Varking's report on meeting the showrunners

[Eldy]

Varking shared this link in the TORn Discord server this morning. It's the most detailed account I've read of the recent Amazon/influencer confab in England. An excerpt:

The story they want to tell in season one is about the “why”. Why does everyone get fooled? Why did the rings get pitched? Why was the deception and seduction so effective?

They want to tell a story where "when **** happens, it matters, because you as a viewer understand why it happened."

They have 22 “main characters” in season one. They felt like they found 22 needles in 22 haystacks. This was the first time I felt like there were PR speak going on. And to be fair, they may truly have felt like this is the case but to a simple dwarf like me it felt sort of like a bullet point they wanted to hit. And I could be misreading that but I can only tell you how I felt.

They said “if it does not sound like Tolkien, it's not in our story”.

“Its not about us having an idea and then slapping LotR on top of it”.

“We didn’t want the show to be political. When you watch it years from now you shouldn’t be able to pinpoint when it was filmed.”

Some of the main themes of the show are “fear of death and a desire to live forever”.

“You’ll learn how everyone views the world fundamentally different.”

The show is about “different varieties of good”.

“Even our villain is the hero of his own story”.

“We have everything we need to do the story justice.” They have heard the chatter about how they don’t have enough rights to do a good job with the story.

“If the words didn’t appear somewhere written by Tolkien, then they aren’t in our script”. This will make me use The Digital Tolkien Project’s resources to check this myself once the show is live. If you haven't seen or used this amazing site to look up where words were used you can find it here: https://search.digitaltolkien.com/

A bunch more at the link, but this was the part that was most interesting to me. I'm intensely skeptical of the idea that the script only contains words written by Tolkien, based on what we know of the rights situation and of the presence of original characters. (I'm not opposed to OCs, but like, c'mon.) But what do I know?

I am very curious, and I'll admit excited, to see what answers the show offers as to why people were fooled by Sauron and why the Rings were made. I feel compelled to point out that, according to Unfinished Tales at least, most people outside the Mírdain were not fooled, but the showrunners ("McPayne"; I love it []) presumably have to stick to what we're told in LOTR, which is a bit different. The idea of the Three Rings being a solo project of Celebrimbor's, for example, is not as clear as in UT.[1]

Their comment about death and the desire for deathlessness being major themes mirrors Tolkien's own statement about LOTR in Letter 203. This is encouraging to see.

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[1] Elrond says that "Celebrimbor was aware of [Sauron], and hid the Three which he had made"; but Gandalf claims "the Smiths of Eregion" as a group heard Sauron speak the words of the One Ring's inscription when he first put it on (FOTR, II 2). Based on UT, Galadriel and Celeborn, Celebrimbor still held all Three Rings himself at that point.

 

[InTheChair]

They said “if it does not sound like Tolkien, it's not in our story”.

“We didn’t want the show to be political. When you watch it years from now you shouldn’t be able to pinpoint when it was filmed.”

If the words didn’t appear somewhere written by Tolkien, then they aren’t in our script

The first two are positive if they turn out to be accurate



The below is also somewhat encouraging.

Some of the main themes of the show are “fear of death and a desire to live forever

 

[Junesong]

Everything I read from there make me sound even more excited. Who knows if they'll deliver on the promises or if its all just cynical PR. I never choose cynicism if I can help it. Optimism is more fun and disappointment is a small price to pay for a good attitude.

I can't wait for September! (Except for the fact that I'm a teacher and so... it's bittersweet)

 

[Ataahua]

Some of the main themes of the show are “fear of death and a desire to live forever

Sounds rather degenerate-kings-of-Numenor, doesn't it?

 

[Wainrider]

How can hobbits, who weren't written into the second age by Tolkien, only speak what Tolkien wrote?

 

[DGHCaretaker]

How can hobbits, who weren't written into the second age by Tolkien, only speak what Tolkien wrote?

JD & Patrick whisper to each other: "Crossing Wainrider off the guest list..."

 

[Felagund]

Very reminiscent of Tolkien's own words, notably:

"But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness." [Letter 203]

[Context: part of an answer to a correspondent's question about alleged allegory in LotR]

 

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

How can Galadriel speak Treebeard's words? Or Treebeard, Tom Bombadil's? We've seen plenty of examples of Tolkien's words being used in radically different contexts. Of course, it that statement is true (and I don't believe it is), this would be taking it to a whole other level. There is no way that they would be able to successfully create a five year long TV show about the second age using only Tolkien's dialogue without it being incredibly awkward.

In short, I don't really trust this report.

 

[Wainrider]

You're right, it's ridiculous to even consider, they are lying.

 

[squire]

This struck me also as being almost impossible to take literally. As we know, Tolkien wrote almost no detailed narratives of the Second Age. The events that the Tale of Years appendix in LotR and several annalistic summaries describe in general terms do not have nearly enough material to support what is commonly called an 'adaptation' of a written work of fiction to the film medium.

What then could this mean:
“If the words didn’t appear somewhere written by Tolkien, then they aren’t in our script”.

To be generous, this is how I interpret the showrunners' statement here:
"If Tolkien didn't write down some event, or hint of an event, somewhere in his works, then we did not expand upon it in our script. In short, we haven't invented any new subplots or episodes that aren't at least hinted about or inferrable from Tolkien's writing."

Not very satisfactory, but there it is, as far as I can tell.

 

[DGHCaretaker]

To be generous, this is how I interpret the showrunners' statement here:
"If Tolkien didn't write down some event, or hint of an event, somewhere in his works, then we did not expand upon it in our script. In short, we haven't invented any new subplots or episodes that aren't at least hinted about or inferrable from Tolkien's writing."

That would more fit reports of the rights purchase as quoted from the Vanity Fair article:

There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay says. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with.

 

[InTheChair]

How can hobbits, who weren't written into the second age by Tolkien, only speak what Tolkien wrote?

I took it to mean that the lines were written by Tolkien somewhere but pehaps for different characters or context.

I think for instance that the lines spoken in teaser, 'There has to be something more out there, beyond our wanderings. I can feel it' sounds a bit like something Sam might have said somewhere in the LotR:s

Though even with that kind of reshuffling, I find it hard to bellieve that with at least some 10+ invented characters, they would be able to completely tell their own story without breaking that statement. Are they going to re-sample Arwen and Aragorn for Bronwyn and Ardondir for instance? And they don't have the rights to other works that might have helped them like Finrod and Andreth.

So yeah, that's probably not a statement to believe in, or at least not one to take literally

 

[uncle Iorlas]

I wondered if they meant individual words, or turns of phrase; that is to say, that they meant to assure us they wouldn't carelessly use anachronistic Americanisms that Tolkien would never have written, that kind of thing.

I suppose I thought of that because my first thought was that they meant whole sentences of dialogue must all be from the professor's pen, which as you say just isn't feasible in the Second Age.

 

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

It is simply misreported by the person making the report.

 

[squire]

Thanks for that idea: that they are referring to vocabulary and usages. I would guess you are right about that, more so than I was with my explanation about plots and episodes (which didn't seem very sustainable, given their known invention of many new characters).

Not that a good imitation of Tolkien's style justifies calling the series 'Lord of the Rings', and selling it with a heavy reliance on the Prof's name, more than a bad imitation would. I've never doubted this production's commitment to high-quality fan fiction.

 

[InTheChair]

They may have been replys to questions, which when reported like this outside the original context, seem to suggest something the showrunners never intended.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

This struck me also as being almost impossible to take literally. As we know, Tolkien wrote almost no detailed narratives of the Second Age. The events that the Tale of Years appendix in LotR and several annalistic summaries describe in general terms do not have nearly enough material to support what is commonly called an 'adaptation' of a written work of fiction to the film medium.

What then could this mean:
“If the words didn’t appear somewhere written by Tolkien, then they aren’t in our script”.

To be generous, this is how I interpret the showrunners' statement here:
"If Tolkien didn't write down some event, or hint of an event, somewhere in his works, then we did not expand upon it in our script. In short, we haven't invented any new subplots or episodes that aren't at least hinted about or inferrable from Tolkien's writing."

Not very satisfactory, but there it is, as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure how to square that with the addition of a romance between a previously unknown son of Pharazon with a previously unknown daughter of Elendil. Especially when we know that Pharazon should be fated to wed his cousin Miriel upon the death of her father. How is that kosher?

 

[Eldy]

Varking was asked about this in the Reddit thread, and he speculated that it meant the writers would only use words that appear in the Tolkien corpus, but rearranged into their own sentences. (Apparently no one asked the showrunners to clarify.) That idea is comedically absurd in my mind—not that they would limit their word choices, but that they'd describe it in such a way—but it's also one of the few plausible explanations besides "they lied" or "their comment was reported inaccurately."

Also, is Pharazôn having a son really one of the rumors/leaks? Oh boy. []

 

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

Does not mean that it (or anything like it) actually was said.

It seems odd to me that every other person who attended this event has said that they can't give specifics about what was said. Has Varking explained why he alone was able to do so.There are some other things about the report that make me doubt it's accuracy. But time will tell.

 

[Eldy]

But time will tell.

I have not followed the news and leaks for ROP nearly as closely as I did with the Hobbit trilogy, though even if I had, I imagine Amazon's level of secrecy would make it hard to judge the reliability of any particular source. Once we can compare the rumors to the actual first season, we should have a better sense of who, and what sites, are most reliable during the wait for future seasons.