S2 E8 - deliberate deconstruction of heros? Isildur the alduterer

Haerangil said:
I really am puzzled and quite a bit confused. I mean this is not Dungeons and Dragons nor is it Marvel... it does feel like Star Trek Discovery, they also share writers. Fallout or Dune worked pretty fine with me as adaptions, even maybe Foundation, though on a different level, that was a similarly VERY loose and free adaption itself. But so is Bladerunner and that works perfectly fine with me.
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Imho the problem is the internal motivations of characters are not coherent, every character acts only insofar as to bring the plot to its next point, nobody pursuit any goals in any sensible way, people profess one thing, then immediately act contradictory to what they have professed, then in the next scene suddenly do something which aligns neither with what they have professed or done before... They know things they have not right to know, then they forget suddenly what had or should have known, just to suddenly know new things out of nowhere. Everybody is constantly self-sabotaging oneself and his/her professed goals. This is all very frustrating to watch. And then the flat character arcs which go nowhere...
 
yes i felt similar.The characters do not react to much inner consistency but according to a plot i fail to relate to. So many situations where i thought "why is that?".
 
i honestly feel the show lacks a relatable POV character. In the Hobbit and LOTR Tolkien decided to use Hobbits who are close to 19th century gentlemen That is still a bit old fashioned but far closer still to us than archaic heroes like Galadriel.

When Tolkien tried to tell 2nd Age stories... there is a reason why he decided for mortal men like Tar-Elmar, Agaldor or the Notion Club guys or the father&son duo Elfwin and Elwin. It was to create accessable windows for his readers to a world that otherwisely feels strangely archaic, esoteric and aloft. We're not meant to understand or relate to a Galadriel or Elrond... they're as strange to Frodo as to us.
 
Haerangil said:
i honestly feel the show lacks a relatable POV character. In the Hobbit and LOTR Tolkien decided to use Hobbits who are close to 19th century gentlemen That is still a bit old fashioned but far closer still to us than archaic heroes like Galadriel.
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Or e.g. such a Halbrand. He is depicted as far too modern a character to pass off even as a believable Southlander, not to mention to later transition credibly into an ages-old archaic ancient demonic evil... and this modernisation lessens him cosiderably and makes him far less interesting. He blunders around control-less, which makes the stakes of the whole endevour far less impactfull than in the original. Same with Isildur. Each of the character is reduced by their modernisation, made insignificant and basically pointless. As such any stakes in the story appear so much reduced that they are barely even there. Add to it that each character behaves constantly in an incoherent and basically stupid way, and many viewers simply stop caring who ultimately wins or not. By having a "normal POV", the other characters would have been free to keep their original grandeur, which would kept them and their larger-than-life struggles interesting to watch. We would be able to watch a cosmic stuggle instead of mere petty squabbles.
 
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Haerangil said:
I liked Halbrand, that may be a problem.He starts as a strider knock-off...
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Too advanced in philosophy and psychology from his very few first words to be a believable Southlander... or we would need a capital city with some stone buildings which could have passed as a library in the Southlands... and there was nothing of the kind.
But also as Sauron; neither a specific interest in philosophy nor empathy is to be expected from a being like Sauron. Spotting other beings' weaknesses to exploit them, sure, analyzing others just for the sake of it - not really credible.

Forcing a in his/her nature unrelatable character into a "relatable" framework can easily destroy the inner workings of said character, if not very careful.
 
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