[Amazon Prime Video] The Lord of the Rings TV Series

Wheel of Time is dangerous. The first few books are epic and excellent...but the middle books of the story become work just to get through them. Robert Jordan got lost in his world about halfway through. In all honesty, I'm not sure he could have wrapped it up himself. Brandon Sanderson led a valiant effort in closing out the series after Jordan passed away and the last couple books saved the series from a nosedive.

The show runners, if they want to be successful, really need to trim down the latter half of the series.

 

Copy and pasted from the other thread:

So I was thinking that it was supposed to take place in the Second age, and most people were thinking it would be a story revolving around the Rise and Fall of Númenor, but in this picture, there appears to be Laurelin and Telperion in the background (the big trees)...so this is a picture of Valinor before the destruction of the trees? That happened millennia before the Second Age. Perhaps a Prologue?

 

OK, so here we go.

When Arda (the world) was first formed, it was lit by two giant lamps. These lamps were called Illuin, the silver one to the north, and Ormal, the golden one to the south. These lamps lit the world with "sunlight" and "moonlight". Melkor (who would later become Morgoth) destroyed the lamps when he broke Arda the first time.

The Valar (archangels) rebuilt Arda and created Valinor, the country where they would live. Since they only had the twilight of the stars as light, Yavanna (the second most powerful female Vala) sung two trees into existence. They were Telperion, the Silver, and Laurelin, the Gold. One's light would wax as the other would wane each day and it was said they were most beautiful when the light would mingle in the process.

Feanor, the mighest elf to ever live used the light of the trees to forge the Silmarils. Morgoth and Ungoliant (the great grandmother of Shelob) destroyed the trees. Yavanna was able to save a fruit and a flower from the trees which became the Sun and the Moon, but it is said that the only place left on Arda with the pure, unsullied light of the trees left were the Silmarils (thus the ages of war for their return).

Yavanna gifted a tree to the elves that lived in Valinor based upon Telperion the Silver. It was called Galathilion. It was the same as Telperion but had no light of its own. The elves then given a sapling of that tree to the men of Numenor and it was called Nimloth the Fair. It grew in Numenor until Sauron led to its destruction. A sapling was saved by Isildur before the destruction of Numenor and brought to Middle Earth. It became the first of four White Trees of Gondor.

The most interesting thing about the picture presented by Amazon is that it depicts the trees in Valinor in front of probably the city of Valmar. This is during the Era of the Trees which was probably multiple "ages". After that, began the First Age of Middle Earth with the destruction of the trees an the creation and sailing of the Sun (and the awakening of Men). It includes pretty much all of the War for the Silmarils. The Second Age is basically the Rise and Fall of Numenor, and the Third Age is basically the "time of the Ring of power".

The rumors and what Amazon owns the rights to are basically the Second and Third Age stories, so to show the Trees in Valinor means that they either acquired the rights along the way, or they have permission to tell the story as part of a prologue or someothing. (everyone assumed it was the story of Numenor in the series)

At the end of The Lord of the Rings (books) the only constantly living elf in Middle Earth (not in Valinor) to have seen the trees was Galadriel. Glorfindel most likely did as well, but he died once and was resurrected, so there is some question as to whether he would have remembered them.