I stopped watching after they butchered a snow troll for no reason.
According to the books, a gentle creature, that gets easily scared. The right way to calm it down involves tickling.
But Galadriel chopped up every single part of its body. Twirling around unnecessarily while doing so, after having shot it up with 6 arrow. For this reason I have elected to cancel my prime membership.
The case of gentle snow-trolls susceptible to tickling existing in Tolkien's universe made me quite curious. The following turned up after a brief research session:
> Snow-trolls are mentioned only once in Tolkien's works, in reference to Helm Hammerhand stalking his enemies "like a snow-troll" during his sorties against the Dunlendings in the Long Winter. The trolls who lived in the Coldfells in western Eriador may have been similar to these. [1]
And the actual passage, from The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl":
> Helm [Hammerhand] held the fortress during the Long Winter. He blew his great war-horn, and broke through the Dunlending ranks, clad in white, stalking men like a snow-troll slaying them with his bare hands. However, his sons Haleth and Háma were slain and Helm grew gaunt because of grief and famine; still his horn would fill the Dunlendings with fear each time it was heard. During one of his night sorties Helm died, possibly from famine and cold; his body was discovered frozen in the snow still standing. [2]
I would say the "stalking" and the subsequent "slaying" similitudes rule out the gentle qualities of the snow-troll.
For the record I haven't watched RoP yet; something feels wrong about this interpretation of Tolkien's work and I think I'll save myself the disappointment.
For those who aren’t aware this is either satire or confusion on the OP’s part. There are no “gentle snow trolls” in the source material.
And there was nothing unnecessary about the fight scene. It’s unrealistic in the way that Legolas is unrealistic in Peter Jackson’s movies, but no worse.
Americans should, I think, not be allowed to write fantasy because none of them know fairy tales well enough, and worse, none of them are capable of dry humor. I assume if I watch this Rings of Power show it'll turn out to be written by Joss Whedon and everyone will constantly be quipping at each other and looking at the camera like on The Office.
I'll watch it if the writers room turns out to be staffed by weird old British Catholics though.
If we are talking individual jokes sure. He is the closest of the three and keeps the dead face unlike Nick Offerman who’s brow is integral to the comedy.
However he regularly expresses emotions through gestures and subtle body language, so yes it’s close but not there over a full routine.
There were two seasons of the British version of the Office, and a Christmas special.
I don't think you should take the longevity of each as a mark of popularity or quality. The British version wasn't cancelled - Gervais and Marchant ended it deliberately with a proper conclusion. I don't think anyone doubts more
British series would have been commissioned if they'd wanted to carry on.
When Gervais was asked if he likes the American version his response was "Yes of course. It's made me very rich." That's his dry sense of humor, but I suspect it also hints at why they stopped doing the UK version and started on the US version instead.
And it has been said multiple times by people working on the American version that besides the inital setup, Gervais and Merchant had very little if any input and everything was done by the American wtiters/show runners.
Isn't that exactly what you would expect from one of the oldest elves, clad in some of the finest armor created by the ancient elf smiths? Tolkien's elves are superhuman entities, magical and supernaturally agile, strong, tireless and so on.
They are not elite fighters in the sense of, say, just being a Navy SEAL.
If you're looking at Rings of Power and expecting a being such as Galadriel to break a sweat fighting something like a troll, you have a strange set of expectations.
Notice that there were no dead elves at the end of that scene, just some mad elves that refused to follow their leader any more. They got kicked around by the troll, but afterwards they were ok. Elves are tough.
No, I would expect risk and effort minimization through perfection of strategy and technique. When 1 v 1 combat looks more dangerous than a farmer killing a goat it breaks my suspension of disbelief.
>I would expect risk and effort minimization through perfection of strategy and technique
I don't think that's consistent with the fights in the books.
I mean Fingolfin physically fought a 40+ foot tall Morgoth in the Silmarillion. He was jumping around between huge pits that Morgoth's mace made when Morgoth tried to hit him. Fingolfin had a sword, while Morgoth held a mace that was bigger than Fingolfin, and yet Fingolfin was able to survive being beaten to the ground by said mace.
I don't think there's anyway to depict fights on screen like that without looking a bit silly.
If you start trying to realistically depict what it would look like to fight giant humanoids, you'd end up with something that is probably very interesting to people like you and myself, but that the majority of people would find boring. Plus that's not how the source material approached combat scenes.
Amazingly she didn’t even run out of breath while running over swords of her compadres.
Do elves posses superhuman stamina as in they can sprint a marathon and some such?
>He [Legolas] was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.
Yes. Legolas is shown in The Lord of the Rings to be capable of stalking his foes day and night, and he only has to stop because Gimli and Aragorn can't keep up.
In general, the elves, especially the older ones like Galadriel, are shown to possess super-human characteristics in all physical feats, including agility, stamina and strength (though the Men of the First Age apparently were stronger though less agile).
According to the books, a gentle creature, that gets easily scared. The right way to calm it down involves tickling.
But Galadriel chopped up every single part of its body. Twirling around unnecessarily while doing so, after having shot it up with 6 arrow. For this reason I have elected to cancel my prime membership.