The Reel Rejects - THE RINGS OF POWER 2x07 Breakdown & Review!!!

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Starting point is 00:00:51 Available for a limited time. Your strato Frappuccino is ready at Starbucks. It's a good time. Come join us. Roll the bumps. What do we got? Oh, God. Is this like one of those Viking metal bands?

Starting point is 00:01:16 Oh, I feel like whoever this is just toured with Mastodon or something. Wild stuff. Oh, God. Let's talk about it. All right. Well, dang. If you guys are listening by a chance on Apple or Spotify. I leave us a five-star rating or whatever rating you like, but, you know, five is a nice place to start.

Starting point is 00:01:35 This was a big, I mean, we got, we're in battle territory now. It's huge. This is a big one. Big battles. One of the biggest battles. Big one. The whole show. Everyone's talking about it.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Gee, I know you had expressed some concerns about how the episode was kind of paced at one point throughout. Now that we have seen it in its totality. what say ye um yeah i thought it was good it's not my favorite of the i felt like season two's been uh pretty good and i feel like the past few have been great and uh especially the last i think the last one was still my favorite episode yeah we've gotten so far i i did like this one overall i do think there was some pacing issues like i don't think any of the scenes necessarily are bad there's some clunky stuff in the action moments that i i do think there was some clunky stuff in the action moments that

Starting point is 00:02:29 I don't feel like they like there was one moment or John I were laughing when someone clearly wasn't hit by anything but they acted like it. Sure. And some stunt man salad there. Yeah. And then like it seemed a little bit funny in the way how that one girl got

Starting point is 00:02:45 shot by all those arrows all of a sudden. It just turns around. She's like, a lot of them. And it was like that seemed like something that would have been brought up and then paid off like

Starting point is 00:02:57 20 minutes down the line in a movie. or I don't know why they didn't like save that to the next episode other than I guess the battle had to end this one Yeah I do think that there was it just felt like oh we're getting momentum And now we're really going to slow it down with this other thing Now we're getting momentum now we're really going to slow it down with this other thing And so I do think some of the cutting around the stuff Actually kind of affected it when I think this episode might have been a little bit stronger

Starting point is 00:03:24 If it was mainly just the caliber more stuff And and and and the battle. Does everything surrounding a reggae on? Yeah, yeah. If it was just mainly that, I think it would have been more focused and it would have been a little bit stronger.

Starting point is 00:03:38 And like, technically it was that. Like, technically, it, there was just the way the scenes were done and how they chose to cut around them. I just thought kind of affected the, the overall pacing of it to the point where

Starting point is 00:03:51 it never really quite soared, even though this was like their biggest battle thing they've done on the show. Yeah. And there were moments in the battle sequence that I totally think were really cool. Like, I think there's a lot of great destruction moments. There's some cool violence that goes down. And it looked good.

Starting point is 00:04:09 It looked fucking great. A lot of the destruction stuff. But, yeah, there was just a sense of like, when I say slowed down, I'm like, this battle is a very urgent high stakes thing. And then that urgency really would feel like it's being put on hold. and so I kind of would I kind of felt like when things should just constantly be ramping up it didn't feel it would be like

Starting point is 00:04:37 like I don't know how to explain it well yeah it's you've got this battle coming to a head and you've also got you know Sauron doing his torment of Kellebrimbor and so there's like enough of like a dilated sense of stakes like there's the super physical stakes right outside the door and there's this like yeah mental torture that we need to pay off

Starting point is 00:04:54 and I think cutting to the dwarves and doing the like all the stuff they did with the dwarves was good and I feel like maybe it might have been better served in the previous episode so that we could spend this episode wondering like they're going to show up though

Starting point is 00:05:10 and then like maybe cut later to reveal why they haven't showed up or something and I think they were trying to do the thing of no when the dwarves show up it'll be like they're saving the day and I never really got the sense that the dwarves were their secret weapon to victory here

Starting point is 00:05:26 and so I didn't really feel like we needed to spend that much time with them in this episode yeah so it's really not like is it's really this that that's my main thing here is yeah it's a pacing problem um but you know good violence and uh hell running laddriel guestin that's right adar's co and uh and errone dear better not be dead errone dear uh yeah i know he really love that aaron dear he's my boy he knows his name. He is my boy. And Kellibrimbor, it's tragic. This like gaslighting abusive relationship. And Saron really seems to not just be saying words to abuse him. He really seems like a narcissistic sociopath. He does, which I think is cool. He's really like, you forced me to do this. I wouldn't

Starting point is 00:06:13 be doing this, but you made me. You chose this. Yeah. You know, it's really cruel. And I actually really like that. I really like how they wrote him that way. Yeah. I'm just like, he's an abusive What makes him interesting is the fact that several times throughout his scenes, like, I'll get lost thinking, like, it seems like he really believes what he's saying. Yeah. And then you'll see that anger underneath, like, boil over when, like, all of the options, like, you can watch him kind of cycle through manipulation tactics where he'll come in and be like, hey, Keller Brimbor, we're making something beautiful. We're going to balance the world. And then it becomes, but you made me, I mean, like, we were doing so great, but then you made me do this stuff that corrupted the process. Early just made me think of like when a husband hits his wife and he's like, you made me hit you. Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. And then when that doesn't work, then it goes to like, I am going to Lord over you and force you to do my bidding. And yeah, like it's a nice detail because I think it's a very hazardous thing arguably to like develop Sauron too much because you don't want to like demystify him or, you know, undercut the dark Lord Emperor vibe motif. But yeah, like Charlie Vickers, like what he's like what he.

Starting point is 00:07:24 He's been bringing to the character throughout this in like the subtle little micro expressions. And yeah, the way he plays this guy, you know, what he's talking about like, you know, Morgoth, what he did to me, like to repeat that cycle of abuses is painful to me. And in a way, I believe that. And like, that's, yeah, that's good stuff. Like, that's interesting. They found something interesting thematically to do there. And then, yeah, like, I kind of forgotten in a way until he and Galadriel had their moment

Starting point is 00:07:53 together outside where they're both like I this is all my fault I let him in no no no I did too like this is like that shame of being the one and then coming to find like no this guy is just an extraordinarily powerful manipulator and everyone falls for this stuff

Starting point is 00:08:09 you know because he is so good at worming into all the things you want to need almost like analogous is an analogous yeah for people in power it is yes it is

Starting point is 00:08:22 the rings of people in power. I can get you a role in this movie. If you do a little some, some for me. Yeah. If you make me these nine rings, I will greenlit your entire franchise. That's what did he did to everyone? That's right. It's like going to every nine rings up.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Make me nine rings. I will get you as many drugs and bodies as you need. Yeah. I like that stuff a lot. The battles were really great, really tangible. And I feel like that does stand in contrast to some of the, you know, battle stuff in the first season. Not to say that, you know, some of the stuff they made there wasn't, you know, lovely looking. But this really had that sort of tangible punch, whether you were in the heart of Aregion where it's mostly like, you know, structures being destroyed or you're in the mud.

Starting point is 00:09:12 I really did feel like they were in a huge place. With tons of people. They didn't feel like a volume or some or like just a fill in with CGI. I really like, I actually really love how the opening shot is in Kellebrimbor's mind, and it's just a big circle around panning, showing, like, the beauty and how he's seeing it. Yeah. But it's also giving you an idea of the geography of how massive this all is. So I really like that opening shot a lot.

Starting point is 00:09:37 Yeah, and like the continued destruction does read nicely across the episode. And, yeah, like all of the practical and physical stunts, and then the blending of CG with stunts and, physical effects like this is what I expected originally when you hear the idea of like Amazon's paying all the money to make a Lord of the Rings series I'm like this is the kind of

Starting point is 00:09:59 budget you expect to see on screen the kind of production value and the kind of choices of what sorts of effects and stunts how to orchestrate them that you would kind of expect and while it might not you know structurally and pacing wise fully live up to some of the stuff in the

Starting point is 00:10:15 movies it at least made me feel like I was in a similar experience as and I was marveling at what they were able to bring together and I was sitting here going, I hope they're able. This is, like, the more we've gotten into season two, the more I'm like, I hope they're able to continue this. Whereas, you know, as in the first season,

Starting point is 00:10:31 I was a little bit ambivalent about it. And, you know, even the stuff with Adar, like, uh, I like the themes. I'm not as plugged into the whole, like, oh, are the orcs going to turn on him? I think they could make that more interesting. But I like just the ironic concept of like, These two people having this all-out battle are actually kind of fighting for the same thing.

Starting point is 00:10:53 They just can't agree on it because that's what Sauron does. There's some story elements that I think it's not really quite hitting there still. You know, like the – because I agree with everything you said. All the positives, I agree with John. So you had those few minutes on to me because apparently I just come in here and I'm like, well, let me tell you. You start out of positives, too. I got a little bit of the negatives. I think some of the story points are really hit.

Starting point is 00:11:16 Like, I, I see how much people kind of clown on the whole thing with humanizing the orcs. I don't mind it. I actually kind of prefer it. I'm like, that's interesting. Yeah, why not? People always just make the orcs, you know, just vicious creatures. And there's something kind of interesting to me about this community. And they, yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:37 They clearly haven't all killed each other. So there must be some way they live together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, they're not just savages. And so I, I like that. but I still don't feel like, yeah, but we never really get to see you. They're only human through that one guy when he comes up and he's like, Daddy, do you love us? And I like that, but yeah, like we don't really get to observe them.

Starting point is 00:12:01 We were in the prison camp before a little bit, but we don't really get to observe them. And I don't need them to be warm and fluffy even. I'm fine with the idea of like if they just give me an understanding of what orculture could be like without me having to like agree with. with it you know like i get the kind of juxtaposition of like more or less evil races across a fantasy show like this but but yeah the way it's presented here it it almost feels like that moment with the woman getting shot with all the arrows it's sort of like when it comes in it's so brief that it feels kind of silly yeah the way it's articulated uh and arndair uh going after adr like we barely spend time with him this season yeah i'm not really feeling for this um

Starting point is 00:12:44 obviously wanting the revenge make sense when you consider all the context and everything from season one yes it does make sense but you want to charge back up on that before they actually fight yeah you want you want some of that emotion to be translated and maybe it is for you uh just for taking just this season on its own i don't really feel that that much so yeah like there's a couple of things that are kind of lacking here and glad you'll drop the pin glad you'll drop the pin she shows up at the right time for kill the proof that was that was a bit frustrating that was very plot mechanics yeah well i mean nothing's gonna there's nothing wrong with him drop with with him finding the pin really like it doesn't change anything no ultimately no that's that's fair but it was one of those things i was like damn i i just were taking it yeah i don't know why because that also implies uh elrond because he saw him wearing i don't know it doesn't really matter that's true so it could be worse but yeah yeah um But overall, it's good. Like the troll, cool.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Hell, yeah. And that, like, this season seems more apt to throw in details like that. When it's dying and laughing and gurgling on itself, like, that's a truly interesting, weird little moment of life inside this universe. Yeah, sometimes there's some, like, uncomfortable, it's not, like, aggressively gory, but there are times where the violence is a little off-putting. And I'm like, eh, no, that never happened in the Lord of the Rings movies. But it still, it does, I get what you mean there, because it's not, like, hard-ar. and this is going a little, I would argue. There's like a full-on throat slash of the horse.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Some guy got his whole elbow, like, or shoulder chopped open. Well, yeah. But, like, when they're crushing, like, the humans and the, like, stomping on them. Yeah. You got, like, blood splats happening. Yeah. The Lord of the Rings movies, to me, and in the battles, you know, with the orcs and stuff, especially, do have some horror, horrific element because you are fighting monsters in the mud.

Starting point is 00:14:42 So it's like it is. It's never R-rated, though. This goes R-rated sometimes with its violence. It does, but the Lord of the Rings movies, I think, part of how they manage to grip people so heavily is because even in a PG-13 context, they communicated the intensity and, like, the harshness and the terror,

Starting point is 00:14:58 even if they're not as, like, explicit as this is. And I think that's a good thing that they've been able to translate here as well. Yeah, man. So excited to see how they wrap this up next week. You know, usually you get, like, a big old battle, and then you get your thematic wrap-ups plus setups for the next season.

Starting point is 00:15:16 But we'll see. Maybe there are more fights to be had. There's still more going down at Caza Doom where we get a Balrog tease. We'll Gandalf and Tom Bombadil kiss. Find out next week. And leave us your thoughts on this one. Love you guys.

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The Reel Rejects - THE RINGS OF POWER 2x07 Breakdown & Review!!!

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