Not Our Middle-Earth – ImaginAtlas
“Despite how Amazon purports to celebrate Tolkien’s unique vision, their approach noticeably simplifies his creations to appeal to more generic and conservative fantasy aesthetics. The short-haired male elves have lost the elegant androgyny of previous incarnations, and dwarf women are feminized. Galadriel is remarketed as a female warrior archetype. These reductive interpretations may also reveal that Amazon’s real agenda has little to do with passion and everything to do with economics. The company has bet so much on The Rings of Power succeeding not because they care about bringing Tolkien’s work onscreen, but because this could be the popular TV that upturns their controversial reputation and brings an indispensable asset to their growing streaming service. The fact that Amazon has deliberately contorted Tolkien’s work into a “safe” product to be marketing globally should thus raise a question in even the show’s most optimistic supporters: who is The Rings of Power’s true intended audience, if it isn’t the Tolkien fans who have been dreaming of such an adaptation for years, and even decades?”
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