The Rings of Power - Pt 1: "The Shadow of the Past" and Pt 2: "Udun" — Page 2

Hello Vranir, I enjoyed your workprint could I please get links to parts 1 and 2 of your new epic double-bill!

Hello there,

Just made my way through Stiepan90’s edit of season 1. He reduced it to about it 6 hours, which seemed to be quite a lot but it worked. Would love to check out your 3 hour 45 minute edit.

KR,

Mathijs

since it’s been a few months, I was wondering if anyone has any feedback (especially on Pt 2).

Vranir, I’ve just watched ‘Shadows Of The Past’, the Season 1 edit of Rings Of Power and wanted to say thank you for transforming a rather clunky, overlong and divisive TV show into a single coherent movie that feels like it can stand alongside the Peter Jackson films.

To use a cliche, you’ve accentuated the positive and eliminated the negative to make a really entertaining 3.5 hours of Middle-earth goodness. The trigger to watching it was the announcement that the series is getting a physical bluray/4K release, and seeing all the negative comments on social media about how awful it was. This fanedit will be my default watch going forward, and I wish that it could have a wider release as I suspect many people would be swayed to think more highly of ROP seeing this cut.

I like that the whole first act of your edit is devoted to Galadriel’s and Nori’s storylines. It certainly centres the movie around those two principal characters rather than the kitchen sink ensemble approach of the show. A lot of material is cut to achieve the 3.5hr running time but to your credit it never feels choppy or incoherent. Even the elements that depart from the plot, such as Lenny Henry’s Saddoc not being present in the fight with the three mystic women are resolved elegantly (spoiler: Saddoc lives!).

On the negative there are a few little micro glitches during transitions, and your decision to eliminate gore (whilst totally valid as a personal choice) does reduce the impact of the infected cow scene and some of the fight sequences.

Bear McCreary and Howard Shore’s excellent music gets to shine in this edit. I like that you didn’t use the TV show intro sequence, but we do still get to enjoy the main musical theme as an ‘intermission’ around the halfway point. The use of ‘This Wandering Day’ for the end credits is also genius, as the Peter Jackson films all used lyrical tracks in this capacity.

I’m looking forward to checking out Part 2!

Excellent feedback! Thank you.

I look forward to your take on “Udun.” It’s got a pretty strong theme of loss throughout, which ties it together in ways that I think were less evident in the source material.

I’m certainly going to revisit my whole film set once season 3 is out. I’m hoping for a cohesive trilogy, plus enough material for most of a 4th film.

Vranir, I’ve just watched Part 2, Udun. I probably should have read your notes before watching it as I wrongly presumed this was ‘Season 2’ the movie cut, but it’s more like half of Season 2. It does feel like less was cut from the TV show for this Part 2 edit, and that’s understandable as it was generally a stronger season.

So Udun doesn’t feature the Dwarves storyline nor any of the Halbrand + Celebrimbor. It was an enjoyable edit, but due to the plotlines you did follow it feels rather smaller and more intimate than your Part One movie. The big showstopper sequence of the siege of Eregion has been saved for the next film - I kind of want to see that one now!

Great job, I certainly enjoyed it more than the TV show and I thought in particular the Rhun and Numenor plotlines were better served the way you presented them with less interruption and cutaways. It felt like it had a proper emotional ending with Gandalf finding out who he is and saying goodbye to Nori (and then that final ‘tease’ of Halbrand showing up on Celebrimbors gate).

Thanks again for the feedback, Matt F.

Yes, I have most of the third movie ready because of where I chose to break the story, but I need at least one other storyline to jump between. I’m really hoping that we get a good emotionally-resolved chunk of the Gandalf vs the Dark Wizard plotline in season 3, because I think that would be an ideal way to wrap up this trilogy and to provide victory alongside the fall of Eregion.

Yes, it will be interesting to see where they go with the Gandalf Vs Dark Wizard plotline now that Nori and the Harfoots are no longer involved (in truth the actress playing Nori looked visibly older in Season 2, and would probably have looked fully adult by season 3!).

It seemed Tom Bombadil’s part with Gandalf was also concluded so I wonder if Gandalf will be alone or if they’ll bring in some new sidekick or foil for him to interact with. Ian McKellen was awesome but the chap they’ve found to play Gandalf is also rather good, and Ciaran Hinds hasn’t been give much to do yet but he’s always solid.

In any regard, I look forward to seeing what you come up with in your Part 3 edit!

Looking forward to Part 3 as well!