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I realise I'm a little late to the party, but I want to talk about Tolkien and RoP.
One of the themes of Lord of the Rings is the idea that the smallest, the humblest person can change the destiny of the world, and become a hero. The Hobbits represent small, humble, ordinary people. They don’t lust for power or fame, or aspire to do great deeds. Thus the Ring can’t corrupt them in the way that it would corrupt Boromir or Galadriel, although it can make them covet it as a possession. We see this when Sam willingly gives it back to Frodo, even though we have seen others kill for it having been exposed to it for far shorter periods. Bilbo manages to give it up, after having owned it and been subjected to its influence for 60 years, and Frodo manages to bear it right into the heart of Mt Doom, with the Ring fighting him all the way.
The Ring works by tempting its owners, offering them ways to get what they desire most. The Wizards want to make the world a better place. The Elves want to stop the decay of the world. Men desire power and the ability to defeat their enemies. Dwarves desire treasure. All of them want something they don’t already have, therefore the Ring has something to work with, something to offer them. While Hobbits are content creatures: “But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of all things that grow. And yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”
Galadriel was never some paladin of light. She is the ultimate redemption arc. Someone who had many of the same flaws as Sauron, but who came back. Sauron had a chance for redemption, but couldn't follow through due to his pride. Like Galadriel he was told to come back to Valinor. He didn't want to leave his powerbase or his pride behind however. The character who some consider to be the ultimate hero of the tale, who gets the last scene is not Aragorn the King or an immortal elf. It's the family man with scars, who lost his friend, and who comes home to his family and does the best he can.
It seems Amazon Studios never bothered to understand when they decided they'll make Galadriel a sort of "girlboss" claiming to save the world but with the writers' focus being on her path to glory like most woke cape blockbusters these days. Given how literarily significant Tolkien is world over, its so bizarre that they'd try to pick apart his legacy and crap all over him. Within my reading circle in India, LOTR is a favourite. The supposed racism doesn't even register. The last RoP trailer in regional languages here also got ratio'd on YouTube. I don't know what Amazon was thinking. They said this is the most expensive show ever and that the future of the studio itself relies on its success, and yet they decide to check the woke quotas instead of giving Tolkien fans what they want. Did they really just not expect this level of blowback? Its so unfathomable to me that the answer is that simple, could it be something else?
I don't think it is any more complex than Amazon simply throwing money at a franchise which is universally known so that it is very likely to draw a large viewership and then producing some generic uninspired series which postures as part of the universally known franchise while pandering to whatever Amazon thinks is the current zeitgeist. On the level of the people who actually produce and write the series there may be some conscious ideological commitment, but on the corporate level where the decision to make this series was actually made, I doubt it is more than just pure indifference to franchise itself and a simple desire to make money.
Also, it is pretty ironic that a multinational tech giant is working with Tolkien material, when Tolkien himself was a bit of a Luddite and a localist.
It's not ironic, they had to wait for the man himself and his son to die to pull this bullshit off.
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But shouldn't they, in theory, make more money if they make something that's remotely high quality? Wouldn't someone be more likely to subscribe or keep their subscription 20 years from when this woke shit expires?
I'll push it further - the people who produced and wrote the serious do have a conscious ideological commitment, and the check writers were too cowardly to make the maximum amount of money possible. They said "OK... we'll make $100m instead of $300m but at least we won't have to have a tough conversation about respecting the source material".
I'd bet against the latter.
My assumption is that writing is hard. Cohesive or compelling writing is harder. "99% of everything is crap." Given a random TV team*, I'm expecting a starting point of mediocrity.
Now add the source material. Compelling worldbuilding, yes. Nail-biting plots and snappy dialogue, no. So they're required from the start to take some sort of liberties. Maybe in the hands of a bold visionary, that means subversion of tropes, detailed intrigue, a stylistic homage. We get a standard hero's journey.
Throw in some romance to hit one crowd, a couple "relatable" characters for others. Marketing is throwing in a demand for one or another actor. Are they running an agenda? Doesn't matter--it's not like the direction is going to conflict. Appeal to the diehard fans with a couple name-drops. Don't worry too much, they'll come back to Middle-Earth for anything. Fill in the stock characterizations and frayed plot threads with luscious set pieces and big-budget CGI, since money is flowing freely.
That's how you get something like this.
* As a side note, the two main writers are both practicing Mormons. Not exactly the first demographic I'd pick for woke ideological capture.
Bezos is only concerned with making money. This show is meant to be the flagship that hooks everyone into paying for a Prime subscription.
I think it's painfully obvious that Payne and McKay have no experience or track record in writing or creating a successful show or movie. They have, what, writing credits on the third reboot Star Trek movie? That's about it, and I have no idea how two guys with nothing to back up "yeah, we did this hit show, that hit movie, etc." could get hired just on the recommendation of J.J. Abrams. How Abrams can manage to get his mucky paws either directly or by proxy all over three beloved fandoms like Star Trek, Star Wars and now Lord of the Rings, in order to mess them up, is another puzzle for the ages.
So they're falling back on standard tropes and slapping an epic fantasy coat of paint on them, as well as borrowing the names of Tolkien characters. Strong Independent Woman who is (spins wheel) motivated by Revenge Quest to avenge (throws dart) her dead brother. Stomps and scowls her way everywhere, because she don't need no stinkin' allies to achieve her aims, she is so omnicompetent she can take down Sauron and his entire army all by her ownsome.
Unless they manage to pull off a heck of a lot of improvement all round in the remaining episodes, there won't be a season two. It's already veering on omnishambles, not omnicompetent.
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It's been my experience that Christians are the worst about wokeness in the racial division.
The racial angle is looking like the weakest criticism of this particular show. See this comment for examples of dumb characterization, Mary Sueing, and blue-tribe audience pandering.
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This is my thought as well.
The LotR appendices were, shockingly, not TV ready. A team applied them to what is by all accounts a fairly standard plot. Much budget was spent on CG and costuming. Casting was more diverse than Peter Jackson’s oeuvre, presumably in an attempt to hit a slightly broader audience.
All pretty vanilla decisions, but because of the brush with diversity, critics have a nice scapegoat.
If they'd spent less money on terrible wargs and more on finding somebody who knew how to write scripts for TV that involved credible dialogue, there would be less to complain about. Their inexperience is not helping them; if they had enough successes under their belt then they could pull off selling the woke stuff. But since their major idea of filling in the gaps in the Second Age seems to be "We have 1 black dwarf and 1 black elf, yay diverse representation!!!!" - no, it's not working.
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Yeah, there's functionally no difference with the Wheel of Time scenario. Or what happened to Percy Jackson. Or what happened to Dark Tower. Or Dragonball: Evolution...
It's simply a matter of magnitude: Tolkien is the most well-known fantasy author (except maybe JKR) and so doing it to his works correspondingly draws more attention
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More than a bit. He once resolved to speak in nothing but old Mercian as a protest for the conversion of the midlands from woods and villages to industry, and the intrusion of radio, television, and other mass-media
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