I do not say that this show is going to be good. I will say that Amazon is probably going to spend a billion bucks on THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER, which is an insane amount of money that probably should not be in Jeff Bezos’ hands anyway. Plus, at that level of funding? If the show fails it will do so spectacularly. That can provide some entertainment, all on its own.
Moe Lane
PS: In case you are wondering: yes, the show will compress together the coming of Annatar, the betrayal of the Elves, the corruption and fall of Numenor, and presumably the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. They are justifying it by – oh, just read what they said:
In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”
…I do not entirely like this angle, but I don’t really have a better one. “Not doing it at all” remains a viable alternative take, of course.
I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, and I watch even less in the way of long serials, so what I know about most of it is from what other people tell me. But, I believe Walking Dead killed off at least one major character every season, and introduced very important characters in later seasons. In fact, I quit watching before the character of Negan was introduced – and yet I know of him. And Game of Thrones did the same thing; I quit watching before Hodor or the Hound were introduced, and yet I’ve heard of them plenty. Obviously being introduced later didn’t hurt anything.
Point being, both of the supposed problems mentioned have already been shown to be not that big a problem in massively successful series. They’re losing some of the most beautiful parts of Tolkien by eliding The Gift of Men. I think it’s a very bad decision.
I may spite watch it.
Given the 3xHobbit, the Bakshi half-flop and the Zimmerman script that JRRT vetoed himself and all the other attempts, I’ve realized Rankin-Bass and Jackson’s LotR were blessed exceptions to a history of glorious failure.
I’ll bring the popcorn.
I know that I’m going to watch it, even though I know better. The big question among my friends is exactly WHEN I will wig out over a particularly blasphemous corruption of JRRT’s Silmarillion.
The big money is on the first five minutes.
“If the show fails it will do so spectacularly. That can provide some entertainment, all on its own.”
Don’t give me hope.
If we go in with low expectations, we’ll never be disappointed. This served me quite well with the Bakshi film.
Aragon as an American Indian and orcs as nazis?
Seems a rather on-point comparison to this travesty.
I was disgusted with Jackson’s LotR films. So I’m pretty sure I couldn’t watch this without stroking out.