The Creative Bankruptcy of Amazon's 'The Rings of Power'
The ‘One Ring’ text (circular inscription)
I did not watch ‘The Rings of Power’ (RoP), but I did see enough, thanks to the Tolkien channels I’m subscribed to on YouTube and their honest, in-depth reviews; I shall be eternally grateful for their sacrifice, watching it so those like me didn’t have to.
Is it really so difficult for those who make entertainment shows – films and tv series – to simply make shows that genuinely entertain?
That’s all we, the fans, want – to be transported away from the world we live in, especially in a fantasy series.
We do not want a show that shoehorns in real-world politics and race and feminism and all the things that only work to divide us as a people.
And they never seem to listen.
The one recent exception is the 2020 ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ film.
When the fans voiced their dislike of the design for Sonic, the director, Jeff Fowler, and his design team took the criticism on board.
They redesigned Sonic, even though it meant delaying the film from its original release date of November 2019 to February 2020.
The humility of Fowler and his team, and the respect they showed the fans, paid off – it was the 6th highest-grossing film of 2020 and the highest grossing superhero film of that year, with even the critics giving it favourable reviews.
With ‘RoP’ and everything else, it seems, we get the exact opposite.
Instead of listening to the fans and getting them on side – after all, we are the paying customers – the media companies lash out and do what they can to divide each fanbase.
It’s not difficult, honest.
All they have to do is take on board what the fans want, be respectful, and they’ll have our support because, at the end of the day, all we want is a successful show we can enjoy.
All we wanted was to be transported back to the world of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
If you watched ‘RoP’ and enjoyed it, good for you.
I’m not here to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t watch or enjoy; each to their own.
Whereas before I’d keep my thoughts to myself, this time I want to speak out about this travesty because I’ve had enough of companies like Amazon and Disney, people like JJ Abrams with his touch of death (‘Star Trek’, and the ‘Star Wars’ sequels; and his acolytes with ‘RoP’), taking beloved, existing series and worlds like Middle-earth, tearing them apart and remaking them into the opposite of what they are, what they stand for, all the while accusing fans of being toxic.
I stayed quiet when it happened to ‘Star Trek’, when it happened to Marvel and DC, up to a point with ‘Star Wars’, but with Tolkien, enough is enough.
In a previous post, I had said, after watching the final trailer before the series began, I thought there was a good enough story buried in there if all Tolkien references were removed.
I now retract that thought.
As I always give fair warning, here it is – SPOILERS AHEAD.
Having compressed the timeline of the Second Age, the showrunners have given no indication of how far into the Second Age the story is set.
There are no clues as to how many days or weeks or months have passed in the series itself.
The existing characters – Galadriel, Elrond, Celebrimbor, Gil-galad, Elendil, Isildur, Ar-Pharazôn, Miríel – might as well be original characters as they’re unrecognisable from Tolkien’s creations.
The plot of ‘RoP’ is an original story with no events from the Second Age except the eruption of Mount Doom (even though the context is wrong as the eruption originally signalled Sauron’s attack on Gondor) and an extremely hurried forging of the 3 elven rings.
JRR Tolkien
Tolkien’s Númenóreans were descended from the Edain, the most noble race of Men.
The clearest difference between them and the typical men who lived on Middle-earth was their height – many averaged over 6 foot.
Elendil, also known as Elendil the Tall, was nearly 8 foot tall.
Another trait that set them apart was their longevity; they’d been blessed with long life for their loyalty and service during the wars against Morgoth, especially the War of Wrath.
Yet, in ‘RoP’, the Númenóreans look the same as those who inhabit Middle-earth; nothing special about them at all.
Of all the characters, the dwarves were the only ones who looked authentic.
The short-haired elves looked like men as their ears weren’t always visible, and they certainly didn’t have an ethereal quality to them.
The harfoots – my goodness, the harfoots; horrible grubby sociopaths!
Having harped on enough about ‘RoP’ being the most expensive TV show ever made, it’s a shame Amazon couldn’t pay for better costumes, a change of clothes for poor Celebrimbor who wore the same outfit all the way through, more ships for the Númenóreans who were known as shipbuilders and great mariners, proper editing…
In one of the episodes, having already established it would take the Númenóreans about a couple of days to get to the Southlands, they arrive in the nick of time in a matter of hours.
Never mind that, the best part – they’re riding their horses at a full gallop with the sun rising behind them, echoing the arrival of Gandalf and Éomer with the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep in Peter Jackson’s ‘The Two Towers’ – except these heroes are riding from the west to the east. Ah well…
That also serves as an example of the creative bankruptcy of the showrunners.
Instead of crafting their own memorable scenes and/or dialogue, they lifted imagery, not from the books, but from Peter Jackson’s films.
There are other glaringly obvious examples, especially in the final episode.
Of all the subverting the showrunners have done, I honestly don’t know which I despise the most – what the Galadriel-character says about her husband, Celeborn; hijacking Tolkien’s greatest love story of Beren and Lúthien, namely how they met, and ‘giving’ it to the Galadriel-character; or shoehorning dialogue and visual details from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ into the Second Age where they don’t belong.
Instead of being nothing other than a rare ore found only in Khazad-dûm (later known as Moria), now mithril is something that’s been created through the light of a Silmaril.
Except in the lore, the 3 Silmarils were gone by the end of the First Age – one in the sky with Eärendil; another thrown in the sea by one of Fëanor’s 2 surviving sons; and the third was destroyed when Fëanor’s other son flung himself and the jewel into a fiery chasm.
Another thing that’s as jarring is when Elrond speaks of how he was found by the Galadriel-character as an orphan, alone on a beach, when, according to Tolkien, he, along with his brother, Elros, were found by Maglor, Fëanor’s son, after the kinslaying at the Havens of Sirion, who then took care of them for a time.
Also, if, in ‘RoP’, Elrond was found alone, where’s Elros? Without him, the Númenórean line of kings doesn’t exist.
And let’s not forget Sauron who, in the Second Age, assumed a ‘fair visage’ as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, befriended and eventually seduced the Elves at Eregion into making rings of power, but he failed to charm Galadriel, Elrond and High King Gil-galad.
Yet, in ‘RoP’ he comes in the guise of a mortal man who seems to want to live a quiet life and is shown working contentedly at a forge in Númenor and who strongly objects to having to return to Middle-earth, even pleads not to go.
But if we’re to follow the show’s ‘logic’, Halbrand has been manipulated into ultimately reclaiming his role as Sauron, the greatest threat to all the free peoples of Middle-earth, by the Galadriel-character, making it all her fault!
I also have to mention the unrelenting attack on the fans, which went on for the duration of the series, right up until the eleventh hour.
If the showrunners are so confident in the product they’ve put out, why do their interviews, published by their paid-for media continue to call us racists?
Granted, before the series began, we did question the race-swapping but only because it contradicted Tolkien’s world.
There may well be a few people who are still going on about that, but I’ve not come across any.
Once the series began, race hasn’t been mentioned by those making valid arguments.
In fact, of those who’ve watched the series, a good many of them said they liked the character of Disa, the female dwarf.
The criticisms levelled at the show are to do with making a mockery of the lore Tolkien painstakingly worked on; subverting existing, well-loved characters, making them unrecognisable; the plot; the pacing, and how boring it is…
The response of the showrunners and their cohorts has remained the same – calling us toxic, racists and more besides.
So, because I question and criticise their show, saying it has nothing to do with Tolkien, that they’ve completely messed with the character of Galadriel and others, that the show is all about making women stronger and more able than men, in their eyes that makes me a ‘patently evil fascist’, and a racist misogynist who “weakens… democratic social discourse”.
For the record, I’m an Indian woman, born in Malaysia, and a few days shy of turning 59.
Those of us who love Tolkien’s stories as they are and see no need for change and, especially, no need for any ‘diversity, inclusion and equality’ are labelled ‘white supremacists’ who want a male-dominated, all-white society.
How does that argument tie in with the fact that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ has been translated into at least 38 languages including Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic?
Do all the people in those countries want a male-dominated, all-white society?
Another question – why is it, the only way they know how to portray ‘strong women’ is to basically turn them into men?
In Tolkien’s writing and in Jackson’s films, Galadriel is portrayed in all her femininity but there’s no denying her power.
If the showrunners have read Tolkien, as they assure us they have, surely they must know that the women Tolkien writes about are strong, capable, and independent while still retaining their femininity.
Also, the fact that there aren’t many of them – what some see as a huge failing – means they’re easily remembered.
What Amazon and the showrunners have failed to understand, or refuse to understand, from the start, is that Tolkien’s work isn’t purely about a mythology for England, and he certainly did not base his work on ‘racist hierarchies and medieval racial stereotypes’.
His work is about the themes of Roman Catholicism.
Tolkien talks of this in a reply to his good friend, Father Robert Murray, who had read and commented on parts of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ before publication, and ‘wrote that the book had left him with a strong sense of “a positive compatibility with the order of Grace…”’.
Part of Tolkien’s reply was thus:
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.” (Letter 142).
Instead of ‘medieval racial stereotypes’, Tolkien looked to Northern European mythology and, yes, paganism as inspiration when writing ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
In this video, Nixxiom eloquently explains the religious aspect of Tolkien’s writing and I highly recommend watching it.
In this article featuring an interview with the showrunners – interestingly, dated the 13th of October, the same day the finale aired – season 2 is going to be more canonical.
Is that a back-handed admission that season 1 wasn’t canonical?
Having changed so much of the lore, compressed the timeline, and made existing characters into something other than what they are, how on earth can they now make season 2 canonical?
Anyway, the season is going to be focussing on Sauron.
The showrunners “…wanted to do an origin story for Sauron. We didn’t want a show that was about the hunt for Sauron…”.
Mentioning that Tolkien wrote Sauron as a deceiver who, in the Second Age, appears in ‘fair form’, they then go on to posit, “… what if he sneaks up on you and is able to get you to sympathize with him and get you to be on board with him so that once you actually realize who he is, that he’s already got his hooks in you? So it’s not just as easy as, ‘This person is evil, I’m going to back away,’ because you’ve already formed some level of attachment to him…”, and they want the viewers to feel that too.
Really? Form an attachment to the character who is evil?
Well, as Nixxiom said in his video, “This show looks spiritually dead.”
It can now be confirmed, it most certainly is spiritually dead, a hollow mockery of Tolkien’s legendarium.
And the showrunners, Payne and MacKay, can congratulate themselves for they have, indeed, come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote, and would never have written.