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Helcaraxe
The Shire
Apr 10 2022, 10:33pm
Post #1 of 23
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The man in the meteor
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What are your thoughts on this guy? Istari?
"Don't Touch Me!!" - Thomas Covenent
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Narvi
Lorien
Apr 11 2022, 2:18pm
Post #2 of 23
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Though not quite "fair" in form, admittedly 
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Apr 11 2022, 3:20pm
Post #3 of 23
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Frankly, this sounds like s stupid contrivance to me that doesn't truly fit any of Tolkien's characters. But if you were twisting my arm, I'd have to guess Sauron. Anyone else (Istari, Glorfinel, etc.) would be even more absurd.
#FidelityToTolkien
#ChallengeExpectations
Year of the Tiger
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Apr 11 2022, 3:23pm)
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Chen G.
Gondor
Apr 11 2022, 4:14pm
Post #4 of 23
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I worry tremendously that its Gandalf
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Daniel Weyman could pass for a Gandalf, and the whole thing about him emerging from the fire, being rescued by two plucky young Hobbits... you can kinda see what they're going for: "See, millennia from this, Gandalf sees something of those girls in Frodo and Bilbo and that's why he takes a shine to them. Ewww..."
And with the very inclusion of Hobbits (and giving Halbrand Rohirrim-like armour, and seemingly making Elrond and Durin IV frenemies in the style of Legolas and Gimli), Amazon had shown that they're very willing - indeed, determined - to play the nostalgia card. So much so that the showrunners couldn't find a more eloquent way to explain the presence of Hobbits other than "well, it won't be Middle Earth without Hobbits, now shut up!"
Well, if its not Middle Earth without Hobbits, it sure isn't Middle Earth without Gandalf: he's THE iconic character of this franchise by a country mile. So, if they went as far as to include Hobbits and even a "wide-eyed-youth-wondering-what's-outside-the-cave" Hobbit, why stop at Gandalf? In a trend we know so well from media in recent years, Markella's Elanor and Megan's "May" would be the fem-Frodo and fem-Sam to Daniel Weyman's Gandalf!
The main argument against it being Gandalf is that its too obvious: even the teaser's closing shot strongly resembles a shot of Galadriel taking Gandalf's hand. Surely, this "stranger" is intended to be a mystery, right? What I would say to that is that its like the Necromancer in that it will inevitably be obvious to us fans, but it will be a mystery to casual fans and new audiences.
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Narvi
Lorien
Apr 11 2022, 4:57pm
Post #5 of 23
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the Gandalf-semblance seems intentional
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On the basis of visual motifs I am in agreement, and I think it is deliberate. But...I still think it is deliberate misdirection. The plan seems to be to make us slightly more comfortable with this unknown character so as to establish expectations for a Gandalf-like role before dashing this in a classic combined recognition/reversal act wherein Sauron remembers his identity and allegiance. I...hope this is handled more subtly than I envision it here.
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Apr 11 2022, 5:31pm
Post #6 of 23
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I couldn't put it any better myself.
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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Junesong
Rohan
Apr 11 2022, 5:49pm
Post #7 of 23
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However - I think it's a great idea. I think the determination for nostalgia as you put it is actually a smart marketing decision. I think it's less cynical than you're presenting it, however.
I think the Gandalf addition is a part of the condensed timeline they've mentioned.
Instead of the Istari arriving at the beginning of the Third Age and Cirdan giving his ring to Gandalf etc, I think the Istari will arrive in the Second Age and in time for Gandalf to be an original ring-bearer.
Makes sense, simplifies Tolkien's details for a Television medium and brings back the "main character" who - as you say - remains THE biggest IP branding that Middle Earth has to offer.
It'll rankle some fan feathers but most of us will shrug it off if the story is strong.
As a huge Tolkien fan it would have been one of my first suggestions if I had the chance to be a part of a project like this. I'll be shocked if it's not Gandalf.
(I think those people calling out Misdirection are right - but I think it'll be a fake misdirection. I think there will be lots of hints that it could be Sauron - as Gandalf is also a Maia, and also works with fire, so I think they'll keep us guessing for a while. But when the dust settles, my money is on Gandalf.)
"So which story do you prefer?"
"The one with the tiger. That's the better story."
"Thank you. And so it goes with God."
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Felagund
Rohan
Apr 11 2022, 6:47pm
Post #8 of 23
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Not that I even remotely want the 'Meteor Man' to be Gandalf but if you're fears are well-founded, I wonder if we've been shown a scene that doesn't appear until right at the end of the series, giving a relatively brief peak at the Istar in question? Gandalf + 'Hobbits Everywhere, Everywhen Please' fans get to cheer, and the writers don't have to spend much time figuring out what to do with a second Maia in Middle-earth, whilst Sauron is arguably at the height of his powers. Misdirection but only in the sense that the character doesn't have much of an impact on the main events, which will have come and gone by that time?
I appreciate that Tolkien himself contemplated a revised, Second Age chronology for the Blue Wizards but didn't get any further, that we know of, than an undeniably tantalising sketch of what they might have got up too. Not that Amazon has the rights in this regard, as far as we know!
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
Apr 11 2022, 7:45pm
Post #9 of 23
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I'm up in the air whether the nods to LOTR, most notably the inclusion of "Proto-Hobbits," stem from a cynical assumption (possibly but not necessarily studio-driven) that audiences need to be hit over the head with familiar elements, or if the showrunners genuinely believe their line about it not feeling like Middle-earth without Hobbits. Frankly, I hope it's the former. If certain elements are thrown in as a safety valve against the unfamiliarity of the Second Age, that leaves open the possibility that the rest of the show will be substantially different from what audiences have previously seen of Middle-earth onscreen. If the showrunners are completely sincere, though, that suggests the worrying possibility that they've made similarity with LOTR a touchstone for the show as a whole, and the distinctive elements that make the Second Age a valuable component of the legendarium in its own right, not merely fodder for backstory, will be sanded down or wholly jettisoned.
In simpler terms: if we take Patrick McKay's rhetorical question "does it feel like Middle-earth if you don’t have hobbits or something like hobbits in it?" at face value, that means he doesn't think the source material he's adapting "feels like Middle-earth." That's not someone I want making a Tolkien adaptation, so I fervently hope it was just a dumb line said for the sake of marketing.
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Junesong
Rohan
Apr 11 2022, 7:53pm
Post #10 of 23
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This is a legitimate concern. Let's hope they know what they're doing.
"So which story do you prefer?"
"The one with the tiger. That's the better story."
"Thank you. And so it goes with God."
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InTheChair
Rohan
Apr 11 2022, 8:21pm
Post #11 of 23
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Is my current guess.
Gives them both the familiarity of wizards and hobbits in Middle earth and also allows them to go their own way.
Still undecided on who he'll turn out to be? Sauron maybe, though I wonder*. Witch-king perhaps, since Adar is an Elf. Possibly a Blue Wizard turning bad.
* (Could be that they have Adar as the main villain of Season 1, while Sauron has a more low key role as meteor man?)
(This post was edited by InTheChair on Apr 11 2022, 8:24pm)
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uncle Iorlas
Rohan
Apr 11 2022, 8:25pm
Post #12 of 23
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don't mean a thing if it ain't wielding Sting
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The idea that it won't be Middle-Earth without hobbits certainly predates the showrunners. Coming from producers for sure whether or not the showrunners thought the same.
I have no insights about Meteor Man, my thoughts rotate among those expressed in this thread, except that I hadn't had Felagund's good thought that maybe he only falls to earth late in the day.
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
Apr 11 2022, 8:42pm
Post #13 of 23
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I remember when it was a punch line that a Silmarillion film adaptation (this was before Game of Thrones, so we weren't speculating about TV series yet) would have hobbits shoehorned in by clueless executives. Little did we know... 
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squire
Half-elven
Apr 11 2022, 9:07pm
Post #14 of 23
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It was Tolkien's idea, originally
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We know that he felt that The Silmarillion was going to disappoint his TH/LotR audience, when he was trying to edit it into publishable shape in the 1950s and 60s, because it lacked the down-to-earth-sensibility of the hobbits to contrast with the 'heigh style' (as he put it) of the great tales and legends.
Christopher Tolkien notes at one point in his History of Middle-earth commentaries that his father semi-seriously considered making the Druedain the hobbit-substitutes in the "Tale of the Children of Hurin". Sador, the wise but lame old retainer who teaches young Turin some wisdom, would become Sadog, the wise old Drug, etc. etc.
The idea, some of whose remnants we can read in the 'Druedain' section of Unfinished Tales, was abandoned early, and in the end The Silmarillion went into print more or less as Tolkien had always written it: plenty of heigh style, and very little humor or down-to-earth characters for the modern audience to relate to and identify with.
The thing the Prof never contemplated was actually retrofitting the hobbits into The Silmarillion. He knew they'd be missed -- and he knew in his heart they didn't belong. His readers were just going to have to deal with the fact that not every story in Middle-earth was really like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
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DeadRabbits
Rohan
Apr 12 2022, 9:39am
Post #15 of 23
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Probably a wizard, but not Gandalf
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In an interview with Vanity Fair, showrunner Patrick McKay is asked if the meteor man might be Gandalf, Saruman or Radagast. This is his response:
Well, I would say those are not the only beings, those names, in that class. So maybe, but maybe not. And the mystery and the journey of it is all of the fun, I would say.
This seem to imply that he in fact is an Istari, but not one of the three aforementioned. He might be one of the blue wizards (whose names Amazon can't use - unless some special deal is made with Tolkien Estate). Most likely, he's an original character, introduced to mirror the relationship between Gandalf and Bilbo/Frodo.
It is of course also possible that by "class" McKay means Maiar and not Istari, which opens up a lot of other possibilities.
Now now Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of miss nancies, so warriors is what I brought
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Eledhwen
Forum Admin
Apr 12 2022, 3:10pm
Post #16 of 23
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I would prefer it to be Gandalf than an invented Istar as Tolkien's quite clear on the number of Istari there were. If it's another Maia it could feasibly be Sauron landing in Númenor or something, although the hobbits don't fit there.
Ah well, I guess we'll find out in due course!
(This post was edited by Eledhwen on Apr 12 2022, 3:10pm)
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Apr 12 2022, 3:59pm
Post #17 of 23
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If it is Sauron (which I believe it is likely)
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I would assume it would be when he reemerged in Middle-earth after Morgoth's defeat at the end of the First Age, not Numenor.
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Apr 12 2022, 4:52pm
Post #18 of 23
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Well, if Amazon were trying to be as faithful as possible
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such extraordinary changes should be based on extraordinary reasons.
IF Sauron, the mechanism of his fleeing was not specific:
"After the War of Wrath, with the downfall of Morgoth and the destruction of Thangorodrim, Sauron adopted a fair form and repented his evil deeds in fear of the wrath of the Valar. Eönwë then ordered Sauron to return to Valinor in order to receive the judgement of Manwë. Sauron was not willing to suffer such humiliation and so he fled and hid himself in Middle-earth.[5]"
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Sauron#The_Black_Years
This scene may be a reference to the 1st age....rights?
As of the 2nd age Sauron was already present in Middle-Earth.
IF some wizard, they would have come by ship as Cirdan witnessed their arrival.
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Junesong
Rohan
Apr 12 2022, 8:28pm
Post #19 of 23
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That is quite the caveat.
I'm sure Fran, Phillipa and Peter would all say that they were "as faithful as possible" while adapting Rings - but we all know they made unnecessary changes all the time and occasionally for the worse. I'm sure their definition of "possible" would have included all their assumptions about "what makes a good story" and "what the audience wants/expects" and "what the studio will allow/pay for" etc. There are many times during Jackson's commentary where I take serious umbrage over some of those reasons and definitions. I'd love to sit around a table with the three of them and have a real conversation about some of their choices - what fan wouldn't?
So I'd go so far as to say the phrase "as faithful as possible" is meaningless.
We don't know what they're trying to accomplish. But it would be wise to think of the source material as both a constraint and an inspiration. Adaptation is a trade off. You take the cool stuff, the interesting details, the amazing imaginative elements of the professor and you mix them with ideas of your own in order to build the scaffold for a NEW story - one that hopefully hits all the main beats we're anticipating (and hits them correctly - without egregious change) while also entertaining us, moving us and awing us! If what they're cooking up works on the fans then its a pretty safe bet it will work on the general public as well.
But I don't think they'll feel too constrained by the source material - especially as there's so much space this time. So little is written in stone. There's so little canonical Tolkien writing on the 2nd Age, afterall. The showrunners have an enormous amount of freedom to tell their own story around these "EVENT PILLARS".
I just hope they'll be faithful to Tolkien's spirit or vibe (if you will) rather than hoping for fidelity to his actual story.
Especially since in this case there's barely a story to adapt.
"So which story do you prefer?"
"The one with the tiger. That's the better story."
"Thank you. And so it goes with God."
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Archestratie
Rohan
Apr 13 2022, 7:06pm
Post #20 of 23
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What are your thoughts on this guy? Istari?
I think it's Sauron. He's a prominent figure in this time period, maybe the most prominent. But he's no where to be seen in the promotional material. Why? I'm left to conclude that we've seen Sauron and just don't know it yet.
My Low-Magic Fantasy Novel on eBook/hardback: The Huntsman and the She-Wolf
The Huntsman and the She-Wolf on audio Book.
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AshNazg
Gondor
Apr 24 2022, 5:44am
Post #21 of 23
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Is the meteor linked to Anguirel and Anglachel?
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I’m reading Children of Húrin at the moment, and the description of Anguirel and Anglachel, two black swords forged from a meteor, seem to fit the description of the broken sword we’ve seen in images.
The sword seems to be tied to this Theo character and his mother, which is interesting because in the book Anguirel has a similar story, when Maeglin and his mother steal the sword from Eol and flee Nan Elmoth to go to Gondolin.
Obviously the show won’t have rights to this story, so I wonder if they will pay homage to it with new characters and simply refer to the sword as an heirloom of the past with a mysterious history, while avoiding its name.
If that’s the case I think this sword is more likely Anglachel (since Turin broke that sword at the end of his tale) but has been given a new story inspired by Anguirel, with men in place of elves, and probably Numenor in place of Gondolin.
I imagine this sort of re-working of stories will happen a lot in this series.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Apr 24 2022, 2:34pm
Post #22 of 23
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I’m reading Children of Húrin at the moment, and the description of Anguirel and Anglachel, two black swords forged from a meteor, seem to fit the description of the broken sword we’ve seen in images.
The sword seems to be tied to this Theo character and his mother, which is interesting because in the book Anguirel has a similar story, when Maeglin and his mother steal the sword from Eol and flee Nan Elmoth to go to Gondolin.
Obviously the show won’t have rights to this story, so I wonder if they will pay homage to it with new characters and simply refer to the sword as an heirloom of the past with a mysterious history, while avoiding its name.
If that’s the case I think this sword is more likely Anglachel (since Turin broke that sword at the end of his tale) but has been given a new story inspired by Anguirel, with men in place of elves, and probably Numenor in place of Gondolin.
I imagine this sort of re-working of stories will happen a lot in this series.
I'd have to guess that there is no connection to the Man in the Meteor as the pair of swords had to have been forged long before the Second Age. The broken sword that we see with Theo could possibly be Gurthang; it does look partially melted and so could have been used to slay the dragon Glaurung.
#FidelityToTolkien
#ChallengeExpectations
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Annael
Immortal
May 5 2022, 3:32pm
Post #23 of 23
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we went over and over this issue with the first films
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Everyone has their own ideas of how things "should" look, but no one agrees on it - our internal visions are highly individual. Sadly none of us can afford to bring those visions to the screen, so we're dependent on the big-money studios to do it. I had problems with many of Jackson's decisions with LOTR, but decided eventually that he was telling the story from a different point of view which skewed things in a different direction - if you've seen "Rashoman" you know how differently the same story can be told - and so I could accept it. (Yes, "The Hobbit" went over the line for me; ;I think Jackson had fallen prey by then to the Lucas-Spielberg Syndrome of being so in love with his own ideas he didn't hire a good writer or editor to rein him in.) But still, what I took away from all those arguments was that everyone has a different idea of what "faithful to the books" is. We even started saying "NARF" because so many people were accusing each other of being "not a real fan" just because they didn't agree on what "faithful" entailed . . . "real fans" being code for "people who agree with ME."
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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