Concerning Amazon and their „pre-LOTR series“
A few years ago I would have been super excited to hear about this deal: Amazon bought the rights to make a series based on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And since it’ll be difficult to top the existing movies, they’re smart about it and want to tell stories we haven’t seen before on screen. Stories about event that happened before the events told in The Lord of the Rings. Oh, I would have loved it!
But a few years ago also two things happened:
I re-read The Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales and also started The History of Middle-Earth.
The Hobbit trilogy came out on the big screen.
And now I’m a lot more suspicious and wary than I want to be.
The first reminded me again in how much details Tolkien envisioned his creation, even though he never treated it as his creation and more as his discovery. It reminded me how long and hard he worked on his writings and how much though he put into it. There are reasons for even the tiniest details, be it the development of various names or the phases of the moon. And that with each text he brought his world closer together and made it fit a little bit more perfectly. And there is still so much that doesn’t fit perfectly together. Celeborn’s and Galadriel’s story for example. The number of Balrogs during the First Age. The origin of the Orcs. Gil-Galad’s heritage. The list goes on. But I love reading the tiny bits and pieces about what could work, and what could fit, and what possibilities there are and the consequences they have.
The second event – watching the three Hobbit movies in the cinema – made me realise what can go wrong when you try to bring Tolkien’s story on screen without really paying attention to the actual story, its elements and the world it’s set in. To me it was painfully obvious that whenever the script writers deviated from the book, the story took a deep dive in quality. Be it large scenes, like the Dwarves fighting the dragon and by stay completely unharmed making him look as threatening as a medium-sized troll, Thorin’s “gold sickness”, the completely useless attack of the Orcs on Lake Town and the annoying and irritating scenes with Alfred during the battle in the last movie – or smaller things like that strange plot about Thranduil‘s desire for that once necklace that got never resolved, Gandalf traveling in plot speed and idiocies as Gandalf re-entering Dol Guldur alone when he knows that Dark Lord himself is waiting in there.
All in all, these movies made me afraid of what could happen if anyone else would try their fingers on Tolkien’s writings. Especially since the most detailed stories are, more or less, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Sure, stories like Beren and Lúthien or Narn i Chîn Húrin are some of the more detailed stories, too. But it’s not much, and for Amazon these stories aren’t available since they’re from The Silmarillion.
However, Amazon can basically use the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and with this they have access to the timetable of the complete Second and Third Age. But that’s the main problem: most of it is timetables. Sure, we have more accounts in text form, too, but any writer writing for that new Amazon series would have to come up with the details by themselves. And I’m afraid they will only try to make it look as impressive as possible on the outside while ignoring the actual heart of the creation. If they have no real love for the writings and the world they’re setting their story in, who will stop them from adding another Dragon or Balrog in every third episode? What will stop them from creating ten more romance plots between Dwarves and Elves despite the complicate relationships these two races have in the original writings? Why not throw in a dozen other Half-Elves, ignoring how special and rare they were in the complete history of Middle-Earth? Why not multiply the number of wizards by ten? As long as they can make it look as “epic” as Game of Thrones in the promos, why not – right?
I know of many stories by Tolkien that I would love to see in some form on screen. But if it actually turns out like described above, I’d rather not see it on screen at all. I’d love to see some stories brought to life by people who respect the original stories and try to stay faithful and true to them. People who ask themselves when writing an episode: does this fit in Tolkien’s world? Does something in Tolkien’s writings contradict what is currently written into an episode in a crucial way?
I know that not everything that is different-from-the-books™ equals bad. But the thing is: you already have to write your own plots and details for this show since there are no real dialogues and story details available. And if you stray too far from the facts and rules of the world of Middle-Earth, then what else is there that is still “Tolkien”? All that would be left is Tolkien’s name that they can use for marketing and luring fans in. In fanfiction that’s usually the part where I say: if you write different stories AND don’t keep the characters in your story in character AND ignore the rules and settings of a world, why don’t you write an original story instead? If Amazon does that with Tolkien, we know they are doing it because of money. It would feel like someone playing in someone else’s sandbox without having the decency to follow the rules.
I don’t want to be negative about it. I want this show to be good. But it’s really hard to ignore the impression The Hobbit left on me, or the state of the quality of TV writing on other shows that continue to ignore or tear down their own established canon just for the sake of unexpected elements that make no real sense and cheap plot twists that go nowhere.
I hope this show will turn out well. Until 2020 there is still a lot of time and hopefully we’ll get a lot of good news about the show until then! I really want to be wrong here & be positively surprised. 🙂