Amazon Developing The Lord of the Rings Multi Season Television Show

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I'm sorry, but while Tolkien did base his fantasy on cross-European lore... where in his books did he say all the elves, humans and hobbits must be white? Do you really think he'd have turned pale if Merry and Pippin were Black?

More importantly... like you said, it's fantasy. And it's fantasy set in a world that isn't our own. Apocalypto and Moana are set in very real cultures and are meant to tell stories about those cultures; LOTR is a rough allegory. If you can't distinguish between the two storytelling methods and insist on 'cultural authenticity' in stories where it clearly isn't required... well, that's on you, not a show's creators.
Where in Moana do they say they must not be white?
And to touch on M76's question: no, I don't think Peter Jackson was racist when he made the LOTR movies. But he was also producing the movies at a time when white people were the "default" for casting and no one stopped to ask if the characters needed to be white. I'd be curious to know how Jackson would cast now, assuming no pressure from outsiders; don't presume he'd do the same thing all over again.
We must not presume he would make as faithful adaptation today is what you are saying.
Pretty simple: because what defines "English" has changed, and was arguably changing in Tolkien's time. If he were alive now, would he tell someone who's the third-generation descendent of Caribbean immigrants that a ground-up English fable shouldn't include them? How about Indians who've been there for several generations? If he thought even Arthurian legend was British but not truly English... well, he's not chained to existing mythology as rigidly as you might think. And even if he was, I don't know that he'd be terribly upset if some of the characters were no longer white.
Can't wait to see white Black Panther and aboriginal Thor. It will be rad!
And LOTR isn't medieval Europe... it's Middle-earth.
Yeah, not Europe, just some place...in the middle...of Earth. 🤔
 
did anyone here watch that Foundation series on Apple TV+?...based on the Isaac Asimov sci-fi book series...they made a lot of changes in that as well in terms of adding more female characters and minorities...you can't make a big tentpole TV series or movie nowadays with only male characters etc...some things don't translate well from book to screen and you need to adapt your story to fit the current era
 
did anyone here watch that Foundation series on Apple TV+?...based on the Isaac Asimov sci-fi book series...they made a lot of changes in that as well in terms of adding more female characters and minorities...you can't make a big tentpole TV series or movie nowadays with only male characters etc...some things don't translate well from book to screen and you need to adapt your story to fit the current era
It wasn't horrific, but ultimately, it largely matters less in a sci-fi setting like that. The color of the skin largely becomes irrelevant since it's not pulling from stories that are tightly bound to a real culture on Earth. I wouldn't want to see a TV series on Ramayana with a bunch of white people, just like I wouldn't want to see a TV series based on largely Anglo-Saxon myth with a bunch of black people.
 
If only the Peter Jackon's LOTR trilogy had been more diverse. It could have been a huge global hit and made large sums of money.

let's not pretend that tons of book purists were not upset with Peter Jackson's LOTR and Hobbit adaptations...
 
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At the end of the day I hope people don't watch this mostly because Amazon is raising the Prime rate to $139 a year. The massive company that profited off of the past two years of suffering and has record profit has the audacity to charge more for Prime. Please stop giving this company money.
 
At the end of the day I hope people don't watch this mostly because Amazon is raising the Prime rate to $139 a year. The massive company that profited off of the past two years of suffering and has record profit has the audacity to charge more for Prime. Please stop giving this company money.

Netflix recently raised prices as well...are you encouraging boycotting them as well?
 
did anyone here watch that Foundation series on Apple TV+?...based on the Isaac Asimov sci-fi book series...they made a lot of changes in that as well in terms of adding more female characters and minorities...you can't make a big tentpole TV series or movie nowadays with only male characters etc...some things don't translate well from book to screen and you need to adapt your story to fit the current era
I understand the need to appeal to a much broader audience. But when things are changed for no reason other than to ingratiate for the sake of diversity, it's incredibly irritating and it pulls you right out of the film or show you are trying to watch. There are reasons that races are a specific race for the location and time they are in. I'm all for more people of different backgrounds and cultures and ethnicities getting chances at being a part of these big stories. That's needed to happen for a very long time. But these should be new and wonderful stories. But it has to make sense. I wouldn't expect to see a movie about ancient tribes in Africa that had everyone replaced with white people or Chinese people. Some things are the way they are for a reason. Or changing superheroes that have had a very distinct identity for 50 years and turning them gay. Make new heroes. Don't change the old ones. A fantastic example of this is Miles Morales. A new and different Spider-Man, but very cool, relatable, new, and fun. People just need to stop being so freaking offended at literally everything. And calling anyone racist that has any issues with these clear agendas is getting quite old.

I don't go into movies to pick apart things that offend me. I go to the movies to escape reality for a while and be entertained. I don't like having politics slapped in my face when I'm trying to escape that from the real world.
 
Netflix recently raised prices as well...are you encouraging boycotting them as well?
No. Amazon is a completely different beast. In fact, I like a lot of stuff on Netflix, but it does suck the price is going up. I really like how Netflix has a lot of foreign movies on it since Hollywood is largely incapable of making decent movies these days.
 
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True for the first 2, but would have been put on that tablet by the go woke go broke would they have failed.

I cannot think of popular culture movie more woke than Us and Get Out (maybe I could if I would take a lot of time to think about it), the for your consideration award campaign material was called Stay Woke by Universal Picture:



https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/28/get-out-box-office-jordan-peele

Get Out: the film that dares to reveal the horror of liberal racism in America​



Woke: a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality:

Dan_D explains what wokeness is in terms of entertainment better than I:
This is there the problem lies. You have a group of people that are assuming that someone complaining about wokeness is only doing so because they are racist or have one or more phobias about different sexual preferences is a false assumption. When you look at the shows that are talked about as being woke dumpster fires versus ones that have a great deal of diversity and sexual representation it becomes clear that there is a massive difference in quality. I don't recall anyone talking about True Blood being woke despite a great deal of diversity in the cast. The cast of the 1980's film Predator is diverse but no one mentions that in a negative light. I've never heard anyone say Alien would be better if Ellen Ripley were male. Notice how diversity and inclusion goes completely unnoticed when its done right? But if you want to talk about Supergirl or Batwoman on the CW, they are woke as hell.

I also think it's a stretch to assume that rage against the term woke has anything to do with where the term originated from. Assuming that hatred of wokeness equals racism or some sort of phobia is part of the problem in these discussions. There is often very little to no evidence that this is the case. You have one side who may be oversimplifying things by calling a TV show "woke", but rather than listen to the actual complaints, the other side simply assumes that someone using the term hates black people and has an irrational fear of transsexuals. It makes very little sense when you think about it. But, I would agree that calling a show "woke" is oversimplifying and potentially misleading.

But understand that "wokeness" as a complaint isn't actually about diversity or inclusion being problematic. It's about the poor quality of the shows that focus on a political ideology or message to the detriment of the material. Batwoman is a bad show. The fact that the main character is a lesbian was never the problem. Like it or not, comics fans are predominantly heterosexual white males. That same group also likes lesbian porn. Do you really think that a show about a lesbian woman in tight outfits is problematic by itself? It really isn't. It's the quality of the show that's the problem. It's badly written, badly acted and its visuals are cheap.

Lastly, when the advertisement and marketing behind a show focuses on diversity and inclusion or modern politics rather than it being a good show, your going to lose people out of the gate. Whether true or not, people are going to assume that the show is going to lecture them. People do not want to be lectured about something especially when they aren't guilty of it. I don't want to get into the weeds on this, but the fact is that when something is well written and believable, it will just work. When something is badly done it gets torn apart. As I said, no one cares about diversity when you have good characters. When you have bad characters who whine about perceived social injustice all the time in the narrative it's going to get called a woke dumpster fire. It's pretty much as simple as that even if the term is being improperly used to some extent.
...
Apocalypto was based on real life Maya history...LOTR is a fantasy story...the only limits are the writer's imagination...if you're doing a story about a real-life group of people or actual historical time period then yes you should adhere to the rules of that time...and like I stated earlier, Tolkien wrote the books in the late 1930's so it reflects the time period he was living in...if he were still alive today the stories he wrote would have a more diverse group of characters

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV Show Reacts to Diversity Backlash From Tolkien Fans

“It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of [author J.R.R.] Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,” executive producer Lindsey Weber told Vanity Fair, which also published several new photos from the series. “Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together.”

added Tolkien scholar Mariana Rios Maldonado, “Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-tv-diversity-1235090283/
I hate this argument that a fantasy story can be interpreted in anyway you want just because it's "fantasy." That is not how it works. A universe was deliberately and meticulously created in the context LOTR (and most other fiction, for that matter). To alter it for any reason is to go against the artist's vision. At that point you should just create your own fiction inspired by the work instead of trampling over the established canon.

There is no feeling of threat over a black elf existing in fantasy. It's the fact that it's being shoehorned into a popular established franchise, unambiguously based in Northern European culture in the author's own words, for virtue signaling reasons.
 
Dan_D explains what wokeness is in terms of entertainment better than I:

...

I hate this argument that a fantasy story can be interpreted in anyway you want just because it's "fantasy." That is not how it works. A universe was deliberately and meticulously created in the context LOTR (and most other fiction, for that matter). To alter it for any reason is to go against the artist's vision. At that point you should just create your own fiction inspired by the work instead of trampling over the established canon.

There is no feeling of threat over a black elf existing in fantasy. It's the fact that it's being shoehorned into a popular established franchise, unambiguously based in Northern European culture in the author's own words, for virtue signaling reasons.

Tolkien's vision was based on the time he wrote the books (late 1930's)...to say that he wouldn't have adapted or approved of more diversity in 2022 is silly...Tolkien's son seemed to approve of the changes so that's as good we can get as far as knowing what Tolkien would have wanted
 
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Tolkien's vision was based on the time he wrote the books (late 1930's)...to say that he wouldn't have adapted or approved of more diversity in 2022 is silly...Tolkien's son seems to approve of the changes so that's as good we can get as far as knowing what Tolkien would have wanted
Of course his son approves of the changes. If he said anything else in public he'd be cancelled along with his father's estate.
 
Tolkien's vision was based on the time he wrote the books (late 1930's)...to say that he wouldn't have adapted or approved of more diversity in 2022 is silly...Tolkien's son seems to approve of the changes so that's as good we can get as far as knowing what Tolkien would have wanted
to claim with such assurance that he would support it is silly...
 
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his son is dead, its in the estates hands now.
Same thing stands, does anyone think the estate would say anything different right now? They exist to protect the estate and continue to make money off of the IP. Of course they agree with the woke changes. Are they going to risk Bezos money?

If it were me, i'd say let it burn to the ground. We already got the books and the LOTR films, but most rich families along with their estates have no principles. They won't risk their wealth.
 
Same thing stands, does anyone think the estate would say anything different right now? They exist to protect the estate and continue to make money off of the IP. Of course they agree with the woke changes.
didnt say otherwise, was only pointing out the facts.
 
Of course his son approves of the changes. If he said anything else in public he'd be cancelled along with his father's estate.

Christopher Tolkien is not shy about giving his opinions...

Christopher Tolkien Trashes Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ Says Films Lack “Beauty And Seriousness” Of The Books

https://www.indiewire.com/2013/01/c...k-beauty-and-seriousness-of-the-books-102485/

his son is dead, its in the estates hands now.

he was alive when Amazon bought the rights...Amazon picked up the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth franchise in 2017...Christopher Tolkien died in January 2020

to claim with such assurance that he would support it is silly...

to claim the opposite is also silly
 
let's not pretend that tons of book purists were not upset with Peter Jackson's LOTR and Hobbit adaptations...
We can only dream about that level of problems today.

Hobbit is shit, though.
 
We can only dream about that level of problems today.

Hobbit is shit, though.
Yeah, Hobbit is complete shit for numerous reasons. It goes to show that certain movies like the LOTR movies really can only be made in the time that they were made in.
 
he was alive when Amazon bought the rights...Amazon picked up the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth franchise in 2017
and they waited until he died to jam all the woke shit into it.

to claim the opposite is also silly
why would he be guaranteed to make it woke if he wrote it now? english and euro history was still predominantly white until the 80/90s. so writing ancient fantasy for it would still be 99% white. your claims dont make sense unless he were a woke 20-30something, then yeah we'd end up with this crap.
 
IMO, the entire western entertainment industry is generally incapable of making good stuff, and it's been that way for over a decade. You occasionally get brilliant stuff like There Will Be Blood, but the industry is just so compromised with pushing agendas that there isn't much left. The fact that awards are directly tied to diversity quotas being met now is all you need to know.
I agree, "woke" movies win awards by the dozens but shows like Yellowstone receive only minor accolades yet see far more success. The sad truth is white culture is being canceled, it's been judged (falsly) to be racist. White culture must be remade with people of color, homosexuals and "strong" women who supplant the alpha male. However every other culture can remain in tact and celebrated.

I saw nothing in this trailer that even felt remotely Tolkien to me. What are those weird expressions on the characters faces all about, CGI? I wouldn't be surprised, like singers who can't sing we now have actors that can't act so they must be manipulated through technology to express some unnatural emotion.

Art is not art if it has to follow rules and guidelines and be the focal point of subjective thought. Comedy, music, art and film are suffering in the modern age. I predict a thousand years from now people will look past this modern time and relish what existed before and hopefully after.
 
Tolkien's son seemed to approve of the changes so that's as good we can get as far as knowing what Tolkien would have wanted

That's a fucking lie. The only reason this dumpster fire is seeing the light of day, is because Christopher stepped down as head of the estate, two months later, we have black elves.
 
LOL, no. It would have to be good to be that. Game of Thrones was good at least for the first few season. There is no indiciation that this will be anything but a CW series made from 100x the money.
The GOT creators had the writer working and guiding them, as soon as they went their own way the show disintegrated. LOTR series creators not just don't have any guidance, they are deliberately going against Tolkiens notions of Middle Earth.
They're engaging in cultural appropriation.
 
10 Burning Questions About Amazon’s The Rings of Power

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay dive deeper into the details of the lavish Lord of the Rings TV series:

What, Exactly, Is the Source Material Here?

So what did Amazon buy? “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” That takes a huge chunk of lore off the table and has left Tolkien fans wondering how this duo plans to tell a Second Age story without access to those materials. “There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay says. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with”

“We worked in conjunction with world-renowned Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien estate to make sure that the ways we connected the dots were Tolkienian and gelled with the experts’ and the estate’s understanding of the material,” Payne says...

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power
 
did anyone here watch that Foundation series on Apple TV+?...based on the Isaac Asimov sci-fi book series...they made a lot of changes in that as well in terms of adding more female characters and minorities...you can't make a big tentpole TV series or movie nowadays with only male characters etc...some things don't translate well from book to screen and you need to adapt your story to fit the current era
I did, and I rather enjoy it in a slow progression sort of way. Now granted I never read the source material at all, so don't really have any comparison to, but then again you're not very likely to get source material matching up super closely with film/TV, yeah there are obviously exceptions but in general if you're comparing to the book then you're already the wrong target audience.

ime "woke" is more often used as a derogative, like calling someone "woke" means they have a big stick up their butt about some social issue and won't shut tf up about it.
I feel the term "woke" is this next generation "affirmative action" knee jerk term to anything they don't like, or feel comfortable about. And honestly that makes me sad.
I agree, "woke" movies win awards by the dozens
Oh fucking no, shows and movies are winning awards that are given largely by the people who are making them. God forbid any movie win an award that you don't like, and that means your identity is being cancelled.
 
Yeah, Hobbit is complete shit for numerous reasons. It goes to show that certain movies like the LOTR movies really can only be made in the time that they were made in.
Which reminds me that I saw this video about that precise subject a few days ago:
The trilogy was definitely something of it's time and it can't be re-done nowadays, even with the huge budgets that's in play.
 
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1644929736145.png
 
I did, and I rather enjoy it in a slow progression sort of way. Now granted I never read the source material at all, so don't really have any comparison to, but then again you're not very likely to get source material matching up super closely with film/TV, yeah there are obviously exceptions but in general if you're comparing to the book then you're already the wrong target audience.


I feel the term "woke" is this next generation "affirmative action" knee jerk term to anything they don't like, or feel comfortable about. And honestly that makes me sad.

Oh fucking no, shows and movies are winning awards that are given largely by the people who are making them. God forbid any movie win an award that you don't like, and that means your identity is being cancelled.
There are hard diversity quota requirements for the best picture award now. This makes it impossible for certain types of films to even be made as all the big studio’s wouldn’t dare not meet the quota. A film like there will be blood or schindlers list wouldn’t be eligible for awards once this takes effect, or generally any period piece set in a time with only white people.

https://www.oscars.org/news/academy...n-and-inclusion-standards-oscarsr-eligibility

You can hand wave this away all you want, but this completely compromises the industry’s ability to produce certain types of movies. This is the type of stuff that people were warning about for years, but people said it would never happen. Well, here we are.
 
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Where in Moana do they say they must not be white?
When it was explicitly tied to Polynesian culture. Please, do read earlier in a thread...


We must not presume he would make as faithful adaptation today is what you are saying.
How do you know that would even have been unfaithful? That you'd consider even a hint of non-whiteness in a fictional fantasy world to be "unfaithful" says more about you than it does about Jackson.


Can't wait to see white Black Panther and aboriginal Thor. It will be rad!
Please drop the straw man arguments. You know damn well those stories depend on real-world cultures in a way LOTR doesn't.
 
When it was explicitly tied to Polynesian culture. Please, do read earlier in a thread...



How do you know that would even have been unfaithful? That you'd consider even a hint of non-whiteness in a fictional fantasy world to be "unfaithful" says more about you than it does about Jackson.



Please drop the straw man arguments. You know damn well those stories depend on real-world cultures in a way LOTR doesn't.
Tolkein literally set out to create a national mythology for England and based it off Nordic and Germanic folklore.
 
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Tolkein literally set out to create a national mythology for England and based it off Nordic and Germanic folklore.
He also didn't say "and all the characters must be white." C'mon, the hobbits that represent the English are all short with big, hairy feet... Tolkien was not obsessed with technical accuracy. Besides, shouldn't the humans have a diversity of skin colors if they're going to represent the entire species?

I have to admit I'm getting a bit amused at how some here just can't let it go and wait to see how the series turns out, that skin color is more important to them than, y'know, whether or not the storytelling holds up. Like they've inadvertently opened a window into an ugly part of their psyche while pretending there's nothing wrong. "I'm not racist, but I'm neurotically obsessed with ensuring a favorite franchise is whites-only."
 
People just want to be mad about something. It allows them to talk about how they aren't going to engage with something that's popular. The stuff they grew up with was better. If it wasn't race, it would be something else. The world has been going to shit generation after generation and this one is (of course) the worst yet! They aren't going to watch this just like the fans of Ozzie and Harriet weren't going to watch that horrible Married with Children and fans of Boston couldn't handle "Gangsta Rap" taking over their favorite radio station.
 
He also didn't say "and all the characters must be white." C'mon, the hobbits that represent the English are all short with big, hairy feet... Tolkien was not obsessed with technical accuracy. Besides, shouldn't the humans have a diversity of skin colors if they're going to represent the entire species?

I have to admit I'm getting a bit amused at how some here just can't let it go and wait to see how the series turns out, that skin color is more important to them than, y'know, whether or not the storytelling holds up. Like they've inadvertently opened a window into an ugly part of their psyche while pretending there's nothing wrong. "I'm not racist, but I'm neurotically obsessed with ensuring a favorite franchise is whites-only."
I just don't understand the mental process. To go from excitedly watching a trailer for a tv show then seeing colored people and immediately disliking it and going online to bash it. I thought it looks like it could be entertaining. Which is really all I look for in a show.
 
People just want to be mad about something. It allows them to talk about how they aren't going to engage with something that's popular. The stuff they grew up with was better. If it wasn't race, it would be something else. The world has been going to shit generation after generation and this one is (of course) the worst yet! They aren't going to watch this just like the fans of Ozzie and Harriet weren't going to watch that horrible Married with Children and fans of Boston couldn't handle "Gangsta Rap" taking over their favorite radio station.
I disagree, there are things always better in new generations. However, film making is without question in a serious lull/low-point right now and has been for at least the past 10-15 years. At least when it comes to Hollywood productions. South Korean & Bollywood stuff has been pretty amazing in this Western lull.
 
I just don't understand the mental process. To go from excitedly watching a trailer for a tv show then seeing colored people and immediately disliking it and going online to bash it. I thought it looks like it could be entertaining. Which is really all I look for in a show.
The trailer has WAY more issues than just skin color.
 
Incel outrage is the easiest, sleaziest free marketing any company could ever ask for, impotent outrage keeps the internet talking for no investment. It's free real estate.

Take heart, angry men of the internet! It looks like the goal is to make some Game of Thrones shit in the Tolkien universe. I can't imagine that's going to be much like the novels, which are super simplistic good v bad affairs.

Of course, I think The Lord of The Rings books are kind of shit. I may have a lot less invested in all this glorious drama. I'm enjoying this show though, it's probably way better than the actual show will be.
 
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