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2024-05-16, 02:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Now part of me wonder if it was meant to be Warhammer Fantasy since some of the armor seems like it came straight from High Elves miniatures (especially 2E).
That or it’s other way around.
Maybe Amazon wanted to make Warhammer but had to recycle their props.
Also was it me or anyone thought that they were going to make Dragon Age “beardless” dwarves when the news came out.Badly drawn helmet avatar drawn by me.
Rest in Peace:SpoilerMiko Miyazaki, Thanh, Durkon- Order of the Stick
Krunch- Looking For Group
Bill- Left 4 Dead
Soap Mactavish- Modern Warfare 3
Sandman- Modern Warfare 3
Ghost and Roach- Modern Warfare 2
Gabe- Dead Space 2
Dom- Gears of War 3
Carmine Brothers- Gears of War series
Uriel Septim VII- Elderscrolls Oblivion
Commander Shepherd- Mass Effect 3
Ned Stark- Song of Ice and Fire
Apple Jack's parents
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2024-05-16, 02:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Correct. I was overstating the absurdity of it somewhat, but let's face it: it is a dazzlingly stupid plan, even if it worked for some reason.
But I may be misremembering, as Adar was basically the only part of the first season that worked for me and I may be backfilling to make it work for me.
Gotta love that attitude, I must admit.
Well, I don't suppose I need to stress how big a mistake that one, in particular, made by trying to adapt what it tried to adapt, nevertheless.Last edited by Metastachydium; 2024-05-16 at 02:35 PM.
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2024-05-16, 02:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Ceika made my avatar over a decade ago and the link has expired since, but people should still appreciate their work.
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2024-05-16, 04:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-05-16, 05:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Naturally they lost the actor between seasons. Oops.
Honestly, part of my issue is that it's a Lord of the Rings series to begin with, because when I hear the pitch "breaking bad but for the rise of a fantasy overlord" that's kind of exciting, and giving a quasi-romance to your main villain and hero is compelling, but neither of those are Lord of the Rings to me.
If this was an original fantasy story I would also be less bothered by a lot of the production decisions, which aren't great but would be vastly improved if I wasn't mentally comparing them to the Jackson and company takes which looked way better both in concept and execution.
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2024-05-16, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I do agree fully with you there. Tolkien made very deliberate choices in how he focused the narratives and what the narratives were. He very deliberately wrote about the meek and the humble, and showed how goodness came from rejection of power. Focusing a show on the badass elf queen is going to go against his ethos no matter what.
I think it's easier for me not to care because while I like LOTR and love The Hobbit, it's not quite important to me on that level. I fully understand Tolkien fans who were upset, though - same reason I started hating Game of Thrones in season 4 in spite of my generous view of most fantasy shows.Ceika made my avatar over a decade ago and the link has expired since, but people should still appreciate their work.
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2024-05-16, 10:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
And she's not even a queen yet, but well said. She was dismissed by the king from her command of troops and sent home (The West). She's got a long way to go before she can be called a queen.
Speaking of which: she dives off the boat, swims east, and runs into "not sauron" who is there because...why?
Maybe they will explain that in Season two, but as it currently stands, that's a deux ex machina at best.
Or is there something about her disobedience to Gil Galad that somehow triggers the sensors of a dark/evil Maia?
Again, unexplained.
Not sure if I am alone in this, but I think that Adar is a First Age elf, a refugee from Beleriand, who wandered long and far before he settled in the south; he met some orcs along the way and for (reasons) feels a connection to them.
Not quite what tolkiengateway has...Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2024-05-16 at 10:49 PM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2024-05-17, 08:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Galadriel never becomes a queen, she and Celeborn become the Lord and Lady of Lothlórien after the king dies at sea and has no heirs and they protect it from Sauron and his forces for thousands of years. It is said that the only way he could have taken Lothlórien is if he went there himself, but of course he couldn't do that until he got the One Ring back.
That's kinda the thing about Galadriel, after all. She isn't dainty or weak. She was referred to as positively Amazonian by Tolkien, one of the wisest and most powerful elves to ever live, taught by the angels themselves back in Valinor.
Admittedly Galadriel in Rings of Power isn't quite as impressive as Cate Blanchett was in the movies but that's really because characters like that are best kept ambiguous and unknowable. In The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel is an ancient and terrifying being who has lived since the First Age, when the gods themselves fought over the fate of the world. It stands to reason making her a protagonist of a show would diminish that mystery.
Speaking of which: she dives off the boat, swims east, and runs into "not sauron" who is there because...why?
Maybe they will explain that in Season two, but as it currently stands, that's a deux ex machina at best.Last edited by Infernally Clay; 2024-05-17 at 08:13 AM.
"Don't think of it as dying," said Death,
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush."
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2024-05-17, 12:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Yes. Just because the meek and the humble are the heroes of LOTR doesn't mean there's no place for the strong and powerful in the plans of Eru Illuvatar. That is, in fact, what Aragorn is doing before the events of Fellowship; as a rogue in the woods, he and his fellow Dunadain hunt monsters and evil creatures in the wild lands, which is why the Shire is so peaceful; they have guards they aren't even aware of ceaselessly laboring so the hobbits and Bree-folk can have a peace.
To quote Terry Pratchett: "Them as can have to do for them as can't, and someone has to speak up for them with no voices." It's an attitude both Tolkien and the characters he wrote would have agreed with.
So it's not that there's no place for Minas Tirith and its high walls or its mighty armies; it's that you can't ultimately achieve victory or a lasting peace through them. Following that route, of prioritizing strength over goodness , eventually takes you down Boromir's path. Sure, you can defeat Sauron but you've won nothing; you've killed Sauron only to take his place, like in the end stage of Diablo. They are a tool for success, even a necessary tool; Frodo could not have made it to an unguarded Mount Doom if tens of thousands of ordinary foot soldiers had not risked their lives in a suicidal attack on the Black Gate to distract the Eye's attention. But you can't establish a peaceful shire and a world worth living in through such means.
Crossing Genres, this is ultimately my complaint about the Jedi in Episode II. I just played through "The Two Towers" and I was struck by Saruman's use of cloning to generate an army of Uruk-hai. Saruman is fighting Sauron using his own weapons, tools, and methods. From Gandalf's perspective, that's even worse than being defeated by Sauron. The goal of Gandalf and Elrond is not just to defeat Sauron, but to make a world where there aren't any Dark Lords at all. Defeating Sauron with his own Ring is, indeed, the shortest path to tactical victory. But it only replaces one Dark Lord with another; the free people gain nothing from it.
I think Lucas writes from the same vantage point as Tolkien as the SW Prequels tell almost the same story. The Jedi choose the literal weapons of their enemy -- the clones -- to fight the enemy of the moment. They are making Saruman's choice. And the result is exactly the thing that Tolkien warned about; the Republic, by using the weapons and methods of the Sith, becomes the Empire. It's not a victory worth having. The point of fighting is not to defeat Dooku to set up Palpatine in his place; the point of fighting is to create a Republic where there aren't any Sith Lords ruling things at all.
This is a test that Gandalf passed and the Jedi failed. While the refusal of the obvious choice (use of clones , use of the Ring) is military madness, as both Boromir and Denethor rightly observe, it's still the better choice because the war both Jedi and Istari are fighting is as much a battle of ideals and spiritual strength as it is a military battle. It's a multi-part battle; winning the military side is still a defeat if they other parts are lost.
Respectfully,
Brian P."Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."
-Valery Legasov in Chernobyl
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2024-05-17, 12:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
The Uruk-hai are a distraction in this. Saruman is only intending to fight Sauron at all if he gets the One Ring. If he doesn't he's angling for a favoured minion position. He may even have been spooked into marching his forces out earlier than he intended by the knowledge that it was on the move and might slip from his grasp, if he'd managed to defeat Rohan he would have been in a position to bargain for some kind of vassalage rather than being gobbled up.
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2024-05-17, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I'm not trying to be pedantic, really I'm not, but I'd like clarification. Should I take "just played through" as "just watched the Jackson film of", or "just read through Tolkien's book"? Or was there actually a video game trilogy that I'm unaware of. (I can easily imagine a strongly-plotted JRPG version, along the lines of the Xenosaga games.) I don't think Tolkien implied that Saurman's generation of the Uruk-hai was through anything other than normal mammalian breeding techniques, but Jackson did things differently.
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2024-05-17, 01:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I'm talking about the PS/2 video game tie-in to the movie. It has a lot of cutscenes interleaved with the movies and Saruman's Uruk-hai feature prominently as adversaries.
One of the things that struck me most about this army, revisiting the game several years on, is how modern Saruman's army is both in the movies and the associated games. The Uruk-hai wear mass-produced plate armor. They carry crossbows, throw grenades, use black powder as explosive, Suicide bombers, catapults. The swords are mass-produced falchions , designed to be easy to mass manufacture, easy and intuitive to use, rugged under battlefield conditions; the AK-47 of LOTR, as discussed in the illustrated guide .
That's not a medieval army. That's an early modern/renaissance army.
This is what I'm getting at: The Uruk-Hai are the Clone Army of LOTR. They are created from spawning pits to generate an army of tens of thousands from practically nothing to contest the dominance of Middle-Earth with Sauron, using tactics and equipment which is centuries ahead of anything anyone else has. It's as if Saruman was watching Gate and thought it was a good idea. This is a close analogue to the ready-made army presented to the Jedi in Star Wars as the Only Possible Alternative to the Separatists winning.
Respectfully,
Brian P.Last edited by pendell; 2024-05-17 at 02:01 PM.
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."
-Valery Legasov in Chernobyl
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2024-05-17, 02:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I mean, he'd need to be omniscient and possibly omnipotent to pull that stunt off. Like, you could claim he had a way of knowing what happened in Gil-Galad's kingdom, maybe even that he could predict Galadriel would pull a stunt and jump overboard. but how in hell would he not only manage to pinpoint where she'd end up, but also appear there at the exact right time? That wasn't some small pond, it was the frigging sea!
Similiarly we have Adar's grand plan. It's viability (and logistics) aside, who the heck made that dam and lock, and decided to use something that seems to possibly be the most magical sword in Middle-Earth (having the blade appear like that seems quite a feat) as the key to the release mechanism?
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2024-05-17, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Sauron is an angel and this is long before he contains most of his power in the One Ring, so the idea that he can track others really isn't that farfetched. His magic power is vastly superior to anything Gandalf or Saruman can do, or any of the elves for that matter.
"Don't think of it as dying," said Death,
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush."
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2024-05-17, 04:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I was going to say that he was overcome by Luthien, in the Silmarillion, so not so vastly superior, but when I actually checked, I found that it was a dog who drove him out from Tol-in-Gaurhoth. Huan, a hound from Valinor, but still a dog. (I suspect some influence from the early days of Tolkien's writing, when Sauron's role was played by a cat.)
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2024-05-17, 04:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
It's worth pointing out that the main "power" of the One Ring is to twist people's wills to that of its master.
Sauron isn't a danger because he's handy in a fight, he's a danger because he can smother the will and enslave the mind. (Which as far as it shows in his writing is Tolkien's version of capital E Evil. Not just an evil thing to do but what evil is.)Last edited by GloatingSwine; 2024-05-17 at 04:53 PM.
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2024-05-17, 05:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I don't believe that's entirely correct. Yes Sauron was driven by his almost single-minded desire to bend all life to his will, but only because it was a corruption of his intended purpose - he was literally created to create order in the world and Morgoth convinced him the only way to succeed at his purpose was to enforce that order himself.
In terms of his actual power, Sauron was the strongest of the Maiar. He was the most powerful ally Morgoth had, which is saying a lot, and unlike the Maiar his power wasn't sealed away while he worked his mojo in Middle Earth. It took Elendil and Gil-galad working together to defeat him, remember, and Gil-galad is easily the only elf still in the world that could be considered as powerful, or more powerful, than Galadriel and he still needed the most powerful of the elven rings of power."Don't think of it as dying," said Death,
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush."
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2024-05-17, 07:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-05-18, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Nobody said otherwise.
The implication seems to be that Sauron knew where Galadriel would be and put himself in her path. She was his ticket into Númenor where, if you recall, he intended to stay. When it turned out the smiths of Númenor weren't good enough to forge the rings of power, he stuck with Galadriel until she could bring him to Celebrimbor.
1. I think some wires got crossed. Sauron was originally a maia of Aule, the craftsman/smith. Calling him the most powerful maiar is not attested. He was one of the most gifted of the maia, yes. Morgoth / Melkor was the most powerful of the Valar. He recruited Sauron to his side.
2. If Manwe can't see everything, and he's got the best eyes and scouts on Middle Earth, Sauron diminished sure can't. Now, if he had a spy in Lindon he'd have found out about Galadriel's being relieved of command and sent home by the High King, Gil Galad. That would then open up his chances to go to sea and find a way to intercept her.
3. Did he summon the sea monster which attacked the boat?
Again, not show on screen, not explained, and without some fleshing out deux ex machina...at best.Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2024-05-18, 09:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
A new season of RoP?!
I'm not surprised... It has dozens of fans! DOZENS!Homebrew Stuff:- Lemmy's Custom Weapon Generation System! - (D&D 3.X and PF)
Not all heroes wield scimitars, falchions and longbows! (I'm quite proud of this one ) - Lemmy's Homebrew Cauldron
You can find all my work here.
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2024-05-18, 01:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2024-05-18, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I know he is called the greatest among the servants of Morgoth, don't think he is explicitely called "greatest of the Maiar". Though Tolkien did have a lot of different takes on things.
I don't believe he showcased any such ability during the events of the Silmarillion, even in cases where it would have been a huge boon. And even if he could it still leaves the bit where he somehow manages to get on a dinky raft in the right place at the exact right moment.
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2024-05-18, 03:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
'greatest' is not the same thing as 'good in a fight' Manwe is the greatest Vala, but Tulkas and Orome are the combat specialists. But the don't have the rights to the Silmarillion with ROP, so I think the best move is just to ignore whatever book lore you've got.
WOT Season 2 is a tricky one. As a generic fantasy show it's above average, but in terms of the material it's really pushing the limits of whether it's adapting the source at all. But if you try to take it as an independent work it becomes really confusing, because the mechanics as explained contradict each other.
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2024-05-18, 06:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-05-19, 05:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I'm on the camp that Sauron didn't plan to meet Galadriel there and it was a literal deus ex machina. Sauron was still on his redemption mode back then, and I think he might be trying to reach Aman.
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2024-05-19, 06:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-05-20, 09:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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2024-05-20, 10:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
If the dialogue is bad, it for sure is on the writers.
I don't think he was. His chance at redemption was at the end of the First Age. And he was unwilling to cross the see and seek absolution from Manwe. His ego got in the way.
Originally Posted by Talakeal
But I'll have to go and check tonight ...Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2024-05-20 at 10:27 AM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2024-05-20, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
I guess that will ultimately depend on how heavy handed they intend to get with Eru Ilúvatar, because they can absolutely angle it as Eru giving Sauron one last chance at redemption by putting him in the path of the one person who could still save him if he allows her to.
We're still years out from the breaking of the world, so it remains to be seen if it'll be a natural disaster or a direct intervention from the creator god of Middle Earth. At this particular point in the show Middle Earth is still very much flat and, of course, Eru is the one that turns it into a globe."Don't think of it as dying," said Death,
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush."
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2024-05-20, 05:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Lord of the Rings - Rings of Power Season 2 [airs August 29th]
Yet, Sauron's record is just one L after the other. Instead, Gothmog and Glaurung have to come out when a main character needs to die. Those two are the actual carries in team Melkor. His other servants (Sauron, Ancalagon) may have more hype, but actually do very little.