Some people are misinterpreting me. Yes, the race changes are a lazy form of representation and they should have done it better. Yes, all these changes do ring of a corporation trying to leech off a beloved work, but I'm willing to give it a chance. No, viewing this as a "culture war" with the "woke" is dumb. I wanted to discuss mostly the way we talk about the race changes. Could you write a better show than Amazon? What would you do DIFFERENTLY? Then do it with Campfire bit.ly/HFM1-22
I haven't even write fanfiction, but Amazon is a big money-sucking nostaglgia-predator fiend, so... Yes I can. Would it be good? Doubtful, but would be better than Amazon's? I feel pretty confident about that.
I'm a little bit put off by the fact that they actually fired two lore experts because they couldn't agree with Amazon's vision because it contradicted the lore
One more point that's not really touched on in the video is some worrying quotes from those making the show which imply that they've completely failed to grasp the characters that they're working with. For example, they call Elrond "politically ambitious", while McKay said that "[Galadriel's] got a sword that’s broken because she’s killed so many orcs. This young hot-headed Galadriel…how did she ever become that elder stateswoman?". What they've described isn't even remotely similar to the characters of the books. Based on those quotes, they will be Elrond and Galadriel in name only. Everything that's come out so far seems to indicate that they essentially just want to make another Game of Thrones, with Middle Earth being nothing more than a backdrop for it.
The actual reasons to be worried about this show without getting into race stuff: 1. Amazon butchered the Wheel of Time show and didn't faithfully adapt the story, world, or characters. It was seen by many as a trail run for this series with one of the Wheel of Time directors directing HALF the episodes of Rings of Power. 2. It is trying to pitch itself as a prequel when it is actually a reboot. The movie adaption rights are still with New Line and as such the show can't use any of the props, sets, locations, or music. 3. The directors have almost no history with an adaption of this scale...or really of any scale. 4. The trailer looked cheap despite being the most expensive show of all time (a similar problem Wheel of Time had as it looked cheaper than other shows with much smaller budgets). 5. They have already shown in interviews and the trailer massive departures from the source with a condensed timeline from thousands of years down to a handful and characters barely reflecting their literary counterparts. 6. Why is everything so clean and why are people rocking modern Harry Styles haircuts? 7. Most importantly, Amazon is making a show about the second age WITHOUT ALL THE RIGHTS TO MATERIAL FROM THE SECOND AGE!!!
HOT TAKE, not all of those are bad things in my mind. for instance I love the lord of the rings soundtrack.......but it already felt out of place in the first hobbit film (they had more new music for the soundtrack in the 2nd and 3rd hobbit films). I've also heard the lord of the rings soundtrack a thousand times in re-viewing and games.......interested to hear what new music/soundtracks can be made. I also look at this as sort of an alternate timeline version of the story, that way whether it is faithful adaption isn't the problem......I am just interested in the story and character development that they come up with
I will say, I actually liked the Wheel of Time adaptation. There were a lot of things that were changed, some of them I think with good reason. For example, I don't think that people would be nearly as interested in a story about 14 year olds. Or at least, it would be a different and smaller audience. The fact that they made Mat more of a scoundrel plays into that a lot, since someone who gets into trouble a lot is much different at 14 versus 25. Giving Perrin a wife is another huge change, but makes sense when you add a decade. Making Moiraine and the Amyrlin Seat lovers was really forced, and that thing about how "They would still us if they knew what we were doing" came out really strange since the show wasn't really clear at that point about what they were doing. (In the book that line was said when they knew Rand was the Dragon and they were going behind the backs of the White tower to try and support him) And finally, the way they kept throwing in how the Dragon could be any of them, or maybe all five of them was just silly. Oh... and it isn't another turning of the wheel. That part is wrong too, since each one of those they would have completely different names and stories, but still with the same age old struggle. Hah. Okay, that kinda became a rant. But what I was trying to get at was that despite all the changes, the adaptation was enjoyable, and it did mostly keep true to the feel of the book. The First season left off in about the same position as the first book, and so they can continue to parallel the story fairly well from here.
Them having Durin IV be prince of Khazad Dum when it was actually Durin III who was around in the third age is very concerning with me because the number and timing of Durins is a very significant detail. This is especially worrying because of rumors about another actor playing King Durin III. It's a very strange choice to ignore what the name Durin actually means. Having two at once would be like having Aang and Kora alive at the same time. Durin doesn't even reincarnate every generation. It's such a small detail with big implications and could have been avoided with just changing one of their names
I'm not too well versed in the lore of Lord of the Rings and not that big of a fan, but I can sympathize with its fans. This whole affair just reads to me like Amazon trying a milk a fan base--which has been around for generations--with no respect for Tolkien or what he created. If they really wanted to do their own thing I would have just tried to make a else world story (like how I choose to perceive Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War). It is more so how they've been trying to promote it and the journalist reaction to the backlash that I find the most insufferable. In addition to this they SEEM to be trying to inject modernity into this and it feels---somewhat--out of place. You are right, taking some creative liberties can help--the movie Wanted comes to mind--but it feels as fit they are taking more than some creative liberties.
This. Honestly, they could do whatever they wanted with a new IP that draws inspiration from other past works, which would force them to create something *good* that inspires a dedicated following. Instead, we get mediocre/bad sequels and prequels that only get attention because of a franchise name.
@@jglerum94 You can demand new IPs as much as you want. That simply won't happen in the capitalist world we live in. A Lord of the Rings show, no matter how bad it might turn out to be, will ALWAYS generate more attention and thus money, than any new fantasy IP could ever hope to do. Therefore, Lord of the Rings it is. Saying they should do otherwise is saying we should establish a different economic system (and I would be all in for it!).
@@hughcaldwell1034 Aside from the diversity thing that is all that comes to mind for now. Which probably could work, they just have to not make it preachy.
I think the lack of rights is one of my major concerns. The other major concern is that this is a product by a massive, faceless corporation, and it feels like it. It does not feel like a passion project by a small group of dedicated creators who fought tooth and nail to get the rights to make something they were truly proud of, not knowing whether or not they would be successful. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who makes a Tolkien adaptation has to play with the exact same set of cards that Jackson and New Line did. But I would like to see the same passion, respect and knowledge from the creators, and so far, I'm not seeing it.
@@kaelanirevyruun1676 having reverence for the material you're adapting seems like a given for any adaptation, yes, although 'canon' isn't the only thing on my mind. Respect does not necessarily mean sticking religiously to the fine print without deviation, because that is nigh impossible and not always desirable when changing mediums. But a sense that the spirit, intention and understanding is there is vital, and from the first trailer, I'm just not getting that. I'm open to having my mind changed but knowing the general state of other big IP:s and after watching Wheel of Time, I'm not expecting much.
@knäckis I agree with worrying about the lack of rights. Like what do they have rights too. I don't see how they can write a story about the Second Age with only the LOTR appendix and not treading on other IP.
I have to wonder if this is due to the "mainstreamming" of "nerd culture". Back in the days of the Jackson Trilogy, it was a huge risk to make something like LOTR because they didn't know if it would appeal to a mass market or whether it would be a bunch of nerds who would go and see it. That way they tried EXTRA hard to make sure it would appease the "nerd" faction, as well as hoping it would get mainstream success. Now, it's just become homoginsed.
i feel like nerd culture has become basic since it is walking away from being a niche thing to a general thing. And niche things require more attention to detail unlike modern movies that have many cliches and basic plot threads to not overcomplicate things. I hope it all turns out well but these past 10 years give reason not to.
I hate that "nerd culture" is now mainstream. Sure marvel movies are great, but everything was better when it was niche communities since it kept the hobby/fandom real and aware of their chosen thing to partake in. In DnD we had Dark Sun for example before, now Drows can't be bad because that would be racist
@@Adrian-qr6gk Yeah, nerd culture now is the normal and if you are a "real nerd"/care more about something, people will try to put a different tag on you.
Nah, that's very specific to lotr. There have been tons of mediocre adaptations of fantasy franchises before the lotr films. People were very careful and hesitant about making Tolkien's works into movies, not only because he's pretty much the inventor of high fantasy, but he also has a famously hard to adapt writing style. In general, movie producers weren't less careless before lotr when it comes to fantasy adaptations than they're now. I think the particular fascination of long and complex but very loose fantasy adaptations that companies like Netflix and Amazon have had with the Witcher and now rings of power was sparked mainly by the success of Game of Thrones, which also largely got worse as it went on. Sure, the lotr films contributed to making nerd culture a bit more mainstream, but not nearly as much as game of thrones, which had millions of people worldwide get invested into dozens of hours of complex fantasy politics, rich worldbuilding, countless morally grey characters to follow etc. That's what made fantasy shows mainstream in my opinion. So of course big studios now know they don't have to provide excellence to get the masses hooked.
i would love to see a series about the Silmarilion and another about the second age, but never adaptations, when something is perfect, any attempt to improve it will only screw it up
9:24 really glad Tim didn’t just brush it off as “any issue with diversity makes you a racist” but the main reason most people are upset with this is more to do with the fact that there *are* actual people of colour in the original lore. They live in a particular area of the world (like how the real world used to be) where their race is stated to be darker than the other human-like races. I think it does a disservice to how carefully Tolkien constructed this world with regional diversity to make it operate like a real world would but instead Amazon have just made them randomly black and white. Another example of this is Game Of Thrones, where places like Dorne have brown skinned people whereas the colder areas like winterfell are populated with Caucasian people. Tldr: diversity is awesome and the source material already had a way to implement it organically but Amazon has seemingly ignored it because they don’t actually know much about Tolkien’s work
It felt sometimes the same with Wheel of Time, it probably has some of the most diversified world regarding skincolor (and this skincolor often specifically mentioned as an attribute of characters/peoples) i've read, but in a logical way, ie. local homogenity, diversity over larger regions and only maybe very few diverse 'cosmopolitan' area's like the largest cities (and even then most people often will still be local). In fact during the story we kind of get a feeling of more diverse area's being formed due to people on the run from all the chaos and violence scattering across the land, like Two rivers getting refugees from all different regions of the continent: - Arad Doman and Tarabon from across the mountains; - Cairhienin, Altarans and Amadicians from the refugees saved from the shaido, probably later also people from Saldea looking at Faile's descendency; - and in smaller quantities people from elsewhere too most likely. Though luckily sometimes they do it right, like with the shienarans being pretty homogenous etc.
Very well said. For me it's not the biggest issue just an annoyance. Its just annoying that if a movie is made about Africa or Asia they wouldn't put white people in there and it would be cool. LOTR is supposed to be mythology for England but in 2022 it would be considered an issue to not have enough diversity. So the double standard is annoying. But like I said, this isn't my biggest issue with the show. I'm more concerned with the comments made by the creators and the firing of Tom Shippey. I fear its gonna be woke garbage.
But there's also the fact that the dark-skinned human peoples of Middle-earth that we know of are usually the enemies of our heroes. I know there are lore reasons for that, but it's still not a good look. And Amazon probably lacks the rights to flesh out regions like Rhûn and Harad more. Having some dwarves and elves with darker skin also doesn't expicitly contradict anything that Tolkien wrote, so I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Imagine how jarring it would be to have asians, latinos, white, and black people all living in Winterfell under the same culture. That's what wheel of time did - we can only hope this show doesn't do the same.
@@swagromancer But that is the great benefit of the Second Age: Morgoth is out of the picture, for a while Sauron is hiding and when he comes out the Numenorians are still good people that have interest in being nice to the men of Middle-Earth. That is the perfect setting to have people of different races working together, only for that cooperation to be ruining by the growing greed and pride of Numenor and Sauron's lies. On the rights, Amazon actually could do basically whatever they wanted on Rhûn and Harad, because there is so little about them in Hobbit and LotR (which they have the rights) that they could easily sidestep the things mentioned on The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (which they can't use because the don't have the rights). I will agree that there is space for black (and asian) dwarves and elves, I just don't like how they implemented it. I think it would be fine if the Princess was from one of the 4 clans living east of the Anduin river. They could even justify her lack of beard on culture of her clan. But what really boils my blood is how they specifically chose to make the Black Elf a Sylvan Elf. You know, associating the black guy with wilds instead of civilization? They could have instead referred to him as a Nandor and I would have applauded, even because part of the Nandor went down the Anduin river and later went north to rejoin the Sindar or establish themselves as the Laiquendi of Ossiriand/Lindon.
There is only one Lord of The Rings quote we need to keep in our hearts in these strange times... "PO-TA-TOES. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!"
Reasons for not watching the rings of power : 1) It's Amazon 2) they seem to be more concerned with theirs story than Tolkien's. 3) they compressed centuries long stories in one lifetime. 4) they don't seem to care that much about the lore.
One thing I'm concerned about is the possibility of them failing to capture the themes and imagery in the Lord of the Rings. Making Elrond and Galadriel the main characters goes against the Lord of the Ring's aspect of small, seemingly inconsequential people ending up saving the world. A gardener being the one to carry the ring and its bearer up a mountain is a far more powerful image than I can imagine being evoked by these two highly important political figures.
I don't see this as a concern, given that is a story theme not a theme tied intrinsically into the world building. They need not adhere to the story telling themes of Lord of the Rings imo when it's a completely different tale.
@@notan3144 I think that if you're trying to capture what makes Tolkien's writing effective, the themes are important. And they show up frequently throughout middle earth, for example in The Hobbit and parts of The Silmarillion. They might make a good story, but I do hope that it feels like a middle earth story, rather than something playing off of the name recognition that lacks the essence of it.
@@rory_person_being If you're bringing up the Silmarillion, the main themes there were basically Pride and Destruction (present in The Hobbit), Tragic Heroism against Overwhelming Evil (a major theme in The Lord of the Rings as well, and present in The Hobbit), and Good Coming From Evil (the flip side of Evil Self-Destructs, a major theme of The Lord of the Rings). In fact, having Elf Lords be the main characters reminds me of quite a few stories in The Silmarillion, though most of those ended with the main characters dead, so it would take a bit of skilled writing to pull it off. It probably would have been better to make the main characters people like Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad and Ar-Pharazon, but oh well.
@@samueldimmock694 Completely agree on all points, but since we already know that eventually, Elrond and Galadriel end up as prominent leaders by the time of LOTR, so I'm worried about the possibility of them not ending up with as strong of a story as they could have if it was instead about a character like Celebrimbor for example. Actually wow, now that I think about it, Celebrimbor not being a main protagonist is such a missed opportunity, that would have been incredible. The others you mention would have been good too, but Celebrimbor in particular would be fantastic.
What made LOTR and the rest so profound was that it all came from old things and deep places. These tales, customs, and prose were what people used to describe and shape their lives. The idea that vows were sacred and was truly binding is deep. The concept that what is good is unselfish and charitable, and that evil is selfish and entropic was moving. It gave life and meaning to the magic / powers of the world. And it made them stand out when they clashed. It made the triumphs bright, and the defeats dark. That is what I fear we will miss in this show. I fear we will lose the depth and beauty to the “pizzazz” and tinsel firstly to greed, then laziness and then social pandering. I will give it the same chance I gave the WOT series. One episode. Which I unfortunately could not tell you the end of because I couldn’t even get that far. So you can imagine my expectations. Alas Tolkien’s work is a deep passion of mine so maybe I could do more than one. As far as what we could have had? We could have had an amazing Harad and Rhun arc. Remember Tolkien redacted his statement about the Blue Istari failing. He said he felt they succeeded because Gondor / Rohan won. He felt they were able to garner positive influence against Sauron. We also have Faramir's quote about the Haradrim, and Aragorn who traveled there himself. I believe it would be safe to assume there was resistance to Sauron’s machinations. Now that would have been AMAZING to see on screen! A conflict between these ideals and seeing how their interactions with the Elves, Numenorians, etc influenced those struggles would have been gold. And of course Numenor would have been just as amazing! Alas we shall see whether it will be good, or if Amazon, Social Justice Warriors, and Hollywood as a whole will ironically be the Great Darkness the inhabitants of Arda feared.
Well said. LoTR is not GOT, and it never will be, and it shouldn't be forced into that mold. Tolkien made something special, and everything Amazon is evidenced to be doing with it is against not only what Tolkien wrote but the ideals behind it. But again. We give it a chance.
Not my words but they hit the nail on the head: “For those of you who only know the movies and are wondering why any of this outcry matters, Tolkien didn’t set out to write just another fantasy, his first love was language and mythology. As a linguist, he set out to make the most beautiful language ever created (Elvish.) He invented Elvish based on Northern European languages. As a historian, he wrote the Silmarillion and all the other extensive back lore that is only hinted at in the movies as alternate mythology for the British Isles. The very creation of Middle Earth by the gods through an act of song was informed by Finnish myths. He was steeped in Northern and Western European culture and the myths, legends, languages, stories, racial characteristics, history, and cultures of Middle Earth are inextricably built from corresponding roots of European culture in a way that no fantasy has ever been able to replicate before or since. He is considered by many of us to be the true father of modern fantasy and no one-bar none-has equaled the depth and verisimilitude he brought to that creation. This trailer and all Amazon interviews to date prove that they don’t care about any of this and intend to dismantle the very foundation of why Tolkien wrote these books as a labor of love in the first place. He loved his culture, his history, and his language and his invented languages, world, races, and stories were the medium through which he communicated his love of his ancestral heritage. To change his work in the ways shown in this trailer and subsequent interviews is not just to reinterpret some surface aspect of his stories, it is to completely undermine his stated intent, strike at the heart of his passion, and directly attack his own cultural heritage.”
Well the letters of Tolkien are enough to point out what his influences were, and why his world is the way it is: "I have always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music; and the passionate love of growing things; and the deep response to legends (for lack of a better word) that have what I would call the North-western temper and temperature. In any case if you want to write a tale of this sort you must consult your roots, and a man of the North-west of the Old World will set his heart and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, and that situation: with the Shoreless Sea of his innumerable ancestors to the West, and the endless lands (out of which enemies mostly come) to the East. Though, in addition, his heart may remember, even if he has been cut off from all oral tradition, the rumour all along the coasts of the Men out of the Sea." --Letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June 1955 ... Middle-earth …. corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe. Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to ‘Middle-earth’. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy. Auden has asserted that for me ‘the North is a sacred direction’. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man’s home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other pans; but it is not ‘sacred’, nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil. The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a ‘Nordic’. (Letter 294, dated 8 February 1967)" His lands of the north western Middle-earth correspond to Europe, and are heavily inspired by real world European culture (hell even things like dwarves and elves in the end they are mythical creatures originating from the european, Norse/Celtic/Germanic folklore and mythology, I wonder how people would react if say we would take a creature from Japanese folklore like Yuki-onna and cast a white caucasian or blakc actress, I'd like to see the reaction of Japanese or all those crying about 'whitewashing', or 'cultural appropriation' hah! The hypocrisy is what make me laugh the most in such cases, if racebending is alright, then people should stop whining about whitewashing :)).
@@fantasywind3923 I remember plenty of people complaining about Major Kusanagi being played by scarlet Johansson. I remember plenty of people complaining about the last airbender having white actors in it. I remember plenty of people complaining about goku being white in dragon ball: evolution. You seem to be the hypocrite here my friend, no one else
Lost me at the "For those of you who only know the movies" already. As if the only people who could disagree would be the people who didn't know the books, the history of the series or the intent of the author. Well, that ain't it chief. Some of us just don't get that worked up about what amazon choose to put into their fanfic.
@@dugonman8360 oh lookie here, another one wiseass, hehe that was my fucking point, I was fully aware of those! If people could complain about whitewashing those characters then, we can complain about 'racebending/blackwashing' whatever you can call it!!!! Think people, sometimes I question the people's reasoning skills. This is the essence the hypocrisy I was talking about!
The meaning of the fans quote message to Amazon Rings of Power : -“Evil is not capable of creating anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” -“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.” -“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.” J.R.R. Tolkein Evil cannot create anything new only corrupt and ruin and his powerful meaning youTube Fay Paraphrase Express the meaning of (the writer or speaker or something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve grater clarity. Nothing is evil in the beginning.
The argument that it will make people read the books is flawed in many ways due to the fact that modern readers will have trouble with Tolkien's prose... I cant tell you how many friends said they couldnt get throught the book because it was boring.
Right. And some people just don't care really. Maybe most casual viewers will just be satisfied watching it. The "Why read the books if you can just watch the new series? You're lazy anyway. And it's just entertainment" mindset.
Exactly Tolkien is not R. Martin. Their style is completely different. Another example would be HP Lovecraft. These are authors who are hard to read by casual readers
@@GothPaoki _I mean let's not ignore there are some pretty big extraneous reasons why modern readers have a hard time with Lovecraft, and it has nothing to do with the style of his prose_
@@GothPaoki Also, Martin will probably never finish the books, so it's just that many more people who GOT will leave disappointed. At least with Tolkien the books are finished (at least LOTR was), but you're right, the styles are very different
@@theradioactiveplayer3461 yea but I'm talking about actual difficulties . Not difficulties of the kind I'm too sensitive to read this and I'm offended just by it existing.
I'm super worried about the whole thing with the love story between Helbrand and an elf. Tolkien only had three of those within his lore (Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, and Aragorn and Arwen) for extremely specific purposes at extremely important times within the Middle Earth timeline. I'm not including Turin and Finduilas here because nothing came of it.
Isn't the purported love story between Arondir and a human woman named Bronwyn? Not that it changes your argument, with which I agree. I'd also add that I don't know where a Welsh name like Bronwyn fits in the translation/localization of any of Tolkien's Mannish languages. {= /
Those 3 might be the only important instances of Elf/Human couples, but there might have been any number of them among the common folk, who have no epic stories or songs written about them. There is even an example of half-elven lineage independent of the main three in Prince Imrahil, who owes his elven ancestry to the marriage of the silvan elf Mithrellas and Imrazôr the Númenórean.
@@stromstorm7467 I'd say unlikely considering the more 'elite' or posh Elven cultures and their isolation from most realms of Men save Arnor. Such unions would be notable so to not mention them would probably be evidence of absence.
My problem with Amazon's LOTR ROP isnt the diversity. I could care less if there are black Elves, Dwarves or even Hobbits. But they need to respect the culture and ways of the race they are portraying as. For example, remember The Shawshank Redemption, amazing movie, the character of Red from the novel was actually a White Irish man, but can you honestly think of anyone else playing Red other than Morgan Freeman and his amazing narration, no because he brought such life to the character, but still respected his novel counterpart. Amazon has already messed up Galadriels and Elrond's character by making them backwards? Galadriel was not a warrior, general, hot tempered or an outlandish adventurer, she was a powerful mage and healer and at this time during the 2nd age was living with her husband and daughter. Elrond was not a politician, poet or architect, he was the warrior, healer, scholar, lore-master and herald of Gil-Galad last King of the Noldor Elves. All Dwarves have beards, Male and Female. All Elves have long hair Male and Female. Yes they can make "stories" using the timelines found in the Return of the King Appendices for different parts of the Ages of Middle Earth. But what most fans had hoped, was that they would make The Hobbit and LOTR into an Episodic Series to really bring all of Middle Earth to life.
A black man in prison does not stretch belief, so changing the race of Red has no impact. LOTR and all the lore is an English myth as stated by JRRT. Non-white characters, of any kind, do not fit. Changing this makes as much sense as putting non-blacks in a African tale or non-Greeks in Greek Mythology. These changes are being done just to irritate and impose 'modern' sensibilities. I'm sure that gender swapping is in the cards as well as rapping hobbits.
@@illogicerr3769 you saying the thing about Africa is funny considering nearly all Egyptian movies have Egyptians as white or definitely not of Nubian descent as they actually were.
7:10 Of course I'm gonna make up my mind based on the trailer, that's literally what the trailer is for: Building hype and first expressions. And they were utterly negative for me. Whether my mind changes in the future is something completely else, but imo it's important for Amazon to know that many people don't want someone play around with their favorite fantasy.
I'm late to the party but I must say, I die a little each time I hear "You can't judge something you never seen based on a trailer". I'm like "Dude, that's exactly what trailers exist for. To get your first impressions and hype." And you're right. One shouldn't bite the hands that feed you, which is exactly what Amazon is doing. I get wanting to do your own story and "oh we have to have representation of literally everyone on this planet" shtick that every major corporation does. Create your character, your tribe, your whatever you need. But let it be grounded in the same universe. Race-swapping and female dwarves not having beards, etc.....that's a middle finger to the fans. The very people you're trying to pander to because that's the whole point is it not? Instead of creating your own fantasy show? Right now, it's still very much a negative for me. But my opinions changes with the wind. And I'm not a huge fan of LotR. I know enough to understand the movies (PJ's) and get some references.
@@FallenAngelHiroko Well said. While I'm not too deep into the LotR fandom myself, I still very much loved the books, movies and games. Naturally I'm going to be very skeptic when something new tries to force it's way into that space and claim to do things very differently.
10:00 On the skintone stuff... what frustrates me as a fan of any media... is when a role has a certain cultural heritage x, and they choose to cast them by y or z instead. Most of Middle Earth is inspired by a European setting. To cast African, Asian or Native American actors for these characters... just feels wrong. It is like casting European/African actors in Avatar or Poppy War for example. Or European/Asian actors in African fantasy settings. Etc. There is a question on minorities... sure, but maybe tell original stories instead? I'm still waiting on the big and popular African fantasy setting, especially because their cultures are so rich. And stories like Wheel of Time offer reasons on why a cast can be diverse. Edit: And of course I should add that this show changes so much that it essentially ends up as complete bullshit. Tolkien and his son Christopher are turning in their graves. Edit 2: And on why I'm taking this stance is rather simple... If I have a gray stance on culturally appropriate casting, it could lead to another The Last Airbender type of situation, or Ghost in a Shell, etc. Edit 3: I feel the need to say that, by classical period, Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Carthage have more in common with Europe than with modern Middle-East/North Africa. Ancient Egypt is considered the origin of Western civilization by many. Not talking about skincolour btw, but about cultural heritage.
They are there because it's a product first and will be marketed to a mass market,get over yourselves 🤣🤣. Even black panther had a token white character.
@@WritingGeekNL ua-cam.com/video/KCNTqUOE2Tk/v-deo.html Why do you people act like these movies exist in a bubble with no other outside factors to consider
@@catsthemovie4692 They had a white character but that was an American not a wakandan. Same here, if they really wanted they could have Haradrim, but instead they simply made a change that made no sense
@Hello Future Me - I have a question about the concern over culture here. As you said: "Middle Earth _was_ created as a mythology for England, and Tolkien drew explicitly on acient Celtic, Finnish, and Anglo-Saxon cultures and traditions in creating much of his world. And I do think that it _is_ really important to depict those if they're gonna do this right. They shouldn't pretend like those aren't important influences." I agree with all of the above, but if the issue is merely cultural and not racial, then is it possible for an "American actor...born in the State of New York to a Danish father and American mother, [who] lived in Argentina during his childhood"--who happens to be white--to better portray that Englishness than a person born and raised in England (to a family who has been in England for generations), who happens to be black? If culture is the deciding factor then I think we'd choose the black Englishman over the white American?
So proud to be a Tolkien fan and see the way the fans have resisted the dark lord bezos. There is some good in this franchise, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!
Having black dwarves and elves isn't the entirety of the problem, it's just the batsignal saying there is more to come, that doesn't follow or outright contradicts Tolkien lore.
there is like ten billion other, FAR more egregious things signalling further contradictions. the fact that people latched onto the race thing as inaccurate is just hilarious in the context of all those other inaccuracies.
Firstly, I apologize for the wall of text, but I really need to get this out. I love your videos, Tim, and I like how they really make me think. this video was no different and gave me a lot to think about. I staunchly refuse to watch "Rings of Power" for several reasons. I'm a 49-year-old woman and born in the same year Tolkien died. And over the past 20 years, I have seen many franchises that I've loved since I was a little girl either expanded of redone with changes that made them bastardized mockeries and insults to the originals. I've always felt that if you're adapting something, you need to do it with an understanding of why people love the original and what made it popular in the first place. Most adaptations/expansions I've seen over the years, I generally hate, because they're made in such a way that you can tell that the people working on it had no love for, or even watched, the originals. It's a clear and blatant cash grab. it's sad when people who are making these things admit, almost with pride, that they never even watched or did research for their character using the original work. Members of the LOTR:ROP group have said this, and it disgusts me. Viggo Mortensen, as an example, when he got the part of Aragorn, reportedly picked up and read all the LOTR books, which he hadn't read before. That's what a good actor SHOULD do, and it should always be part and parcel of preparing to portray a character you're adapting. when the crew doesn't do this kind of thing, what they make reads, in my opinion, as empty, hollow, and without heart at best, and insulting to the fanbase at worst. I've seen this a lot lately, from the last airbender, to star trek and star wars, to she-ra and he-man. and these are only a few. It angers me no end when people not only ruin a series i love without care, but then blame all fans, including ME, for first pointing out the faults, and how what they created sucks, but also for the fact that what they made failed to make money because they insulted the very people they should have been listening to, the fans, who've kept the franchise alive for as long as it's been going. Star Wars is a great example of this. I've loved the original trilogy since my dad took me to see it when it originally first came out. I was 4 years old. The spaceships amazed me! Darth Vader scared me. And the scene in episode 4 where Luke swings across the chasm with Leia was one of the most exciting things I’d ever seen in my young life. And Luke Skywalker was my first crush. Now, I wish I’d never gone to see the sequel trilogy because it soured and ruined everything I liked about him, and then lucasfilm started attacking the fans and telling us we're awful people just because we think those movies are awful and suck. Due to that sort of thing happening, I refuse to support any company or actor./actress, that attacks the fans. in my opinion, you cannot insult me and then ask me for money, and if i gave you money first and then you do that, you no longer deserve my support. Finally, as to the race (or even gender) swaps... there are VERY few times it doesn't bother me, and the main reason it does is that I know, especially these days, that the only reason they do that is because they want to tick off boxes and be more inclusive, which is good, but when you're remaking or adapting something, in my opinion, especially something like Tolkien, where he's explicitly described the character, that's what a fan expects to see, no matter what race the character is, it's not what fans are expecting the character to look like, and people who don't know the original material will have misconceptions when they finally read the actual thing. They won't see what the author describes, they'll see the actor that played the character. it's also not being a faithful adaptation if the movie/tv crews do that for no apparent reason at all but "diversity", which is no better than virtue signaling in my eyes, and i find virtue signaling hypocritical and annoying. I don't think it's racist to complain when races of characters get arbitrarily changed in an adaptation where the character has been explicitly described, no matter what race gets changed to which. My last big reason is the fact that movie crews and companies these days think every film needs to send a "message" and that they should express their "activism". when I go to a film, i don't want to be preached at or given a lesson, certainly not from people who, when you look at their lives and actual personality, are far worse than most regular people, excepting a handful of decent people. I just want to have fun for a couple of hours, take a break and escape from my life for a bit. I don't care or want to know what your politics and opinions are. if i do know, it kind of ruins the immersion for me. for example, in the live action "beauty and the beast" i didn't see belle, I saw emma watson and her stupid politics, which ruined the entire experience for me, and i don't like rewatching that version of the story. I think with all this, most people can at least, even if you don't agree with me, understand why I hate most adaptations we get these days. In my opinion, the best adaptation I’ve seen was "the last unicorn" and that was at least 30 years ago.
I don't think you understand why people are angry about the race swapping. You say that it won't effect the story. But the thing is, if they so easily do unnecessary things like race swapping it shows they don't care about the story.
I'm just sick of people who get control of franchises and try to "update them for modern times" (read: make a political statment while wearing the skinsuit of beloved franchise). If Tolkien wrote thay elves have dark skin, they should have dark skin. If he wrote that Galadriel was a warrior, she should be one. Except that's not what he wrote. They aren't trying to adapt LOTR, they're trying to use it. I've seen numerous franchises fall to this crap and lose any semblance of coherency with what it once was (Doctor Who being the worst example I can think of), I'm not going along with the desecration of what I consider to be the greatest story ever written. Peter Jackson made changes, not all good ones, but most of them were for the sake of books not translating pefectly to screen, and the few thay weren't that way mostly don't contradict the source material or are insignificant. A *beardless* black dwarf is significant. Dwarves would sooner die of shame than have their beards shaven. Let's also not ignore the spirit of whay Tolkien was trying to do. He wanted to create a sort of mythology for England. Would it make sense to go insert white people into Chinese mythology or make the Greek gods look like Norse gods and the Norse gods look middle eastern? No. All I want is for them to adapt the LOTR faithfully - if they want to send a political message then they shouldn't be trying to use LOTR to do it, they should make their own series. Then again, evil cannot create, can it?
The "black dwarf/elf" argument is utter BS and you know it. If you're that worried about demonetization, you would've been better off not doing this video at all, rather than spouting a blatant lie. We all know how those races are supposed to look like, we all know why the amazon version looks differently. If you wanna make a series with black dwarves and elves, more power to you. They're just never ever, ever (!) going to be Tolkien's dwarves and elves. It's no hyperfixation, it's not racism, it's just a raw fact. Deal with it.
Hey, it's not stopping people like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Shadiversity, and others from talking about it. It is rather strange to call out hyperfixation on politics, when it's the show's creative staff to interjected the modern politics to start with.
01) if anyone thinks amazon is interested in telling a new story instead of capitalizing on already established massive IP, either they are in urgent need of mental health assistance or high up on enough copium to make Pablo Escobar blush. 02)the reason they probably got relatively unknown showrunners is that that way they can manipulate them to do whatever they can do. and the notion that adaptation, even a bad one would bring in more fans to the books that almost 70 years old fandom couldn't bring is purely based on thinking modern consumer demographic is willing to read 2000+ pages of books. and if that kind of demographic would buy the books ONLY IF the show was amazing. it's LOTR not harry potter. 03) of course they gonna prioritize their stories over Tolkien. they even put their made-up characters on to the new edition of LORT book covers. also, no person gonna adopt someone else works without trying to personalize it. that's why the majority of adaptations are universally bad. to it not to be that the original creator must be heavily involved or adaptor must possess incredibly high leveled discipline and respect to the original author/their work (like Peter Jackson). witch, I don't think the amazon team has. they even said they are going to make it appealing to the modern audience. 04) #WheresTheBeardJeffry 05) I agree 100%. but still not giving money to bozo. Play here I come! 06) majority of people's criticism isn't because they put dark-skinned dwarfs or dark-skinned elves. it's because they put a black dwarf and a black elf. it's insulting to fans. when black cosplayers are putting more thought into accurate cosplay than amazon. if they wanted to do a diverse casting they could absolutely do that. but they need to justify it by explaining it in the lore, especially in works detailed as LOTR. but no what they did was shoved a "diverse" character to score a social point. and nobody is naive enough to think they did it so a global audience could relate to Tolkien. more than 200+ million people embarrassed Tolkien's works all around the world before ROP. nor to mention the movie trilogy. because, unlike the USA, we are not obsessed with our race being represented. and the rest of the world is more r**ist than the USA you can imagine. but I appreciate your unbiased opinion because you are one of the few people willing to give this a try without selling out (I hope 😅) but thinking this is not woke or related to "culture war" is again dumb. considering the amount of attack on fan and virtue signaling the journos and amazon is doing.
What I am afraid of most? A lack of respect for authorial intent. A 'rewrite for modern audiences". Gratuitous sex and cruelty, which really goes to my first fear.
Please read the entire work of Tolkien's legendarium. Its so deep and tied to realism and thats one thing Tolkien fans really love. Its so grounded in our reality and the history of our world. Amazon's series is a complete change of tolkien's work and anyone whose read everything down to his letters understand that. The guy spent his entire life to build this world unlike most authors who build "enough" of thier world to tell a story and make sales.
"The shadow that bred them..." quote is actually from Frodo in Return of the King (The second book), and it actually means a lot. The problem today is that we don't see the people who creates new stories because companies, afraid of losing a single cent, will not invest in new stuff, but rather take what's established and turn it into something that is not. I cringed a lot when all white Gods of Egypt came out, but it brings me to the point that Hollywood is a melting pot of cultures and couldn't care less about anything going out of it. They will starve until they realise that creating new things is the only way.
@@juusovuolle8251 "The Return of the King" is two books (5th and 6th volumes from The Lord of The Rings : "The War of The Ring" is the first and "The Return Of the King" is the second.)
Ok, I can understand where you are coming from when you think people are over reacting to the addition to black elves and hobbits. It could be fine on it's own, but looking at Hollywood it clearly is actually a political move. This is just another case in a long line of characters. Like with the Witcher, which is supposed to be based around Scandinavian and Nordic lore. It didn't really make sense. Also let's be really there is a long line of charactes being replaced, (a lot of them are also redheads. Including: Wally and Iris West, Jim Olson, Hawkgirl, and Josie McCoy in CW shows. MJ and Heimdall in the MCU. Starfire and Miss Martian in Titans. Trish from Witcher. The issue isn't with adding more black people. The problem is Hollywood is very political and this is just one of the ways they are showing it. You would never see them putting a White or Asian person as a native member of Wakanda. Because that wouldn't make sense either. A good example of this being done is with Dune. Based off the book, I didn't really seem the freeman as very dark skinned. Maybe just tanned. But it makes perfect sense for them all to have very dark skin to black. And that was a very good movie with the latest version of movie. What we really need is more fantasy shows based office other countries lore. I'd love to see the book The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter turned into a movie. I think that could be an amazing show/movie.
i read the Lotr trilogy a little while back since the last time i'd read it was as a kid and was inspired by the subtlety of the side characters and how they brought life to the world where protagonists couldn't go. reading the books back to back and then watching the movies was disappointing despite the movies being good - the movies lacked grounding when compared to the books. novels adapted to short stories often do. but the world building that Tolkien did was the source of that grounding and i can't possibly see amazon doing the leg work. its just a huge job. arcane took 6 years to make and it shows. when they adapt something like the wheel of time and it does ok thats fine - wasn't the most interesting read - but when you have to make up stuff for a story that defined an entire genre for almost 70 years... i'd say good luck but amazon doesn't deserve it
Yes, I've already made up my mind. As said under your trailer reaction video. For me, the "black" elf and dwarf are simply a summary of "what I think will be wrong about this show". In another setting it wouldn't bother me, but from the trailer and interviews/articles I've indeed gotten the feeling that this is another show filled with current politics (as much as you disagree with that) of forced ethnic diversity (race-swapping characters or inserting random characters to check off a box, instead of showing stories of actual diverse characters), forced "feminism" (adding women who have to be bossy and warriors and possibly also hate men), replacing male with female characters (because again "men bad" and we need to check off that box, because women are nothing more than a stupid diversity check box which... I can't express just how frustrating that is to see, as a woman myself), and so on. Add in that they don't seem to care about the lore that exists and have made changes to that (and not in a "we have to shorten tLotR down into 3 films"- but rather in a "we have to expand the appendices but will change stuff anyway"-way, and I'm not even talking about the time compression which is just stupid and takes away a lot imo). And finally, I don't think it shines a good light on creators when they call fans bigots simply because the fans don't like the changes the creators made! (I've probably forgotten things but anyways)
Personally when I watch an adaptation of a story I already know I'm not hoping for a perfect recreation of the source material(since I already have that), I'm hoping for something that uses the source material as a base and then offers a new interpretation and/or perspective. That's what the best adaptations do, including Peter Jackson's LOTR films. Tolkien almost certainly wouldn't have made those films exactly the way Jackson did but that's alright because they're still a good representation of the story, as told through Jacksons's interpretation. Now obviously I might not like that interpretation, but I'd still prefer that over something that just tried to mimic the source material without adding anything new.
Thanks for the video - nice to hear your thoughts on it. On the race thing - I would suggest it does matter quite a bit. One of the main reasons why I think people are drawn to Tolkien’s work and to Jackson’s adaptations is because the world feels so historical and authentic. It’s the mythology of a time before time. If we rewind to England 1000 years ago, we’re looking at a homogenous group of caucasians, not a diverse cross section of races that you would expect on the streets of NYC in 2022. Similarly, if we made a film about Africa 1000 years ago, we wouldn’t expect a diverse cross section of skin color. So to forcefully insert other ethnicities as elves or dwarves really does shatter that immersive feeling that this world in fact existed. It pulls you out of the story and you’re (at least subconsciously) always aware that these characters are only black to check a box. (It’s also part of the reason why this trailer feels like a modern YA fantasy.) What’s sad is there are a lot of positive and creative ways they could have actually incorporated a diverse cast without straying from Tolkien’s vision. But they chose to sacrifice authenticity and cohesive world building for their own agenda. So it does concern me both on its own accord, and as symptomatic of a lack of regard for Tolkien’s close attention to detail in world building.
I had a very similar feeling when playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. Your tribe is supposed to be this very isolationist, somewhat xenophobic group... and yet it's full of racial diversity. I'm not against diversity - I just don't like it when it doesn't make sense with the established lore!
1,000 years ago England of 1022 would have a small level of ethnic diversity due to the influence of the previous Roman Empire. We have archeological evidence of Syrians being stationed along Hadrians wall during the Roman occupation of England. Those people the Roman Empire brought with them would have mixed with the general population and resulted in a melting pot of ethnicities. Yes the Roman Empire departed from the shores of Britania, but not everyone left. Some stayed, as Britania was their home. We also know that the people we collectively call the Vikings had dealings with the Middle East, so again there would have been some mixing of the ethnicities. Regarding Africa, even as far back as the height of Greek/Macedonian time there was a large influx of White Caucasian mixing with the North African populations. The people of the Middle East also made parts of North Africa their home and mingled with the native populations. Multi-ethnicities societies arw nothing new, they are well documented. That all being said, they would not have been to the percentage of diversity that we see in say New York in 2022.
See this take and the matching one in the video I have serious issue with - it's not historically accurate to pretend england has been a monolith of whiteness at any point during our history and the upholding of this narrative is used to this day to pull the racist "but where are you FROM" "go back to where you're from" line on people of colour living here.
One thing that does bug me that's more of a small nitpick in actor choice is the way they made elrond look because in the film we've seen exactly what he looked like in the second age so replacing him with this stranger things looking kid just makes it hard for me to attach the name elrond's to that character
I’m legit afraid that it’s going to, and has already indicated that, it will ignore the creative ideal of Tolkien to introduce modern day ideology in place of telling anything actually valuable or interesting. I’ll refer to the first season of the Witcher for a moment here where the creative director intentionally made terrible costume design for nilfgaard to make them look like scrotums, yes that was the intention and that was directly stated. The current Tolkien society has said that his work is in service to modern times and has jumped clean over sharknado with their statements on this and I am legit afraid they are going to subvert the creative intention to push actual propaganda instead of telling a compelling story. You can already see that happening too just by example of the dwarf queen and the marketing real they put out on UA-cam with “real” fans “reacting” to the trailer. It comes across as hollow and manipulative
@@swagromancer who exactly, I can start grabbing quotes but it would be helpful to talk directly about what you’re concerned over; be that the show directors themselves or the Tolkien society
"I am legit afraid they are going to subvert the creative intention to push actual propaganda instead of telling a compelling story. You can already see that happening too just by example of the dwarf queen" That's what I was referring to. I've seen the posters and I read the Vanity Fair article, but I didn't follow any other news concerning the show that closely, so it's entirely possible that a lot of things just slipped my attention. As an avid dwarf content enjoyer, I would be kind of miffed if they used my lads (and lassies) for any sort of silly business.
@@swagromancer ill be back on this later dude, long day at work means i didnt get a chance to get a good reply for you. ill hit you up tomorrow when i have a day off
Hold up, if there is "a black dwarf and a black elf" then the problem becomes even larger. Skin colour not making any sense aside, how would a single elf and a single dwarf become dark-skinned? If it was an entire people of dwarves and elves, or a subset of an entire people, that would make much more sense, however un-lorefriendly that may be.
There's a single black dwarf and a single black elf *in the trailer*. We have zero information regarding how many there are in the show, and if the ones in the trailer are in any way exceptional in this regard.
@@Carabas72 I do assume there are more, which would just leave the problem of "It doesn't make any sense", but Tim said people were getting angry over one elf and one dwarf, and that argument specifically is what I am addressing. I also think the dwarf not having a beard is a much more significant problem that shows the people making the series have no regard and don't care about Tolkien's original work. And probably don't even know the work in detail, or ignored the advisors they hired who do know it. That lack of care is what probably lead to the other flaws we see as well, skin colour being just one of them.
I always figure big business will ruin everything they touch. Until they prove otherwise. Also I will never pay amazon any money again after working there so I will never see this anyways. I do feel that there has been a concerted effort lately to destroy/rewrite history and culture. I feel even if you think the original has bad themes or other such things it's still important to pass that on so we know about it and not try and cover it up with new modern rhetoric.
That may or may not be, but I can take comfort in my strong belief that if this is bad people will just forget about it in a year or two and it won’t actually damage the LOTR name a significant amount
Unfortunately I am getting serious Highlander 2 vibes. And the reaction by fans to the political aspects of what has been released is natural considering the writers and 'experts have stated they have purposefully politicized it.
Full respect to the actors, no doubt they are masters of their craft and are professionals who will be doing everything they can with what their given, but Amazon is making them sacrificial lambs; They are subtly but clearly directing massive amounts of outrage toward them to paint all criticism of the show as racially motivated, same as Disney and Marvel did with Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
As a catholic, for me some of my fears (on top of many of the already stated fears) is they will suck any and all of Tolkien’s faith from the work. They’ll try to inject their brand of morality and “my truth”. Yes, LOTR and Middle Earth as a whole is not blatantly catholic, but Tolkien was quoted saying (I don’t remember the quote off the top of my head) that it started out unconscious at first and then once he realized it, became a conscious choice, to imbue his faith within the world. The man was deeply connected to his faith and understood the power that comes from that place of spirituality. And as a catholic, nothing has ever been as inspiring to me as knowing that one of the most prolific and honored writers of the last century was deeply devoted to his faith. He was able to weave beautiful stories that connected with people of the church and those outside of it in different ways and through his art is able to bring people together. I can only hope to be half as good as him someday at writing. But yeah I mean the movie that came out about Tolkien like last year I think, completely removed any mention/connection to his faith when it is common knowledge being a catholic was integral to his life and works, which to me is a sign that Amazon will do the same here. They’ll try to imbue modern politics and modern issues into a world that doesn’t need it.....
There is a political problem with media today. So many writers feel that their show has to champion a LGBTQ+ and forced divesrity message that they wedge sub-plots into stories where they are not needed or wanted and do nothing to improve the overall story. I am not a racist. I have no intention to persecute the LGBTQ+ community. I don't need more info about the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community. I am perfectly fine without the forced diversity and lectures. Stories without this addition would be more refreshing than a national tax holiday. Please get over yourselves and stop preaching this agenda. I'm sick of it. You can always feel sorry for yourselves on your own time. Get over it and just for the love of God stop. I am fed to the teeth with this nonsense.
A black dwarf changes a lot. Many dwarves that come from Durins (if she is in his family) family need to look different, they need to live under the sun, they need to be in the outside world a lot and due to that would get confronted with other races in Middle Earth a lot more than they already do.. 😅 That's changing the lore, changing what makes sense and is typicall for people living under the earth. Also it makes no sense regarding The Hobbit and LotR because there are no black dwarves.. so what happened to them? What happened to black elves and hobbits? They all died? Are they murdered? I would love to see Haradrim, a very unexplored culture. I wanna know more about how and why they fell for Sauron, how they lived, what they believe and so on. That would be very interesting and it would fit the world. Helbrand is a decent looking human that fits the people living in middle earth. 🤷♀️ So nothing to complain about. He looks decent regarding his costume and surroundings, he looks like he belongs to the men living in Middle Earth we already know a lot about.
You expect or even hope for clever writing from this show? Manipulations by Sauron with intrigue and brilliant subtlety? I'll make a prediction now... Sauron's manipulations will be limited to Sex, Offers of Power, Money, and lastly threats and magical mind control. He will have the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Dear Hello Future Me .... Sadly i cannot begin to tell you how much you missed the mark on the concerns that Loyal LOTRs fans have about this upcoming project by Amazon raises in Us.First and Most Importantly I Hate being told by people who mostly have never even read the material how I'm being a 'Racist" by not embracing the "Creators' of this show checking off the Diversity boxes they felt they needed to do to get people to watch this Soon to Be Car wreck. Second why is Galedriel the Elf-Queen being turned into a Warrior - General that is going to Lead the "Northern Armies". Their quote....not Mine. Oh I know...its to show women that there are "Strong Female" characters in Tolkien's work. You know because she was made to look and appear so weak in all of his writings. Lets now forget about Arwen and Eowyn....you know...because they're so weak. Here's some food for thought...why are there Hobbits in the Second Age.....when they didn't exist? Go ahead...I'll wait....I'll leave you with this thought...........Most.. not all True fans are concerned with arrogance of Amazon and the Writers to come up with a quote along the lines of "Can we write the book that Mr Tolkien never wrote?"...The answer in a word is...No. I could go on for hours about this topic, but i wont. I have always enjoyed your work and will continue to do so. That being said i Vehemently disagree with the Lazy minded thinking people have come up with whenever a True fan raises their voice in concern
You were so wrong defending this show...it has turned out to be an absolute tragedy, and anyone with half a brain could tell it was going to be before it aired just by watching the trailers, teasers, interviews and collection of still pics...
Thank you for this video man. I was looking everywhere for someone who actually had a positive outlook for this series. I'm excited to see how it turns out. Thanks man!
9:18 if this was any other author i would agree. said author could very well speak up and say something like "yes, in retrospect i approve of this change because it makes the world more diverse" or "no, i don't approve of this for [insert reason]" but Tolkien can't do that, not anymore. He described dwarves and elves and he created his work to make an epic for ENGLAND so, no, diversity shouldn't be used ESPECIALLY since Tolkien isn't here to give his approval or disapproval. That change is actually the most outrageous because they are taking something created by a man long ago, a man who had his own vision of it and his own reasons for making it this way, and changing it to appeal the "woke left", so that they can pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, we FIXED that thing". I'm fully aware of the other changes that the trilogy has gone through, like Aragorn's sword or the removal of Tom Bombadill or even the actual ending with Saruman taking over the Shire, but those were made because they either had to be cut for pacing issues, like Tom Bombadill and Saruman's ending, or because they didn't really work in a movie, like Aragorn's sword actually being the broken Narsil which would have looked weird in fight scenes. This show is doomed for one reason only: they don't want to make "the lord of the rings", they want "game of thrones". They want Galadriel to be the new Daenerys, which she is not. They just want a quick cash grab.
We know it will be pathetic. All effort is spent on being Woke. No money spent on story, acting, effects, consistency ... This is copying Wheel of Time trash. Bladerunner was good because they had a well-formed story and got good actors, not random trash based on their wokeness representation.
I think why most people are talking about the black dwarf and elve, is because the MSM is mostly talking about those changes. And how the writers have been talking, it seems that they'll be forcing modern racial politics in the story
I didn't realize there was so much anger towards the race changes in the new adaption. Personally, I was more confused that they hadn't secured the rights to the Silmarillion but were still plowing ahead anyway. I get that the original books have a European flair, pulling from multiple cultures and mythologies, but present day Europe is pretty diverse. As you said, I would rather have more people exposed to Tolkien's stories and themes, which are far more central to the plot than the characters' skin tones.
"The show will drive people to buy the books and read it for themselves, it will happen even if the show is bad" Yes, and it can also happen the other way around: it might drive people AWAY from buying and reading the books if the show is bad. They might think the books are bad because the adaptation is bad. I've seen it happen with Eragon and Game of Thrones, people got so put off by the bad adaptation that they don't want anything to do with it anymore.
Just from a pure numbers perspective I think that's usually heavily outweighed by the amount of people being made aware of the thing in the first place. Ask your average person about Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire in 2008 and even fairly nerdy people would often just give you a blank stare. Now it's hard to find anyone who doesn't know about it. Even if there was just a 0,1% conversion rate of those new people into new readers it'd dwarf the amount of people who had heard of the books before but hadn't read it and were put off by the series.
I’m frustrated that from what i can guess they’re more concerned with shoving their ideology and political ideas into the show rather than actually telling a good story. It’s activism disguised as entertainment. We’ve seen it with star wars and it’s not gonna be any different here
Simply having women of non-white people in a show isn't activism or political, at least not more than not having them, particularly for something where the characters are new. Changing the source material is potentially something different, and being more concerned with a message or appearance than telling a good story with good characters just results in a bad show.
You're being too kind to amazon, HFM. They are disrespecting Tolkien, his lore and his fans, all for the sake of raking in perceived dragons' hoards worth of money, attempting to ride on PJ's LOTR coattails. They only have the 'rights' to mere whispers of Tolkien's work, which means they CANNOT use OR reference anything else! It's the story of the three blind men with the elephant, they all think it's a completely different animal.
I think the problem people have with changing character race is that we all know that it comes purely from a a desire to be more culturally diverse. Real world politics should never be your priority when writing a story, companies like Amazon and Netflix have a notorious history of prioritising these politics over the integrity and quality of their story.
I'm not fixating on skin color. That'd be stupid and bigoted. Instead, I'm fixating on the distortions and corruptions that will be inflicted onto Tolkien's work just to accommodate these fabricated characters or to adapt classic characters to the XXI century's political correctness. I think I'll have a lot more issues with a Jeanne d'Arc type of Galadriel that with a low profile dark skinned elf.
It has to do with ethnicity and the mentality of creators. Adding their political agenda to Tolkien world, is hijacking. A lot of us are bored with preachy attitude.
All the Hollywood adaptations of great books feel like someone dug up your grandma, and parades her around, and everytime you criticise them, you are just told to appreciate the beautiful makeup. You can just remember your grandma as you want, our parading of this corpse should not affect you! Slight hyperberly might have been used.
There is a slim chance that Galadriel in armor with the Feanorean Star is a flashback to the exodus and the kinslaying when her wearing that would still make sense. Her look of distress could even be her as one of the late comers of the House of Finarfin to the battle that are realizing too late what is actually happening. Do I think that’s what happening? No it’s probably something that makes no sense with canon lore, but slight chance there does exist.
willful ignorance. the dude likes to go on and on about how you shouldn't fixate on race just because it's heavily based and influenced by celtic/english mythology, but i can guarantee you that if there was a story out there that based on african or east asian mythology and the adaptation sticks a bunch of white people in it, screams and wails will be heard about "white washing" this and "white supremacy" that.
@@nickhalden374 yeah, I mean if they want diversity that much, why not adapt something else? Like stormlight archive for example. The majority of the main characters aren't even white (at least on how it is depicted)
I feel like in the climate on the the internet your rational thoughts will either be ignored or attacked. Please keep up the good work! Don't apologize to the mob online. Keep doing good work!
Honestly, the cast diversity is one of the best selling point of the series, as long as representation is fair to the characters created and doesn't relegate them to traitors and servants. There is diversity in Tolkien's world, and there should be in our imagination and our representation of that world as well. Thanks for the great video, as always.
This isn't diversity; it's tokenism. The "Rings Superfans" video pretty much proves that. There were ways to incorporate a natural diversity into the story without deliberately changing the lore, but the "Superfans" video proves that it's just tokenism.
Your discussion of dark skinned characters Im afraid still breaks down to “I don’t wanna call you racist but don’t you think you might be a little racist?”. And you’re missing the issue. Immersion. When you see a darker skinned elf, if you’re the thinking sort you think, “Where did they come from? Did sone elves develope in a hotter environment? But not many elves reproduce much. How did they develope darker skin? Did elves start out with darker skin? The family lines in Tolkien are pretty well traced for elves. Is this a new family line?” If they explain it, it can work, but the issue is when it’s not explained. Then you immediately revert to an out of world explaination. Either they couldn’t find enough light skinned actors who fit the part or it’s that they’re trying to be inclusive, and that takes you into the world of modern politics, not Middle Earth. Look at Wheel of Time for instance. When they had most of the Two Rivers folk being dark skinned I thought “well maybe that’s what people from the Two Rivers look like. Maybe they immigrated here from somewhere further south originally. But then Matt is white as the driven snow and I’m like what the hell? Could they just not find a dark skinned guy to do Matt? Isn’t he from the Two Rivers? If they added in that his family was from somewhere else it would be fine but with no explanation, a guy like Matt native to the Two Rivers where not many people go? Where people should look pretty much alike? Where Rand should feel out of place for not looking like them? It cuts into immersion and gets you thinking about the political motivations of racial casting which is not where you want to be.
I think hyper focusing on someones race like this is flat weird. I see a black elf, I see a black elf. It's an elf who happens to be black. Why can't there be black elves? There's no reason when they were made that a few could have been made black. It's that simple to explain, because the people in this universe were created by higher powers and didnt evovle like actual humans did, so they dont have to scientifically explain different levels of pigmentation. When Illuvatar made elves (or whoever did it in the legendarium, I cant remember) he made a few black. Simple as. They do magic ffs, so I dont think it matters. Same with Wheel of Time, the Two Rivers arent that homogenous or separate from the world that everyone would be the same. And Rand still is the odd man out lol, they mention like five times in the show that red hair is a typical Aiel trait, to the point he was mistaken for an Aiel.
@@stephengrant4841 Hey good for you. But I don’t think looking at peoples skin tone and wondering why they look like that is hyper focusing on race. If you find black people living in the arctic you’d say, I thought melanin was an adaptation to hot environments. Maybe it’s like the polar bear and dark skin helps them absorb more sunlight or endure heavy sweating under furs better. Or at least you would if that sort of thing interested you. If it doesn’t, then what can I say except I’m glad you have one less thing to worry about. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it does. I’d immediately look up how dark skin pigmentation might be useful in arctic environments.
@@Agaporis12 That sort of thing does interest me - I just don't think it matters in a fantasy world that was designed by a creator, *especially* one wherein large groups of people move very frequently due to war.
You really get to the heart of the issue wrt dwarf women beards. It was so fundamental to the original vision, leaving it out will undermine the entire spirit of the story 😔
Is it okay if a African mythology film replacing with a white or asia actor/actress to a black actor/actress? No, i don’t so and I think the same in Amazon LOTR.
The name mostly comes from the fact that the Tolkien Estates only sold the rights to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (and hence they use what is in the Appendices of Return of the King, not what's in Unfinished tales or Histories of Middle Earth!). If they didn't add the "Lord of the Rings" in the title, probably could've have caused legal issues. But you covered that in part. Very good take on this. Much better than many other UA-camrs who only rant! Thanks for this!
I just wanted giant women beards 😭 Imagine the craic that the costume department could have had making a dwarf queen’s beard? Bits of gold and jewellery strung through it, fancy plaits ect. Awesome
As someone who isn't white, my big issue with the race changes is that there already were non-white humans in the lore (e.g., Haradrim) that are really underexplored and would be a great avenue for the creators to write their own stories while also including some racial diversity. But that would take some actual talent and creativity to do. Simply adding in one black dwarf and one black elf (why just black elves and dwarves, where are the Asian elves and dwarves?) reeks of the type of "woke" corporate diversity checklist that is far too common in American media. Amazon doesn't actually care about true equality and representation of diverse cultures and worldviews, they just want to make money, and a big group of overpaid executives likely got together and decided that adding in a couple token black characters would make them more money than not having them.
@Anjelica Snorcket yeah that was the other option. Either a couple token black people thrown in, or it will be like the wheel of time series where every single location, regardless of its an isolated farming village, a major city, or a remote border outpost has the ethnic diversity of a modern day major metropolitan area, which just makes absolutely no sense, since any distinct ethnic differences in a small, isolated area will be bred out within a few generations. The Shire is likely going to be portrayed like that as well
I completely agree with both takes. Tell the a great story. Don't shoehorn characters just to check a box. There are plenty of locations that would support a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural setting: Tharbad, Osgiliath, Umbar, Rhun, Harad, or any large urban area. Just don't make the Black Numenorians black.
@@adc1222 tbf, in the WoT show we actually saw a pretty realistic level of diversity. The two Rivers were overall brown, with some exceptions sprinkled in (which makes sense for a remote area that has some trade, but not a lot, and descends from a bustling city state), Tar Valon was a melting pot and Fal Dara was overwhelmingly Asian with some exceptions, which also makes sense for a place with a lot of refugees. There are a lot of places the WoT show fell apart, but imho it's not with the ethnicities of characters and where they're from, imho.
It's blackwashing. I would really have enjoyed even a main character from Rhun who wasn't white. Their lore needs expansion anyway. Instead they take white races and blackwash them.
People point as Tolkien's writing and say, "this is racist; but it's a product of his time"; also, "he wanted to make a mythology for England", and such. So yeah, at face value, "racist". But if you look more deeply, it clear that Tolkien thought more deeply, as well. The words were given to Faramir in the film, but the ponderings about the motivations of the slain Southron in "Of Herbs And Stewed Rabbit" are Sam's inner thoughts. What a statement! Deeply Humanist, against a racist tableau. In my personal reading, I like to view all of Tolkien's writings similarly: trying to do right, be good, against inherent human nature to fear/hate "the Other". Aragorn eventually (i.e. 4th Age) makes peace with the Haradrim and Southrons. He does not subjugate them.
@@mme.veronica735 can I add thick muscles to that? The ideal Dwarven woman has a beard and thick muscles. You may not like it, but this is what peak Dwarven femininity looks like. /s
Interestingly, my biggest gripes weren't really what you brought up. For me, some of the biggest immersion-breaking things were: 1. Why are these "adventurers" wearing fresh-pressed and spotless linen sheets straight from the Target rack? 2. How were some of these more modern hairstyles achieved in the Second Age? "Magic" I guess? 3. Having a "younger version" of some of our well-known elven characters is foreign to me. Wasn't the whole point of the elven race that after they reach adulthood, they look exactly the same until the end of immortality? that was one of the reasons they seemed so disconcerting to people. Things like this!
The cleanliness from the trailer is definitely setting off some alarm bells for me too. Not saying everything needs "gritty realism", but they don't look like outfits that have been lived in. The people don't look like they spent the day doing anything other than stepping out of a make-up trailer. I can give the Elves a bit of a pass because that's a characteristic that makes them stand out from other people, but if everyone is clean and tidy it takes away from that.
The Wheel of Time had the same issue. Boy those were some clean peasants. It should be a rule that fantasy costume designers have to go work on a farm for a week in one set of clothing and no washing machine.
@@jessip8654 I tried out the Wheel of Time and I didn't like how they referred to things as ominous Darkness etc etc instead of having names. It's probably a personal gripe but it broke the world-building for me. With fantasy costume designers, you literally just have to throw some (even fake!) dirt on people that would have dirt on them, and you're done! Obviously royalty and wealthy characters would be clean, but even this minor visual detail would add another layer of depth to a scene. I.e. Arya in GOT rolled up looking like she just got off the road and you could tell she had been through some shit.
Tolkien actually spent a fair amount of time and work figuring out the rate at which the bodies of the elves aged. See the recent "The Nature of Middle-earth" volume edited by Carl Hostetter. After all, do you suppose that Cırdan was an aged-looking elf with a beard when he first took up the art of ship-building? This should not be a problem. The telescoping of 2500 years of time down to a single mortal lifetime (as seems to be the case with Isildur) rather undercuts this, however.
It’s interesting since we also know they’re pulling from the Silm here and there so I’m assuming they have permission to use stuff they don’t have full rights to? It’s weird
I dunno about that, it's probably mostly true but I'd heard else where the reason this show cost so much is that they had to rewrite the way the film rights worked. The way the lotr rights worked since the 70's is that you only got the rights to the book you were adapting but not the other attached material but I'm pretty sure they rewrote that somewhat for this. For a bit of added context Christoper Tolkien basically said that a silmarillion adaptation would only happen over his dead body, then a few months after he actually died they released that preview image of the 2 trees of valinor.
As a lawyer, I would love to be paid to know the lore so well that that I'd be explain that they can't use this dragon unless they remove references to its sacking of this particular city as well as the injury it got from this particular elf's sword.
Can two kids in the 21st century tell "the novel that Tolkien never wrote?" Well, Tolkien was a man who lived through two world wars-fought in one of them and saw his children and friends' children fight in the other; taught multiple forms of English at a university; learned an extinct form of English and translated ancient texts like Beowulf so that modern people could read them; and spent the remainder of his life imagining and inventing a world with such believable and realistic depth that you can actually _learn the fictional languages in it._ Not translate whatever words and phrases appear throughout the text, you can actually learn to speak and read these languages because they have grammatical structure that is as detailed and functional as any extant language. So, no... I do not think that two kids in the 21st century can tell a story on Tolkien's level. They might be able to come up with some cool fanfiction, though!
I have better fanfic stories tabbed then they could ever write it's the mentality the fantasy has to represent reality that poses the issue from them the world Tolkien made was immersive cause it wasn't the real world but had real struggles and characters that you could understand and feel for these guys something like that is impossible they are blithering morons when it comes to writing the only things there credited with are horrible woke trash shows that got cancelled nothing is changing for them they just have money to play with now
Well, if Tolkien could do that in his age, it's plausible that kids from this age could immerse themselves enough in the ancient texts to do him justice. Do I believe that Amazon hired the people who could do that? No.
@@TheJonflannery That's a good point. I didn't mean to say that _nobody_ in their twenties can be a good storyteller, just that these fellows haven't shown the signs of doing so.
For me, the black elves and dwarfs represent a huge missed opportunity. It is perhaps the least interesting way to introduce POC into this story. It feels like they are cynically just trying to check boxes, the way studio executives often do. If you're creating new characters anyway, why not try to tell the story of some of the Eastern nations that were traditionally enemies of the Free Peoples? Perhaps the long-standing grievances that caused them to join forces with Sauron were based on very legitimate issues. Let us get to know these nations we really know very little about. You don't even have to set storylines in those locations. Just have characters that have traveled from or defected from these places.
It's confusing to me. The original Hobbits are described as being nut-brown, so, since this is something of a prequel, when people started complaining about skin color, I thought for sure there were going to be hobbits. That it's an elf and a dwarf comes completely out of left field to me. 😳😅
It's very possible they were just trying to check boxes and you won't see me defending Amazon, but if the actor/ actress was the best person for the part then I can't say it bothers me too much what race they are unless it is critical to their character (ie if your casting a story about slavery on a southern plantation, casting a black overseer should fundamentally change how other characters view them in the given time period and it would be awkward if it didn't.) If race wasn't a factor in their casting decisions for elves and dwarves then I really have no issue with their decisions to cast them. If they did have a goal of having POC in the story (which isn't a bad goal) then it does seem kind of box checky not to try to come up with a better way to integrate them in the story since they specifically wanted POC actors and not actors who happen to be POC
It comes down to rights. I think not enough people understand that. What Amazon bought were not the rights to The Lord of the Rings, nor the rights to the Silmarillion. They bought the rights to the LotR appendices. So, they can officially only use and expand on what is explicitly mentioned there. And the appendices mainly focus on events and peoples from the Westlands. Cultures and histories for regions like Rhûn and Harad would have to be essentially invented from scratch, and I don't think that's within the limits of the rights agreement.
The only way to know if it's amazing is to watch it though. Way too often people just say something is bad because they read it online. Watch it and form your own opinion
I don't want to watch it, because I don't support projects like this. In the last couple of years a ton of franchises have been ruined by projects like this. Just keep the classics to themselves
@@kilianvounckx9904 If I have to go by what these creatures have been putting out these recent 5 years, I can confidently say that this series WILL BE mediocre at best. And you would know that too, if you weren't wilfully ignorant or maybe naive
You can watch it and then quit after sometime if it does not satisfy you. That way it would also signal that show failed to keep people watching despite them having tried.
I was actually really excited when I first heard about this series because the Second Age allows for so much creative interpretation. There are so many ways to develop new plotlines, ideas, arcs...it appears, however, that Amazon adopted none of them, and that's why the disappointment is so sharp. Galadriel in Numenor? Really? Totally unbelievable. Show her as a ruler. There are, as you point out, so many interesting potential storyarcs that could be created, and yet, it doesn't feel that Amazon went for any of them.
Little is known about Galadriel's movements in the early Second Age. It is not inconceivable that she visited Numenor as the books state that Elves passed through there a lot and it was initially friendly to the Elves. Obviously due to Elros being the first King. It wasn't really until the establishment of Lothlorien that she became more of a statesman or (stateswoman). I think thats what her character arc will be. It will also touch on her feelings about her brother Finrod being killed by Sauron in the first Age and how this affected her which I think could be interesting and something not previously explored much.
@@ZiggyStardust49 I'll be honest, I'm so tired of stating why I think so much of what Amazon is doing is nonsense that I'm not likely to give this the response it deserves. While you are correct in that I could buy into Galadriel visiting Numenor in the early days of the Second Age, at the time in question, I think it's absolutely ridiculous. By the time Ar-Pharazon was around, there was a very clear estrangement between the Eldar and the Edain. Regarding Finrod--this is clearly a first-age arc, why would you involve it in the Second Age when there is so much more going on? Also, Galadriel had sway as a sort of 'stateswoman' before Lothlorien, though not as a kind of sovereign power. She had already been powerful among the elves for a long span of time. Ruining her character as being some kind of young and ambitious hothead is so disingenuous. I have work tomorrow, it's almost 1am, and I still haven''t had dinner, but suffice it to say--I am very disappointed in what I hear coming from Amazon and I will continue to voice my displeasure.
@@ZiggyStardust49 oh lord not the tolkien didin't specifially mention she did NOT visit Numenore. Well he didin't specifically mention she didin't fly a spaceship either. How about we focus on the things that Tolkien mentions her doing and not what she could have potentially done in centuries where Tolkien doesn't specify what she was upto. If some of the elven lords would go to Numenore it would be Elrond. You know the brother of the first king? Or perhaps another lord in service of Gil-Galad after all they get the seedlings of mallorn tree from there. Galadriel should be visiting Khazad-Dum she takes Celebrian through there when they leave for Lothlorien. Also Galadriel will be leading northern armies and going to hunts for sauron and his servants all the way to distant Forodwaith so story focusing on her being a statesman is pretty redicilous at this point. Also Galadriels brother is rumoured to be the elf leading the orc warbands. So there is that to look forward to. /s.
From the creatives' own mouths there are some VERY worrying statements. They essentially don't understand the characters (Galadriel, Elrond). They are introducing a bunch of characters so they can tell the story they want (what ever that will be) rather than Tolkien's story. Make a show not in Tolkien's universe, or in Rhun or outside the known world. Just another pp shaped rocket destined to fail to impress his wife's boyfriend.
@@crustboi93 "she was also not really a soldier or 'amazon', but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis." - Tolkien letters
@@thomasmurrell9394 Military gallantry at a crises is not angry and brash , commander of the Northern Armies, leaving her husband and child behind to avenge whatever. That is not Galadriel.
As many others have said, the issue with the race swapping isn't "oh muh races, I can't stand black dwarves." The fact that Tolkien built an already diverse world where races and ethnicities arose in logical geographic areas as happens in the real world is part of what made Tolkien's world breath and live. But more importantly than the fact that there are diverse areas of Middle-Earth that they could have used for diversity, I feel that the fact that the Amazon writers thought that the only way to include diversity in the show was to race swap existing races and ethnicities shows that they DON'T know the lore or world well enough to be faithful to it. Its like trying to write a historic WWII story and in an attempt to be diverse you make up an all black battalion because you don't actually know about the Tuskegee airmen or the 761st Tank Battalion. It shows you didn't do your research. Which means they CAN'T write Tolkien's stories because they don't actually know or understand them. They can only write their own. You said you were worried they'd write their own stories instead of Tolkien's, well this is the red flag that they're going to do just that. Its getting a lot of attention because its a red flag. There are faithful ways they could be diverse (heck if they actually cared about the stories they'd HAVE to be diverse because the fall of Numenor has interactions with the Easterlings). But either they don't realize that because they don't know the lore and just assumed "ah its all white dudes, we gotta fix this", or they do realize it but are swapping things anyway "because we can, its our story." Its not about "oh no black dwarves," its that either they don't know the lore or they don't care about it. And both are a recipe for disaster for a setting that they don't even own the rights to the source material for.
@@danielmontoya2494 Every kindom North of (and including) Gondor and west of Rhun was white in skin colour and race, sure some were more pale than others in the same way that the Spanish are darker than English but they are both still white. People of Harad were mainly inspired from arabian cultures and the easterlings where inspired from a variety of Persian cultures, particularly Sassanid Persians, Mongol horsemen, and Ottoman Turks. So there were no gondorians in Far harad except in time of war perhaps, just as there were no Haradrim in gondor.
Thank you 😑 I keep hearing lazy responses like people are just racist for not accepting the black characters. That's not the problem. We're past racism, people, damn. The fact that they're going OUT OF THEIR WAY to add characters that don't fit lore wise is a huge red flag for the whole series..that they are sacrificing an already fleshed out and stable world for the agenda of seeming "inclusive" and "diverse" to us.
Some people are misinterpreting me. Yes, the race changes are a lazy form of representation and they should have done it better. Yes, all these changes do ring of a corporation trying to leech off a beloved work, but I'm willing to give it a chance. No, viewing this as a "culture war" with the "woke" is dumb. I wanted to discuss mostly the way we talk about the race changes.
Could you write a better show than Amazon? What would you do DIFFERENTLY? Then do it with Campfire bit.ly/HFM1-22
Most likely not, but I'm sure that you can!
I love it when you gesticulate with sharp, lethal weapons🥰
Nice video, I like how I always agree with everything you say (except for one particular video of course). Must be because it's right
Debatable. It would definitely involve less of the detriments.
I haven't even write fanfiction, but Amazon is a big money-sucking nostaglgia-predator fiend, so... Yes I can. Would it be good? Doubtful, but would be better than Amazon's? I feel pretty confident about that.
I'm a little bit put off by the fact that they actually fired two lore experts because they couldn't agree with Amazon's vision because it contradicted the lore
Sadly nothing new. Well, firing them used to be less common, but just flat out ignoring them is outright traditional, at this point.
Source? I'd like to read up on that
I don’t think we have a reason for Shippey’s firing
@@ItsButterBean1020 I thought it was because he was the one who gave the interview and told that Amazon didn't have the rights to the Silmarillion.
@@my_cousin_mose9782 I've heard that but It's not officially stated or supported
One more point that's not really touched on in the video is some worrying quotes from those making the show which imply that they've completely failed to grasp the characters that they're working with.
For example, they call Elrond "politically ambitious", while McKay said that "[Galadriel's] got a sword that’s broken because she’s killed so many orcs. This young hot-headed Galadriel…how did she ever become that elder stateswoman?". What they've described isn't even remotely similar to the characters of the books. Based on those quotes, they will be Elrond and Galadriel in name only.
Everything that's come out so far seems to indicate that they essentially just want to make another Game of Thrones, with Middle Earth being nothing more than a backdrop for it.
No love but that for profit.
Galadrial is going to be Buffy the Orc Slayer.
Lmao Galadriel is already thousands of years old during the second age.
This video is one hour long, yet your comment is one hour long. Teach me the way of the timetravel
Well there was this young hot headed man, they used to call him Otto Von Bismarck he ended up being a verry important elder statesman...
The actual reasons to be worried about this show without getting into race stuff:
1. Amazon butchered the Wheel of Time show and didn't faithfully adapt the story, world, or characters. It was seen by many as a trail run for this series with one of the Wheel of Time directors directing HALF the episodes of Rings of Power.
2. It is trying to pitch itself as a prequel when it is actually a reboot. The movie adaption rights are still with New Line and as such the show can't use any of the props, sets, locations, or music.
3. The directors have almost no history with an adaption of this scale...or really of any scale.
4. The trailer looked cheap despite being the most expensive show of all time (a similar problem Wheel of Time had as it looked cheaper than other shows with much smaller budgets).
5. They have already shown in interviews and the trailer massive departures from the source with a condensed timeline from thousands of years down to a handful and characters barely reflecting their literary counterparts.
6. Why is everything so clean and why are people rocking modern Harry Styles haircuts?
7. Most importantly, Amazon is making a show about the second age WITHOUT ALL THE RIGHTS TO MATERIAL FROM THE SECOND AGE!!!
Well spoken, mellon nin. Well spoken, indeed
HOT TAKE, not all of those are bad things in my mind. for instance I love the lord of the rings soundtrack.......but it already felt out of place in the first hobbit film (they had more new music for the soundtrack in the 2nd and 3rd hobbit films). I've also heard the lord of the rings soundtrack a thousand times in re-viewing and games.......interested to hear what new music/soundtracks can be made. I also look at this as sort of an alternate timeline version of the story, that way whether it is faithful adaption isn't the problem......I am just interested in the story and character development that they come up with
I will say, I actually liked the Wheel of Time adaptation. There were a lot of things that were changed, some of them I think with good reason. For example, I don't think that people would be nearly as interested in a story about 14 year olds. Or at least, it would be a different and smaller audience. The fact that they made Mat more of a scoundrel plays into that a lot, since someone who gets into trouble a lot is much different at 14 versus 25. Giving Perrin a wife is another huge change, but makes sense when you add a decade.
Making Moiraine and the Amyrlin Seat lovers was really forced, and that thing about how "They would still us if they knew what we were doing" came out really strange since the show wasn't really clear at that point about what they were doing. (In the book that line was said when they knew Rand was the Dragon and they were going behind the backs of the White tower to try and support him) And finally, the way they kept throwing in how the Dragon could be any of them, or maybe all five of them was just silly.
Oh... and it isn't another turning of the wheel. That part is wrong too, since each one of those they would have completely different names and stories, but still with the same age old struggle.
Hah. Okay, that kinda became a rant. But what I was trying to get at was that despite all the changes, the adaptation was enjoyable, and it did mostly keep true to the feel of the book. The First season left off in about the same position as the first book, and so they can continue to parallel the story fairly well from here.
@@TheJonflannery just say that you have not read the books. Cuz what you said is bs.
Considering point 3, Jackson had no experience with this scale either...
Them having Durin IV be prince of Khazad Dum when it was actually Durin III who was around in the third age is very concerning with me because the number and timing of Durins is a very significant detail. This is especially worrying because of rumors about another actor playing King Durin III. It's a very strange choice to ignore what the name Durin actually means. Having two at once would be like having Aang and Kora alive at the same time. Durin doesn't even reincarnate every generation. It's such a small detail with big implications and could have been avoided with just changing one of their names
I'm not too well versed in the lore of Lord of the Rings and not that big of a fan, but I can sympathize with its fans. This whole affair just reads to me like Amazon trying a milk a fan base--which has been around for generations--with no respect for Tolkien or what he created. If they really wanted to do their own thing I would have just tried to make a else world story (like how I choose to perceive Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War). It is more so how they've been trying to promote it and the journalist reaction to the backlash that I find the most insufferable. In addition to this they SEEM to be trying to inject modernity into this and it feels---somewhat--out of place. You are right, taking some creative liberties can help--the movie Wanted comes to mind--but it feels as fit they are taking more than some creative liberties.
Ah. Thus, sad to say, this sounds almost exactly like what Disney did to Star Wars. And they've learned nothing. *Sigh.*
This. Honestly, they could do whatever they wanted with a new IP that draws inspiration from other past works, which would force them to create something *good* that inspires a dedicated following. Instead, we get mediocre/bad sequels and prequels that only get attention because of a franchise name.
@@jglerum94 You can demand new IPs as much as you want. That simply won't happen in the capitalist world we live in. A Lord of the Rings show, no matter how bad it might turn out to be, will ALWAYS generate more attention and thus money, than any new fantasy IP could ever hope to do. Therefore, Lord of the Rings it is. Saying they should do otherwise is saying we should establish a different economic system (and I would be all in for it!).
What modernising have they done?
@@hughcaldwell1034 Aside from the diversity thing that is all that comes to mind for now. Which probably could work, they just have to not make it preachy.
I think the lack of rights is one of my major concerns. The other major concern is that this is a product by a massive, faceless corporation, and it feels like it. It does not feel like a passion project by a small group of dedicated creators who fought tooth and nail to get the rights to make something they were truly proud of, not knowing whether or not they would be successful. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who makes a Tolkien adaptation has to play with the exact same set of cards that Jackson and New Line did. But I would like to see the same passion, respect and knowledge from the creators, and so far, I'm not seeing it.
So basically you'd prefer the person creating an adaptation to respect the Canon, am I right?
@@kaelanirevyruun1676 having reverence for the material you're adapting seems like a given for any adaptation, yes, although 'canon' isn't the only thing on my mind. Respect does not necessarily mean sticking religiously to the fine print without deviation, because that is nigh impossible and not always desirable when changing mediums. But a sense that the spirit, intention and understanding is there is vital, and from the first trailer, I'm just not getting that. I'm open to having my mind changed but knowing the general state of other big IP:s and after watching Wheel of Time, I'm not expecting much.
@knäckis I agree with worrying about the lack of rights. Like what do they have rights too. I don't see how they can write a story about the Second Age with only the LOTR appendix and not treading on other IP.
I have to wonder if this is due to the "mainstreamming" of "nerd culture". Back in the days of the Jackson Trilogy, it was a huge risk to make something like LOTR because they didn't know if it would appeal to a mass market or whether it would be a bunch of nerds who would go and see it. That way they tried EXTRA hard to make sure it would appease the "nerd" faction, as well as hoping it would get mainstream success. Now, it's just become homoginsed.
i feel like nerd culture has become basic since it is walking away from being a niche thing to a general thing. And niche things require more attention to detail unlike modern movies that have many cliches and basic plot threads to not overcomplicate things. I hope it all turns out well but these past 10 years give reason not to.
I hate that "nerd culture" is now mainstream. Sure marvel movies are great, but everything was better when it was niche communities since it kept the hobby/fandom real and aware of their chosen thing to partake in. In DnD we had Dark Sun for example before, now Drows can't be bad because that would be racist
@@Adrian-qr6gk Yeah, nerd culture now is the normal and if you are a "real nerd"/care more about something, people will try to put a different tag on you.
@@MrWepx-hy6sn More so because it doesn't make sense. Imagine if all white elves were evil. Would that make any sense?
Nah, that's very specific to lotr. There have been tons of mediocre adaptations of fantasy franchises before the lotr films. People were very careful and hesitant about making Tolkien's works into movies, not only because he's pretty much the inventor of high fantasy, but he also has a famously hard to adapt writing style. In general, movie producers weren't less careless before lotr when it comes to fantasy adaptations than they're now. I think the particular fascination of long and complex but very loose fantasy adaptations that companies like Netflix and Amazon have had with the Witcher and now rings of power was sparked mainly by the success of Game of Thrones, which also largely got worse as it went on. Sure, the lotr films contributed to making nerd culture a bit more mainstream, but not nearly as much as game of thrones, which had millions of people worldwide get invested into dozens of hours of complex fantasy politics, rich worldbuilding, countless morally grey characters to follow etc. That's what made fantasy shows mainstream in my opinion. So of course big studios now know they don't have to provide excellence to get the masses hooked.
Honestly, I'm just wondering, "Why does this exist, or who asked and demanded for it?"
Aside from from company execs desperate to keep rights.
What kind of question is that lol
@@Sal3600 What's the matter with it?
@@carbootstudios2459 do shows and movies come into fruition because people ask for it?
@@Sal3600 Well people ask for good stuff.
And new original stuff too.
i would love to see a series about the Silmarilion and another about the second age, but never adaptations, when something is perfect, any attempt to improve it will only screw it up
9:24 really glad Tim didn’t just brush it off as “any issue with diversity makes you a racist” but the main reason most people are upset with this is more to do with the fact that there *are* actual people of colour in the original lore. They live in a particular area of the world (like how the real world used to be) where their race is stated to be darker than the other human-like races. I think it does a disservice to how carefully Tolkien constructed this world with regional diversity to make it operate like a real world would but instead Amazon have just made them randomly black and white.
Another example of this is Game Of Thrones, where places like Dorne have brown skinned people whereas the colder areas like winterfell are populated with Caucasian people.
Tldr: diversity is awesome and the source material already had a way to implement it organically but Amazon has seemingly ignored it because they don’t actually know much about Tolkien’s work
It felt sometimes the same with Wheel of Time, it probably has some of the most diversified world regarding skincolor (and this skincolor often specifically mentioned as an attribute of characters/peoples) i've read, but in a logical way, ie. local homogenity, diversity over larger regions and only maybe very few diverse 'cosmopolitan' area's like the largest cities (and even then most people often will still be local).
In fact during the story we kind of get a feeling of more diverse area's being formed due to people on the run from all the chaos and violence scattering across the land, like Two rivers getting refugees from all different regions of the continent:
- Arad Doman and Tarabon from across the mountains;
- Cairhienin, Altarans and Amadicians from the refugees saved from the shaido, probably later also people from Saldea looking at Faile's descendency;
- and in smaller quantities people from elsewhere too most likely.
Though luckily sometimes they do it right, like with the shienarans being pretty homogenous etc.
Very well said. For me it's not the biggest issue just an annoyance. Its just annoying that if a movie is made about Africa or Asia they wouldn't put white people in there and it would be cool. LOTR is supposed to be mythology for England but in 2022 it would be considered an issue to not have enough diversity. So the double standard is annoying. But like I said, this isn't my biggest issue with the show. I'm more concerned with the comments made by the creators and the firing of Tom Shippey. I fear its gonna be woke garbage.
But there's also the fact that the dark-skinned human peoples of Middle-earth that we know of are usually the enemies of our heroes. I know there are lore reasons for that, but it's still not a good look. And Amazon probably lacks the rights to flesh out regions like Rhûn and Harad more.
Having some dwarves and elves with darker skin also doesn't expicitly contradict anything that Tolkien wrote, so I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Imagine how jarring it would be to have asians, latinos, white, and black people all living in Winterfell under the same culture. That's what wheel of time did - we can only hope this show doesn't do the same.
@@swagromancer But that is the great benefit of the Second Age: Morgoth is out of the picture, for a while Sauron is hiding and when he comes out the Numenorians are still good people that have interest in being nice to the men of Middle-Earth. That is the perfect setting to have people of different races working together, only for that cooperation to be ruining by the growing greed and pride of Numenor and Sauron's lies.
On the rights, Amazon actually could do basically whatever they wanted on Rhûn and Harad, because there is so little about them in Hobbit and LotR (which they have the rights) that they could easily sidestep the things mentioned on The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (which they can't use because the don't have the rights).
I will agree that there is space for black (and asian) dwarves and elves, I just don't like how they implemented it. I think it would be fine if the Princess was from one of the 4 clans living east of the Anduin river. They could even justify her lack of beard on culture of her clan. But what really boils my blood is how they specifically chose to make the Black Elf a Sylvan Elf. You know, associating the black guy with wilds instead of civilization? They could have instead referred to him as a Nandor and I would have applauded, even because part of the Nandor went down the Anduin river and later went north to rejoin the Sindar or establish themselves as the Laiquendi of Ossiriand/Lindon.
There is only one Lord of The Rings quote we need to keep in our hearts in these strange times...
"PO-TA-TOES. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!"
"give it to us raw!"
- Gollum
"...and wriggling!
- Smeagol
Reasons for not watching the rings of power :
1) It's Amazon
2) they seem to be more concerned with theirs story than Tolkien's.
3) they compressed centuries long stories in one lifetime.
4) they don't seem to care that much about the lore.
One thing I'm concerned about is the possibility of them failing to capture the themes and imagery in the Lord of the Rings. Making Elrond and Galadriel the main characters goes against the Lord of the Ring's aspect of small, seemingly inconsequential people ending up saving the world. A gardener being the one to carry the ring and its bearer up a mountain is a far more powerful image than I can imagine being evoked by these two highly important political figures.
I don't see this as a concern, given that is a story theme not a theme tied intrinsically into the world building. They need not adhere to the story telling themes of Lord of the Rings imo when it's a completely different tale.
@@notan3144 I think that if you're trying to capture what makes Tolkien's writing effective, the themes are important. And they show up frequently throughout middle earth, for example in The Hobbit and parts of The Silmarillion.
They might make a good story, but I do hope that it feels like a middle earth story, rather than something playing off of the name recognition that lacks the essence of it.
I agree with this
@@rory_person_being If you're bringing up the Silmarillion, the main themes there were basically Pride and Destruction (present in The Hobbit), Tragic Heroism against Overwhelming Evil (a major theme in The Lord of the Rings as well, and present in The Hobbit), and Good Coming From Evil (the flip side of Evil Self-Destructs, a major theme of The Lord of the Rings). In fact, having Elf Lords be the main characters reminds me of quite a few stories in The Silmarillion, though most of those ended with the main characters dead, so it would take a bit of skilled writing to pull it off.
It probably would have been better to make the main characters people like Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad and Ar-Pharazon, but oh well.
@@samueldimmock694 Completely agree on all points, but since we already know that eventually, Elrond and Galadriel end up as prominent leaders by the time of LOTR, so I'm worried about the possibility of them not ending up with as strong of a story as they could have if it was instead about a character like Celebrimbor for example.
Actually wow, now that I think about it, Celebrimbor not being a main protagonist is such a missed opportunity, that would have been incredible. The others you mention would have been good too, but Celebrimbor in particular would be fantastic.
What made LOTR and the rest so profound was that it all came from old things and deep places. These tales, customs, and prose were what people used to describe and shape their lives.
The idea that vows were sacred and was truly binding is deep. The concept that what is good is unselfish and charitable, and that evil is selfish and entropic was moving. It gave life and meaning to the magic / powers of the world. And it made them stand out when they clashed. It made the triumphs bright, and the defeats dark. That is what I fear we will miss in this show.
I fear we will lose the depth and beauty to the “pizzazz” and tinsel firstly to greed, then laziness and then social pandering.
I will give it the same chance I gave the WOT series. One episode. Which I unfortunately could not tell you the end of because I couldn’t even get that far. So you can imagine my expectations. Alas Tolkien’s work is a deep passion of mine so maybe I could do more than one.
As far as what we could have had? We could have had an amazing Harad and Rhun arc.
Remember Tolkien redacted his statement about the Blue Istari failing. He said he felt they succeeded because Gondor / Rohan won. He felt they were able to garner positive influence against Sauron. We also have Faramir's quote about the Haradrim, and Aragorn who traveled there himself.
I believe it would be safe to assume there was resistance to Sauron’s machinations. Now that would have been AMAZING to see on screen! A conflict between these ideals and seeing how their interactions with the Elves, Numenorians, etc influenced those struggles would have been gold.
And of course Numenor would have been just as amazing!
Alas we shall see whether it will be good, or if Amazon, Social Justice Warriors, and Hollywood as a whole will ironically be the Great Darkness the inhabitants of Arda feared.
Well said. LoTR is not GOT, and it never will be, and it shouldn't be forced into that mold. Tolkien made something special, and everything Amazon is evidenced to be doing with it is against not only what Tolkien wrote but the ideals behind it. But again. We give it a chance.
Not my words but they hit the nail on the head: “For those of you who only know the movies and are wondering why any of this outcry matters, Tolkien didn’t set out to write just another fantasy, his first love was language and mythology. As a linguist, he set out to make the most beautiful language ever created (Elvish.) He invented Elvish based on Northern European languages. As a historian, he wrote the Silmarillion and all the other extensive back lore that is only hinted at in the movies as alternate mythology for the British Isles. The very creation of Middle Earth by the gods through an act of song was informed by Finnish myths. He was steeped in Northern and Western European culture and the myths, legends, languages, stories, racial characteristics, history, and cultures of Middle Earth are inextricably built from corresponding roots of European culture in a way that no fantasy has ever been able to replicate before or since. He is considered by many of us to be the true father of modern fantasy and no one-bar none-has equaled the depth and verisimilitude he brought to that creation.
This trailer and all Amazon interviews to date prove that they don’t care about any of this and intend to dismantle the very foundation of why Tolkien wrote these books as a labor of love in the first place. He loved his culture, his history, and his language and his invented languages, world, races, and stories were the medium through which he communicated his love of his ancestral heritage. To change his work in the ways shown in this trailer and subsequent interviews is not just to reinterpret some surface aspect of his stories, it is to completely undermine his stated intent, strike at the heart of his passion, and directly attack his own cultural heritage.”
Well the letters of Tolkien are enough to point out what his influences were, and why his world is the way it is:
"I have always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music; and the passionate love of growing things; and the deep response to legends (for lack of a better word) that have what I would call the North-western temper and temperature. In any case if you want to write a tale of this sort you must consult your roots, and a man of the North-west of the Old World will set his heart and the action of his tale in an imaginary world of that air, and that situation: with the Shoreless Sea of his innumerable ancestors to the West, and the endless lands (out of which enemies mostly come) to the East. Though, in addition, his heart may remember, even if he has been cut off from all oral tradition, the rumour all along the coasts of the Men out of the Sea."
--Letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June 1955
...
Middle-earth …. corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe.
Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to ‘Middle-earth’. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.
Auden has asserted that for me ‘the North is a sacred direction’. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man’s home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other pans; but it is not ‘sacred’, nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil. The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a ‘Nordic’. (Letter 294, dated 8 February 1967)"
His lands of the north western Middle-earth correspond to Europe, and are heavily inspired by real world European culture (hell even things like dwarves and elves in the end they are mythical creatures originating from the european, Norse/Celtic/Germanic folklore and mythology, I wonder how people would react if say we would take a creature from Japanese folklore like Yuki-onna and cast a white caucasian or blakc actress, I'd like to see the reaction of Japanese or all those crying about 'whitewashing', or 'cultural appropriation' hah! The hypocrisy is what make me laugh the most in such cases, if racebending is alright, then people should stop whining about whitewashing :)).
HAHA! NEEEERRRRRRDDDD!!!
@@fantasywind3923 I remember plenty of people complaining about Major Kusanagi being played by scarlet Johansson.
I remember plenty of people complaining about the last airbender having white actors in it.
I remember plenty of people complaining about goku being white in dragon ball: evolution.
You seem to be the hypocrite here my friend, no one else
Lost me at the "For those of you who only know the movies" already. As if the only people who could disagree would be the people who didn't know the books, the history of the series or the intent of the author.
Well, that ain't it chief. Some of us just don't get that worked up about what amazon choose to put into their fanfic.
@@dugonman8360 oh lookie here, another one wiseass, hehe that was my fucking point, I was fully aware of those! If people could complain about whitewashing those characters then, we can complain about 'racebending/blackwashing' whatever you can call it!!!! Think people, sometimes I question the people's reasoning skills. This is the essence the hypocrisy I was talking about!
The meaning of the fans quote message to Amazon Rings of Power :
-“Evil is not capable of creating anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.”
-“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”
-“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.”
J.R.R. Tolkein
Evil cannot create anything new only corrupt and ruin and his powerful meaning youTube Fay
Paraphrase Express the meaning of (the writer or speaker or something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve grater clarity.
Nothing is evil in the beginning.
The argument that it will make people read the books is flawed in many ways due to the fact that modern readers will have trouble with Tolkien's prose... I cant tell you how many friends said they couldnt get throught the book because it was boring.
Right. And some people just don't care really. Maybe most casual viewers will just be satisfied watching it.
The "Why read the books if you can just watch the new series? You're lazy anyway. And it's just entertainment" mindset.
Exactly Tolkien is not R. Martin. Their style is completely different. Another example would be HP Lovecraft. These are authors who are hard to read by casual readers
@@GothPaoki _I mean let's not ignore there are some pretty big extraneous reasons why modern readers have a hard time with Lovecraft, and it has nothing to do with the style of his prose_
@@GothPaoki Also, Martin will probably never finish the books, so it's just that many more people who GOT will leave disappointed. At least with Tolkien the books are finished (at least LOTR was), but you're right, the styles are very different
@@theradioactiveplayer3461 yea but I'm talking about actual difficulties . Not difficulties of the kind I'm too sensitive to read this and I'm offended just by it existing.
Not even giving it a chance. Wheel of Time was too horrible for me to ever trust Amazon again.
I'm super worried about the whole thing with the love story between Helbrand and an elf. Tolkien only had three of those within his lore (Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, and Aragorn and Arwen) for extremely specific purposes at extremely important times within the Middle Earth timeline. I'm not including Turin and Finduilas here because nothing came of it.
Isn't the purported love story between Arondir and a human woman named Bronwyn? Not that it changes your argument, with which I agree. I'd also add that I don't know where a Welsh name like Bronwyn fits in the translation/localization of any of Tolkien's Mannish languages. {= /
I agree with you 100%, reminds me of the weird shoehorned romantic relationship between Kili and Tauriel.
Those 3 might be the only important instances of Elf/Human couples, but there might have been any number of them among the common folk, who have no epic stories or songs written about them. There is even an example of half-elven lineage independent of the main three in Prince Imrahil, who owes his elven ancestry to the marriage of the silvan elf Mithrellas and Imrazôr the Númenórean.
@@NeshomehPPC That's made up amazon tripe, and cause amazon just googled "middle earth sounding names" and picked one.
@@stromstorm7467 I'd say unlikely considering the more 'elite' or posh Elven cultures and their isolation from most realms of Men save Arnor. Such unions would be notable so to not mention them would probably be evidence of absence.
My problem with Amazon's LOTR ROP isnt the diversity. I could care less if there are black Elves, Dwarves or even Hobbits. But they need to respect the culture and ways of the race they are portraying as. For example, remember The Shawshank Redemption, amazing movie, the character of Red from the novel was actually a White Irish man, but can you honestly think of anyone else playing Red other than Morgan Freeman and his amazing narration, no because he brought such life to the character, but still respected his novel counterpart. Amazon has already messed up Galadriels and Elrond's character by making them backwards? Galadriel was not a warrior, general, hot tempered or an outlandish adventurer, she was a powerful mage and healer and at this time during the 2nd age was living with her husband and daughter. Elrond was not a politician, poet or architect, he was the warrior, healer, scholar, lore-master and herald of Gil-Galad last King of the Noldor Elves. All Dwarves have beards, Male and Female. All Elves have long hair Male and Female. Yes they can make "stories" using the timelines found in the Return of the King Appendices for different parts of the Ages of Middle Earth. But what most fans had hoped, was that they would make The Hobbit and LOTR into an Episodic Series to really bring all of Middle Earth to life.
SO MUCH THIS!! The mischaracterisation they seem to put onto Elrond and Galadriel just feels so wrong.
A black man in prison does not stretch belief, so changing the race of Red has no impact. LOTR and all the lore is an English myth as stated by JRRT. Non-white characters, of any kind, do not fit. Changing this makes as much sense as putting non-blacks in a African tale or non-Greeks in Greek Mythology. These changes are being done just to irritate and impose 'modern' sensibilities. I'm sure that gender swapping is in the cards as well as rapping hobbits.
@@illogicerr3769 you saying the thing about Africa is funny considering nearly all Egyptian movies have Egyptians as white or definitely not of Nubian descent as they actually were.
@@deldel5204 If ancient Egyptians were portrayed as white then that it wrong, although I have no idea of the "Egyptian movies" you are talking about.
7:10 Of course I'm gonna make up my mind based on the trailer, that's literally what the trailer is for: Building hype and first expressions. And they were utterly negative for me. Whether my mind changes in the future is something completely else, but imo it's important for Amazon to know that many people don't want someone play around with their favorite fantasy.
I'm late to the party but I must say, I die a little each time I hear "You can't judge something you never seen based on a trailer". I'm like "Dude, that's exactly what trailers exist for. To get your first impressions and hype." And you're right. One shouldn't bite the hands that feed you, which is exactly what Amazon is doing. I get wanting to do your own story and "oh we have to have representation of literally everyone on this planet" shtick that every major corporation does.
Create your character, your tribe, your whatever you need. But let it be grounded in the same universe. Race-swapping and female dwarves not having beards, etc.....that's a middle finger to the fans. The very people you're trying to pander to because that's the whole point is it not? Instead of creating your own fantasy show? Right now, it's still very much a negative for me. But my opinions changes with the wind. And I'm not a huge fan of LotR. I know enough to understand the movies (PJ's) and get some references.
@@FallenAngelHiroko Well said. While I'm not too deep into the LotR fandom myself, I still very much loved the books, movies and games. Naturally I'm going to be very skeptic when something new tries to force it's way into that space and claim to do things very differently.
10:00
On the skintone stuff... what frustrates me as a fan of any media... is when a role has a certain cultural heritage x, and they choose to cast them by y or z instead. Most of Middle Earth is inspired by a European setting. To cast African, Asian or Native American actors for these characters... just feels wrong. It is like casting European/African actors in Avatar or Poppy War for example. Or European/Asian actors in African fantasy settings. Etc.
There is a question on minorities... sure, but maybe tell original stories instead? I'm still waiting on the big and popular African fantasy setting, especially because their cultures are so rich. And stories like Wheel of Time offer reasons on why a cast can be diverse.
Edit: And of course I should add that this show changes so much that it essentially ends up as complete bullshit. Tolkien and his son Christopher are turning in their graves.
Edit 2: And on why I'm taking this stance is rather simple... If I have a gray stance on culturally appropriate casting, it could lead to another The Last Airbender type of situation, or Ghost in a Shell, etc.
Edit 3: I feel the need to say that, by classical period, Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Carthage have more in common with Europe than with modern Middle-East/North Africa. Ancient Egypt is considered the origin of Western civilization by many. Not talking about skincolour btw, but about cultural heritage.
They are there because it's a product first and will be marketed to a mass market,get over yourselves 🤣🤣. Even black panther had a token white character.
@@catsthemovie4692
I didn't notice any Wakandan character having white skin.
Because that's what I'm saying. Cultural heritage.
@@WritingGeekNL ua-cam.com/video/KCNTqUOE2Tk/v-deo.html
Why do you people act like these movies exist in a bubble with no other outside factors to consider
@@catsthemovie4692 They had a white character but that was an American not a wakandan. Same here, if they really wanted they could have Haradrim, but instead they simply made a change that made no sense
"Even if the adaptation is terrible, it brings people into the community"
Exactly how I was introduced to the Inheritance (Eragon) series...
15:34 I was taking a drink of tea AND NEARLY SPIT IT ACROSS THE ROOM, I was not expecting that. This entire ad is very enjoyable.
@Hello Future Me - I have a question about the concern over culture here. As you said: "Middle Earth _was_ created as a mythology for England, and Tolkien drew explicitly on acient Celtic, Finnish, and Anglo-Saxon cultures and traditions in creating much of his world. And I do think that it _is_ really important to depict those if they're gonna do this right. They shouldn't pretend like those aren't important influences."
I agree with all of the above, but if the issue is merely cultural and not racial, then is it possible for an "American actor...born in the State of New York to a Danish father and American mother, [who] lived in Argentina during his childhood"--who happens to be white--to better portray that Englishness than a person born and raised in England (to a family who has been in England for generations), who happens to be black?
If culture is the deciding factor then I think we'd choose the black Englishman over the white American?
So proud to be a Tolkien fan and see the way the fans have resisted the dark lord bezos. There is some good in this franchise, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!
Oh hey, we have the same off-brand sting.
Having black dwarves and elves isn't the entirety of the problem, it's just the batsignal saying there is more to come, that doesn't follow or outright contradicts Tolkien lore.
there is like ten billion other, FAR more egregious things signalling further contradictions. the fact that people latched onto the race thing as inaccurate is just hilarious in the context of all those other inaccuracies.
Firstly, I apologize for the wall of text, but I really need to get this out. I love your videos, Tim, and I like how they really make me think. this video was no different and gave me a lot to think about. I staunchly refuse to watch "Rings of Power" for several reasons. I'm a 49-year-old woman and born in the same year Tolkien died. And over the past 20 years, I have seen many franchises that I've loved since I was a little girl either expanded of redone with changes that made them bastardized mockeries and insults to the originals. I've always felt that if you're adapting something, you need to do it with an understanding of why people love the original and what made it popular in the first place. Most adaptations/expansions I've seen over the years, I generally hate, because they're made in such a way that you can tell that the people working on it had no love for, or even watched, the originals. It's a clear and blatant cash grab. it's sad when people who are making these things admit, almost with pride, that they never even watched or did research for their character using the original work. Members of the LOTR:ROP group have said this, and it disgusts me. Viggo Mortensen, as an example, when he got the part of Aragorn, reportedly picked up and read all the LOTR books, which he hadn't read before. That's what a good actor SHOULD do, and it should always be part and parcel of preparing to portray a character you're adapting. when the crew doesn't do this kind of thing, what they make reads, in my opinion, as empty, hollow, and without heart at best, and insulting to the fanbase at worst. I've seen this a lot lately, from the last airbender, to star trek and star wars, to she-ra and he-man. and these are only a few. It angers me no end when people not only ruin a series i love without care, but then blame all fans, including ME, for first pointing out the faults, and how what they created sucks, but also for the fact that what they made failed to make money because they insulted the very people they should have been listening to, the fans, who've kept the franchise alive for as long as it's been going. Star Wars is a great example of this. I've loved the original trilogy since my dad took me to see it when it originally first came out. I was 4 years old. The spaceships amazed me! Darth Vader scared me. And the scene in episode 4 where Luke swings across the chasm with Leia was one of the most exciting things I’d ever seen in my young life. And Luke Skywalker was my first crush. Now, I wish I’d never gone to see the sequel trilogy because it soured and ruined everything I liked about him, and then lucasfilm started attacking the fans and telling us we're awful people just because we think those movies are awful and suck. Due to that sort of thing happening, I refuse to support any company or actor./actress, that attacks the fans. in my opinion, you cannot insult me and then ask me for money, and if i gave you money first and then you do that, you no longer deserve my support. Finally, as to the race (or even gender) swaps... there are VERY few times it doesn't bother me, and the main reason it does is that I know, especially these days, that the only reason they do that is because they want to tick off boxes and be more inclusive, which is good, but when you're remaking or adapting something, in my opinion, especially something like Tolkien, where he's explicitly described the character, that's what a fan expects to see, no matter what race the character is, it's not what fans are expecting the character to look like, and people who don't know the original material will have misconceptions when they finally read the actual thing. They won't see what the author describes, they'll see the actor that played the character. it's also not being a faithful adaptation if the movie/tv crews do that for no apparent reason at all but "diversity", which is no better than virtue signaling in my eyes, and i find virtue signaling hypocritical and annoying. I don't think it's racist to complain when races of characters get arbitrarily changed in an adaptation where the character has been explicitly described, no matter what race gets changed to which. My last big reason is the fact that movie crews and companies these days think every film needs to send a "message" and that they should express their "activism". when I go to a film, i don't want to be preached at or given a lesson, certainly not from people who, when you look at their lives and actual personality, are far worse than most regular people, excepting a handful of decent people. I just want to have fun for a couple of hours, take a break and escape from my life for a bit. I don't care or want to know what your politics and opinions are. if i do know, it kind of ruins the immersion for me. for example, in the live action "beauty and the beast" i didn't see belle, I saw emma watson and her stupid politics, which ruined the entire experience for me, and i don't like rewatching that version of the story. I think with all this, most people can at least, even if you don't agree with me, understand why I hate most adaptations we get these days. In my opinion, the best adaptation I’ve seen was "the last unicorn" and that was at least 30 years ago.
I don't think you understand why people are angry about the race swapping. You say that it won't effect the story. But the thing is, if they so easily do unnecessary things like race swapping it shows they don't care about the story.
Let's just say, those characters being black in Rings of Power makes as about as much sense as Sokka and Katara being white in the The last Airbender.
Finally someone said it lol
I'm just sick of people who get control of franchises and try to "update them for modern times" (read: make a political statment while wearing the skinsuit of beloved franchise). If Tolkien wrote thay elves have dark skin, they should have dark skin. If he wrote that Galadriel was a warrior, she should be one. Except that's not what he wrote. They aren't trying to adapt LOTR, they're trying to use it. I've seen numerous franchises fall to this crap and lose any semblance of coherency with what it once was (Doctor Who being the worst example I can think of), I'm not going along with the desecration of what I consider to be the greatest story ever written. Peter Jackson made changes, not all good ones, but most of them were for the sake of books not translating pefectly to screen, and the few thay weren't that way mostly don't contradict the source material or are insignificant. A *beardless* black dwarf is significant. Dwarves would sooner die of shame than have their beards shaven. Let's also not ignore the spirit of whay Tolkien was trying to do. He wanted to create a sort of mythology for England. Would it make sense to go insert white people into Chinese mythology or make the Greek gods look like Norse gods and the Norse gods look middle eastern? No. All I want is for them to adapt the LOTR faithfully - if they want to send a political message then they shouldn't be trying to use LOTR to do it, they should make their own series. Then again, evil cannot create, can it?
1 minute in but i already love your daniel greene vibes AHAHA
Just say he's copying...
The "black dwarf/elf" argument is utter BS and you know it. If you're that worried about demonetization, you would've been better off not doing this video at all, rather than spouting a blatant lie. We all know how those races are supposed to look like, we all know why the amazon version looks differently. If you wanna make a series with black dwarves and elves, more power to you. They're just never ever, ever (!) going to be Tolkien's dwarves and elves. It's no hyperfixation, it's not racism, it's just a raw fact. Deal with it.
Hey, it's not stopping people like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, Shadiversity, and others from talking about it.
It is rather strange to call out hyperfixation on politics, when it's the show's creative staff to interjected the modern politics to start with.
@@Thomas.Wright Exactly my thoughts on that argument, thank you!
Let's hope so (especially after wheel of time)
01) if anyone thinks amazon is interested in telling a new story instead of capitalizing on already established massive IP, either they are in urgent need of mental health assistance or high up on enough copium to make Pablo Escobar blush.
02)the reason they probably got relatively unknown showrunners is that that way they can manipulate them to do whatever they can do. and the notion that adaptation, even a bad one would bring in more fans to the books that almost 70 years old fandom couldn't bring is purely based on thinking modern consumer demographic is willing to read 2000+ pages of books. and if that kind of demographic would buy the books ONLY IF the show was amazing. it's LOTR not harry potter.
03) of course they gonna prioritize their stories over Tolkien. they even put their made-up characters on to the new edition of LORT book covers. also, no person gonna adopt someone else works without trying to personalize it. that's why the majority of adaptations are universally bad. to it not to be that the original creator must be heavily involved or adaptor must possess incredibly high leveled discipline and respect to the original author/their work (like Peter Jackson). witch, I don't think the amazon team has. they even said they are going to make it appealing to the modern audience.
04) #WheresTheBeardJeffry
05) I agree 100%. but still not giving money to bozo. Play here I come!
06) majority of people's criticism isn't because they put dark-skinned dwarfs or dark-skinned elves. it's because they put a black dwarf and a black elf. it's insulting to fans. when black cosplayers are putting more thought into accurate cosplay than amazon. if they wanted to do a diverse casting they could absolutely do that. but they need to justify it by explaining it in the lore, especially in works detailed as LOTR. but no what they did was shoved a "diverse" character to score a social point. and nobody is naive enough to think they did it so a global audience could relate to Tolkien. more than 200+ million people embarrassed Tolkien's works all around the world before ROP. nor to mention the movie trilogy. because, unlike the USA, we are not obsessed with our race being represented. and the rest of the world is more r**ist than the USA you can imagine.
but I appreciate your unbiased opinion because you are one of the few people willing to give this a try without selling out (I hope 😅) but thinking this is not woke or related to "culture war" is again dumb. considering the amount of attack on fan and virtue signaling the journos and amazon is doing.
On the "faithfullness to Tolkien" thing: Y'all know elves don't have pointy ears, right? That shit was made up in adaptations too.
That rain sound at the end should be an ASMR video on its own. That's better than most of them that sound like bacon.
People just don't want a culturally important work to be made woke and worn like a skin suit.
What I am afraid of most? A lack of respect for authorial intent. A 'rewrite for modern audiences". Gratuitous sex and cruelty, which really goes to my first fear.
Please read the entire work of Tolkien's legendarium. Its so deep and tied to realism and thats one thing Tolkien fans really love. Its so grounded in our reality and the history of our world. Amazon's series is a complete change of tolkien's work and anyone whose read everything down to his letters understand that. The guy spent his entire life to build this world unlike most authors who build "enough" of thier world to tell a story and make sales.
"The shadow that bred them..." quote is actually from Frodo in Return of the King (The second book), and it actually means a lot. The problem today is that we don't see the people who creates new stories because companies, afraid of losing a single cent, will not invest in new stuff, but rather take what's established and turn it into something that is not.
I cringed a lot when all white Gods of Egypt came out, but it brings me to the point that Hollywood is a melting pot of cultures and couldn't care less about anything going out of it. They will starve until they realise that creating new things is the only way.
Preeeeetty sure Return of the King is not the second book :D
@@juusovuolle8251 "The Return of the King" is two books (5th and 6th volumes from The Lord of The Rings : "The War of The Ring" is the first and "The Return Of the King" is the second.)
Given that they've committed to buying opinions, I believe even the writers and producers know it's going to be shit.
Ok, I can understand where you are coming from when you think people are over reacting to the addition to black elves and hobbits. It could be fine on it's own, but looking at Hollywood it clearly is actually a political move. This is just another case in a long line of characters. Like with the Witcher, which is supposed to be based around Scandinavian and Nordic lore. It didn't really make sense. Also let's be really there is a long line of charactes being replaced, (a lot of them are also redheads. Including: Wally and Iris West, Jim Olson, Hawkgirl, and Josie McCoy in CW shows. MJ and Heimdall in the MCU. Starfire and Miss Martian in Titans. Trish from Witcher.
The issue isn't with adding more black people. The problem is Hollywood is very political and this is just one of the ways they are showing it. You would never see them putting a White or Asian person as a native member of Wakanda. Because that wouldn't make sense either.
A good example of this being done is with Dune. Based off the book, I didn't really seem the freeman as very dark skinned. Maybe just tanned. But it makes perfect sense for them all to have very dark skin to black. And that was a very good movie with the latest version of movie.
What we really need is more fantasy shows based office other countries lore. I'd love to see the book The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter turned into a movie. I think that could be an amazing show/movie.
i read the Lotr trilogy a little while back since the last time i'd read it was as a kid and was inspired by the subtlety of the side characters and how they brought life to the world where protagonists couldn't go. reading the books back to back and then watching the movies was disappointing despite the movies being good - the movies lacked grounding when compared to the books. novels adapted to short stories often do. but the world building that Tolkien did was the source of that grounding and i can't possibly see amazon doing the leg work. its just a huge job. arcane took 6 years to make and it shows. when they adapt something like the wheel of time and it does ok thats fine - wasn't the most interesting read - but when you have to make up stuff for a story that defined an entire genre for almost 70 years... i'd say good luck but amazon doesn't deserve it
Yes, I've already made up my mind. As said under your trailer reaction video.
For me, the "black" elf and dwarf are simply a summary of "what I think will be wrong about this show". In another setting it wouldn't bother me, but from the trailer and interviews/articles I've indeed gotten the feeling that this is another show filled with current politics (as much as you disagree with that) of forced ethnic diversity (race-swapping characters or inserting random characters to check off a box, instead of showing stories of actual diverse characters), forced "feminism" (adding women who have to be bossy and warriors and possibly also hate men), replacing male with female characters (because again "men bad" and we need to check off that box, because women are nothing more than a stupid diversity check box which... I can't express just how frustrating that is to see, as a woman myself), and so on. Add in that they don't seem to care about the lore that exists and have made changes to that (and not in a "we have to shorten tLotR down into 3 films"- but rather in a "we have to expand the appendices but will change stuff anyway"-way, and I'm not even talking about the time compression which is just stupid and takes away a lot imo). And finally, I don't think it shines a good light on creators when they call fans bigots simply because the fans don't like the changes the creators made!
(I've probably forgotten things but anyways)
Personally when I watch an adaptation of a story I already know I'm not hoping for a perfect recreation of the source material(since I already have that), I'm hoping for something that uses the source material as a base and then offers a new interpretation and/or perspective. That's what the best adaptations do, including Peter Jackson's LOTR films. Tolkien almost certainly wouldn't have made those films exactly the way Jackson did but that's alright because they're still a good representation of the story, as told through Jacksons's interpretation. Now obviously I might not like that interpretation, but I'd still prefer that over something that just tried to mimic the source material without adding anything new.
Thanks for the video - nice to hear your thoughts on it.
On the race thing - I would suggest it does matter quite a bit. One of the main reasons why I think people are drawn to Tolkien’s work and to Jackson’s adaptations is because the world feels so historical and authentic. It’s the mythology of a time before time. If we rewind to England 1000 years ago, we’re looking at a homogenous group of caucasians, not a diverse cross section of races that you would expect on the streets of NYC in 2022. Similarly, if we made a film about Africa 1000 years ago, we wouldn’t expect a diverse cross section of skin color.
So to forcefully insert other ethnicities as elves or dwarves really does shatter that immersive feeling that this world in fact existed. It pulls you out of the story and you’re (at least subconsciously) always aware that these characters are only black to check a box. (It’s also part of the reason why this trailer feels like a modern YA fantasy.)
What’s sad is there are a lot of positive and creative ways they could have actually incorporated a diverse cast without straying from Tolkien’s vision. But they chose to sacrifice authenticity and cohesive world building for their own agenda.
So it does concern me both on its own accord, and as symptomatic of a lack of regard for Tolkien’s close attention to detail in world building.
I had a very similar feeling when playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. Your tribe is supposed to be this very isolationist, somewhat xenophobic group... and yet it's full of racial diversity. I'm not against diversity - I just don't like it when it doesn't make sense with the established lore!
1,000 years ago England of 1022 would have a small level of ethnic diversity due to the influence of the previous Roman Empire. We have archeological evidence of Syrians being stationed along Hadrians wall during the Roman occupation of England. Those people the Roman Empire brought with them would have mixed with the general population and resulted in a melting pot of ethnicities. Yes the Roman Empire departed from the shores of Britania, but not everyone left. Some stayed, as Britania was their home. We also know that the people we collectively call the Vikings had dealings with the Middle East, so again there would have been some mixing of the ethnicities.
Regarding Africa, even as far back as the height of Greek/Macedonian time there was a large influx of White Caucasian mixing with the North African populations. The people of the Middle East also made parts of North Africa their home and mingled with the native populations.
Multi-ethnicities societies arw nothing new, they are well documented. That all being said, they would not have been to the percentage of diversity that we see in say New York in 2022.
See this take and the matching one in the video I have serious issue with - it's not historically accurate to pretend england has been a monolith of whiteness at any point during our history and the upholding of this narrative is used to this day to pull the racist "but where are you FROM" "go back to where you're from" line on people of colour living here.
@@merchantarthurn "Monolith of whiteness", perhaps not, but it's silly to act as if non-whites were a major part of the population.
0:05 WOAH! Daniel Greene, be careful with that sword!
One thing that does bug me that's more of a small nitpick in actor choice is the way they made elrond look because in the film we've seen exactly what he looked like in the second age so replacing him with this stranger things looking kid just makes it hard for me to attach the name elrond's to that character
I’m legit afraid that it’s going to, and has already indicated that, it will ignore the creative ideal of Tolkien to introduce modern day ideology in place of telling anything actually valuable or interesting. I’ll refer to the first season of the Witcher for a moment here where the creative director intentionally made terrible costume design for nilfgaard to make them look like scrotums, yes that was the intention and that was directly stated. The current Tolkien society has said that his work is in service to modern times and has jumped clean over sharknado with their statements on this and I am legit afraid they are going to subvert the creative intention to push actual propaganda instead of telling a compelling story. You can already see that happening too just by example of the dwarf queen and the marketing real they put out on UA-cam with “real” fans “reacting” to the trailer. It comes across as hollow and manipulative
I may have missed that. What did they do? What sort of propaganda did they push?
@@swagromancer who exactly, I can start grabbing quotes but it would be helpful to talk directly about what you’re concerned over; be that the show directors themselves or the Tolkien society
"I am legit afraid they are going to subvert the creative intention to push actual propaganda instead of telling a compelling story. You can already see that happening too just by example of the dwarf queen"
That's what I was referring to. I've seen the posters and I read the Vanity Fair article, but I didn't follow any other news concerning the show that closely, so it's entirely possible that a lot of things just slipped my attention.
As an avid dwarf content enjoyer, I would be kind of miffed if they used my lads (and lassies) for any sort of silly business.
@@swagromancer ill be back on this later dude, long day at work means i didnt get a chance to get a good reply for you. ill hit you up tomorrow when i have a day off
I had fairly high expectations for the show and im really happy with it.
Hold up, if there is "a black dwarf and a black elf" then the problem becomes even larger. Skin colour not making any sense aside, how would a single elf and a single dwarf become dark-skinned? If it was an entire people of dwarves and elves, or a subset of an entire people, that would make much more sense, however un-lorefriendly that may be.
There's a single black dwarf and a single black elf *in the trailer*. We have zero information regarding how many there are in the show, and if the ones in the trailer are in any way exceptional in this regard.
@@Carabas72 I do assume there are more, which would just leave the problem of "It doesn't make any sense", but Tim said people were getting angry over one elf and one dwarf, and that argument specifically is what I am addressing.
I also think the dwarf not having a beard is a much more significant problem that shows the people making the series have no regard and don't care about Tolkien's original work. And probably don't even know the work in detail, or ignored the advisors they hired who do know it.
That lack of care is what probably lead to the other flaws we see as well, skin colour being just one of them.
@@Carabas72 exactly there is probably a bunch which is even more ridiculous and underscores the point further
@@randalthekidd7006
I'm not seeing the problem at all.
I always figure big business will ruin everything they touch. Until they prove otherwise. Also I will never pay amazon any money again after working there so I will never see this anyways.
I do feel that there has been a concerted effort lately to destroy/rewrite history and culture. I feel even if you think the original has bad themes or other such things it's still important to pass that on so we know about it and not try and cover it up with new modern rhetoric.
That may or may not be, but I can take comfort in my strong belief that if this is bad people will just forget about it in a year or two and it won’t actually damage the LOTR name a significant amount
@@emblemblade9245 If it's bad we at least get hundreds of hours of people making fun of it.
Unfortunately I am getting serious Highlander 2 vibes.
And the reaction by fans to the political aspects of what has been released is natural considering the writers and 'experts have stated they have purposefully politicized it.
Full respect to the actors, no doubt they are masters of their craft and are professionals who will be doing everything they can with what their given, but Amazon is making them sacrificial lambs; They are subtly but clearly directing massive amounts of outrage toward them to paint all criticism of the show as racially motivated, same as Disney and Marvel did with Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
As a catholic, for me some of my fears (on top of many of the already stated fears) is they will suck any and all of Tolkien’s faith from the work. They’ll try to inject their brand of morality and “my truth”. Yes, LOTR and Middle Earth as a whole is not blatantly catholic, but Tolkien was quoted saying (I don’t remember the quote off the top of my head) that it started out unconscious at first and then once he realized it, became a conscious choice, to imbue his faith within the world. The man was deeply connected to his faith and understood the power that comes from that place of spirituality. And as a catholic, nothing has ever been as inspiring to me as knowing that one of the most prolific and honored writers of the last century was deeply devoted to his faith. He was able to weave beautiful stories that connected with people of the church and those outside of it in different ways and through his art is able to bring people together. I can only hope to be half as good as him someday at writing.
But yeah I mean the movie that came out about Tolkien like last year I think, completely removed any mention/connection to his faith when it is common knowledge being a catholic was integral to his life and works, which to me is a sign that Amazon will do the same here. They’ll try to imbue modern politics and modern issues into a world that doesn’t need it.....
Is it possible to use campfire to write a world where the Hobbit Trilogy was as good as the LoTR trilogy?
There is a political problem with media today. So many writers feel that their show has to champion a LGBTQ+ and forced divesrity message that they wedge sub-plots into stories where they are not needed or wanted and do nothing to improve the overall story. I am not a racist. I have no intention to persecute the LGBTQ+ community. I don't need more info about the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community. I am perfectly fine without the forced diversity and lectures. Stories without this addition would be more refreshing than a national tax holiday. Please get over yourselves and stop preaching this agenda. I'm sick of it. You can always feel sorry for yourselves on your own time. Get over it and just for the love of God stop. I am fed to the teeth with this nonsense.
A well thought out piece. Thanks.
A black dwarf changes a lot. Many dwarves that come from Durins (if she is in his family) family need to look different, they need to live under the sun, they need to be in the outside world a lot and due to that would get confronted with other races in Middle Earth a lot more than they already do.. 😅 That's changing the lore, changing what makes sense and is typicall for people living under the earth. Also it makes no sense regarding The Hobbit and LotR because there are no black dwarves.. so what happened to them? What happened to black elves and hobbits? They all died? Are they murdered? I would love to see Haradrim, a very unexplored culture. I wanna know more about how and why they fell for Sauron, how they lived, what they believe and so on. That would be very interesting and it would fit the world. Helbrand is a decent looking human that fits the people living in middle earth. 🤷♀️ So nothing to complain about. He looks decent regarding his costume and surroundings, he looks like he belongs to the men living in Middle Earth we already know a lot about.
You expect or even hope for clever writing from this show? Manipulations by Sauron with intrigue and brilliant subtlety? I'll make a prediction now... Sauron's manipulations will be limited to Sex, Offers of Power, Money, and lastly threats and magical mind control. He will have the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
The "Evil cannot create" quote is in EVERY comment section of EVERY video that I've seen discussing this show. It's almost entering meme territory.
Dear Hello Future Me .... Sadly i cannot begin to tell you how much you missed the mark on the concerns that Loyal LOTRs fans have about this upcoming project by Amazon raises in Us.First and Most Importantly I Hate being told by people who mostly have never even read the material how I'm being a 'Racist" by not embracing the "Creators' of this show checking off the Diversity boxes they felt they needed to do to get people to watch this Soon to Be Car wreck. Second why is Galedriel the Elf-Queen being turned into a Warrior - General that is going to Lead the "Northern Armies". Their quote....not Mine. Oh I know...its to show women that there are "Strong Female" characters in Tolkien's work. You know because she was made to look and appear so weak in all of his writings. Lets now forget about Arwen and Eowyn....you know...because they're so weak. Here's some food for thought...why are there Hobbits in the Second Age.....when they didn't exist? Go ahead...I'll wait....I'll leave you with this thought...........Most.. not all True fans are concerned with arrogance of Amazon and the Writers to come up with a quote along the lines of "Can we write the book that Mr Tolkien never wrote?"...The answer in a word is...No. I could go on for hours about this topic, but i wont. I have always enjoyed your work and will continue to do so. That being said i Vehemently disagree with the Lazy minded thinking people have come up with whenever a True fan raises their voice in concern
You were so wrong defending this show...it has turned out to be an absolute tragedy, and anyone with half a brain could tell it was going to be before it aired just by watching the trailers, teasers, interviews and collection of still pics...
Thank you for this video man. I was looking everywhere for someone who actually had a positive outlook for this series. I'm excited to see how it turns out. Thanks man!
9:18
if this was any other author i would agree. said author could very well speak up and say something like "yes, in retrospect i approve of this change because it makes the world more diverse" or "no, i don't approve of this for [insert reason]" but Tolkien can't do that, not anymore.
He described dwarves and elves and he created his work to make an epic for ENGLAND so, no, diversity shouldn't be used ESPECIALLY since Tolkien isn't here to give his approval or disapproval.
That change is actually the most outrageous because they are taking something created by a man long ago, a man who had his own vision of it and his own reasons for making it this way, and changing it to appeal the "woke left", so that they can pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, we FIXED that thing".
I'm fully aware of the other changes that the trilogy has gone through, like Aragorn's sword or the removal of Tom Bombadill or even the actual ending with Saruman taking over the Shire, but those were made because they either had to be cut for pacing issues, like Tom Bombadill and Saruman's ending, or because they didn't really work in a movie, like Aragorn's sword actually being the broken Narsil which would have looked weird in fight scenes.
This show is doomed for one reason only: they don't want to make "the lord of the rings", they want "game of thrones".
They want Galadriel to be the new Daenerys, which she is not.
They just want a quick cash grab.
We know it will be pathetic. All effort is spent on being Woke. No money spent on story, acting, effects, consistency ... This is copying Wheel of Time trash. Bladerunner was good because they had a well-formed story and got good actors, not random trash based on their wokeness representation.
I think why most people are talking about the black dwarf and elve, is because the MSM is mostly talking about those changes. And how the writers have been talking, it seems that they'll be forcing modern racial politics in the story
I didn't realize there was so much anger towards the race changes in the new adaption. Personally, I was more confused that they hadn't secured the rights to the Silmarillion but were still plowing ahead anyway. I get that the original books have a European flair, pulling from multiple cultures and mythologies, but present day Europe is pretty diverse. As you said, I would rather have more people exposed to Tolkien's stories and themes, which are far more central to the plot than the characters' skin tones.
In the beginning, I was hesitant about the skin colour, but it started to matter less when I saw what Amazon was doing with the lore.
@@hermitsunite953 the skin color is the sign of the lore being ruined. Black elves is just the first thing they ruined in the lore
"it feels like someone puppeting a corpse" just hit the nail right on the head
"The show will drive people to buy the books and read it for themselves, it will happen even if the show is bad"
Yes, and it can also happen the other way around: it might drive people AWAY from buying and reading the books if the show is bad. They might think the books are bad because the adaptation is bad. I've seen it happen with Eragon and Game of Thrones, people got so put off by the bad adaptation that they don't want anything to do with it anymore.
Just from a pure numbers perspective I think that's usually heavily outweighed by the amount of people being made aware of the thing in the first place. Ask your average person about Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire in 2008 and even fairly nerdy people would often just give you a blank stare. Now it's hard to find anyone who doesn't know about it. Even if there was just a 0,1% conversion rate of those new people into new readers it'd dwarf the amount of people who had heard of the books before but hadn't read it and were put off by the series.
I’m frustrated that from what i can guess they’re more concerned with shoving their ideology and political ideas into the show rather than actually telling a good story. It’s activism disguised as entertainment. We’ve seen it with star wars and it’s not gonna be any different here
Simply having women of non-white people in a show isn't activism or political, at least not more than not having them, particularly for something where the characters are new.
Changing the source material is potentially something different, and being more concerned with a message or appearance than telling a good story with good characters just results in a bad show.
@@101Mant yes i think peter jackson said something very important before they started filming: we don’t want to put our own baggage into these films
There is no movie, the earth king has invited you to lake logai
You're being too kind to amazon, HFM. They are disrespecting Tolkien, his lore and his fans, all for the sake of raking in perceived dragons' hoards worth of money, attempting to ride on PJ's LOTR coattails. They only have the 'rights' to mere whispers of Tolkien's work, which means they CANNOT use OR reference anything else! It's the story of the three blind men with the elephant, they all think it's a completely different animal.
I think the problem people have with changing character race is that we all know that it comes purely from a a desire to be more culturally diverse.
Real world politics should never be your priority when writing a story, companies like Amazon and Netflix have a notorious history of prioritising these politics over the integrity and quality of their story.
I'm not fixating on skin color. That'd be stupid and bigoted.
Instead, I'm fixating on the distortions and corruptions that will be inflicted onto Tolkien's work just to accommodate these fabricated characters or to adapt classic characters to the XXI century's political correctness.
I think I'll have a lot more issues with a Jeanne d'Arc type of Galadriel that with a low profile dark skinned elf.
It has to do with ethnicity and the mentality of creators. Adding their political agenda to Tolkien world, is hijacking. A lot of us are bored with preachy attitude.
All the Hollywood adaptations of great books feel like someone dug up your grandma, and parades her around, and everytime you criticise them, you are just told to appreciate the beautiful makeup.
You can just remember your grandma as you want, our parading of this corpse should not affect you!
Slight hyperberly might have been used.
Have you read The Name of the Wind? Would love to hear your thoughts on the books!
There is a slim chance that Galadriel in armor with the Feanorean Star is a flashback to the exodus and the kinslaying when her wearing that would still make sense. Her look of distress could even be her as one of the late comers of the House of Finarfin to the battle that are realizing too late what is actually happening.
Do I think that’s what happening? No it’s probably something that makes no sense with canon lore, but slight chance there does exist.
Yes, but isn't having "a" black dwarf & "a" black elf just another attempt of tokenization, which is equally problematic? I'm genuinely confused
willful ignorance. the dude likes to go on and on about how you shouldn't fixate on race just because it's heavily based and influenced by celtic/english mythology, but i can guarantee you that if there was a story out there that based on african or east asian mythology and the adaptation sticks a bunch of white people in it, screams and wails will be heard about "white washing" this and "white supremacy" that.
@@nickhalden374 yeah, I mean if they want diversity that much, why not adapt something else? Like stormlight archive for example. The majority of the main characters aren't even white (at least on how it is depicted)
@@nickhalden374 reverse racism is not a thing. Please stop trying to make it a thing.
@@nickhalden374 Good news is you don't need to imagine because that's already been done multiple times before.
I feel like in the climate on the the internet your rational thoughts will either be ignored or attacked. Please keep up the good work! Don't apologize to the mob online. Keep doing good work!
Honestly, the cast diversity is one of the best selling point of the series, as long as representation is fair to the characters created and doesn't relegate them to traitors and servants. There is diversity in Tolkien's world, and there should be in our imagination and our representation of that world as well.
Thanks for the great video, as always.
This isn't diversity; it's tokenism. The "Rings Superfans" video pretty much proves that. There were ways to incorporate a natural diversity into the story without deliberately changing the lore, but the "Superfans" video proves that it's just tokenism.
@@Thomas.Wright I guess I will enjoy the show more than you, then.
Your discussion of dark skinned characters Im afraid still breaks down to “I don’t wanna call you racist but don’t you think you might be a little racist?”. And you’re missing the issue. Immersion. When you see a darker skinned elf, if you’re the thinking sort you think, “Where did they come from? Did sone elves develope in a hotter environment? But not many elves reproduce much. How did they develope darker skin? Did elves start out with darker skin? The family lines in Tolkien are pretty well traced for elves. Is this a new family line?” If they explain it, it can work, but the issue is when it’s not explained. Then you immediately revert to an out of world explaination. Either they couldn’t find enough light skinned actors who fit the part or it’s that they’re trying to be inclusive, and that takes you into the world of modern politics, not Middle Earth.
Look at Wheel of Time for instance. When they had most of the Two Rivers folk being dark skinned I thought “well maybe that’s what people from the Two Rivers look like. Maybe they immigrated here from somewhere further south originally. But then Matt is white as the driven snow and I’m like what the hell? Could they just not find a dark skinned guy to do Matt? Isn’t he from the Two Rivers? If they added in that his family was from somewhere else it would be fine but with no explanation, a guy like Matt native to the Two Rivers where not many people go? Where people should look pretty much alike? Where Rand should feel out of place for not looking like them? It cuts into immersion and gets you thinking about the political motivations of racial casting which is not where you want to be.
I think hyper focusing on someones race like this is flat weird. I see a black elf, I see a black elf. It's an elf who happens to be black. Why can't there be black elves? There's no reason when they were made that a few could have been made black. It's that simple to explain, because the people in this universe were created by higher powers and didnt evovle like actual humans did, so they dont have to scientifically explain different levels of pigmentation. When Illuvatar made elves (or whoever did it in the legendarium, I cant remember) he made a few black. Simple as. They do magic ffs, so I dont think it matters.
Same with Wheel of Time, the Two Rivers arent that homogenous or separate from the world that everyone would be the same. And Rand still is the odd man out lol, they mention like five times in the show that red hair is a typical Aiel trait, to the point he was mistaken for an Aiel.
@@stephengrant4841 Hey good for you. But I don’t think looking at peoples skin tone and wondering why they look like that is hyper focusing on race. If you find black people living in the arctic you’d say, I thought melanin was an adaptation to hot environments. Maybe it’s like the polar bear and dark skin helps them absorb more sunlight or endure heavy sweating under furs better. Or at least you would if that sort of thing interested you.
If it doesn’t, then what can I say except I’m glad you have one less thing to worry about. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it does. I’d immediately look up how dark skin pigmentation might be useful in arctic environments.
@@Agaporis12 That sort of thing does interest me - I just don't think it matters in a fantasy world that was designed by a creator, *especially* one wherein large groups of people move very frequently due to war.
You really get to the heart of the issue wrt dwarf women beards. It was so fundamental to the original vision, leaving it out will undermine the entire spirit of the story 😔
What we need is a series about Gandalf doing things
Is it okay if a African mythology film replacing with a white or asia actor/actress to a black actor/actress?
No, i don’t so and I think the same in Amazon LOTR.
The name mostly comes from the fact that the Tolkien Estates only sold the rights to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (and hence they use what is in the Appendices of Return of the King, not what's in Unfinished tales or Histories of Middle Earth!). If they didn't add the "Lord of the Rings" in the title, probably could've have caused legal issues.
But you covered that in part. Very good take on this. Much better than many other UA-camrs who only rant! Thanks for this!
Tim… who said you were allowed to use knives in front of a green screen? You’re stepping into a world you’re not prepared for.
THE WHITE KNIVES
The Daniel Greene energy is strong with Tim
I did
*The Goblin Clan will get their Revenge!*
_Just you wait..._
My first thought was: is he turning in to daniel greene now?
I just wanted giant women beards 😭 Imagine the craic that the costume department could have had making a dwarf queen’s beard? Bits of gold and jewellery strung through it, fancy plaits ect. Awesome
@Alex Anderson yes
@Alex Anderson If you don’t like Tolkien’s books why are you here?
That would be so fucking cool hahaha
@Alex Anderson
I kinda find it humorous
@Alex Anderson So why are you here then?
As someone who isn't white, my big issue with the race changes is that there already were non-white humans in the lore (e.g., Haradrim) that are really underexplored and would be a great avenue for the creators to write their own stories while also including some racial diversity. But that would take some actual talent and creativity to do. Simply adding in one black dwarf and one black elf (why just black elves and dwarves, where are the Asian elves and dwarves?) reeks of the type of "woke" corporate diversity checklist that is far too common in American media. Amazon doesn't actually care about true equality and representation of diverse cultures and worldviews, they just want to make money, and a big group of overpaid executives likely got together and decided that adding in a couple token black characters would make them more money than not having them.
@Anjelica Snorcket yeah that was the other option. Either a couple token black people thrown in, or it will be like the wheel of time series where every single location, regardless of its an isolated farming village, a major city, or a remote border outpost has the ethnic diversity of a modern day major metropolitan area, which just makes absolutely no sense, since any distinct ethnic differences in a small, isolated area will be bred out within a few generations. The Shire is likely going to be portrayed like that as well
I completely agree with both takes. Tell the a great story. Don't shoehorn characters just to check a box. There are plenty of locations that would support a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural setting: Tharbad, Osgiliath, Umbar, Rhun, Harad, or any large urban area. Just don't make the Black Numenorians black.
@@adc1222 tbf, in the WoT show we actually saw a pretty realistic level of diversity. The two Rivers were overall brown, with some exceptions sprinkled in (which makes sense for a remote area that has some trade, but not a lot, and descends from a bustling city state), Tar Valon was a melting pot and Fal Dara was overwhelmingly Asian with some exceptions, which also makes sense for a place with a lot of refugees. There are a lot of places the WoT show fell apart, but imho it's not with the ethnicities of characters and where they're from, imho.
It's blackwashing. I would really have enjoyed even a main character from Rhun who wasn't white. Their lore needs expansion anyway.
Instead they take white races and blackwash them.
People point as Tolkien's writing and say, "this is racist; but it's a product of his time"; also, "he wanted to make a mythology for England", and such. So yeah, at face value, "racist". But if you look more deeply, it clear that Tolkien thought more deeply, as well. The words were given to Faramir in the film, but the ponderings about the motivations of the slain Southron in "Of Herbs And Stewed Rabbit" are Sam's inner thoughts. What a statement! Deeply Humanist, against a racist tableau. In my personal reading, I like to view all of Tolkien's writings similarly: trying to do right, be good, against inherent human nature to fear/hate "the Other". Aragorn eventually (i.e. 4th Age) makes peace with the Haradrim and Southrons. He does not subjugate them.
The lack of lady dwarf beards is definitely annoying.
I’m honestly far more annoyed about the lack of lady beards than I am about the black dwarf or elf.
I've only ever wanted one thing in my visual depictions of fantasy dwarf women, and that is BEARDS!!!
When I first saw it I literally shouted “ WHERE’S THE BEARD?”
She still has some very impressive sideburns.
@@mme.veronica735 can I add thick muscles to that?
The ideal Dwarven woman has a beard and thick muscles. You may not like it, but this is what peak Dwarven femininity looks like. /s
Interestingly, my biggest gripes weren't really what you brought up. For me, some of the biggest immersion-breaking things were:
1. Why are these "adventurers" wearing fresh-pressed and spotless linen sheets straight from the Target rack?
2. How were some of these more modern hairstyles achieved in the Second Age? "Magic" I guess?
3. Having a "younger version" of some of our well-known elven characters is foreign to me. Wasn't the whole point of the elven race that after they reach adulthood, they look exactly the same until the end of immortality? that was one of the reasons they seemed so disconcerting to people.
Things like this!
The cleanliness from the trailer is definitely setting off some alarm bells for me too. Not saying everything needs "gritty realism", but they don't look like outfits that have been lived in. The people don't look like they spent the day doing anything other than stepping out of a make-up trailer. I can give the Elves a bit of a pass because that's a characteristic that makes them stand out from other people, but if everyone is clean and tidy it takes away from that.
The Wheel of Time had the same issue. Boy those were some clean peasants.
It should be a rule that fantasy costume designers have to go work on a farm for a week in one set of clothing and no washing machine.
@@AvereeChaloupka That's what I'm saying! They DO look like they walked straight from the make-up trailer to the set 😂
@@jessip8654 I tried out the Wheel of Time and I didn't like how they referred to things as ominous Darkness etc etc instead of having names. It's probably a personal gripe but it broke the world-building for me.
With fantasy costume designers, you literally just have to throw some (even fake!) dirt on people that would have dirt on them, and you're done! Obviously royalty and wealthy characters would be clean, but even this minor visual detail would add another layer of depth to a scene. I.e. Arya in GOT rolled up looking like she just got off the road and you could tell she had been through some shit.
Tolkien actually spent a fair amount of time and work figuring out the rate at which the bodies of the elves aged. See the recent "The Nature of Middle-earth" volume edited by Carl Hostetter. After all, do you suppose that Cırdan was an aged-looking elf with a beard when he first took up the art of ship-building? This should not be a problem. The telescoping of 2500 years of time down to a single mortal lifetime (as seems to be the case with Isildur) rather undercuts this, however.
Oh god they only have the rights to PARTS of Tolkien? Omg that must be a legal nightmare to write for
It’s interesting since we also know they’re pulling from the Silm here and there so I’m assuming they have permission to use stuff they don’t have full rights to?
It’s weird
I dunno about that, it's probably mostly true but I'd heard else where the reason this show cost so much is that they had to rewrite the way the film rights worked. The way the lotr rights worked since the 70's is that you only got the rights to the book you were adapting but not the other attached material but I'm pretty sure they rewrote that somewhat for this. For a bit of added context Christoper Tolkien basically said that a silmarillion adaptation would only happen over his dead body, then a few months after he actually died they released that preview image of the 2 trees of valinor.
As a lawyer, I would love to be paid to know the lore so well that that I'd be explain that they can't use this dragon unless they remove references to its sacking of this particular city as well as the injury it got from this particular elf's sword.
@@PoorMarvoloSawyer Ha! Yeah thats the exact kinda shit i'm thinking it would probably come down to
fuck copyright am I right Uniquenameosaurus
I do watch your video
Can two kids in the 21st century tell "the novel that Tolkien never wrote?"
Well, Tolkien was a man who lived through two world wars-fought in one of them and saw his children and friends' children fight in the other; taught multiple forms of English at a university; learned an extinct form of English and translated ancient texts like Beowulf so that modern people could read them; and spent the remainder of his life imagining and inventing a world with such believable and realistic depth that you can actually _learn the fictional languages in it._ Not translate whatever words and phrases appear throughout the text, you can actually learn to speak and read these languages because they have grammatical structure that is as detailed and functional as any extant language.
So, no... I do not think that two kids in the 21st century can tell a story on Tolkien's level. They might be able to come up with some cool fanfiction, though!
I have better fanfic stories tabbed then they could ever write it's the mentality the fantasy has to represent reality that poses the issue from them the world Tolkien made was immersive cause it wasn't the real world but had real struggles and characters that you could understand and feel for these guys something like that is impossible they are blithering morons when it comes to writing the only things there credited with are horrible woke trash shows that got cancelled nothing is changing for them they just have money to play with now
This, I hate what they think they're doing is amazing
Well, if Tolkien could do that in his age, it's plausible that kids from this age could immerse themselves enough in the ancient texts to do him justice. Do I believe that Amazon hired the people who could do that?
No.
@@TheJonflannery huzzah for your magnificent point
@@TheJonflannery That's a good point. I didn't mean to say that _nobody_ in their twenties can be a good storyteller, just that these fellows haven't shown the signs of doing so.
For me, the black elves and dwarfs represent a huge missed opportunity. It is perhaps the least interesting way to introduce POC into this story. It feels like they are cynically just trying to check boxes, the way studio executives often do. If you're creating new characters anyway, why not try to tell the story of some of the Eastern nations that were traditionally enemies of the Free Peoples? Perhaps the long-standing grievances that caused them to join forces with Sauron were based on very legitimate issues. Let us get to know these nations we really know very little about. You don't even have to set storylines in those locations. Just have characters that have traveled from or defected from these places.
It's confusing to me. The original Hobbits are described as being nut-brown, so, since this is something of a prequel, when people started complaining about skin color, I thought for sure there were going to be hobbits. That it's an elf and a dwarf comes completely out of left field to me. 😳😅
It's very possible they were just trying to check boxes and you won't see me defending Amazon, but if the actor/ actress was the best person for the part then I can't say it bothers me too much what race they are unless it is critical to their character (ie if your casting a story about slavery on a southern plantation, casting a black overseer should fundamentally change how other characters view them in the given time period and it would be awkward if it didn't.) If race wasn't a factor in their casting decisions for elves and dwarves then I really have no issue with their decisions to cast them. If they did have a goal of having POC in the story (which isn't a bad goal) then it does seem kind of box checky not to try to come up with a better way to integrate them in the story since they specifically wanted POC actors and not actors who happen to be POC
@@TreeHairedGingerAle lol yeah you know like a tan person. That’s the least fruitful argument for defending that cheap slop
It comes down to rights. I think not enough people understand that. What Amazon bought were not the rights to The Lord of the Rings, nor the rights to the Silmarillion. They bought the rights to the LotR appendices. So, they can officially only use and expand on what is explicitly mentioned there. And the appendices mainly focus on events and peoples from the Westlands. Cultures and histories for regions like Rhûn and Harad would have to be essentially invented from scratch, and I don't think that's within the limits of the rights agreement.
@@swagromancer so this is just one big screw up from every possible angle, just like many of us feared?
I never needed a lord of the rings series and if it isn't amazing I am not gonna watch it.
The only way to know if it's amazing is to watch it though. Way too often people just say something is bad because they read it online. Watch it and form your own opinion
I don't want to watch it, because I don't support projects like this. In the last couple of years a ton of franchises have been ruined by projects like this. Just keep the classics to themselves
@@kilianvounckx9904 If I have to go by what these creatures have been putting out these recent 5 years, I can confidently say that this series WILL BE mediocre at best. And you would know that too, if you weren't wilfully ignorant or maybe naive
You can watch it and then quit after sometime if it does not satisfy you. That way it would also signal that show failed to keep people watching despite them having tried.
Same here. I lived and worked in Hollywood from 2013-2021. I’ve had enough of political and religious Neo-Marxism forced onto me.
I was actually really excited when I first heard about this series because the Second Age allows for so much creative interpretation. There are so many ways to develop new plotlines, ideas, arcs...it appears, however, that Amazon adopted none of them, and that's why the disappointment is so sharp. Galadriel in Numenor? Really? Totally unbelievable. Show her as a ruler. There are, as you point out, so many interesting potential storyarcs that could be created, and yet, it doesn't feel that Amazon went for any of them.
THIS!!!
Little is known about Galadriel's movements in the early Second Age. It is not inconceivable that she visited Numenor as the books state that Elves passed through there a lot and it was initially friendly to the Elves. Obviously due to Elros being the first King. It wasn't really until the establishment of Lothlorien that she became more of a statesman or (stateswoman). I think thats what her character arc will be. It will also touch on her feelings about her brother Finrod being killed by Sauron in the first Age and how this affected her which I think could be interesting and something not previously explored much.
@@ZiggyStardust49 I'll be honest, I'm so tired of stating why I think so much of what Amazon is doing is nonsense that I'm not likely to give this the response it deserves. While you are correct in that I could buy into Galadriel visiting Numenor in the early days of the Second Age, at the time in question, I think it's absolutely ridiculous. By the time Ar-Pharazon was around, there was a very clear estrangement between the Eldar and the Edain. Regarding Finrod--this is clearly a first-age arc, why would you involve it in the Second Age when there is so much more going on? Also, Galadriel had sway as a sort of 'stateswoman' before Lothlorien, though not as a kind of sovereign power. She had already been powerful among the elves for a long span of time. Ruining her character as being some kind of young and ambitious hothead is so disingenuous.
I have work tomorrow, it's almost 1am, and I still haven''t had dinner, but suffice it to say--I am very disappointed in what I hear coming from Amazon and I will continue to voice my displeasure.
@@ZiggyStardust49 oh lord not the tolkien didin't specifially mention she did NOT visit Numenore. Well he didin't specifically mention she didin't fly a spaceship either.
How about we focus on the things that Tolkien mentions her doing and not what she could have potentially done in centuries where Tolkien doesn't specify what she was upto.
If some of the elven lords would go to Numenore it would be Elrond. You know the brother of the first king?
Or perhaps another lord in service of Gil-Galad after all they get the seedlings of mallorn tree from there.
Galadriel should be visiting Khazad-Dum she takes Celebrian through there when they leave for Lothlorien.
Also Galadriel will be leading northern armies and going to hunts for sauron and his servants all the way to distant Forodwaith so story focusing on her being a statesman is pretty redicilous at this point.
Also Galadriels brother is rumoured to be the elf leading the orc warbands. So there is that to look forward to. /s.
From the creatives' own mouths there are some VERY worrying statements. They essentially don't understand the characters (Galadriel, Elrond). They are introducing a bunch of characters so they can tell the story they want (what ever that will be) rather than Tolkien's story. Make a show not in Tolkien's universe, or in Rhun or outside the known world.
Just another pp shaped rocket destined to fail to impress his wife's boyfriend.
do you have any links, particularly about the writers' lack of understanding Elrond and Galadriel? I'm really curious to check that out.
@@crustboi93 Galadriel in armor is most of the explanation. Galadriel is not a warrior princess type of character.
@@mf-- true that. I'd be willing to say she may have some combat experience, but I'm not excited about them turning her into a D&D party member
@@crustboi93 "she was also not really a soldier or 'amazon', but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis." - Tolkien letters
@@thomasmurrell9394 Military gallantry at a crises is not angry and brash , commander of the Northern Armies, leaving her husband and child behind to avenge whatever. That is not Galadriel.
As many others have said, the issue with the race swapping isn't "oh muh races, I can't stand black dwarves." The fact that Tolkien built an already diverse world where races and ethnicities arose in logical geographic areas as happens in the real world is part of what made Tolkien's world breath and live. But more importantly than the fact that there are diverse areas of Middle-Earth that they could have used for diversity, I feel that the fact that the Amazon writers thought that the only way to include diversity in the show was to race swap existing races and ethnicities shows that they DON'T know the lore or world well enough to be faithful to it. Its like trying to write a historic WWII story and in an attempt to be diverse you make up an all black battalion because you don't actually know about the Tuskegee airmen or the 761st Tank Battalion. It shows you didn't do your research.
Which means they CAN'T write Tolkien's stories because they don't actually know or understand them. They can only write their own. You said you were worried they'd write their own stories instead of Tolkien's, well this is the red flag that they're going to do just that.
Its getting a lot of attention because its a red flag. There are faithful ways they could be diverse (heck if they actually cared about the stories they'd HAVE to be diverse because the fall of Numenor has interactions with the Easterlings). But either they don't realize that because they don't know the lore and just assumed "ah its all white dudes, we gotta fix this", or they do realize it but are swapping things anyway "because we can, its our story."
Its not about "oh no black dwarves," its that either they don't know the lore or they don't care about it. And both are a recipe for disaster for a setting that they don't even own the rights to the source material for.
Perfect encapsulation in your response to his argument in the video and I really couldn't have said it better myself.
Umm could you tell me the ethnicties in lotr? Bc from what i know most of the LOTR races dont have defined skin colors
@@danielmontoya2494 Every kindom North of (and including) Gondor and west of Rhun was white in skin colour and race, sure some were more pale than others in the same way that the Spanish are darker than English but they are both still white. People of Harad were mainly inspired from arabian cultures and the easterlings where inspired from a variety of Persian cultures, particularly Sassanid Persians, Mongol horsemen, and Ottoman Turks. So there were no gondorians in Far harad except in time of war perhaps, just as there were no Haradrim in gondor.
@@bradleywoods3742 ah nice i tried going on wiki and researching but it proved to be too large of a task
Thank you 😑 I keep hearing lazy responses like people are just racist for not accepting the black characters. That's not the problem. We're past racism, people, damn. The fact that they're going OUT OF THEIR WAY to add characters that don't fit lore wise is a huge red flag for the whole series..that they are sacrificing an already fleshed out and stable world for the agenda of seeming "inclusive" and "diverse" to us.