I read (well, skimmed, really) a few critiques of Amazon's Rings of Power, all of them calling the series horrible, unenjoyable, a travesty of Tolkien's Legacy, and all that. They all, without exception, assert that a True Tolkien Fan would not enjoy t...
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I read (well, skimmed, really) a few critiques of Amazon's Rings of Power, all of them calling the series horrible, unenjoyable, a travesty of Tolkien's Legacy, and all that. They all, without exception, assert that a True Tolkien Fan would not enjoy the show.
My Father read the Lord of the Rings to me while I wasn't even born. He read the Hobbit as bedtime story when I was little. By the time I was eight, I read the Silmarillion twice. I love the world of Middle-Earth (and other Tolkien stories too!). I'm a Fan. I tell Tolkien-inspired stories to our twins, too. They love the Ents, the Hobbits, the Dwarves, the Riders of Rohan, the Wizards and Tom Bombadil.
Yet, I enjoy the Rings of Power. I enjoyed season one, and I am enjoying season two. And I'm a fan of Tolkien's works.
I enjoy the show not because it is true to Tolkien's heritage (it isn't). I enjoy it because I never expected it to be such. I expected to hear familiar names, with stories that bear no resemblance to Tolkien's world. I expected to see a gorgeous setting. The series delivers on that.
I never expected a good story. I never expected it to be in the Middle-Earth I imagined when reading Tolkien.
Thus, the show is fine. It is gorgeous, it does have some fun storylines (The Stranger and the Harfoots are great - I'd love to watch a show just about the Harfoots, really). It's something I can likely watch with the kids in a few years time (there's a bit more violence in it than I'd be comfortable to subject our twins to at this time).
And I'm a Tolkien fan. I just don't treat the series as something that would be part of His world. It's a show that may contain traces of Tolkien's world, and that's about it. And that's fine. There's no need to gatekeep. It is a show set in a beautiful setting (most of the time), with fun characters that have a little resemblance to characters in Tolkien's work. It also sports characters that share a name with Tolkien's, but have little connection to them otherwise - and that's fine too. It's not a faithful adaptation. It's at best inspired by Tolkien, nothing more.
Instead of raging and lashing out on the internet with foaming mouth, perhaps these critique writers should try to stop taking fandom so seriously, and treat this show as what it really is: an expensive, beautiful fantasy series that may contain familiar names, and nothing more.
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@algernon
interesting take. so far I saw exclusively negative reviews. maybe I gotta try watching it.
most reviewers I saw are mad at Amazon's ploy: they spent $1 billion in order to produce this, advertised it to death, got a lot of people subscribe to Prime because of it. it might be passably good, but people were overhyped to think it's better than LotR was 20 years ago. -
@kaia Yeah, I haven't seen any positive reveiws either, hence my toot. Because I do genuinely think Rings of Power is enjoyable. Not just "passably good", but truly enjoyable. All that you need is to forget that it has anything at all to do with Tolkien, and watch it for what it is: a fantasy show with names and stories that you might have seen elsewhere.
I would not compare it to Peter Jackson's LotR. The two set out to accomplish wildly different things. RoP is a show you watch for the looks and the music. Don't expect a deep, or faithful storyline.
I have absolutely no idea why anyone expected anything faithful or deep from Amazon of all studios in the first place. Spend big bucks, create some beautiful scenery, great music, slap some story with familiar names into it, done. That's Rings of Power. Yet, that beautiful scenery and the music works.
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@algernon
All well and nice, but why do they call it "Lord of the Rings" then? -
@kupac I don't know, and I don't really care either. Marketing, I suppose. I don't trust marketing, so I'm very happily ignoring that part.
It contains traces of Tolkien, some of that is in the title. The show's title and how it was advertised has no bearing on how I watch it, or on whether I enjoy it.
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pamela :flan_butterfly:replied to Gergely Nagy 🐁 last edited by
@algernon I would be very down for Harfoot tales, they are SO fun and their culture so rich even with just what we've already seen!
Something the foaming doesn't allow for is the idea that sometimes you're going to hit a more magical, meaningful story with a looser adaptation, particularly when you can't even get rights access to all of the world at once. If we get a living, breathing new tale by retconning a few lines somewhere, that seems a very fair trade... one the author would happily have done, too, and I think he'd have quite enjoyed this, honestly, Tolkien's world is literally remixes of the creative works of others. He LOVED adaptations!
It's funny, in a few areas where RoP is being dismissed I find it IS actually being fairly true to the source, and just doing an amazing job highlighting how readers take home different things. In this adaptation, they happen to hew very close to Galadriel's personality and behavior as I've always read her and imagined her experiences, this woman of conflicting traits to the point of almost a dual nature. (Womanhood in a nutshell, tbh). She's instantly recognizable to me as that character here. Others insist she's a complete stranger. An interesting reminder that no two people ever truly read the same book.
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Gergely Nagy 🐁replied to pamela :flan_butterfly: last edited by
@pamela I like to imagine that a lot of the critics haven't actually read the book, but they're comparing RoP's Galadriel against Peter Jackson's LotR Galadriel. The difference there is stark - but also, RoP's Galadriel is considerably younger, and far less experienced than LotR's! People grow, people change. Even Elves.
Both Galadriels are very different than how I imagined her - and that's okay too! As you put so very well, no two people ever truly read the same book. That's something people should celebrate and embrace - it's interesting to hear how someone else interprets a story. A story has many lives, in each reader's head, and that is beautiful.
While there are parts in the show I don't particularly enjoy (Halbrand's arc, for example is something I care little about - yet it is one some of the critics I read celebrate as the only good part), there are others that are fantastic. Often in small, tiny details (besides the Harfoot...). Like Disa! She's such a great character, and her dynamic with Durin is so loveable and relatable.