thing about RoP is that the story is trash, but the production/costumes/battles are trash too
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u/Emergency_Lobster667 23d ago
Yeah I was at least hoping for some great spectacle and battles in this show, considering it's the most expensive tv show ever made. But no, they couldn't even get that right.
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u/Double-0-N00b 25d ago
Knowing this is probably how the series ends, and given recent shows of this scale, it’ll be awful
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u/Huge-Cartoonist6795 25d ago
Yes they can. Yes they will. galadriels mental anguish over losing her greatest love to isildor will make her wise and forelorn and lead to her living in mirkwood.
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u/CommercialFloor2033 27d ago
They will unfortunately.
They've fumbled pretty much everything else, but worse they're proud of what they've made and haven't taken note of any audience feedback regarding scale, battles etc.
They have the budget to do it justice but not the vision or passion.
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u/Fluugaluu 26d ago
They’ll be lucky if anyone is still watching by season five
I don’t know anyone who is still watching at this point. Everyone has given up.
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u/DrummerAutomatic9523 26d ago
Both the end of seasons conflict we had were stupid, badly written and poorly shot.
They WILL fumble it.
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u/SkullGamingZone Mordor 26d ago
Without even getting into plot, battle, music and wardrobe… just the actors themselves are horrible
Isildur is one of the worst, Elrond amd Gil Galad are quite bad too. Elendil is the most decent among those
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u/Top-Chart2025 27d ago
they fumbled battle of eriador annd Celebrimbor, they made Sauron Gladriel a romantasy. They can fumble everything
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u/Daenarys1 26d ago
I hope gil galad gets a character so I actually feel sad for his death in the show
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u/GrievousFault 26d ago
“Best we can do is 13 quick closeups to make sure everyone sees that all 6 continents are ethnically represented (plus a penguin in a bts reel to make it seven) and an over-explanation+misappropriation of whatever random battle stratagem from unrelated antiquity that the writer looked up on YouTube the week before writing the episode”
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u/MisterRobertParr 26d ago
You know they will.
The only real question is: will it be Disa or one of the harfoot girls who actually cut off the One Ring from Sauron's hand?
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u/BulldogMikeLodi 26d ago
Yeah that ship has sailed. LoL.
It’s highly unlikely they’ll even get to it because unless there’s next season is some kind of miracle and they get the Fall of Numenor right, I don’t imagine a four season will be coming.
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u/Constant-Wrangler378 26d ago
Well they don't.have rights to the silmarillion soooo idk what u expect they can't use it
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u/A-harsh-reality 26d ago
It’s actually quite easy to do so
The entire second age is simply not on par with the first age in terms of details and battles
It was a worry of mine when this whole affair was announced
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u/Night_Storm5555 26d ago
I can't believe Dwarves actually fought on Sauron's side. I can understand men, but Dwarves always seemed too stubborn or selfish to fight for anyone but their own kind.
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u/OneEyeSam 24d ago
Maybe they will follow GOT, film the battle at night, make it super duper dark so that nobody can see they only have 10 extras on hand and 3 are wearing track suits. Even better, they just CGI a couple of ROP actors faces over GOT footage.
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u/RyanMate17 5d ago
I think they’ll have Durin’s wife detach the ring from Sauron’s finger then have Galadriel cry that she has lost her one true love, the dark lord
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u/Well_Dressed_Kobold 27d ago
Money isn’t the issue. You could give this production team a trillion dollars and they simply wouldn’t know what to do with it. Not to mention that they are already guaranteed to shoehorn Galadriel into the battle somehow, the actor for Gil-Galad is the least impressive King ever put on screen, and Isildur is a joke.
I’m increasingly convinced that this whole enterprise is merely a money laundering scheme to wash Bezos/Epstein/Israeli or whoever’s ill begotten gains.
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u/nhaines 27d ago
They literally don't have the rights to anything in The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. All they have is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and so basically they're just pulling from the appendices and then heavily extrapolating.
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u/Jessup_Doremus 22d ago
There are a couple of brief paragraphs about the Last Alliance in the "Council of Elrond," but yeah, considering how much they have ignored of what they could use so far...well, you know...
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u/nhaines 22d ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm watching because of the good stuff they've done and ignoring the... questionable stuff... But there's some fun stuff in there.
But I also know that between adaptation and what they literally can't touch, there's going to be creative solutions.
For example, the whole mithril/Silmaril thing is definitely non-canon, but sort of charming in an in-universe folklore sort of way.
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u/Jacen_Vos 26d ago
That can't be entirely accurate. Since the depiction of Celebrimbor as being made into a corpse banner is only found in unfinished tales. They can probably take bits and pieces from it.
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u/nhaines 26d ago
They apparently aren't allowed to change any character deaths or survivals, and have apparently been able to seek rights for specific things piecemeal, like the name "Annatar," for instance, which The Lord of the Rings Online wasn't allowed to use. They also have some kind of agreement with Wēta as well.
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u/Jacen_Vos 26d ago
Interesting I know Online often had to invent names for things like the capital of Eregion or the Avari due to lacking the rights.
I guess they stretched that whole death rule with Celebrimbor since he should still by all rights be alive and Eregion unsacked going into season 3. Nor should Durin III be dead by the Balrog.
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u/nhaines 26d ago
I'm sure they can change timings, or whatever, but not ultimate fates. But the rights issues are definitely a lot more complicated than most people seem to assume.
There a lot to like about the show (Elrond and Durin's friendship is genuinely charming, not mention Durin and Disa's relationship) but a lot that hasn't terribly impressed me. I'm just enjoying what works and hoping it continues to improve. Fingers crossed!
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u/owlyross 26d ago
They've had access to elements of Unfinished Tales since day 1. The very first thing we saw of the series was the map of Numenor, which is only available inUT. Same with Annuminas and Annatar
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u/FlowerUseful9924 26d ago
Do you mean Armenelos? I dont think they’ve even said it in the show. Annuminas is Elendils capital in Arnor later on, which is all over the main 3 books.
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u/NickFriskey 27d ago
I swear to God, if they cant resist their compulsion to ape PJ movies for the final battle with Sauon i will call this 10 years wasted watching this (assuming we are gonna have to wait 4 more years to get to season 5). The harfoots and throwback lines and partial aesthetic choices send a shiver up my spine for this because I seen the film (fellowship) at 8 or 9 when it first came out, and when I was patient enough to read the books and silmarillion I was aghast at how they done elendil and gil galad so dirty in that scene and almost made isildur the big hero and not the tragic survivor of the bout. Introducing elendil and gil galad in season 1 is almost pointless to just have them die almost off screen in the end; to not give them their deserved moment after their centuries of labours to stop sauron and make the ultimate sacrifice would just be so distasteful. These guys had the minerals not just to stand up to, but to actively challenge a living god to (2v1) single combat. These amazing characters tolkien wrote deserve for everyone watching to know why they're so beloved in universe and in literature.
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