Rings of Power hurts, and I should clearly explain in my own words just why
Amazon, lacking the rights to directly adapt ANY of Tolkien's work that covered the Second Age, really SHOULD have just made this a wholly original work that leaned on Tolkien's style and themes.
This would be a great show if the title were not The Rings of Power, and supposedly about Galadriel, Elrond, Sauron, etc.
If this show were named something like "Traitor's Ring" and were about Lady Seldanna, Tolith, and the Dark Lord Phadzak, etc al, with more or less the exact same story as they're doing now, this would be something I could enthusiastically praise as a triumph of fantasy fiction (outside of my usual revulsion for Amazon as a company). But it isn't.
Amazon didn't have the rights to adapt the thing they were making a show about, but went with it anyway.
That's right: Amazon did not secure the rights to any of the material in The Silmarillion, History of Middle Earth, Unfinished Tales, etc. before making a series that covered those EXACT WORKS.
To pinch another Tumblrer's example, they were baking a cake and didn't have the rights to use flour, so they used sawdust, and still called it a cake. You can make the most AMAZING LOOKING CAKE EVER SEEN BY THE EYES OF MORTAL MEN, but if you substitute something THAT elemental to the recipe, it's no longer a cake, no matter how rave the reviews.
A Tolkien adaptation minus Tolkien's original work isn't an adaptation any longer -- it's fanfiction.
This could have been an AMAZING original fantasy fiction show that really set the bar for lavish production and high concept fantasy fiction in tv/web series form the same way Peter Jackson's LOTR Trilogy did for fantasy films, but Amazon chose instead to try to pass their original story off as an official (or officially licensed at the very least) prequel to the most beloved and most influential fantasy saga of the modern age while completely ignoring the actual author's actual prequel material that covers that same period.
OF COURSE PEOPLE WHO READ THE BOOKS ARE GOING TO BE PISSED. THIS IS NOT EXACTLY ROCKET SCIENCE.
As I wrote in a reply elsewhere,
This is why adherence to the lore and aesthetic Tolkien literally spent TENS OF THOUSANDS OF WORDS ESTABLISHING is so important.
Tolkien wrote what he wrote the way he wrote it for VERY GOOD REASONS. And deviating from that base is fine, if you have a good reason for it and you let people know that, which is what Peter Jackson did. God knows a slavishly faithful adaptation of ANYTHING Tolkien is basically impossible so SOMETHING will have to be changed, but the issue is that SO MUCH was changed and for... no good reason.
If you want to make an adaptation, fine, make an adaptation. If you want to make an original story, fine, make an original story. The world could always use more of those.
But for the love of god don't do what Amazon did which is promise the former and deliver the latter.
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