A simpleton question (I be forgiven…)

GreenHillFox

GreenHillFox

Bree
Whereas I feel confident about knowing TH, LotR, UT and supporting publications thereof, I read TS only twice (and some time ago).

Now – that is just me, of course: my preference would be to read once again those parts of TS which are at the direct basis of the RoP matter, before I start watching RoP.

Is any informed advice available? Or should I just wait until the first episodes are out and this will become known better?
 
Amazon only has the rights to The Lord of the Rings. The Rings of Power are mainly based on the appendices at the end of The Return of the King.
 
What Amazon actually purchased were rights to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Ring and the appendices. They don't have rights for The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales or anything else.

The showrunners do seem to have limited permission to make some references to those other sources. In the case of The Silmarillion that would primarily consist of AKALLABETH and OF THE RINGS OF POWER AND THE THIRD AGE. There also seems to be a handful of references to portions of Quenta Silmarillion (such as "Of Beren and Lúthien").
 
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What Amazon actually purchased were rights to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Ring and the appendices. They don't have rights for The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales or anything else.
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The should have gone for the volume discount.
 
As far as learning, which are at the direct basis of the RoP matter, reading the Silmarillion will only get a few stray bits here and there. Mostly whatever they will include in a flashback or prologue as a background for the series, and even then there's no guarantee they will follow what the Silmarillion say. Especially if they do time compression.

You might read through some of the LotR:s appendices again. That'll probably get you about as much as reading the Simarillion does, only now for the show proper rather than flashbacks.
 
is like reading the bible, format-wise. A blend of historical anthology from various peoples (flight of the Noldor story, Fall of Gondolin etc), individual stories (Beren and Luthien, Children of Hurin), cautionary tales (Akallabeth), and prehistorical narrative (Ainulindale, the great migration of elves from Cuvienen to the West, the story of how the dwarves came to be), all split up into multiple, distinct "books" within a single tome.

Ie if one can read the Christian bible, one can easily read the Silmarillion, because they're structured/compiled very similarly within the overall book. Just as the bible has 66 distinct books, and bible stories within them, some historical anthology (Chronicles, 1/2 Kings), some individual stories (Ruth, Esther, and one can include the Gospels here as well), cautionary tales (Job, Proverbs), prehistorical narrative (Genesis), and doctrinal treatises (Paul letters- I'd say parts that weren't published in the Sil, but could fall under this particular analogy, would be LACE, and Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth).

I'm not saying that both share all sub-categories, but the STRUCTURE (multiple books, each different in style, compiled into one volume) is incredibly similar in both.

So, allegorically speaking, reading The Silmarillion will be a lot easier for someone who is familiar with the Christian bible, in terms of overall editorial format. The editorial format/structure is VERY similar.


I would also advise familiarizing oneself with the family trees first, especially the F-names, because there are a lot of them! That can help with the confusion, and keep everyone straight in one's mind [:)]
 
And I'm not entirely opposed to the changes or the weirder additions, taking this project in the spirit of being (as I said to someone else) a "goofy alternate history" of the Second Age. But very little that I saw at the cinema this evening (I couldn't get out of work on time to see the first half of the first episode) has much support in The Lord of the Rings, in my opinion. Some lovely visuals, though. I certainly look forward to your comments on it, probably more so than I do any further episodes of the series itself.
 
with the Bible, the Sil never "felt" that way to me, although structurally, I can really see that. I guess I'm such an "atmospheric" person, that's what strikes me the most about stuff I read.[:)]
 
I'm not saying the Sil is an allegory, though the creation story definitely sparks that thought.

My convoluted post was probably not very clear, but my point was that, format-wise, the Sil is very similar to how the bible is structured, so those who can read that structure will probably have an easier time reading the Sil than someone who isn't.
 
Like someone who is not very familiar with the source material and can judge RoP solely on its merits as a production. That’s what I'm going to try to do, to the extent that I am able.

I love Tolkien’s tales of the First and Third Ages but the Second Age has always been of less interest to me and I'm less invested in it. I have read the Akallabeth and so on a number of times over the decades but not nearly as often or as recently as the LotR and Quenta Silmarillion etc. So while I remember the main points, I'm not as familiar with the details of the story of Numenor. When first I saw Jackson's LotR and Hobbit, I knew the books well enough that I was easily aware of every addition and deviation whether I approved, disapproved or was neutral. But for RoP, I have chosen not to do a reread. So I come to the series as something as close to a non-reader as I can get.

It should be an interesting experience.
 
That's actually a great question, but no easy answer!

I myself prefer to watch something as removed as I can get myself from the book(s). Otherwise I spend the entire viewing grumbling about things that aren't EXACTLY like they were in the book. If it's been a while since I've read the source material, with any luck I've forgotten -- or at least relegated to a dusty corner of my brain -- those grumbly details and I can sit back and just enjoy the show.
 
Ro! Great to see you here!

Heh, I thought this Board would be overwhelmed as soon as the first episodes ended, guess everyone needed some sleep first! [laugh]
 
a little bit of the excitement of the good ol' days when each new movie premiered.

I had to drop in to help me figure out what I think of these episodes! Mostly I'm thinking it's way past my bedtime (sympathies to those who need sleep first!), and that I need to watch them again. With popcorn. I'll be back.

Nice to see you too, dernwyn, and great to be here...like coming home. :-)
 
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