[Thinlómien]

I started writing a commentary on the article on the other thread, but I'll post my scrambled rant here instead:

Galadriel’s world is a raging sea. Far from the wise, ethereal elven queen that Cate Blanchett brought to Peter Jackson’s acclaimed films, the Galadriel played by Morfydd Clark in Amazon’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thousands of years younger, as angry and brash as she is clever, and certain that evil is looming closer than anyone realizes. By episode two, her warnings set her adrift, literally and figuratively, until she’s struggling for survival on a raft in the storm-swept Sundering Seas alongside a mortal castaway named Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who is a new character introduced in the show. Galadriel is fighting for future; Halbrand is running from the past. Their entwined destinies are just two of the stories woven together for a TV series that, if it works, could become a global phenomenon.

It probably shouldn't have started with this particularly brainrot inducing snippet. Is there a lot to Galadriel's story we don't know? Yes. Can I imagine her castaway on the sea with some random human guy with whom she shares an entwined destiny? Yikes... Also a young and angry Galadriel is an interesting concept, but we're already in the Second Age. She's thousands of years old and has been through a vast number of things. I am... skeptical about this take on the character.

Tolkien, like space travel, is a personal obsession for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who’s among the richest people in the world. This is a big-ticket business venture that will allow him to create the most expensive, elaborate TV series ever made.

Yikes #2

Their series will juggle 22 stars and multiple story lines, from deep within the dwarf mines of the Misty Mountains to the high politics of the elven kingdom of Lindon and the humans’ powerful, Atlantis-like island, Númenor. All this will center, eventually, around the incident that gives the trilogy its name. “The forging of the rings,” says [showrunner] McKay. “Rings for the elves, rings for dwarves, rings for men, and then the one ring Sauron used to deceive them all. It’s the story of the creation of all those powers, where they came from, and what they did to each of those races.”

I was intrigued enough by this...

...until I read this:

The driving question behind the production, he adds, was this: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?”

No, please no, the obvious answer is NO.

“Everyone was crowding around the monitor as we’re doing this close-up where Galadriel’s face fills the screen and she cries, and she decides: I have to fight,” says McKay. As soon as the scene ended, the soundstage erupted in cheers. “It’s a perfect example of how Tolkien and Middle-earth have a way of finding you, even in the darkest and most uncertain moments,” says Payne.

...does this sound like a Tolkien-y scene? Nope. Yikes #3

McKay says the goal was “to make a show for everyone, for kids who are 11, 12, and 13, even though sometimes they might have to pull the blanket up over their eyes if it’s a little too scary. We talked about the tone in Tolkien’s books. This is material that is sometimes scary—and sometimes very intense, sometimes quite political, sometimes quite sophisticated—but it’s also heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic. It’s about friendship and it’s about brotherhood and underdogs overcoming great darkness.”

I think this is ultimately going to be IT: whether the show manages to reach a tone that resonates with Tolkien's writing, or whether it falls flat. At least for me personally that's going to be the measure of whether I'm going to enjoy it or not.

We will finally see the full glory of Khazad-dûm

Strangely enough, this tidbit was the most exciting thing in the whole article for me. I am perhaps looking forward the most to see fresh visual depictions of Middle-Earth. I am very conscious they may fall short of my expectations, though...

It will also bring the elven smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) to life, as his skill with metals and magic lead to the forging of the rings. And a canny young elven architect and politician named Elrond (Robert Aramayo) will rise to prominence in the mystical capital of Lindon. Another story line will follow a sailor named Isildur (Maxim Baldry) years before he becomes a warrior and cuts the soul-corrupting ring off Sauron’s hand, then falls victim to its powers himself.

I have so many questions about this. Are these the interpretations of the article writer, or new show canon? Will Elrond be a wily politician? Will Isildur's background still be royal, or will he be just an ordinary sailor?

In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”

And funnily enough, this is the creative choice I'm the least suspicious about. It's very understandable - yet I guess we'll have to wait and see how it works out. Will Sauron be constantly zigzagging between Eregion and Númenór and various kingdoms of men where he is corrupting the future nazgûl?

Furthermore, I'm not sure what to make of the Estate's involvement in this. They seem to have made a full 180. Did they finally get so much money? Has the estate board changed? Or are they adapting to a new era and new ideas? I have to say I haven't been following the Tolkien Estate at all recently, but as a (relatively ) old school fan their enthusiastic seeming involvement in this baffles me.