A Historian's Take on a "Flat" RoP - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Formendacil · 12-16-2022, 05:28 PM

Bret Devereux, a military historian with interests that have intersected with Middle-earth before (there's a thread on this forum SOMEWHERE about his several-post analysis of the Battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor, in which he basically says the movies don't make complete military sense, but that Tolkien usually does), posted a long form analysis today on his blog that I think hits on what parts of The Rings of Power really didn't work:

The Blog Post

Basically, Devereux's issues with RoP isn't that RoP deviates from Tolkien--it's that it deviates from what we know of human societies and by doing this, RoP is really not presenting the same kind of "real world" society, which Tolkien generally (not perfectly) does a deliberate job of doing--and does well, for the most part.

I think a lot of the problems I had--the sorts of things that got tossed in my Watch-and-React posts--are in this blog, and it feels nice to be validated. His overall argument, that RoP's Middle-earth feels flat (i.e. rather than fully realised) might be the best way of articulating what I think the show is, even if I think I enjoyed it a bit more than he did.

12-16-2022, 05:28 PM	#1
Formendacil Dead Serious Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Perched on Thangorodrim's towers. Posts: 3,309	A Historian's Take on a "Flat" RoP Bret Devereux, a military historian with interests that have intersected with Middle-earth before (there's a thread on this forum SOMEWHERE about his several-post analysis of the Battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor, in which he basically says the movies don't make complete military sense, but that Tolkien usually does), posted a long form analysis today on his blog that I think hits on what parts of The Rings of Power really didn't work: The Blog Post Basically, Devereux's issues with RoP isn't that RoP deviates from Tolkien--it's that it deviates from what we know of human societies and by doing this, RoP is really not presenting the same kind of "real world" society, which Tolkien generally (not perfectly) does a deliberate job of doing--and does well, for the most part. I think a lot of the problems I had--the sorts of things that got tossed in my Watch-and-React posts--are in this blog, and it feels nice to be validated. His overall argument, that RoP's Middle-earth feels flat (i.e. rather than fully realised) might be the best way of articulating what I think the show is, even if I think I enjoyed it a bit more than he did. __________________ I prefer history, true or feigned.