TheOneRing.com has a new video about the primary concern with “The Rings of Power” set in “The Lord of the Ring’s” universe.
I was very excited when I first heard Amazon had bought the rights to Tolkien’s works. I became more and more troubled as time has gone along. The first warning was when it was revealed Jeff Bezos just wanted another “Game of Thrones.” Did they really care about Tolkien’s property? Or did their computers and data analysts say, let’s get a big fantasy franchise with some name recognition and turn it into something we really want?
Secondly, Amazon only bought the rights to the appendices of “The Lord of the Rings.” Therefore they have very little source material to work with, leaving them only a vague outline. Amazon could have turned this into an advantage and “gone off the map.” They could have developed stories about lands and peoples new or briefly touched on in the source material. Importantly, this would have allowed Amazon to organically add diversity to their cast.
Instead, Amazon’s computer’s told them they’d need to exploit Peter Jackson’s trilogy. Therefore, they had to use as many familiar characters as possible. With deft editing, Peter Jackson narrowly avoided turning Arwen into XenArwen : Warrior Princess. Galadriel wasn’t so lucky. Thus comes the third warning sign: Galadriel of Tarth.
Here’s TheOneRing.com‘s take:
This is both disappointing and worrying – but typically Amazon. It makes me so grateful that Peter Jackson was honoured with the task of bringing such a huge project to the big screen, and he respectfully repaid that honour with, what is still to me in todays overused, over-hyped, digital/graphic fests, the last film (fellowship) I was truly blown away and emotionally overwhelmed by, after reading the books many times and years before.
Just a footnote* (in the true style of Mr Pratchett)
*The same mistakes (in my opinion) were made with ‘The Watch’ (BBC). No comparisons in scale or budget of course, but still disappointing and unforgivable.