Totally agree. It’s the viciousness of the naysayers I really don’t get???

But many more Tolkien fans in the organized book fandom were generally optimistic after that first teaser trailer showed the Fellowship - every single member including Bill the Pony instantly recognizable - coming over the hill crest. It might actually be good, we thought. But here? There was not a single image in this trailer of things that a Tolkien fan might expect to see in a story of the Second Age. No forging nor giving of Rings; no open Doors of Durin; no Sauron in chains before the ageing Ar-Pharazon; no nine ships escaping the wreck of Númenor. Instead, a lot of travelogue footage that leave the fans of a certain disposition to speculate uselessly. "It's ice! It _might_ be the Helcaraxë!" But really, it could be from any post-Tolkien fantasy novel of the last forty years. Then we read the very patronizing Vanity Fair quote about how the millennia of the Second Age have been telescoped to only a relatively few years (badly undermining the slow decline of Númenor and the theme of the blasphemous desire for bodily immortality that fuels its fall, and the corruption of the bearers of the Nine): "Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things." This is not an encouraging attitude towards the fans nor the integrity of the work. They may say they love Tolkien's work; but I have seen little evidence of it so far. From the opening image of perhaps Númenor, we can see that they love Peter Jackson's work, but not Tolkien. And with virtually nothing known about the actual story nor the original characters, we cannot even tell if it will be good television even if it is not good representation of Tolkien.

If there’s a lego game I’ll preorder it. I never preorder video games.

And some proper second age lists to go with it!

We’re of the same ilk John ;)

So you like it and will watch it many times over even though you’ve not seen it? Sounds to me like you’re no Tolkien fan but a beta male ready to sell out your principles on the altar of woke virtue.

I just hope GW doesn’t decide to double their prices when this comes out! I get that there are material costs and so forth but holy heck! The difference in prices from country to country also sucks.

I get what your saying. But I remember a lot of fuss about the movies having a different “feel” to the books, and people were calling pj the anti christ lol, soon enough, pjs middle earth is the bench mark. Who knows how well feel after it’s released, but I am hopeful, maybe a fools hope ;)

@@TopTableGaming we're also six months out from release. That's plenty of time for them to put the final polish on the presentation. If you look at the early trailer for Fellowship and compare to the finished movie, you can see it there too.

This! I also got a Naria feel from the teaser and less of a LOTR feel. However, I will wait and see the next trailers and am excited for the series. I don't mind if the series is less timeless as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Thanks Stu!

Have you seen it?

How do you know snorre? No one has seen it yet? They parted ways with one Tolkien expert of which they hired many, because he broke nda rules.

@@TopTableGaming I don't think it is particularly necessary to have seen the show at this stage to know it's going to be a stark departure from the source material. Comments like "have you seen it" display, to put it kindly, a naive lack of critical thinking. Edit: It may be a good show - interesting, entertaining and with a great production quality - but I think it's safe to say canonically there will be events and characters misrepresented.

Sorry i read the books and big changes is more obvious to me. I Rly dont Need to see the show to know at this level

If you showed people this a year ago and told them it was Alice in wonderland 3 most would’ve bought that

Pretty much on the same page as you Dave. I’ve have nothing but positive feelings about this and hoping it follows through with the hype

I’m super excited by what I’ve seen so far, am fully aware not everyone feels the same, but am quietly confident for sure. Gw license makes complete sense right?

@@TopTableGaming It makes snese that they would want it, but the issue is does it make financial sense for them to buy it? Its an additional cost on top of the current license so it would have to bring them additional revenue of more than those new costs whilst also simultaneously makign sure the current line of models are still profitable and that all those customers just don't move to the new products 'forgetting 'the old range. Then you add in one more dimension that is if they don't buy it then someone else will and then they are going to face competition which will drop their sales. Basically unless they have a great plan that can make it really profitable or are happy to take minimal earnings/or a loss then I would say its isn't a great situation this puts GW in tbh

Dude, you’ve literally in one 8 word comment, done the exact thing I asked you not to do. If the race of the actor is the thing that offends you, that’s a YOU problem and you need to have a long look in the mirror. That comment goes against everything the story of of good vs evil preaches.

@@TopTableGaming pretty sure black Elves are not cannon. This was almost certainly done to appease modern day SJWs. It shows their heart is in the wrong place.

@@JulianY2K12 do you not entertain either of these two of many facts? - the text was written in a time when our world was very very white, this isn’t an opinion. It’s fact, so that text will have been influenced my that and we live in a very different world now - the actors black or otherwise are playing a part of a make believe character. Elves and dwarves and orcs aren’t real so why why would the actors colour come into it? A lot of these arguments fall back to skin colour and it’s actually sad to see in this day and age. I’ve seen a lot of people online preaching what THEY believe Tolkien would have wanted, no one knows, no one making these comments knew him personally, it’s madness, the world has changed for the better in the last 100 years, so a show based on a text 100 years old will obviously have changes, it’s not hard to work out. Arwen never took Frodo to Rivendell but we all are happy with that, one of many things that at the time people mined about.

​@@TopTableGaming Middle earth is based on northern european mythology (not southern european or slavic culture). Modern day europe being more diverse than it was when tolkien wrote the story does not have any effect on the older myths and legends. It's like saying the cast of 47 ronin should be diverse because modern day japan has a higher concentration of non-japanese citizens than it did back when the story first emerged.

@@TopTableGaming you have some good points but there seems to be a pattern of established IPs getting tarnished by modern day politics. I can only imagine the black actors were hired out of tokenism (since an all white cast would be considered inherently racist, somehow) rather than any creative reasons.

Wow dude. Lol In all seriousness the second age needs embellishment so it’s fully expected.

@@TopTableGaming your correct there, they need to add new characters but they don’t need to add ones which don’t make canonical sense or don’t fit in the time period. And they definitely don’t need to change already amazing characters into something they aren’t and which Tolkien never internet them to be. If you change so much than it’s lotr/Tolkien in name only because you have lost all of the rich values and universe which Tolkien created

Did he not get captured and tortured by Sauron and the werewolves were his demise i the end?

​@@TopTableGaming yes but not captured from battle, it was him, beren and a few companions that were captured on their quest to capture a silmaril.

@@scatterthewinds3126 some details will obviously change though right to help the flow of the story and the condensed timeline, pj done this also. and I’m her to see any adaptation of a book where this is not done to help the visual start telling of the story.