[+] The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - SPOILERS ALLOWED

[Henadic Theologian]

I could list literally dozens of instances where the Jackson movies violate the tone, theme and plot of LotR, yet the people who are panning the - as yet unseen - upcoming series sing his praises, and are fuming because the casting choices and characterization in the Amazon show are so "egregiously lore breaking." There is a case of extremely selective criticism at work, and it is based on race and gender bias, because if:

1) There were no black elves,
2) There were no black hobbits and;
3) Galadriel was wearing a dress all of the time

I guarantee their messaging would be very different.

I also suspect that Nerdrotic, Geeks & Gamers, MauLer, Critical Drinker and their ilk are really just looking for clicks and are cynically playing that card.

I've read the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and I've seen the movies, but I'm not a huge Tolkien expert, I prefer the Forgotten Realms and other fantasy settings to Middle Earth.

I will say that the Forgotten Realms always had diversity baked in both in terms of humans, but also Dwarves and Elves some other races from the beginning, more then Middle Earth or any other D&D setting except maybe Planescape, so it really never had to worry about how to fit PoC in, they were always there. Same with female warriors and wizards and clerics, Ed had those in the setting from the beginning.

But Tolkien and Ed were from very dfferent parts of the world and different generations.

 

[Hriston]

Middle-earth has always had PoC just like it does now. If some people want to imagine a legendary time when there were no PoC, that's on them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wonder how it will compare with the competition. There's 3 fantasy shows in atm. Subjective opinion best to worst.

Witcher
Shadow and Bone
Wheel of Time
I liked all if the above to some extent although WoT had issues.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm going to reserve judgement until I actually see it, but my general sense is that it looks less like an attempt to adapt Tolkien's Middle-earth to screen and more like fan-fiction. Meaning, sort of akin to the recent Star Wars movies. I do hope that they don't mangle certain aspects of Tolkien's creation like SW did, but on the other hand, unlike the SW movies, Tolkien's creation exists primarily (and only, really) in book form. Meaning, SW is a film franchise, so there's a sense that any film made is representative of the entire universe. With the Tolkien films and TV series, we can at least step back and say, "This is someone else's version of Tolkien's world, and thus more akin to fan fiction."

Or to put it another way, a bad SW film actually diminishes the franchise, whereas a bad Tolkien film or series can't touch the books. My only concern is that the vast majority of people know Tolkien only through the films, which is sort of like watching Troy but never reading The Iliad.

 

[Morrus]

“Fan fiction” is used as a pejorative so often now that it’s literally lost any meaning. Everything’s fan fiction.

 

[ART!]

“Fan fiction” is used as a pejorative so often now that it’s literally lost any meaning. Everything’s fan fiction.

Yeah, we live in a post-"fanfiction" era, where the traits of fanfiction have ingrained themselves into mainstream fiction. At this point, multiple generations of writers have grown up with fanfiction, so those traits are part of how mainstream writers think and write. It would be hard or even impossible to weed out these influences of fanfiction.

 

[billd91]

I'm going to reserve judgement until I actually see it, but my general sense is that it looks less like an attempt to adapt Tolkien's Middle-earth to screen and more like fan-fiction.

That's some pretty elitist BS, there. It's an adapted screenplay (or, I guess since it's for a TV series, teleplay). It's like any other adapted teleplay.

 

[Mercurius]

That's some pretty elitist BS, there. It's an adapted screenplay (or, I guess since it's for a TV series, teleplay). It's like any other adapted teleplay.

LOL, elitist?

How is it an "adapted screenplay?" From what, the appendices? The Silmarillion? Have you read those? They aren't novels - more vignettes, notes, and summaries, so I'm not sure "adapted screenplay" is accurate.

 

[Mercurius]

“Fan fiction” is used as a pejorative so often now that it’s literally lost any meaning. Everything’s fan fiction.

You can see this an attack on the latest thing that everyone loves, or instead try to hear my actual point.

Such terms have variable meanings. I'm using it to differentiate it from an attempt to adapt a work in a way that stays as true as possible to the source material, vs. a re-envisioning. It is a spectrum. So far this seems to veer more towards the latter than Peter Jackson's trilogy did.

But again, I'm going to reserve judgment until I actually see it.

 

[billd91]

LOL, elitist?

Yeah, elitist. Would you be slinging that fanfic criticism at Blade Runner? At Dune? Lawrence of Arabia? Schindler's List?

How is it an "adapted screenplay?" From what, the appendices? The Silmarillion? Have you read those?

Adapted from the materials they have the rights to adapt - the Hobbit, LotR and its appendices.
And yes, I've read those, plus the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales, etc. Not that it matters that I've done so to take issue with criticizing the adaptation of any of them for this project as "fanfic".