Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power, the long-awaited Lord of the Rings prequel, opened on September 1 to near-universal praise… Yeah, maybe in an alternate universe that isn’t plagued by our never-ending culture wars battling over everything from pronouns
Nobody's even talking about how dwarves are Scottish, Harfoots are Irish, and the supremacist elves are from somewhere posh in England. Considering the humans are apparently Geordie, this is a clear example of Welsh erasure.
The irony is that elves in the source material are extremely Welsh, with a side of Finnish, particularly in their language. Hobbits are English and the Rohirrim are Anglo-Saxons.
I really wanted to love Rings of Power. The Peter Jackson movies are my favorite movies of all time, and I am right now looking at a canvas print on my wall of a poster for the Ralph Bakshi animated LOTR.
I heard good things about Rings from Tolkienologists before it launched, and the choice of Galadriel for the protagonist is absolutely inspired. Galadriel is, I think, the most interesting character in Lord of the Rings by a very long shot.
I won't bore you with all the details of her very lengthy history in which she was involved in essentially every major event in Tolkien's history. But Galadriel has a significant streak of megalomania and self-mythologizing in her history that I find fascinating.
There are, most interestingly, conflicting theories about her past. One version of events says that, after the victory in the War of Wrath and the Valar offering their pardon the elves of Middle-earth, including most of the Noldor who had rebelled and returned to Middle-earth from Valinor (which offer of pardon excepted some of those who had been guilty of kinslaying, of which Galadriel was not guilty), she rejected the pardon and remained in Middle-earth to rule her own realm, which had always been her ambition.
Rejecting what is essentially God's forgiveness is pretty fuckin baller, in my opinion.
I watched the first two episodes of Rings, that were in the initial release, and wasn't offended, but not engaged either. I decided to wait it out and see what reception the rest of the season received. And boy am I glad I never turned it back on.
Bret Devereaux, a man who takes Tolkien seriously and has written at length about the realistic portrayals of Medieval/ancient warcraft present in the books and PJ films (https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/), and who is also on what I would unironically describe as the woke right, HAAATED Rings. This was both for macro reasons, such as the fact that nothing that happens makes sense, but also for micro reasons. Essentially, in almost every case, the makers of Rings got the details wrong. Contrast this with the books and films, which took the details extremely seriously and reaped the rewards of verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief.
So I will continue to re-watch the PJ films for the rest of time, and pretend like this Amazon crap doesn't exist.
And what do you have against Vegemite!!
Pure ignorant prejudice.
It’s good. For now I like it. I reserve the right to change my mind
Stop agreeing with me so much
🤣🤣🤣
Nobody's even talking about how dwarves are Scottish, Harfoots are Irish, and the supremacist elves are from somewhere posh in England. Considering the humans are apparently Geordie, this is a clear example of Welsh erasure.
The irony is that elves in the source material are extremely Welsh, with a side of Finnish, particularly in their language. Hobbits are English and the Rohirrim are Anglo-Saxons.
I really wanted to love Rings of Power. The Peter Jackson movies are my favorite movies of all time, and I am right now looking at a canvas print on my wall of a poster for the Ralph Bakshi animated LOTR.
I heard good things about Rings from Tolkienologists before it launched, and the choice of Galadriel for the protagonist is absolutely inspired. Galadriel is, I think, the most interesting character in Lord of the Rings by a very long shot.
I won't bore you with all the details of her very lengthy history in which she was involved in essentially every major event in Tolkien's history. But Galadriel has a significant streak of megalomania and self-mythologizing in her history that I find fascinating.
There are, most interestingly, conflicting theories about her past. One version of events says that, after the victory in the War of Wrath and the Valar offering their pardon the elves of Middle-earth, including most of the Noldor who had rebelled and returned to Middle-earth from Valinor (which offer of pardon excepted some of those who had been guilty of kinslaying, of which Galadriel was not guilty), she rejected the pardon and remained in Middle-earth to rule her own realm, which had always been her ambition.
Rejecting what is essentially God's forgiveness is pretty fuckin baller, in my opinion.
I watched the first two episodes of Rings, that were in the initial release, and wasn't offended, but not engaged either. I decided to wait it out and see what reception the rest of the season received. And boy am I glad I never turned it back on.
Bret Devereaux, a man who takes Tolkien seriously and has written at length about the realistic portrayals of Medieval/ancient warcraft present in the books and PJ films (https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/), and who is also on what I would unironically describe as the woke right, HAAATED Rings. This was both for macro reasons, such as the fact that nothing that happens makes sense, but also for micro reasons. Essentially, in almost every case, the makers of Rings got the details wrong. Contrast this with the books and films, which took the details extremely seriously and reaped the rewards of verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief.
So I will continue to re-watch the PJ films for the rest of time, and pretend like this Amazon crap doesn't exist.