• aleph@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      The project is named The Hunt for Gollum, which implies it will be in the Third Age, between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

      In the books, Gandalf mentioned that he and Aragorn tracked Gollum for quite some time during this period, so presumably it will feature these characters as well.

      • aleph@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        But do it properly this time. No wizards or halflings in the Second Age, thank you very much.

        • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlM
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          6 months ago

          I was ok with the wizard, just don’t make it Gandalf for nostalgia, stick to the blue wizards as that’s actually canon and interesting and expansive to the lore.

          I’m pretty sure the rings of power writers thought they could easily get away with combining the blue wizards with Gandalf, but I think it’s just too confusing for regular fans and too wrong for nerds.

          A new wizard though, one mentioned by Gandalf in films? That can work!

          • aleph@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Yeah, same. The blue wizards would have been doable from a lore perspective, and would have been ripe for exploration seeing as they have so little known about them. But no, the RoP writers had to have their Gandalf + Hobbit to fill their nostalgia quota, of course.

            The “always follow your nose” ‘reveal’ was the final nail in the RoP coffin for me.

            • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlM
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              6 months ago

              When they had the “always follow your nose” “reveal” , that was the final nail in the RoP coffin for me.

              Oh yea. I loudly groaned when it happened. My partner watching with me isn’t as much of a LoTR nerd as I do I had to explain it to them I was so loud.

              I’m actually still hoping that it was a bit of a fun tease and even a way to test the waters with the fan base on whether they should make it Gandalf. It’d be perfectly fine and even a little fun if it’s a “nice” wizard thing to say and think given that bodies and smells might be entirely new to maiar.

              • aleph@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                Yeah, the potential is there for another audience fakeout, but I think it’s highly unlikely. Their target demographic is a mass audience who enjoyed the Jackson movies but aren’t hardcore fans of the books. To these fans, as you said, a blue wizard would be too much of a head-scratcher.

          • aleph@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Nope. Canonically, the blue wizards arrived around the same time as their more famous brothers, early in the Third Age.

              • aleph@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                That’s true, however that was more or less a footnote and not something that featured in the published works. Hence why I said ‘canonically’, as in ‘going by the books’.

                I think it would have been fine for the RoP writers to have The Stranger be a blue wizard on this basis, though.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlM
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        6 months ago

        That’s kinda what I’d heard as a rumour elsewhere, that this is in part being pushed by Amazon doing the rings of power.

        Who owns what rights though?

        If Warner Bros own rights to the Silmarillion, then this gets interesting and they’ve got my attention.

        Sure the hobbit was money grabbing trash, but the Silmarillion is fantasy in the end (so yay) and not something easily stretched out into garbage as it poses the opposite challenge like LotR. Could work out.