Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[Boromir88]

I go back and forth all the time about the Amazon series, currently I'm at a "maybe I'll watch the series a few years later if people I know and respect say it's great and worth it. And if they say it's a flop then maybe I'll watch it 10 years later."

My problem with the trend in Hollywood and Amazon, Disney...etc is it's just laziness and uninspired. There's nothing wrong with trying to create stories that are relatable to different audiences, or has a positive message you want to get out...but Melkor have mercy, CREATE YOUR OWN.

Changing races, genders, adding in love interests to a story when there isn't one will inevitably be a cheaper, lazier product. In my opinion it just tells me right off the start "Hey, I can't write an inspiring, good asian/latino/gay/female character, so I'm going to use a large brand like Tolkien to sell it."

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Changing races, genders, adding in love interests to a story when there isn't one will inevitably be a cheaper, lazier product. In my opinion it just tells me right off the start "Hey, I can't write an inspiring, good asian/latino/gay/female character, so I'm going to use a large brand like Tolkien to sell it."

I agree with what you said in general but... in this particular case, this specific thing you named isn't probably going to be a problem. Because exactly, if this is going to be taking place somewhere in the Second Age, then you don't know anything about the people's races, genders and love interests (apart from that if there is, say, Númenorean king who has a known wife, obviously he should be married to her; but aside from such a case anything goes).

This whole thing will be about inventing new characters besides some five known Isildurs and co. But Isildur's second-in-command, Isildur's best childhood friend, the person who bullied Isildur at school, Isildur's kind teacher who secretly let him study Elvish... all these are open to create. And yes, the only question is whether the creators will make these INTERESTING, and not just random and un-Tolkien-y straw figurines. That's their only job.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Which means it's goin to be fan-fic, and can never be anything but. Or worse than fan-fic, just standard TV hack-work, written not by fans but by people who don't give a rodent's rump about Tolkien.
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And actually we know this much: this is (supposed to be) Tolkien's universe. JRRT would never in a million years have peopled it with non-hetero people. I doubt he would even have ascribed it to Umbar; his mode of expressing corruptioon never went in the Sodom-and-Gomorrah direction.

Pretty much nobody can write Tolkien but Tolkien. PJ tried and failed, and at least he tried, and had a novel to work from. Amazon, I firmly believe, merely wants to hang the Tolkien brand name on an overwrought sword-sorcery-and-sex epic. (Note how they paid Tom Shippey for his name, only; certainly not his expertise or advice).

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

"Hey, I can't write an inspiring, good asian/latino/gay/female character, so I'm going to use a large brand like Tolkien to sell it."

That right there is basically everything that is wrong with contemporary pop culture summed up in a single sentence.

[Huinesoron]

It occurs to me quite belatedly that if this series is indeed the Forging of the Rings through to the Last Alliance, then it's not just a Middle-earth story: it's a villain origin story. "How did Sauron become Lord of the Rings and a giant burning eyeball?" is in the same vein as "How did Cruella become an evil fashionista?" or "How did Insert Name Here become a crazy clown?".

Stay tuned for the tragic tale of Mairon, who only turned to evil because short people in waistcoats pelted him with gold rings and hit him in the eye. "Ouch! That's a Sore One! Hmmm..."

(Also I think they released some more cast members recently, but didn't attach any names to them or anything.)

hS

[Huinesoron]

Courtesy of the official Twitter account, we finally have a release date - 2 September 2022 - and the first image from the series!



The city design is very much "Peter Jackson's Minas Tirith in the style of Peter Jackson's Rivendell". There's lots of details to be seen if you zoom in on the full-size version - I spotted birds flying over the city, and people walking the path down by the ?lake - but the biggest is right there in the centre: this ain't Numenor, and that ain't the sun.



(From the prologue, I guess, but also AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

hS

[Kuruharan]

I have a bit of a bizarre reaction, but seeing this image actually (and irrationally) makes me angrier about this whole thing than I was before.

I guess I had made peace (sort of) with the Debauchery of Numenor but seeing this makes me afraid that we will have to endure the salacious tale of Indis the Whore of Tirion-upon-Túna.

Although, this bothering me more makes no sense because I had no hopes for this thing from the get-go.

[Galadriel55]

Can someone please remind me what material they do and don't have rights to? Like, how much of The Sil could we reasonably see here? I really hope that this is not going to be about the Fall of the Noldor. I felt quite mildly about the thing when I assumed it would be a totally made up from scratch thing with only some names to link it to Tolkien, but I am not watching them butcher The Sil.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Can someone please remind me what material they do and don't have rights to? Like, how much of The Sil could we reasonably see here? I really hope that this is not going to be about the Fall of the Noldor. I felt quite mildly about the thing when I assumed it would be a totally made up from scratch thing with only some names to link it to Tolkien, but I am not watching them butcher The Sil.

As far as I can tell, nooooobody knows. My best guess, given that Christopher was alive at the time the deal was made, is that they have only Second and Third Age material - ie, Akallabeth and Of the Rings of Power from Silm, plus everything except Of Tuor and the Narn from UT. That would give them "Galadriel and Celeborn", which I'd imagine they'd want given that she's one of the few movie characters around in the Second Age; and assuming they also have access to the Hobbit+LotR license, the beginning of Appendix A gives enough about the Two Trees and such that they could legitimately use it in the prologue without drawing on the Silm.

I have seen a claim that the Tolkien estate is "very happy" with how things are going. That comes from the same source that claims the only nudity being filmed is specifically non-sexualised... which led to the adorable claim by various fans that there is "No Nudity In Any Of The LotR Books". Bless... I can name three instances without even thinking about it, and that's not going near the Silm.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to it just so I can cackle with glee every time ill-informed people elsewhere on the internet claim that Tolkien would never have written nudity, or women doing anything other than sewing (no, actually it's pretty much only Arwen who sticks to that), or skin that wasn't ivory-white ("The Harfoots were browner of skin..."). At least on the Downs I know the criticisms I read will be grounded in actual facts, not people's made-up memories of misreading the books!

hS, practicing the cackle already, mwehehehe