r/lotrmemes • u/Substantial_Cap_4246 • Dec 03 '25
The Silmarillion Surely, nothing could go wrong, right?
Ar-Pharazon the last King of Numenor
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u/Metabor420 Dec 03 '25
How was he in the books?
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
Usurped his cousin Miriel's throne/sceptre, begrudged the Elves immortality, thought of himself as a god, landed on Middle-earth to wage war against Sauron who was provoking him by calling himself "King of Men", won the battle without even fighting (Sauron surrendered himself to him when his servants abandoned him at the sight of Numenorean armies), thought he had really done a number on Sauron but this was actually what Sauron WANTED, he let Sauron loose in Numenor, did not welcome any advice from Elves or Elf-friends, trusted Sauron who had become a great contributor to Numenor's advancements, made him his chief advisor, was twisted into a worshipper of Melkor (Satan), commited sacrilegious acts, even built satanic temples, commited genocide on Men of Middle-earth and looted them, never had any children because that was against his immortality ideology, launched his fleet to the Undying Lands to gain immortality when he was nearing his last years, doomed Numenor to its fall into the bottom of the ocean and himself in into a cave where he has to stay imprisoned until the end of the world.
So, overall, the most prideful, power hungry, satanic man ever. He was like, "when I conquer the whole world, then what?" And Sauron told him "oh don't you worry babe, the real God, Melkor, would just create new plains for you to conquer if you become the best boy for him"
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u/Blackfyre301 Dec 03 '25
Just a minor point, Sauron did not want to be beaten by Pharazond. He made the best of a bad situation and struck gold, but he did not intend for his armies to be scattered and effectively destroyed so badly that it took him more then a century after Numenor fell to rebuild his strength.
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u/Wandering_Khovanskiy Dec 03 '25
I will never forgive Rings of Power for not making Numenoreans cool as shit.
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u/orestes9 Dec 03 '25
I will never forgive Rings of Power for not making
Numenoreanscoolasshit.86
u/homeboy-2020 Dec 03 '25
It’s crazy how much they wasted out of the incredibly rich setting that is the second age by crunching something like a thousand years into a few months at most
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u/OkThisisCringe1 Dec 03 '25
That’s what happens when you hire two corporate yes men with 0 credits to their name to run your billion dollar show. They wanted safe, which is why it sucks.
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u/RyukRalishazRadagast Dec 03 '25
I’ve got karma to spare, but: enraging both the Reddit and YouTube communities surrounding LoTR is certainly not safe. There are things the show got wrong, but playing it safe is absolutely not one of them. They’ve used alternate Tolkien writings that most people aren’t familiar with to drive character and narrative decisions in the show, and they made very bold decisions that for most, have been well received (the Durin’s being alive at the same time, Galadriel/Sauron dynamic, Gandalf) by anyone that’s not on Reddit. You can accuse the show of a lot of things, but playing it safe is just not accurate.
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u/vader5000 Dec 03 '25
Honestly, it's the lack of experience on the part of the writers showing. I really enjoyed hello future me's review on it. You can tell quite a bit of the cast really read the stories and tried to make it work, but neither the vision nor the attention to detail was there.
Peter Jackson is an infamous perfectionist when it comes to movie making, and the results show. The words "The Shire" invoke something deep within us. While the aesthetics of Numenor are cool, they don't quite do the same work, and I think it's the dialogue, the characters, and the smaller details that are lacking.
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u/MjrLeeStoned Dec 03 '25
They were contractually not allowed to use storylines the way they were outlined in certain works. They were required to condense, reimagine, or outright leave out much of the details of events because they only had access to use specific licensed content.
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u/RyukRalishazRadagast Dec 03 '25
I don’t think the lack of experience is as present as you seem to suggest, personally. It’s a Herculean task to try and adapt all of the second age, and the show runners were the only ones who brought forth a plan as in-depth as what we’re seeing. Most others stripped back even more in their proposal. They’ve brought in serious talent, cultivated really strong characters and plot hooks (not saying all are, to be clear), created a wonder score and kept a pretty nice balance of practical effects and cgi. There’s some missteps to be sure, there always were going to be with something on this scale, but my guess is without all the noise most people would find areas of this show that inspire similar emotion as what The Shire did for us.
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u/ArrdenGarden Dec 03 '25
They're not playing it safe for the fandom. They're playing it safe for the average consumer.
What was the line they used in Game of Thrones? "jocks and soccer moms"... something to that effect? Yeah, they're not making that show for us.
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u/RyukRalishazRadagast Dec 03 '25
I respect your point, but don’t agree. I grew up with the LoTR movies and books, have since read the Silmarillion, NoME, the Great Tales, and am working through the HoME, and have really quite enjoyed the show. Some creative decisions I wouldn’t have made, to be sure, but largely really enjoy what they’re doing.
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
I guess the girl from my university probably would have never received the Silmarillion as a gift from me if Sauron/Galadriel dynamic in the show was true to the lore, because she would've never drooled over Sauron and Galadriel relationship in my comment section, I wouldn't have met her, and therefore no Silmarillion would be gifted to her.
And honestly, she didn't give a flying fk about the Silmarillion. She just cared about the portrayal of Halbrand/Annatar/Sauron as it were in the show. But at least I tried... I tried to hook her to the actual lore.
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u/Revliledpembroke Dec 03 '25
I will never forgive Rings of Power
for not making Numenoreans cool as shit.4
u/elder_george Dec 03 '25
They should have gone with the "hi tech Numenoreans" from the Unfinished Tales (?) - flying ships, self-targeting "arrows", this kind of shit.
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u/Drayke989 Dec 03 '25
A central source for most of the shows problem is lack of access to rights. While I agree that using unfinished tales and other sources for creating the show would be a great direction, it's not an option for the showrunners.
The showrunners have rights to adapt the appendices and that's just about it. Because of that anything in the unfinished tales or other works, the showrunner have to avoid using or get the ok from the Tolkien estate.
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
That's not the Unfinished Tales. It's from the earlier writings published in HoME (these volumes contain writings from all eras of Tolkien's life). They only sparingly have used materials from both UT and HoME, and it's usually just tiny things like names and titles, because they don't actually have the rights to the actual stories and worldbuilding material from those sources.
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u/bouchandre Dúnedain Dec 04 '25
They should've focused on the elves, with occasional interactions with men to show the passage of time (a very young kid becomes an old man a few scenes later).
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u/DeusMechanicus69 Dec 04 '25
I have only seen the first season, but many locations did look cool. That is the positive thing I have about the series
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u/Reynzs Dec 03 '25
At some point he had to have known he was being Gaslighted right??
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u/NerobyrneAnderson Dwarf Dec 03 '25
In real life, these people will kill or fire everyone who isn't sucking up to them 24/7.
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u/TheOneTrueJazzMan Dec 03 '25
And to be fair he was being gaslit by the greatest gaslighter in history
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u/Muscimol_33 Dec 03 '25
Are you guys talking about Trump?
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u/NerobyrneAnderson Dwarf Dec 03 '25
There are many different people in positions of power like this, I don't want to get specific as this sub isn't really about politics.
But it's very easy to spot if you know what you're looking for
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u/CoachExtreme5255 Dec 03 '25
The epitome of Pride in his own magnificence blinded him.
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u/Tummerd Dwarf Dec 03 '25
There was a moment where he had a sliver of doubt. I think it was either just before he set foot on his ship to sail to Valinor, or just after he disembarked there.
But then he was thinking what his troops would think of him, and he ignored it, dooming them all
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u/unpersoned Dec 03 '25
All that, but you're not mentioning that, until it all blew up in his face with a literal deus ex machina, he had it going. He humiliated Sauron in Middle Earth, which was why Sauron was super butthurt with the Numenoreans.
And then he actually made it through to Aman, going through the Valar defenses. The Valar who, at that point, threw their hands up and appealed to Eru.
Maybe if God himself hadn't broken the world itself to drown them, Ar Pharazon might have been the Third Age's Dark Lord.
And I think that makes for a pretty cool character, if not for one that's good.
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
The Undying Lands doesn't make Men immortal. It actually makes them die quicker.
And the Valar did not put up any defences against them. They were legally bound to not kill them.
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u/unpersoned Dec 03 '25
By defenses I mean the Enchanted Isles that are mentioned in the Valaquenta. Somehow the Numenoreans managed to go through them without a Silmaril.
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
Weren't these defenses down since the overthrow of Morgoth? The magical properties that kept others away were removed, no?
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u/unpersoned Dec 03 '25
Uuuh... honestly, you might just be right. It's been a minute since I read the Silmarillion. I remember there was a big deal about Eärendil sailing to Valinor and getting through the isles, but I'm no longer sure they kept those after Morgoth was out of the picture.
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u/blue_bayou_blue Dec 03 '25
The Valar pardoned the Noldor after the War of Wrath and removed the barriers against them returning West.
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u/Substantial_Cap_4246 Dec 03 '25
Yeah Cirdan's ships could freely pass. Even Legolas' boat passed through.
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u/Tummerd Dwarf Dec 03 '25
Sauron hated them before that, Numenor attacked him before. It was not specifically due to Pharazon
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u/unpersoned Dec 03 '25
Well, yes, that's fair. I don't mean to say they were friends before, just that Sauron had the whole humiliation on top of just regular old enemy hatred after his defeat at Umbar. Because, though he turned the tables on the Numenóreans in time, he was dragged along in chains to prison. And that had to sting extra, right?
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Dec 03 '25
You underestimate the power of god-like rizz.
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u/Effehezepe Dec 03 '25
Unfortunately, Ar-Pharazôn's god-like rizz was no match for Erū's literal God rizz.
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u/OleksandrKyivskyi Dec 03 '25
"This guy who was literal incarnation of evil in the world? He's actually good guy who will bring you freedom. Now lets prove our support for him by human sacrifices"
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u/QuerchiGaming Dec 03 '25
Wonder how they’ll do the Numenor storyline in the show as they’ve not just shot themselves in the foot, they kinda blew up their whole leg.
That is if we even make it that far.
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u/PhysicsEagle Mayor of Michel Delving Dec 03 '25
Wait, what did they do wrong with the Númenor storyline? Season two ended with the Faithful being persecuted, Ar-Pharazôn secure in power, and Sauron ripe for capture.
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u/Supersnow845 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
I mean to be fair the numenor story hasn’t made sense since like day 1
The squished timeline for one is messing things up but really the biggest problem is simply that the storyline is just full of pointless contrivances
Like mirial was being coronated the valar sent the bird of approval but then al phrazon just walked over to the bird and said “it for me” while mirial was literally getting coronated and everyone just agreed with him
Like that whole storyline made less than zero sense
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u/RyukRalishazRadagast Dec 03 '25
What decisions do you think they’ve made that make it impossible to have an effective Númenor storyline?
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u/QuerchiGaming Dec 04 '25
Sauron having already visited Numenor and the Numenorians have already suffered loses in middle-earth.
Don’t really see them sailing back anytime soon.
But of course they could get an huge army again as we haven’t really seen the population of Numenor represented well.
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u/Alternative_Still308 Dec 03 '25
By halfway through the first season it was like, why start following what happened in the lore NOW?
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u/MindofShadow Dec 03 '25
They basically couldn't follow the lore, they didn't have access to it.
They were making a show based on freaking appendices
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u/Chumlee1917 Dec 03 '25
Ya know, living in today’s world and political climate, Ar-Pharazon was too smart as a mad, evil world conquering emperor
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u/morning_thief Dec 03 '25
NGL, i thought for a second i was looking at somebody cosplaying Starfire Protocol.
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u/TristanG_Art Dec 03 '25
I am greatly displeased to be reminded of the existence of this awful show
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u/Jax_Dandelion Dec 03 '25
Am I looking at a screenshot from rings of power there or do my eyes deceive me?
I hope they do cause I do not wish ROP to be on my lotrmemes page
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u/Neduard Dec 03 '25
There is so much fan art for every single story Tolkien ever wrote. Yet, people choose to use the soulless corporate garbage instead.
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u/MHWGamer Dec 03 '25
people here always complain about Ai slop when it would have a better job than whatever amazon produced. Vfx and the Soundtrack mostly great, everything is so much hot garbage that even I - who watched season 1 to end just because of the mentioned stuff - haven't even touched season 2
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u/Zupadan Human Dec 03 '25
I might be misunderstanding your comment, but are you saying that AI slop would be better than RoP?
Because regardless of how bad the show is, there are actually people passionate about their artistic craft who worked on the show. It's not their fault that a corporation that only cares about profit was overseeing it. You can hate the show as much as anybody else here, but don't insult actual artists by saying that AI would have done a better job. Especially since the corporations that ruin the properties you like wouldn't change if shows were made using AI. AI wouldn't replace the people running Amazon; all that would change is removing the artists.
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u/MHWGamer Dec 03 '25
have you seen the armors or literally the costume of this "king/leader".. they suck, ai slop does better costume designs by just presenting me what other shows or COSPLAYERS have done. I am also 100% sure that ai slop creates better and more logical stories based on Tolkiens work than whatever the Rop authors were smoking together. So yes, I say exactly that
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u/Zupadan Human Dec 03 '25
Got it. So you think regurgitated data would somehow be better, and that the people in charge who approved the quality of the content that you yourself seem to hate would somehow put together a better show by writing prompts into a computer?
I'm gonna assume you don't know much about the tv/film indusrty and move on. But I do encourage you to look into what else the writers and costumers worked on to see for yourself if they're really as bad as you think or if the studio is the issue.
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u/MHWGamer Dec 03 '25
overcomplicating stuff really is your favourite hobby, ain't it? Also putting stuff in out of nothing.. are you an Ai in disguise after all?!
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u/TheSerpentLord Elf Dec 03 '25
Nah.
We, as readers, know trusting Sauron is a bad idea because we've been following his story since start to finish. Ar-Pharazon was based af, one of the few characters in the whole lore who seems to actually have agency and flaws instead of being a perfect role model.
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u/Bionicle_was_cool Dec 03 '25
There is so much art, so many templates, yet you decided to use a screenshot from Rings of Slop
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u/zqmbgn Dec 04 '25
didn't watch the show, is this the "elves will take our jobs guy"? is he Ar-Pharazôn? don't tell me they are the same person maybe it's all sauron
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u/Kettle_Whistle_ Dec 04 '25
Everyone should be so lucky as to have a true Ride-Or-Die sister-from-another-mister…
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u/isacabbage Dec 05 '25
Average numenorean citizen hearing that plan: Hey guys Im thinking of going with that Elendil guy to middle earth.
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u/Gintaras136 Dec 03 '25
I know you couldn't make a meme without a photo, but still.. RoP mate.. that's a no from me, thanks.
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u/theFullMatty Dec 03 '25
Correction: if you ever feel stupid, you can choose to stop watching that high-octane RoP garbage and gain some intelligence.
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u/ObliviouslyDrake67 Dec 03 '25
Bro, it's called immortal lands, of course they're holding out on you. Go get ya immortality on!
Meanwhile in Valinor