Rings of Power (Spoilers inside)

[BloodOmen]

So now that shit is over, gotta point out the obvious flaws that don't follow Tolkien lore.

1. There were no black elves or black dwarves, the closest thing to black elves and dwarves were due to Sauron's corruption.

2. Do timelines mean nothing to these cunts? Gandalf arrived way too early

3. Fuck Amazon and quite frankly fuck the Tolkien estate for pissing on Tolkien's legacy for a quick bit of cash.

Hated it, really hated it. The fact that Amazon fired the LOTR Scholars already set the alarm bells off, this shit though? christ... Tolkien will be spinning in his grave over this.



Woke shite

3/10 at best

 

[Scouse]

fuck the Tolkien estate for pissing on Tolkien's legacy for a quick bit of cash

They refused Amazon's request for access to the first age / Silmarillion because they didn't want them to trash that.

 

[BloodOmen]

They refused Amazon's request for access to the first age / Silmarillion because they didn't want them to trash that.

They shouldn't have allowed them to use any of it without the final say in what goes into it. I'd have said bring peter jackson on as a consultant as he did a good job with the movies but I'm pretty sure he wanted nothing to do with it.

 

[Scouse]

I'd have said bring peter jackson on as a consultant as he did a good job with the movies

Christopher Tolkein regretted having sold the rights for the films as they infantilised his fathers work. The films are "flavour" of the book, nothing more - and a distorted one at that.

What was striking about Jackson's films was when he did anything original, rather than trying to stick fastidiously to the text as best he could - it was always a bit shit. And he got more confident towards the end - so the films progressively got worse.

I think it was a good call from the family to allow Amazon to make up some shit for the second age. Tolkein never wrote about it all directly - so the Silmarillion lies untouched and un-defiled, if you like. And most people hate the book - which is fine. It's arcane language and difficult to get into - but I read it 3 times when I was a kid and found it absolutely magical. Not for everyone at all - but just stunning IMO.

So we've still got that. And if you stop watching the movies as a comfort blanket and go back to the book then you can re-discover what all the fuss was about. And find that most people hated that book too.

Movies are always a bastardisation of the source material - even when done well (like the recent Dune movie - a great flavour of the book - but a cold empty shell by comparison). The amazon shit - well, I'll watch it, of course.

As far as I'm aware Gandalf didn't arrive in middle earth by fucking shooting star - for a start their mortal bodies could die. 5 were sent over, but I always assumed they travelled by boat for some reason

 

[ECA]

1. There were no black elves or black dwarves, the closest thing to black elves and dwarves were due to Sauron's corruption.

Demographics change, Tolkien didn't run into a lot of non-white people in his life, so we should just exclude black people from acting gigs because?
You can accept dragons and magic but black people is where your line is?

Sorry but I think that attitude is poorly thought out and a tad racist.

 

[Gwadien]

Netflix wanted to pay *way* more for the rights, and they wanted to make an Avengers type thing - where the different characters would have their own movies and it would culminate into one epic film about LOTR, but the Tolkien estate said no, as it wasn't true enough to the original writing - so any notion that they did it for the £££ is pretty bollocks.

I think @Scouse is right - they allowed them to do it around a time that Tolkien didn't cover in detail, sure it's brought up lots of huhs? But since the estate passed it off, I guess there's something in the story arch that allows it to fit in and make sense - for example the harfoots & Sauron's now super dead bitches are the only ones that know of Gandalf's existence, so it could quite easily be passed off as he's now on an adventure of self discovery, and once that's done he'll rock up at the Grey Havens and get his ring and continue into the main story line.

I hate the 'woke' argument as a reason to slate it, it's pretty daft, there's lots of more legitimate reasons to slag off a $1bn series, also nobody has pointed out the potential issue of making the black elf in the series a lower class elf than the white elves

Plus Amazon have Tolkein's writing style on their side - as far as I'm aware it's a written 'history' rather than a god's view of events that sees everything.

 

[Scouse]

Demographics change, Tolkien didn't run into a lot of non-white people in his life, so we should just exclude black people from acting gigs because?
You can accept dragons and magic but black people is where your line is?

Sorry but I think that attitude is poorly thought out and a tad racist.

Not at all. Game of Thrones deals really well with a diverse cast - but white people live in the north, brown people come from the hot countries, swarthy easterners from swarthy eastern countries.

All sorts of people can and do get cast = diverse casting victory.

What RoP does is sprinkle colour all over the world like someones shaking a great woke pepperpot willy-nilly all over the world, paying no attention to geography. It's shit, it's jarring and it feels like the worst type of wanky social engineering.

Flip it on it's head: why not have a load of white people in the armies of Black Panther?

It'd be weird and provoke outrage, right? And I'd agree - it'd be fucking stupid.

Tolkien wrote LotR partly as a mythology for the white peoples of the north, and is reflective of the geography of our planet. To pepper-shake over this story and not over Black Panther is a hypocritical double-standard.

"Demographics change" (especially in this fantasy world) is a weak argument - Tolkien himself explicitly stated that he detested allegory - and the producers of tgis show have made it allegorical of our social order and reflective of fucking London's demographics.

It's not racist to point this out or to hate what's been done. It's pretty obvious Tolkein would have hated it too.

 

[ECA]

That's a dumber take than kanyes recent takes.

 

[Scouse]

That's a dumber take than kanyes recent takes.

Tell me why?

 

[Scouse]

Just to be clear, it's not a hill I'm going to die on. All other things being equal there's a lot more wrong with it than really fucking dumb method of casting (and it is dumb - especially when the had a workimg blueprint from GoT).

If they got the other things right I wouldn't blink tbh.

 

[Tom]

Jesus who the fuck cares about skin colour? Tolkien said the Harfoots were "browner of skin" and people are complaining about that?

Who gives a shit if an elf is black? We're talking about a land with sentient trees, giant eagles and ghosts, and we're complaining that it's wrong to have brown people?

Christ.

 

[Tom]

Also, so what if what Tolkien wrote has been changed? You want Tolkien, go read Tolkien. There's absolutely nothing wrong in creating new stories based on someone else's work. Which is why Jesus Christ went up to heaven on a Yamaha and did a skid.

 

[Tom]

PS I reckon that power-hungry bloke in Numenor might become the Witch King.

 

[Scouse]

Jesus who the fuck cares about skin colour?

Fans of Tolkein's writing who wanted at least a semi-faithful adaption of his original vision of the world? (Which, to be clear, included people of different colours).

It's not wrong or racist to dislike when something is done badly.

I think the problem with it is that the whole thing has been done badly - and that's not exclusive to skin colour. So the actual problem is "stupid people at the helm".

 

[Overdriven]

PS I reckon that power-hungry bloke in Numenor might become the Witch King.

So LoTR & Game of Thrones crossover event? Can we throw in some Witcher too?

 

[Gwadien]

PS I reckon that power-hungry bloke in Numenor might become the Witch King.

Nah, he's going to be the King who's responsible for the queen's dreams coming true.

But yeah, stuff like who are the wraiths and the witch king would be interesting stuff to cover as Tolkien didn't really mention where they came from iirc.

 

[Gwadien]

Fans of Tolkein's writing who wanted at least a semi-faithful adaption of his original vision of the world? (Which, to be clear, included people of different colours).

It's not wrong or racist to dislike when something is done badly.

I think the problem with it is that the whole thing has been done badly - and that's not exclusive to skin colour. So the actual problem is "stupid people at the helm".

I'd wager it's something that was pushed through by the tippy top PR people at Amazon.

 

[Tom]

Fans of Tolkein's writing who wanted at least a semi-faithful adaption of his original vision of the world? (Which, to be clear, included people of different colours).

Nerds who got annoyed that Frodo didn't age 20 years after Bilbo left the Shire.

 

[Gwadien]

Something that annoys me in the Tolkien world is how incompetent the Dwarves come across - twice, they come across some big beasties, a dragon and a balrog, they get wrecked by both (whilst supposedly being just as powerful as the Elves) and Smaug is killed by a human bloke with a good shot and the balrog is killed by an old man with a stick.

It's weird to me.

 

[Scouse]

Read the books @Gwadien

 

[Gwadien]

Read the books @Gwadien

Erm, that is in the books?

 

[Raven]

Liked the book, actually enjoyed the films, for the cinematography.

Haven't got around to watching the Amazon one yet, not that fussed about who is in it. Although isn't Lenny Henry in it? Which seems like a bit of an odd casting choice for high fantasy, but been surprised before.

 

[Scouse]

Erm, that is in the books?

They don't come across as incompetent in the books.

 

[Scouse]

Although isn't Lenny Henry in it?

Yep. Liked him.

 

[DaGaffer]

Demographics change, Tolkien didn't run into a lot of non-white people in his life, so we should just exclude black people from acting gigs because?
You can accept dragons and magic but black people is where your line is?

Sorry but I think that attitude is poorly thought out and a tad racist.

You mean apart from the whole being born in South Africa bit?

 

[Raven]

You mean apart from the whole being born in South Africa bit?

I was born in Germany and only left when 4, met few Germans, even fewer that would affect my world view.

Tolkien was 3 when he left South Africa. He grew up in Birmingham.

 

[DaGaffer]

Jesus who the fuck cares about skin colour? Tolkien said the Harfoots were "browner of skin" and people are complaining about that?

Who gives a shit if an elf is black? We're talking about a land with sentient trees, giant eagles and ghosts, and we're complaining that it's wrong to have brown people?

Christ.

And if they were all "browner of skin" that would work just fine; randomly dropping different ethnicities into pre-industrial societies (mythical or not) is just stupid; there's no in-universe logic to it. Do it because it makes sense, not because it makes you look virtuous with your friends in Soho House.

 

[BloodOmen]

Jesus who the fuck cares about skin colour? Tolkien said the Harfoots were "browner of skin" and people are complaining about that?

Who gives a shit if an elf is black? We're talking about a land with sentient trees, giant eagles and ghosts, and we're complaining that it's wrong to have brown people?

Christ.

It's not just 'skin colour' per say... it's continuity as well. How many Black Elves/Dwarves did you see in LOTR/The Hobbit trilogy?

I get it, people want diversity, sure, go for it but things that have been written for decades should be left well alone.

This is the problem with Amazon and Netflix adapting things, its just woke woke woke woke woke and fuck the source material. Lets cast none white people for bonus points among the minority woke crowd that probably don't even watch the fucking series in the first place.

 

[DaGaffer]

I was born in Germany and only left when 4, met few Germans, even fewer that would affect my world view.

Tolkien was 3 when he left South Africa. He grew up in Birmingham.

I was four when I left South Africa, I remember lots of black people, in fact that and my garden gate are pretty much all I remember. And besides, he was very much a child of the British Empire, the existence of different ethnicities, even if they didn't live next door, was a given. If Tolkien wrote LOTR through a European lens it was intentional, not because he didn't see brown people every day.

 

[Embattle]

I really don't have any major issues with RoP.