The Orc Problem (in Rings of Power and generally)

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Пікірлер: 502

@mikeMakhno 3 ай бұрын

The fact that orcs reproduced sexually does not necessarily mean that they had loving families or even pair bonded.

@allthings2allmen 3 ай бұрын

Nasty orc orgies? Sorry, that's a mental image no one needed.

@TunekSunevi 3 ай бұрын

How can you take care of a child if you don't care for it? Orcs children and babies must be as weak as humans ones.

@Scolecite 3 ай бұрын

Oh, who showed them how to grow up to be adult Orcs?

@alexg3434 3 ай бұрын

@@Scolecite That's the point.

@Arcessitor 3 ай бұрын

@@Scolecite Everyone around them, which is how they all got to be violent.

@peterwolfe67 3 ай бұрын

Great video. You nailed what I think the problem most Tolkien fans have with the show: the show runners are making choices (lore-breaking or not) which have consequences that they do not understand, and they have neither the interest nor the skill to handle them properly. In the films, Arwen rescues Frodo instead of Glorfindel, which breaks canon. But I doubt anyone really cares that much because it doesn’t cause any problems and makes sense to avoid introducing a whole new (badass) character. But introducing Gandalf in the second age certainly does. Ignoring the fact that his stupid mystery box was a mystery to no one and that his whole two-season arc has been about finding a stick and mishearing a name, his presence in the second age is a real problem. What is he going to do? Anyone who has watched even one episode of the show knows the answer: he will be a wandering hobo carrying a #10 can of deus ex machina. If you think Sauron and the rings just acquire whatever powers are necessary for the scene, you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s lazy, frustrating and completely unnecessary. Same with not-Saruman. The story of the blue wizards could be the entire show and, if done right, could be amazing. But the show runners lack the imagination and talent to even attempt it. So they gave us a dementia patient and Darth Butterfly instead. 🤦‍♂️

@Scruffynerfherder10 3 ай бұрын

“If done right” that’s the issue, there’s some things in RoP that “if done right” would make it way better than what it is, but it’s not and that’s the problem I personally have with the show.

@korganrocks3995 3 ай бұрын

Arwen replacing Glorfindel is a great example, since it streamlines an already overlong movie. Some characters aren't actually essential to the plot, and can be cut to make more time for the stuff that truly matters. The movie version of Pride and Prejudice got rid of one of Bingley's sisters and her husband, because they genuinely don't affect the plot in any way. The married sister just echoes her single sister's opinions, and her husband just eats and drinks a lot. There are reasons they were in the novel, but the movie isn't losing anything by getting rid of them. I'd rather an adaptation make a dozen such creative decisions than change the spirit of the original work.

@TheGuyCalledX 3 ай бұрын

Gandalf, in Maiar form as Olorin, originally arrives with the other Istar and Melian when the elves first awoke in Cuivienen. He was likely in Arda during the Second Age however

@victorcates9330 3 ай бұрын

The important of lore might depend on the franchise. If the fans are into depth, then they may care about all the small details adding up to the big details. And if changing things, there's the question of what right do you have? The original storyteller has a legitimacy that someone who bought the rights doesn't have - particularly if the people who bought the rights subcontract someone who has very limited credits. It seems best to avoid the arrogance of claiming fidelity and then thinking that you are a singular genius who should have your name written into the history of LOTR. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has a distance from AA Milne that gives it permission. By contrast, something nearer to Milne could be worse. For instance, if someone introduced a new character that was somehow a reskinned version of themselves that became the main character while mimicking the writing style and any illustrations. If marketing is honest then you're in a better position than pure bait and switch.

@SeanMurphy1090-d5u 3 ай бұрын

Also, that's the only consequential thing Glorfindel does. I'm sure it was considered carefully.

@ernestcampbell9319 3 ай бұрын

I hope the Barlogs get humanized in Season 3. We could see a nice happy of Balrogs: papa, mana, and baby. That would be so cool.

@TruthFundi 3 ай бұрын

I hope we see a gay Barlog couple that fights with dwarves because they misgendered them.

@crusaderforchrist 3 ай бұрын

I hope they show us some of Morgoth's backstory and explain how he was actually a victim and all the evil he caused was actually completely justified.

@GreenManXY 3 ай бұрын

@ermestcampbell9319 I had to wait to reply because I was laughing so uncontrollably from your comment. On the other hand, the dwarfs did colonize the mountain so it's not the fault of the Balrog family if they try to take their land back. You bigot!

@dosdes888 3 ай бұрын

I want the backstoy of that snow Troll that was killed in under ten seconds....

@profpapsmear3543 3 ай бұрын

Orc family life would be too brutal to depict to any audience. That's a horror movie.

@vannederynen1 3 ай бұрын

House of a thousand corpses

@Charlie-m6r5v Ай бұрын

People would love that today.

@kdkseven 3 ай бұрын

That shot of that orc family cuddling together feeling sad about their uncertain future is possibly the stupidest thing i've _ever_ seen on screen in my life. I still can't believe that they actually did that. It blows my mind.

@bloodyneptune 3 ай бұрын

Every day my decision not to watch season 2 is justified for me lol

@crazyralph6386 3 ай бұрын

Imagine being a fly on the wall during that Amazon writers block meeting in which they came up with that bird brain idea??? Bet they were all high fiving each other, thinking they were doing some groundbreaking stuff showing an Orc mom and dad clutching their little Orcling? 😂

@allthings2allmen 3 ай бұрын

After watching the interviews, I'd say that's exactly what they did! Probably over several bottles of hooch...glug! glug! glug! OH! YEAH! Briliant!!!

@Treblig1969 3 ай бұрын

He said that Orcs spawned Orcs not that they had loving, protective families. Their personalities would certainly suggest that maybe they weren't brought up in a very nurturing environment. They seem kind of insecure.

@takuid 3 ай бұрын

Exactly, orcs multiplying does not mean they love their offsprings, AT ALL. they hate everything, including themselves. Tolkien calls them "people of hate" literally in Fall of Gondolin and other places. Their one quality of note is them being in a state of constant hatred of living beings. It is very much possible that an orc "infant" is not an infant at all, and in most likelihood does not need nurture like a human baby. Even many animals do not receive or need any nurturing once they are born in nature. Acting like orcs are just ugly humans is a travesty to everything Tolkien wrote about them, which is that every single orc is a torturing, serial murdering, bloodthirsty creature. Not a single orc in 50k pages of lore does a single good deed. It is inexplicable how that would be possible if they have familial bonds and witness compassion. In comparison, I can list all the vile acts they commit here but the list would be extremely long smh... Elves and men are terrified of getting caught by an orc party in the wild because of what they would do to them. You do not reason with an orc unless you are willing to negotiate with the lives of many others to save your own.

@kuraifin4449 3 ай бұрын

THANK YOU. This is the obvious distinction a lot of people aren't making

@freeguy7628 3 ай бұрын

They are cannibals, so... lol

@michaeljfoley1 3 ай бұрын

Yeah, I definitely don't see orcs having wives and husbands, and nuclear families. Reproduction would result from violence, not love.

@zacharyclark3693 3 ай бұрын

Tolkien came up with many ideas about Orcs that changed over time. Early on they were made from the Stone and Earth (like Golems from mythology), then later that they were corrupted elves. The Peter Jackson Trilogy combined those two ideas. Tolkien also wrote that Orcs “multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar.” So they have babies the same way Elves, Men, etc have babies. This also makes sense if you consider LOTR mentions Half-orcs and Goblin-men. That implies mixed parentage. To be fair he wrote about many different theories about Orcs and he continued to develop them even after he wrote LOTR. Orcs could still be terrible monsters. I mean, some of the worst human beings that have existed in real life had families. Doesn’t make their actions less bad.

@dinofelis9343 3 ай бұрын

To me the Orcs represent the absolute worst of humanity given form. Take a Man (or Elf) and squeeze out of him all the compassion, selflessnes, loyalty, charity, wisdom and virtue and amplify his anger and hatred, his sadism and selfishness and destructive tendencies. Draw out all his worst impulses, hidden deep in his uncounsious mind, and you have an Orc.

@semicharmedlife311 3 ай бұрын

Better interpretation than the ridiculous "modern audience" take that evil doesn't actually exist and all villains are just poor, misunderstood, and mistreated victims.

@korganrocks3995 3 ай бұрын

@@semicharmedlife311 Bonus points if this is a prequel to a classic movie where the villain is literally trying to murder children or puppies; no amount of tragic backstory is gonna make the audience forget about that, so why does this prequel even exist???

@semicharmedlife311 3 ай бұрын

@@korganrocks3995 Shameless retconning. 👍

@superhetoric 3 ай бұрын

@@semicharmedlife311Cruella (2021)

@LarthV 3 ай бұрын

@@semicharmedlife311 Thing is, one does not necessarily exclude the other. It is absolutely possible that one is a poor, mistreated victim, and still lacks any positive traits. It makes their story much sadder, but them no less evil. A serial killer that was abused as a child nonetheless is to dangerous to be left run around freely just because.

@dimitris470 3 ай бұрын

The problem with orc families in RoP is how do you fit the image of a merciless killing machine that might eat their prisoners and even eat each other, but then they have a nuclear family and they worry about their kids and act with affection in front of others? It's just silly. If they had to, they would have much better luck showing orcs raising their young ones like Spartans or something. Raising them in collective camps while training them for war. The nuclear family image is completely incompatible... They probably did it to give Adar's cause some merit, but it had no merit in the first place.

@I_Don_t_want_a_handle 3 ай бұрын

Yes. Teaching their children to hate others because of the past crimes of their ancestors. Might be a bit too close to home and contra to THE MESSAGE.

@inagaddadavidahoney 3 ай бұрын

Yes! Sparta. That's what I was saying throughout this video. Also, why would the orc pov version have to paint the Elves as authoritarian bad guys. It could have shown them just raising their young as warrior citizens in the agoge. And that they had enslaved the Haradrim like the Spartans did the helots.

@RMartian76 3 ай бұрын

I always thought of the orcs like sharks. Sure, they're "born" from other orcs, but they don't get nurtured and raised. Lots of animals (like sharks) give birth then let the children fend for themselves. I feel like orcs would immediately put their children into some sort of pen where they would fend for themselves where only the strongest orcs could escape and join the horde. Also, AI does influence (heavily) a lot of modern Hollywood. Years ago, studios started using AI Management Software that helped determine with great accuracy the profit margins of a movie. So, the scripts that were chosen were run through these machines and without having to tell writers anything, the "notes" they'd receive were based on what the AI determined. So you get A LOT of injection of the concept of "family" without any real connection to the story. Hence, orcs with families because ... reasons.

@BZolti 3 ай бұрын

My problem is, that all i hear is: we just want to live peacefully, but what i see is one of them licking blood off the knife he used to kill a horse.

@donkeysunited 3 ай бұрын

He's probably thinking about how he can cart this dead horse home to feed his wife and 7 kids through the harsh Winter. Leave him alone, you bigot!!!!!! 🤣🤣

@zoefezius6615 3 ай бұрын

Hey, don't food shame people... my thought is more on the ones who don't wanna kill but instantly attack a single elf in the woods to give him a cool action scene that leeds nowhere...

@SouthernItalyHomestead 3 ай бұрын

Adar taught them never to waste food because there are goblins starving in Angmar.

@Karras353 3 ай бұрын

Seriously, food poverty is no joke. We are supposed to root for those entitled elves and Numenoreans, (literally) on their high horses whilst peace loving orcs are starving in the mud?

@ravenmad9225 3 ай бұрын

They have totally misunderstood Tolkien

@GlazedLemon 3 ай бұрын

If anyone trying to humanize orcs could stand on the battlefield at Helms Deep and watch them tuck into a fresh elf corpse because they wanted some 'man meat', they definitely wouldn't be inviting the orc and his family round for tea and biscuits anytime soon for a chat about changing they're life goals lol

@gorcrow 3 ай бұрын

You don't need to know anything about Tolkien lore to effectively criticize this show - because it completely falls apart totally on its own (but it does help to know the lore, since you will see it fall apart even faster)

@gracefuldice1956 3 ай бұрын

How much faster can it fall when it fell in the first scene of the first episode. You know what I'm talking about. It has something to do with: 🪨 and 🛳

@semicharmedlife311 3 ай бұрын

Not merely faster, but precisely where it's failing to the point where the great Professor is rolling over in his grave.

@Scruffynerfherder10 3 ай бұрын

Yep…regardless of their understanding of the source material, the quality of the story IS what people latch onto, if the quality is great, then people will latch onto it, if it’s bad, they’ll ignore it or mock it. Simple as IMO.

@korganrocks3995 3 ай бұрын

@@Scruffynerfherder10 Especially people who haven't read any of the source material, which is the demographic all these adaptations must be trying to appeal to; they certainly aren't trying to appeal to the Tolkien fans! The problem is that if the writing is shit, the show/movie will be shit, and no one will like it.

@SaithMasu12 3 ай бұрын

I dont know. The show has some good and bad points. I for one really liked the depiction of a) Durin the IV and b) Annatar Owain Arthur and Charlie Vickers really nailed their roles here and you might not like the show as a whole, but i think not all is bad. Second point are the visuals and the transitions. Visuals for a Tv show are really good and the Map to Real Location transitions are a nice touch. Third: The Orc costumes are leagues ahead of what we have seen in the Hobbit Trilogy. (Hobbit is basically all CGI, which sucks) Like its not even close. Then again there were also many bad points like: Inconsequental distances between locations, Characters that should not be arround (Gandalf, Halflings etc,..), some cringe dialogues, weird time skips, pacing issues.

@sukablat5938 3 ай бұрын

The main issue the ROP characterisation of orcs is that it ignores the archetype and purpose they were clearly made to fill and instead inserts modern allegory whereby the orcs are oppressed by Morgoth, then Sauron, and actually just want to have family bbqs or something (suggesting that they are just like humans only ugly and forced into evil, whereas Tolkien clearly intended that they were evil by nature via corruption of their souls). This just creates endless problems and doesn't really fit into the world. If they really wanted to make the orcs more interesting perhaps they could have portrayed them as somewhat tragic, playing into the issue Tolkien had whereby orcs obviously have souls but are so twisted and corrupted that they don't even have a chance at being good, maybe playing on themes Tolkien weaved in like the issue of evil existing at all, and his answer seemed to be that without evil, what is good, there are no hero's without adversity. (Eru illuvatar said that Melkor's discord actually increased the majesty of his creation, or something along those lines, it was obviously Tolkien ruminating on the deep philosophical questions about the existence of evil whilst also having an all powerful and good god). Basically the problem is that ROP was clearly written by people who don't really understand (or choose to ignore) the deeper themes in Tolkien's work. It doesn't matter if something technically fits the letter of the lore if it completely subverts the themes of the book. Also the idea of writing a Wide Sargasso Sea type story about middle earth whereby we assume the position of 'evil is good' via some sort of paradise lost style characterisation of Melkor, might work as some sort of philosophical work, but you would lose what makes Lord of the rings compelling story.

@wolfmauler 3 ай бұрын

How about the Orc's attitude towards the environment, the natural world, vulnerable living things? They aren't without agency; they literally delight in choices that bring about violence, destruction, pollution. They have no reverence for life, even towards thier own kind.

@semicharmedlife311 3 ай бұрын

Precisely. It's modern writing sensibilities that try to gaslight people into believing that no real evil exists. Only shades of grey where eveyone is misunderstood and mistreated "victims". Which is, of course, rubbish.

@Natusian 3 ай бұрын

The fact that they multiplied and orc women would have existed does not confirm the existence of the orc nuclear family unit.

@exantiuse497 3 ай бұрын

The fact that Bolg, son of Azog, had somewhat of a vendetta against Durin's folk over the death of his father implies that he had at the very least some level of attachment for his father, which in turn implies he might have been raised in something resembling a family and that Azog took part in it enough for such attachment to form; you don't harbor thoughts of revenge for 150 years over the death of someone that meant nothing to you. It isn't concrete proof but does support the idea of (at least some) orcs having a family It should be noted that having a family does not make one a good person. For example, Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda for the national socialists, had nine children (who he would murder before killing himself shortly before the end of the war). Abdul Hamid II, the sultan of Ottoman Empire responsible for, amongst other things, the genocide of Armenians, had 13 children. Stalin had no children of his own but greatly enjoyed their company. Is any of these men a good person, are their crimes justified, just because they had a family?

3 ай бұрын

@@exantiuse497 or the vendetta could just be based on killing an orc leader. your'e inferring way more than the text warrants.

@fr.andygutierrez5356 3 ай бұрын

Fantastic exposition, Liene, truly. I’ve enjoyed all of your Rings of Power and Wheel of Time videos, but this was the first one that I’ve watched in which you delve into writing as a craft. You presented your points succinctly, but with enough explanation that I followed your line of reasoning without any problem. I also learned a few things about the complexities of writing a good story. It’s no small feat to make a 37 minute KZbin video fly by, but you did just that. Thank you!

@nickhtk6285 3 ай бұрын

In terms of the Rings of Power Im jaded and think the writers were following the more modern trend of making villains as a misunderstood/unwilling PG-13 level of evil. Dumbed down, family friendly, trash. Love the sweater BTW. :)

@RevAnakin 3 ай бұрын

I don't know why so many creators (not you) ignore the keystones of Tolkien's actual words. It is simple, Tolkien had two keystone thoughts on orcs: 1. Tolkien did not want anyone to feel remorse for killing evil meat robots. Orcs are literally evil incarnate. 2. Then Tolkien was thought, "oh but Melkor does not have the power to create anything with a soul." So many people think these two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Aule created the dwarves, but without the Fire from Eru, they would have been Aule's meat robots too. So Melkor 100% made the orcs in mockery of elves, but did not give them souls (because he was unable to) and thus both keystones of Tolkien's wishes are met. Regarding "othering", this is 100% intentional for the orcs. They are not individuals in Tolkien's eyes and this is contrasted by the "evil" men of the South and East. These men (humans) are children of Eru (God) and thus have souls. Never in the stories are these men slaughtered without recourse. There are even explicit lines in the books to make you feel sorry for them. Were they forced to fight for Sauron? What families are they leaving back home. This is because they are children of Eru, not Melkor (the Devil).

@kingghidorah5213 3 ай бұрын

Actually, the Orcs do have souls as they are pretty much just evil and corrupted elves. At least that's what tolkien says about them in the silmarillion

@aludrenknight1687 3 ай бұрын

@@kingghidorah5213 Actually, the orcs are not persons and have no individual moral code or morality. They are evil because Melkor was evil.

@RevAnakin 3 ай бұрын

@kingghidorah5213 quote please. In addition, it is true Tolkien never settled on the mechanism regarding these two keystone philosophies, but the keystones are there nonetheless. As such, orcs having souls means we should hate Gimli and Legolas for making a game out of killing them.

@kingghidorah5213 3 ай бұрын

@@RevAnakin "But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. For who of the living has descended into the pits of Utumno, or has explored the darkness of the counsels of Melkor? Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the elves, of whom they were afterwards bitter foes." And now the most interesting part: "For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Illúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before the Beginning: so say the wise."

@kingghidorah5213 3 ай бұрын

@@RevAnakin so Melkor could never make any life and not even something remotely similar to life. So he basically had to breed everything he wanted and couldn't create anything that could move. And another thing is (if you want me to I can find that as well in the book) that the Orcs can move on their own at will and have a will of their own (even though much weaker than that of Elves or Man) the dwarves on the other hand could not, at least not before they had been adopted by Illúvatar, and could only move while Aulë was near and controlled them with his mind like a person would steer a RC car and when he wasn't near the dwarves and didn't command them to do something, they simply stood still and were lifeless statues

@murmur9994 3 ай бұрын

Yes, this was something I commented on to people with Adar in season 1. Giving the orcs interiority is not, in and off itself, an impossible task, and many other settings have tried (and some succeeded) in trying to explore the moral life of "evil" characters and races. But, right from the start is was clear that RoP was simply aping this trope, essentially thoughtless symbolic mimicry in the J. J. Abrams mystery box vein, hoping to generate an immediate emotional reaction in the audience, with no thought to broader theme or intent. And you can see this in the way the orcs whipsaw from sympathetic portrayals when Adar is around to being spiteful and vindictive and cruel in almost every other scene. There is never a question of whether it is right to kill orcs, not just when Galadriel does it, but when Arondir or Theo or Isildur does it either, including when Arondir kills apparent deserters. So it's a false moral nuancing, essentially a cargo cult attempt at depth in their work in a way that they themselves ignore when it is inconvenient.

@Barbayat79 3 ай бұрын

I think better writers might have been able to do something interesting with the concept. I like the idea of Adar, him seeing them as his children and believing that if they just get to settle down, they could live meaningful free lifes - but then make it about him deluding himself. That he overlooks their cruelty, that they were created to be the army and they didn't come with the ability to empathise or something. Then have Adar come to terms with it and realising that his hope to see the orcs redeemed, is about him, that he is the one who just wants to live in peace, despite what he did after he was corrupted. That could be really interesting and might be something that resonates with the other elves, because I can imagine that what Morgoth did with corrupting some of the elves is something very terrifying to them. Or maybe go the other way and make it so that yes, maybe the Orcs could be redeemed but that they are super easy mind controlled or swayed by evil forces - but whatever RoP was doing just an embarassing mess.

@zoefezius6615 3 ай бұрын

I like how Markus Heitz did IT with Legends of the Albae as counterpart to the dwarves series.

@alastairleith8612 3 ай бұрын

not to mention LOTR characters Legolas and Gimli sharing jokes about their dead orc count during battle. people seem to forget these novels are first and foremost fantasy. some of the logic pedants may wish to apply will break in fantasy. cope or leave you pedants lol.

@bobisuncanny2760 3 ай бұрын

Isn't violence and blood part of their culture ? They're dumb and cruel but that doesn't contradict them caring between each other. It's just Orcs being Orcs

@murmur9994 3 ай бұрын

@@bobisuncanny2760 You misunderstand the problem. The issue is not the orc behavior being contradictory, it is what the story is communicating thematically about their existence as moral agents. I would argue that there is a little bit of inconsistency as the orcs are often shown to not want conflict (every conversation glug has with Adar, the deserters Arondir kills), while at other times they are shown as purely bloodthirsty, so there isn't a consistency in presentation or an attempt to present different ideologies or viewpoints within orc culture, there's just the one "good' one who isn't even that good. As it is, the orcs are presented as both having sympathetic qualities and being wholly incompatible with the other races, to the point of brutalizing them continously. That does not solve the problem, it makes it worse, it means that the orcs are moral agents, they are "people' in that sense, but the only solution, as presented in the narrative, is their wholesale annihilation. I don't think that's what they intended to do, but it is the outcome. Because they didn't think of theme or the ideas being communicated, they only though "how do we add deepness to these orcs". And please don't pretend season 3 is going to engage with this meaningfully.

@yapper58 3 ай бұрын

I think this is an excellent analysis story wise of TRoP. The Orcs in Tolkien's world aren't just avatars of evil, but their whole spirit is controlled and dominated first by Morgoth, and then Sauron. Orcs were created by Morgoth to serve as slaves and soldiers, which is the true corruption of Eru's original intent for the Elves and Humanity. Elves and Humans were created by Eru to be free to make their own choices (and live with the consequences). When Morgoth and Sauron are destroyed the Orcs lose all discipline and order and scatter to the winds in a panic because their sole purpose was to obey the will of their masters, who are embodiments of evil and destructive power. Without the will of their masters controlling their minds and spirits they fall into fear and fighting amongst themselves. That is one of the shortcomings of TRoP (and the Jackson trilogy in my opinion), they have no grasp of the spiritual power embodied in Morgoth and Sauron. They completely ignore that in the LoTR characters such as Galadriel, Gandalf, and Sauron are embodiments of spiritual powers that have "real world" and physical effects on Middle Earth. The One Ring is the physical embodiment of Sauron's spirit and if he manages to reunite the physical and spiritual he can dominate all of Middle Earth. Without it he can only dominate the spirit of his followers but cannot physically manifest, so his power revolves around "whispers" from the One Ring affecting it's wearer or through visions in the palantirs, affecting the minds of those who look into them.

@Barbayat79 3 ай бұрын

Honestly, the writers of RoP were clearly just jumping from highlight to highlight in favour of telling a coherent story. They aren't even close reaching an approach that would give them the space to do anything interesting with the orcs. It's all about single moments, which why you have the reveal of the effect of the ring on Adar, right next to him getting shanked, followed by a bit later Glug getting off. It's all "damn snap" moment. They never truly explore the characters, hence Galadriel's stupid over the top sadistic genocide speech, all that leads to is her having a generic discussion with Sauron afterwards about going to far without every having learned anything. It's all surface level.

@socialjihad5724 3 ай бұрын

Spot on. Adding to that, two other egregious examples is Durin turning the dwarven army around even though he confronts his father alone and Arondir being given a dramatic mortal wounding scene only for that to be completely ignored and he appears completely uninjured in the next scene like it didn't happen

@donkeysunited 3 ай бұрын

It feels very similar to how the Wheels of Time show has been written - they are jumping in and out of their main story points without any regard to the geography or distance of the land and without giving us time to get to know the characters. The cause is a combination of weak writing and too few episodes. Gone are the days of shows having 20 episodes per season which allow you to really get to know the characters and understand their layers. Now it's all rapid-fire tick boxes and an expectation that the viewers must accept what they are force-fed and anyone who speaks up must be beaten down as a toxic bigot, lest they infect other viewers with the truth that the show is weak and cares more about being morally right (as defined by BlackRock, etc) rather than telling an entertaining and engaging story.

@jojobookish9529 3 ай бұрын

It's a very common misconception that Tolkien said his experiences didn't influence his work. What he did say was that he as the author did not intend any specific, single "true meaning" for anything in Middle-earth that "actually represents" anything in the real, modern world. The Dead Marshes are not the Somme in the sense that he didn't *intend* for the Dead Marshes to represent the Somme in the mind of the reader and therefore make some point about the Somme or the Great War generally; the Dead Marshes are the Dead Marshes. If you think of the Somme when you read about them, that's your experience of the story and that's just fine.

@lostny76 3 ай бұрын

no... wtf this is what we are dealing with, twats like you just making shit up. he didn't fucking say that he NEVER FUCKING SAID THAT someone said that they said he said it now you say it STFU, stop fucking midwits

@korganrocks3995 3 ай бұрын

Yeah, if you want to see the kind of allegory Tolkien was against, read the Narnia books as an adult and see how incredibly heavy-handed and unsubtle the allegory is in them. I had them read to me as a little kid, and re-read them a bunch without having the slightest idea about the religious allegory, but once I re-read them as an adult I was shocked at how blatant it was.

@I_Don_t_want_a_handle 3 ай бұрын

Bearing in mind he was not writing for us but for the War Generation. People who had seen suffering and death. People for whom growing up was not a given. At a time when their society was battered and broken and industry was blighting the countryside. They might see the shallow lying dead as the fallen in the mud, as a recounted experience rather than a thinly veiled 'allegory'.

@neobaud513 3 ай бұрын

The weird thing for me was during the battle I didn't care who won. The show had given more time with the orcs than with the elves. So for me the elves were the other. An unthinking faceless group that had idiotically allowed sauron himself to take control of their city. And the emotional moments with the orcs just felt cheap so I didn't care about them either. Also I thought the orc family was just tossed in there to give that orc dude a reason to betray adar.

@connork8321 3 ай бұрын

I would say the showrunners were trying to illicit sympathy for 'minorities' by way for allegory...

@buchbummelant8980 3 ай бұрын

Yes, you're totally right. We didn't care about the elves in Eregion the way we cared about Helm's Deep or Minas Tirinth. We didn't spend enough time with its people, we didn't see the effects Celebrimbor's departure from governing his city has on the people living in the city, we don't see any agency in them at all. It's the same with the other elves and even the dwarves. We don't see a race to be there on time, we don't see struggles on the way to get wherever they are going. Even with Arondir who got STABBED and then was fine the next episode, without so much as addressing his stabbing? It's just ... in the LotR movies, one of the worst scenes for me was one of the Elves dying, who came to their aid. He didn't have much of a scene, but Aragorn rushing to help him, They cut too much through the narrative (even though season 2 was better than season 1!) and even the potentially emotional scenes don't land because there's no real stakes. We know Galadriel and Elrond and Gandalf are going to make it (and that certain other characters are going to make it into other seasons is a given, like Isildur, Elendil, Gil-Galad, Durin), so showing them in peril doesn't sit as tight with the audience as with the original characters - and then they bungle that up as well. Same with Adar ... they could have really had an Arc for him, from him wanting a home for his "uruk"-children and then fighting against Sauron to keeping them safe, but them being blood-thirsty and not following his rules, embracing Sauron's handling, eventually departing from Adar. And in the end, I think that's what they wanted to show, but they didn't stick the landing, like with so many other plotlines ...

@Loboozer 3 ай бұрын

I started watching your videos back in season 1 of the rings of power and got loved your passive sarcastic take on those episodes. And really enjoyed watching again this season. i just dig your style....cant really explain what it is about you, but whatever it is it feels genuine and I love it. this video was just as great because you were totally open about what you know and what you don't know but made sure to emphasize good storytelling is at the core..and should always be at the core no matter what angle you take. Like I said, I dig your style, honesty and the way you speak on the details. Keep on keeping on, love it !

@RoseBaggins 3 ай бұрын

It is meant to be read as myth and legend. Guess where most of the monsters in Greek mythology came from? The issue is trying to paint evil as good and good as evil. Tolkien said being orcish is evil, as noted in the snippet he had of an idea for a sequel, so trying to show it as otherwise, the show loses sight of what makes Middle-ERth unique.

@Evolfurnace 3 ай бұрын

The problem was that the orc family should have been a fantastic and monstrous new creation, unlike any family found in nature. Imagine two burly male orcs fusing together, growing a new (tiny) orc from yeastlike buds sprouting from their own bodies. Then allow the audience to feel compassion and pity for that!

@semicharmedlife311 3 ай бұрын

Given that The Rings of Power amounts to nothing more than incomprehensible fan fiction, this idea would fit right in!

@superhetoric 3 ай бұрын

that would've been legit

@allthings2allmen 3 ай бұрын

A Voltron-esque Borg orc!

@rasatamulione5151 3 ай бұрын

I do completely agree with you. But I can see what they might have wanted to achieve - they wanted to change this story from pure good vs. evil to everything is morally grey. This was not the correct story to try and do this though

@zoly4812 3 ай бұрын

Great video, thank you for taking a much more nuanced take on the Orc problem compared to many other videos.

@And-ur6ol 3 ай бұрын

In a interview Tolkien talked about how in his stories, there is the underlying theme that the rightful king (Aragorn) is a good king, because he is the rightful king. But (as he laugh) that does not mean he actually think England needs to be lead by a king. He is very much against that kind of government. But in his fiction, kings are good, simply because it is a romanticism of the king.

@magister343 3 ай бұрын

I believe he described himself as an Anarcho-Monarchist at least once. He leaned more towards Anarchism philosophically, but thought that having a charismatic figurehead can be useful for social cohesion. He was somewhat attracted to the idea of having a powerful monarch provided he was not allowed to delegate his authority to a large bureaucratic state apparatus.

@Scruffynerfherder10 3 ай бұрын

The man hated that the legends of Celtic and Pre-Norman Britain was destroyed by the Norman’s, his love of Norse history and language reflects in his stories, and he wanted to create something like that for his home.

@TheMarquisLovenorn 3 ай бұрын

@@Scruffynerfherder10 It was not Normans. Bruh. Celtic legends in Britain are like those of Gaul and other Celts from across Europe. They hardly wrote anything down from what we know, not like Romans or Greeks who wrote epics of their legends and gods. The Christianised Britons of Romano-Britain wrote down the legends along with the Anglo-Saxons but they likely had changed vastly from the original tales told when my area had two tribes fighting each other at times and against the Romans. 90% of my area's legends were wrote during the Victorian period with connections to the Anglo-Saxons and Romano-Britons.

@tayh.6235 3 ай бұрын

And as a Christian, the idea of "when the true king comes to take up his rightful place, all will be restored" is a deeply held belief but not one that can ever be fulfilled by a fellow human being. Aragorn has a certain Christ like role in the story, that as Lainey said about a lot of the story elements, is more symbolic.

@patrickroos739 3 ай бұрын

Orcs were created by Melkor out of hate for the Elfs and to spite Eru, basically why his drive to destroy everything Eru wanted to create. Then bred as an instrument of this destruction what is percieved as evil. There was good in the first elfs that were captured but then tortured into hatred and obedience. After those first orcs its safe to assume that they are all obidient slaves to evil and destruction. Lore is everything or you have created something different. Or more specifically, if you are operating within an already existing story, storyline, timeline, world, characters, lore is everything. If you dont follow that lore in that existing story you break it and have created something completely different. If Amazon promoted RoP as "loosely based on" but an "alternative story" fine... But please understand that they are changing an already established story, characters, timeline etc etc, not only lore. This is the reason for the uproar in the Tolkien fanbase. They are changing and perverting something already established. And in addition in a very incompetent way. What happened in the age/ages after the TA? There you would have the freedom to invent a bit. Not sure if Im clear, but eg we already know who Galadriel is as a character, period. Cant be changed. Why? She is a main character and then the whole universe changes, this is the path they choose and changed everything in an already established everything. Dont work and why the total mess. Its like re making King Kong with an octopus...we all know Kong is a giant gorilla, its established if its King Kong. You could do it but...

@LuisAlbright 3 ай бұрын

The given fact that orcs multiplied doesn’t imply that they coalesced into loving families. The only example of an orc family is that we know from the Appendices that Bolg was the offspring of Azog … PJ’s depiction of that takes liberties of course, but in canon the relationship is all we know. We do however have multiple examples of orc culture and especially how orcs behaved amongst themselves. For instance the way the Isengard orcs interacted with the Mordor orcs (book only) when taking Merry and Pippin to Isengard, the conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag at Kirith Ungol, as well as the murderous mini-orc-civil-war subsequent to that, and also how the two orcs tracking Frodo and Sam in Mordor (book only) treated each other … from all these we can see that orc culture was course and extremely violent. Of course my wife and I have humorous speculations about orcs: are there orc nerds? Do orcs have restaurants (“Meats back on the menu boys!”), etc. They certainly have artists as they carve the hilts of their swords and daggers.

@benjaminrider6351 3 ай бұрын

Good analysis! Fantasy writers have been struggling with this problem since Tolkien, I think. As an easy example, this is a huge theme in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. At first, the Parshendi are a nameless alien evil. But then we see their perspective and what they have gone through. Kaladin eventually becomes paralyzed by not knowing who to fight for.

@laurenanderson61 3 ай бұрын

I've heard that Tolkien came up with the word "orc" from "Oxford Rugby Club," which was rather thuggish

@adamaccountname 3 ай бұрын

It likely came from the same origins as ogre etc. Orcus the lord of the underworld

@superhetoric 3 ай бұрын

that sounds incredibly apocryphal lol

@justthinkingoutloud2538 3 ай бұрын

I recently made a video on my channel all about orcs and how Rings of Power doesn't understand them. Orcs were bred for war and violence by Melkor as one breeds dogs, so they have no capacity for love and compassion, so sure, they reproduce like all races, but it is completely devoid of love. I imagine their "family" units like those of animals like hyenas, who have extremely brutal and disgusting lives. So while the details of their lives and societies are up for speculation, Tolkien described them as "naturally bad" and gave no indication they are capable of goodness. Thus I disagree strongly that the orcs are problematic in the books. However, I do 100% agree that even if it wasn't a poor adaptation of the lore, it just doesn't work on its own, either. Even within RoP, the orcs are usually depicted as sadistic, mindless monsters who get gratuitously slaughtered whenever we're not focused on daddy orcs and his family.

@teamhonn 3 ай бұрын

Thanks for your time to put this together. I think you are giving show runners more credit. I think they are using them to represent groups in the real world but are in a crack because the two groups that they want us to be sympathetic to are now battling each other. Not much vision or planning. Same exact situation in the wheel of time.

@Trencher1375 3 ай бұрын

In the scouring of the shire there is one of the thugs that kinda turns into an orc. I think the orc and the elf looking gruesome and graceful respectfully is just an overlap between Tolkiens fantasy world and the fairy tales he took inspiration from. In fairy tales people are the same on the outside like they are on the inside and if they are not they get turned ugly and or beautuful depending on how they are on the inside.

@Agni1965 3 ай бұрын

So on point. Especially the observation about GRR Martin's White Walkers. Existential threats do not need or require humanization. It is harder to rationalize or justify the eventual fate of the orcs (probable extinction via slaughter) if they are shown to be capable of empathy.

@NefariousKoel 3 ай бұрын

The comment you referred to is how I've always understood it from the books and, if anything, further shows ME orcs to long be evil incarnate. Breeding pits would be more appropriate, not white picket fences.

@heatbeatrepeat 3 ай бұрын

There is no notion of orcs caring about anything, including each other. Any attempt to make you feel empathy to orcs is to ignore that if you lived next to orcs, they would eat your kids, your parents, your dog, and eventually you, with you going last only because they would find it entertaining to watch your horror as they skinned your family alive and then made bacon out of it. Shagrat and Gorbag seemed to talk wistfully about what they would do if they could get away or after the war: they would find a quiet place to loot and pillage and kill, away from their superiors in Sauron's amassed army. Even that is sketchy, but to attach any sympathy to either of them is misplaced: just a few paragraphs later they tried to brutally murder each other, and one of them was successful. They are monsters. They are evil. Remembering that LOTR is a fundamentally Christian (Catholic, per Tolkien) work, the orcs are effectively lesser demons. There is no room for sympathy towards demons. They want only destruction.

@GlenLake 3 ай бұрын

Came for the problem, stayed for Liene's Lore...

@allthings2allmen 3 ай бұрын

I could care less about the lore, I just eat out of Liene's hand 'cuz she's a great story teller, is super smart, and she has pretty 'eyeses'!

@GlenLake 3 ай бұрын

@@allthings2allmen I hear you. I am so glad to have found her channel.

@kostantza1 3 ай бұрын

I think they could have crafted a truly successful storyline for the orcs, keeping with Tolkien's themes, if they had leaned into Adar's former elven nature - he's their progenitor, sure (we're never even told why exactly he wanted children in the first place, couldn't he just have his own?), but he still holds onto some bit of his original self, and he refuses to see that his spawn is naturally bloodthirsty and feral, and they can't truly conform to what he considers familial and social bonds. We should have had Adar just barely keeping them in line during the second season especially, believing if they have their own home and stop being persecuted they'll manage to make their own society and live free, but orcs only make an effort out of some sense of respect and gratitude for the care he shows them, and because Sauron wanted to make them slaves - so when Sauron meets them again and sweettalks them, this time emphasizing their true nature, promising to let them have all the slaughter they want and telling them Adar doesn't understand and wants them to go against their nature to become like defective elves, that's when the orcs rebel against him and kill, and become basically slaves of their own free will. That way Adar's death isn't totally stupid - like, even the orcs wouldn't have been so stupid as not to know that killing Sauron was the only way they wouldn't find themselves on the other end of his wrath. So the story becomes about a father who couldn't see his children's true nature and wanted to believe there was some chance for them to live like people, bound with emotions and loyalty, and Sauron who offers them basically eternal slavery by pandering to their lowest instincts - the orcs choose and thus they are damned, both led due to their innate nature, but also by their own choice, so the essentialism of them being born "evil" is mitigated, while leaving their final spiritual fate as a species totally on the air, as it should. They *are* done dirty by birth, but it's they who choose to lean into it.

@Dude_1864 3 ай бұрын

A good example of a not lore breaking change for Jackson's LOTR is omitting Bombadil, or (against my better judgment) including Elves at Helm's deep. The best example of Lore breaking from Jackson's adaptations was how dirty they did Farimir, such a radical and completely unnecessary change.

@Doodle1776 3 ай бұрын

I agree, the show itself is just bad on its own. Outside of it outright insulting everything Tolkien and his work it's just a bad, very poorly written show. Someone said it perfectly by stating that Rings of Power is Tolkien for dummies written by dummies. The original Jackson trilogy wasn't exact lore but he got the feeling and base of it correct. He might have changed who said what or when. Or changed a few characters who did things or made them more important than they were in the books, but he kept the entire spirit and feel of the books. Which is all that one can ask for. The Hobbit films though were a bigger break. He got the base correct and the theme correct but he added far too much to drag it out to three films. I have said many times that the Hobbit trilogy should have been a duology, cutting out the elf love story and the white orc side story and it would have been 100% better in being closer to the book, even with the other changes.

@MaryPlaysPiano 3 ай бұрын

Thanks for another great video with entertaining insights, loved the blooper reel! 😂

@Trygvar13 3 ай бұрын

Not only were they the embodiment of evil but they just became extinct after Sauron's essence was swept away (not destroyed since as a Maiar he could not be destroyed) since there was nothing to sustain them.

@archangelmichael7400 3 ай бұрын

"War is about death. Needless, stupid death". Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is why war is something to be avoided. In all cases. However, once you are in a war, this quote applies. "No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. The way you win a war, is make the other poor bastard die for his country". From the movie "Patton". (Don't know if the read General George Patton said that or not).

@Redmist370Z 3 ай бұрын

Tolkien often talked about the most feared beings in middle earth, the Pedantists. Most dare not confront them and simply flee at their sight…

@alastairleith8612 3 ай бұрын

omg i just wrote a comment about pedants three seconds ago 😂 fantasy is fantasy, not scientific literature about the nature of good and evil in humans or other species. some questions make no sense in terms of the Tolkien Lore.

@Redmist370Z 3 ай бұрын

@@alastairleith8612 brilliant minds think alike!

@fullchicken4259 3 ай бұрын

20:47 I think we have to be careful about terminology here. This segment talks about Orcs "breed"ing and "multipl"ying. And yes, "orc-women" were acknowledged. But breeding and multiplying doesn't - and shouldn't - systematically imply the sociological concept of family existing in orcdom. I like to see Orcs as some type of ant-like insects with colonies. They breed and multiply, but they do not have what western sociology would qualify as a family. I do agree that Orcs shouldn't be seen as some weird problematic analogy for a people, and I do believe Tolkien did not mean to depict Orcs as a "people" like Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and Men. Consequently, I don't think we should use the term "orc-wives" interchangeably with "orc-women", or "orc-children" with "orc-spawns". "wives" and "children" imply matrimony and family, and I don't think orcs were meant to be seen that way. In summary, orc-breeding is a thing, but orc-families are likely not, and does not feel on par with Tolkien's intent. This whole push to over-intellectualize and make everything morally ambiguous is, in my humble opinion, overused, and should not apply to everything, namely orcs in that case.

@kaylemain2006 3 ай бұрын

The "Othering" argument for Orcs is one I've heard for a while and it's one of the most unintelligent, uninformed, ignorant, self-centered arguments one can have against this because it starts from an assumption that we, the people reading, are too dumb to realize this, or that Tolkien does not realize this. We all realize how this can be interpreted, and we also realize that this is a story and what Tolkien meant was not this at all. It's the incessant need for protecting what needs no protection that is the real problem here, the compulsion to lever the most surface-level analysis through a modern point of view that was entirely inexistent at the time of its creation, completely neutering real art and real storytelling even if it goes against the author's plain intentions with their art. Nothing is more inane than starting an analysis from the point of view of whether if it is problematic or not. "Problematic" is a modern consideration that should not ever be near any honest and intelligent art critique. It is a literal intellectual dead end.

@christianpetersen163 3 ай бұрын

In my view, the orcs should only be humanized through the perspective of Adar, who is at least in concept an interesting character. If they wanted to show how orcs are actually a race and have a society etc, they could have done that, but they were clearly concerned that they would invoke racism and eugenics. What they should have done is lean into it, and show orc mom and dad running away from their 20 screaming sharp-clawed and pointy-teethed babies. They could have made the orcs so ridiculously destructive that everybody would agree that they simply have to go, like the jakovasaurus in Souh Park. In ohter words, Peter Jackson did it right.

@emperorboot 3 ай бұрын

One sweater to rule them all! Forged in the looms of Mt. Doom. It reveals the unseen spirit world, and keeps the wearer warm even in sub zero temps of Forodwaith.

@BenRobinson1974 3 ай бұрын

Nice sweater

@OldBrensBarns 3 ай бұрын

The bookshelf is sauron, the shadow in the middle, makes sauron. That's cool

@Etherealsighting 3 ай бұрын

I feel like the Two Towers movie had the moral escape route with the breeding of the Uruk-Hai of Isengard, specifically that they were breed from eggs. This both lessens the moral impacts of the orc birth cycle, i.e. they don't necessarily have to spawn as infants, and also explains why they can be so numerous as clutches of eggs are a lot easier to produce than litters of children...

@kostantza1 3 ай бұрын

Also, since you so very well explained why Orcs' actual moral/spiritual/"human" (or "elvish") state, my perspective on Orcs was pretty clear since I learned how Tolkien described them (like the man who is surrendered to the lower instincts of war); creatures existentially stuck forever in that bloodthirsty, mindless, berserker mindset that a person totally lost in the horror and rage of battle is in danger of losing himself in. Such a creature is a natural enemy - he kills you, or you kill him - a person, even an enemy soldier might have family, loved ones and a whole family, might be a stellar person outside the battlefield, but you don't meet him in the heat of the charge - you meet an abstract of humanity, and the orcs are as if you had a whole race of creatures stuck in that perpetual mental and emotional state, totally subject to the lowest instincts war can inspire in man. I never got the sense from LotR that one would be celebrating whenever killing orcs, or saying things like that horrible stuff they had Galadriel saying (which is unacceptable from a heroine no matter what creatures she's talking about), but also never the sense that you'd go over to an orc and close its eyes after it's dead. Wisely, Tolkien left the matter of their metaphysical fate on the air, since they are Eru's creatures, not Morgoth's, in the end, but that potential redemption is in the realm of metaphysics, not on Middle Earth on which their actions take place. Idk, that was my take. After all, Tolkien wrote in mythological, not historical terms. It's like when heroes slaughter thousands of enemies (and let's be real, ofter those enemies are nobler than the heroes themselves, much less orcs, or how gods slaughter thousands of demons to show their prowess. It's not allegory, but metaphor).

@johnmiwa6256 3 ай бұрын

Great video. It's always great to hear objective analysis of Tolkien.

@AugustSideling 3 ай бұрын

I think an important stipulation in the Silmarillion is that the Elf origin of Orcs is specified in in that text to be largely speculative: this is what the Wise of Eressea *believe*, but that's just their going theory. The his later life, it seems Tolkien was leaning more into the idea that orcs were originally humans (he specifically did not like the Elf-origin precisely because he was afraid people would then associate them too closely with elves. A note written by Tolkien even read "Revise this: Orcs are not Elvish.") So in this proposed revision (which was unfinished and therefore went unpublished) Tolkien presented a scenario where breeding Orcs was Melkor's idea, but he lacked the subtlety and cunning to pull it off. So while he was chained by the valar in his first imprisonment, Sauron went ahead and began the process because he DID have the subtlety and cunning. And from what it sounds like, it was a long process of corruption and degeneration over generations of men--a combination of selective breeding and demoralization that resulted in a brutal race who where then convinced by the Dark Powers that men are just as cruel and Elves are cold and contemptuous. I personally think this scenario makes the best sense in relation to the LOTR books in general, especially with regard to Saruman and the Uruk-hai.

@samhui9517 3 ай бұрын

I really enjoyed your videos, thank you! I have read The Lord of the Rings many times over the last few decades, I have read the Hobbit and the Silmarillion a couple of times, that’s the extent of my experience of professor Tolkien’s work. There’s a quote from the movie “Galaxy Quest” which I think is quite appropriate: “It doesn’t take a good actor to recognize a bad one.” One does not need to be a Tolkien lore expert to recognize that The Rings of Power is not Tolkien at all. The reason The Lord of the Rings is so beloved by so many for generations is its universal core values like good vs. evil, friendship, sacrifice, fellowship, mercy, etc. that resonate with so many of us. It is utter arrogance for writers/ producers to think they can somehow “improve” or “modernize” such a masterpiece, not to mention that TRoP is just objectively bad writing. Just my humble opinion.

@guustaafros1 3 ай бұрын

I've read somewhere (it was a long time ago so I could be wrong) that Frodo and Sam in Mordor overheard two orcs talking about settling down after the War of the Ring and starting a mundane kind of lifestyle (I want to say farming as weird as it would be to see an orc toiling away on his farm.)

@tayh.6235 3 ай бұрын

That does happen. Then they get into an argument and one stabs the other and runs off. Orc friends aren't much better than orc enemies lol

@victorcates9330 3 ай бұрын

It's genuinely a limitation to process ALL stories in a literal sense. The purpose of stories might cover simulating reality, teaching lessons (hence the cautionary tale), or being way more abstract. In a realistic story that hasn't signalled being metaphor, it makes sense to process things in a more straightforward way. But if you're watching a lynch film or a fairy tale, you need to understand you're dealing in the realm of poetry. We're trained to see stories in limited ways. When Ziegler says Snow White's prince is a stalker, I get why she arrived at that conclusion. And it's difficult when stories could have multiple functions simultaneously. Something could be an allegory and be understood as such, but still have the human brain interpret it in a more literal way. If you think of the human brain as a computer, it could be running two programs simultaneously. Maybe one is poetic_understanding.exe running in the foreground and another one is gleaning_information.exe running as a daemon (background process). And there are other problems. Sure the rings are tainted, but I think they have to slowly corrode people where they have an opportunity to simply take them off. It would be a problem for free will if you could slip a ring on someone's finger while they slept and it would mean that their soul was forfeit. So when you see the Nazgul, I think you have to assume they made their choice.

@magister343 3 ай бұрын

If they were going to do an interesting deconstruction story about the elves and orcs, they should really have also included a bit about the Petty Dwarves, whom the Elves hunted for sport and quite probably ate before they met any other dwarves or were convinced that they were intelligent creatures worth any more than other dumb animals.

@VolkerWendt-vq8pi 3 ай бұрын

Cool video, clever and thoughtful. Liked it and subbed.

@keyseeker1 3 ай бұрын

You’ve spoken really well about this. We’re meant to think of orcs how the monks of Lindisfarne thought about the Danes, how the Romans thought about the Huns, how the Saracens thought about the Mongols: they are existential, anti-civilisation - barbarians. In his further musings Tolkien fleshes them out to be as your father describes: fallen, twisted, outside of the natural chain. To me the dual threat of orcs is always twofold - firstly that they are an immediate physical threat, but secondly that if you are not careful you could become like this one day. This could be you. Every heroic character and culture of Tolkien must contend with this. Some indeed fail.

@Some_Dumass 3 ай бұрын

You are correct in that the Orc family in the show is kind of accurate. Tolkien writes in the _Silmarillion_ : "Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressea, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of Orcs in mockery and envy of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before the Beginning: so say the wise.” He also writes in his letter to Mrs. Munby: "“There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known.” Not much was known about how Orcs live. What we do know is that the Orcs spread like Elves and Men. If that’s true, then the resulting babies would probably develop like Elf and human babies, meaning someone’s going to have to take care of them for some amount of time. If Orc-women didn’t fight in battles, as Tolkien implies, then they would likely be the ones caring for the babies. Since Melkor created the Orcs in mockery of the Elves and Men, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that the Orcs might have some twisted semblance of a family. All this logically makes sense based on what’s available in the text. There’s nothing in the lore that says that this can’t happen, although it probably wouldn’t look the way it does in the show. Tolkien says that the Orcs are a mockery of Elves and Men - a corruption of the Children of Ilúvatar, the greatest of all of Morgoth’s sins. The Orcs may be evil, but this is not their fault. It is a condition that was done to them, meaning they’re not only redeemable, but deserving of pity. The only thing that the show argues is that the Orcs are pitiable. That’s it. The bigger issue, for me, is that the scene undermines what the Orcs represent in the context of Tolkien’s stories. Again, the Orcs are Morgoth’s greatest sins, a twisted corruption of the Children of Ilúvatar. Literally, they are former Elves and Men, possibly mixed with lower animals. Their wretched nature is the point. It shows Morgoth’s depravity and cruelty that he would force sentient creatures into this miserable form. If the show wanted the audience to take pity on the Orcs, show them trying to resist their nature and failing to do so because such is their corruption. That would be more effective than putting a baby in their arms because it would make more sense and, as we’ve seen, a lot of people wouldn’t care.

@zacharyclark3693 3 ай бұрын

Tolkien once wrote “we were all orcs” when describing his experience in the trenches of World War I. I personally think that Orcs represent the worst aspects of humanity (greed, cruelty, malice) in contrast to Elves which represent beauty, art, and nature. I honestly didn’t think the Orc family scene was that bad (Tolkien’s later ideas of Orcs had them “multiply in the same manner as the children of I’luvatar). Just because you have a family doesn’t make you less capable of being a villain (look at Darth Vader, or even human beings in real life that are horrible despite having families). Media nowadays leans more towards morally grey characters, redemption arcs, or making good and evil more nuanced. I think you can make that work in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but the level of writing in ROP doesn’t lend itself to much depth and nuance, which would be needed to pull that off in a satisfying way.

@BlibbertyBlobberty 3 ай бұрын

Your sweater

@kefkaFollower 3 ай бұрын

From "The orcs had life and multiply after the manner of the children of Ilúvatar" to orcs having "loving families" like is shown a rings of power there's a huge distance. That's a huge leap. And orcs showing love or any kind of empathy does breaks lore.

@user-nd8rp9tl4k 3 ай бұрын

Thank you Liene, I find your analysis very insightful and you have managed to verbalise succinctly the problems with this. I have similar lore knowledge with you (but have read the Hobbit) and I cannot think of any problems with your argument lore wise. I also agree that the essentialism of the orcs can be problematic if one takes them allegorically, as it has happened with several people who have come out to accuse Tolkien for being racist. Perhaps this is why Tolkien had so vehemently denied his books being allegories, because he realised the problem this would cause and how he and his books would be perceived, especially following WW2 and in the knowledge of what happened there. The Jackson movies brush over this by depicting the orcs as nothing more than bloodthirsty and evil. The show tries to play it both ways and fails miserably. I don't know what they were thinking. They are almost suffering from the old curse of episodic TV series where every episode was regarding the problem of the week and anything that happened to the characters would reverse back to square one for next week's episode. This week let's explore the humanity of orcs. Next week they are back to being bloodthirsty evil goblins. One could even suspect that they are not writing a cohesive story but lightly touching upon various 'themes', as if the writers and showrunners were too many, uncoordinated, and inexperienced and didn't know what they were doing... Oh wait! 😊 Anyway, thank you for the well written analysis again

@deanog2577 3 ай бұрын

I haven't watched 1 second of the series. But I'm here to support the people who suffered through it.

@starleaf2795 3 ай бұрын

one of my many issues with the showrunners is that they're so lazy and stupid they just copied the jackson trilogy's aesthetic for most things including the orcs, but they also want to think they are doing something new and original. no, no, no - if you want to explore the idea of sympathetic orcs (personally i actually like the idea IN THEORY), the visual design has to reflect that, like a del toro film. you can't just copy the jackson trilogy and simultaneously be original

@Steve_Stowers 3 ай бұрын

Great video. I almost skipped it because I haven't watched season 2 of Rings of Power (yet, at least), but it was well worth it for the things you said about "the Orc Problem" in general (and the other related issues you addressed), very well expressed and explained.

@nickwalker2438 3 ай бұрын

My dad read the Hobbit to me when I was a kid and I’ve loved fantasy books ever since

@KevinSmith-vv2jd 3 ай бұрын

Galadriel what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.

@ffelegal 3 ай бұрын

Wow, what a well thought out video. That made me realize how hard it is to write good stuff. Recently I've seen a very good example of this struggle of portraying vilain characters in the anime Frieren. Have you ever seen it? There demons are evil but they may deceive good-hearted people who doesn't know their true nature. It's a pitty we didn't have clever writing for these series, it could have been epic.