LOTR: the new series comes like the in rushing sea to Númenor:

[Arakan]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

To be clear, I think it's fair to point out the casting is at least in part cynical corporate virtue signaling.  That's hard to deny.  It's just that's still preferable to maintaining an all-white cast for one of the most popular IPs in the world.  And I don't see any reason to get all bent out of shape about it.

Let’s try to find common ground: I agree. All white casts would be horrible. But what Amazon/Bezos have done is the laziest and most cynical of all paths. Invent some random characters and make them POC. And in doing so contradicting the world building of Tolkien. It took me less than 10 minutes to find better ways to include POC not only as a few token characters, but potentially much more characters, with a meaningful mature storyline and great narrative possibilities.

I would have respected Amazon if they had the balls to make the Noldor (for example) an all-black or all-Far East Asian Elven tribe/folk. But as it is it’s just a „feel good“ shallow exercise as all the main characters are still white anyway and only invented characters are non-white. That’s pseudo-brave and typical for a company like Amazon. 

[Clueless Northman]

24 minutes ago, DMC said:

To be clear, I think it's fair to point out the casting is at least in part cynical corporate virtue signaling.  That's hard to deny.  It's just that's still preferable to maintaining an all-white cast for one of the most popular IPs in the world. 

There might be a small issue of consistency, not with the books, but actually with the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies: we've seen plenty of Elves from Lorien and Mirkwood, and we've seen plenty of Dwarves from Blue, Misty and Iron Mountains. Granted, you might argue that there's an even farther dark-skinned Dwarven people, but it'd be a bit weird that they didn't show up in the Hobbit movies. As for Elves, we even had a few shots from the Last Alliance; we'd have to assume that dark-skinned Elves live even farther and were mostly wiped out by Sauron by then, because there definitely weren't that many in Lorien. Hopefully, the series will at least give indirect indications as to where they come from.

Time compression of course is the biggest issue, it just makes no sense and is a complete betrayal of the source material.

[Arakan]

1 minute ago, Clueless Northman said:

There might be a small issue of consistency, not with the books, but actually with the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies: we've seen plenty of Elves from Lorien and Mirkwood, and we've seen plenty of Dwarves from Blue, Misty and Iron Mountains. Granted, you might argue that there's an even farther dark-skinned Dwarven people, but it'd be a bit weird that they didn't show up in the Hobbit movies. As for Elves, we even had a few shots from the Last Alliance; we'd have to assume that dark-skinned Elves live even farther and were mostly wiped out by Sauron by then, because there definitely weren't that many in Lorien. Hopefully, the series will at least give indirect indications as to where they come from.

Time compression of course is the biggest issue, it just makes no sense and is a complete betrayal of the source material.

With the dwarves that’s not that big of a deal actually as all the dwarves we have seen so far (with the exception of the battle of Nanduhirion 2799) are of Durin‘s folk. The 6 other tribes of the dwarves are not really part of Tolkien‘s story (battle of Dagorlad is another exception). 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Arakan said:

And in doing so contradicting the world building of Tolkien. It took me less than 10 minutes to find better ways to include POC not only as a few token characters, but potentially much more characters, with a meaningful mature storyline and great narrative possibilities.

I don't think anyone has a problem with the proposal you made, it sounds fine.  It's just, ya know, not what the show is.  And I wholeheartedly agree with polishgenius that continuing to have elves be all-white is a major problem in this day and age, and consequently part of Tolkien's world building that does need to be contradicted.

7 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

There might be a small issue of consistency, not with the books, but actually with the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies: we've seen plenty of Elves from Lorien and Mirkwood, and we've seen plenty of Dwarves from Blue, Misty and Iron Mountains.

Sure.  Be interesting to see how they address it or if they do.

7 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Time compression of course is the biggest issue

Sounds like we can all agree on this.  Or at least how much they're apparently compressing it.

[Clueless Northman]

Yeah, compressing it to several centuries, a couple of Numenorean kings' generations at least, is required. The more the better imho, because Numenor was quite benevolent when the Rings were forged and had become a dark place by the time of Pharazon.

As for the all-white Elves being a problem, I'm not sure it's required that all Tolkien races should have massive diversity, and I'm not sure that taking Avari as "dark elves" so literally is clever, but well, we'll see. Even with various kinds hominids, we can't be sure that we had the kind of variations current shows seem to seek - after all, our Homo Sapiens ancestors were all dark-skinned 40K years ago.

[Arakan]

As of right now, the Rings of Power Teaser has roughly 19 million views on YouTube, with only 84k likes (and at least 60k dislikes, likely multiple times more). 

For comparison: the new Doctor Strange Trailer stands at roughly 32 million views and 1.6 million likes. 

Forget about dislikes and comment section but almost 20 million views and less than 100k likes should make Amazon a bit nervous…

After massive backlash, Netflix had cancelled Cowboy Bebop after just one season. Could they same happen here?

 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

I'm not sure it's required that all Tolkien races should have massive diversity, and I'm not sure that taking Avari as "dark elves" so literally is clever, but well, we'll see.

Don't think anyone's calling for "massive" diversity, just some diversity is required.  And yeah, again I agree with PG, using the Avari in such a way is a solution that's worse than the problem.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

30 minutes ago, Arakan said:

With the dwarves that’s not that big of a deal actually as all the dwarves we have seen so far (with the exception of the battle of Nanduhirion 2799) are of Durin‘s folk. The 6 other tribes of the dwarves are not really part of Tolkien‘s story (battle of Dagorlad is another exception). 

Btw Lotro has non-white show up at the Battle of Azanulbizar

[Arakan]

Just now, DMC said:

Don't think anyone's calling for "massive" diversity, just some diversity is required.  And yeah, again I agree with PG, using the Avari in such a way is a solution that's worse than the problem.

But that’s illogical and inconsistent. There was no real ethnical or „racial“ diversity within specific tribes, neither in Tolkien‘s lore nor in real world Germanic/Norse counterparts. It would have been much better, consistency wise to make all Sindar/Nandor or Noldor non-white. 

Not only would that be much more logical but it would also be really brave and a true Statement. As it stands now, Amazon was just box checking in the most cynical and lazy manner: inventing characters and making them black. IMO that’s even insulting.

[Arakan]

6 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Btw Lotro has non-white show up at the Battle of Azanulbizar

Yeah, for the dwarves it should be easy to integrate a multi-ethnic cast. We only ever interact with dwarves of Durin‘s folk and there are still six others out there. They could be played by anykind of non-white characters. As long as they are consistent. 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Arakan said:

But that’s illogical and inconsistent. There was no real ethnical or „racial“ diversity within specific tribes, neither in Tolkien‘s lore nor in real world Germanic/Norse counterparts.

Again, I'm not arguing it's inconsistent, I just think it's necessary.  Think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree here. 

And as for being "illogical," I really don't think logic applies when we're talking about a fictional race in a fictional universe.  If you're gonna insert diversity into a fictional race that was canonical homogenous, I think it's much more ideal to spread that diversity across the allocated "tribes" within that race than segregating them into only one.  Especially considering there's a very clear hierarchy between the tribes when it comes to the elves.

[fionwe1987]

5 hours ago, Arakan said:

Why not integrate a whole people of POC with the Haradrim and show how fucked up Numenorean imperialism was from their perspective? How it basically pushed them into Saurons arms? 

As someone born in a former British colony, I think outrage might be too mild a word if I'm to buy a story that imperialism drove an entire people to worshipping the devil and serving him. 

Sure, Numenorians ended up serving him too, but not all did. 

5 hours ago, Arakan said:

This would have been brave, subversive, empowering story telling…but maybe too close to home, after all Amazon is one of the biggest status quo supporting mega corporations…

Empowering? 

There's no way to depict Numenorian imperialism without also changing the notion that somehow everyone who was and Easterling or Haradrim simply allied themselves with Sauron. 

That kind of reduction to unnuanced  sameness is at the core of the issue in the books. Your proposal, as you present it, only deepens the issue. 

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, Arakan said:

And you know better because I know that you love Tolkien.

I love my dad too but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge and challenge it when he says some bullshit he believes coz of the context of his age and the place he grew up in. 

[Arakan]

3 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

As someone born in a former British colony, I think outrage might be too mild a word if I'm to buy a story that imperialism drove an entire people to worshipping the devil and serving him. 

Sure, Numenorians ended up serving him too, but not all did. 

Empowering? 

There's no way to depict Numenorian imperialism without also changing the notion that somehow everyone who was and Easterling or Haradrim simply allied themselves with Sauron. 

That kind of reduction to unnuanced  sameness is at the core of the issue in the books. Your proposal, as you present it, only deepens the issue. 

Sorry but that’s the biggest nonsense argumentation I have ever seen with regards to Tolkien. Like 100%. Guess what? The Haradrim and Easterlings WERE Sauron’s vassals. They DID serve him. And ALL of this was already shown in the movies…no notion has to be changed at all (do you actually know LOTR? honest question)

How can it not be better to show how the ACTIONS and wrongdoings of one imperial power led to that situation, which is 100% codified anyway. 

Thats like saying: show me all the atrocities committed by the FLN against French civilians but please do not give me any context whatsoever and ignore everything the French did or what their goals were. And calling this balanced history teaching. Yeah, right….

[Ran]

9 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

It is definitely interesting that so far none of the canon (presumably) main characters are POC, is it not?

I was thinking about this all and what would actually have been bold would have been to do a Hamilton and simply cast pretty much everyone from minority groups only. Then it really doesn't matter because by changing everything they're just making it a non-issue (lore wise) by letting you know it doesn't really matter, while of course mattering a great deal to the dozens of actors who'll get these roles, especially those getting big breaks in major lead roles. It would be to fantasy television what Black Panther was to cinema. If they hadn't done screwy narrative and character stuff, I might even have watched it.  That 90% of the cast is white and that those who aren't are playing invented characters does make it all feel like a cold calculation about audiences rather than something that is integral to the story they want to tell.

Lets be real here: we're talking about a $500 million dollar commercial production run by two white men, mostly written by white men and women, with departments headed mostly by white men and women, in the employment of a company created and run by a very wealthy white man, based on the works of a dead white man who was inspired by the myths of white Europe. Half a dozen minority actors are, by comparison, simply a PR exercise; good for the actors and their dependents, almost entirely unimportant to almost everyone else in the world in the grand scheme of things. 

Surely it would be better for real diversity in the genre and on television to take the position that this LotR show is just more of the status quo, and that that money would have been better spent adapting works created by, run by, written by, and performed by minorities. That money could have funded five, six, even seven Underground Railroads.  Adapting Octavia Butler, Marlon James, Yoon Ha Lee, Rebecca Roanhorse, etc. would be meaningful moves in terms of diversity and representation in a way that sprinkling a handful of minority actors into LotR can never be. (And I say this as someone who finally sees a fellow Latino in LotR, so I am ostensibly a beneficiary of this corporate interest in diversity and representation. Guess how much that affects my day to day life or general sense of well-being?)

@Calibandar

I feel strongly that it'll be Sauron, but they'll play him up as maybe being Gandalf for a time.

[Arakan]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

I was thinking about this all and what would actually have been bold would have been to do a Hamilton and simply cast pretty much everyone from minority groups only. Then it really doesn't matter because by changing everything they're just making it a non-issue (lore wise) by letting you know it doesn't really matter, while of course mattering a great deal to the dozens of actors who'll get these roles, especially those getting big breaks in major lead roles.

Correct. The so called diversity is fake and smokescreen and they expect applause and standing ovations for this fakeness. And it’s telling that in todays (social) media climate so many people, even longtime members here, are falling for this PR BS. 

Its telling and somehow sad that even here, people are willing to sacrifice Tolkien‘s lore consistency for diversity tokenism when such tokenism was already condescendingly insulting 30 years ago. 

Inventing characters and making those invented, most expendable characters POC is the most lazy, most cynic, most self-aggrandizing, patting themselves on the back, self-righteous way to actually „do“ something with regards to inclusion and ethnic diversity. 

[Arakan]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

I love my dad too but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge and challenge it when he says some bullshit he believes coz of the context of his age and the place he grew up in. 

Strawman. I explicitly showed better ways (make all the Noldor black for example) to increase diversity within the world much more (and still being consistent) than just inventing random, expendable characters and making them POC. So my proposals actually go way beyond what you applaud as „diversity“ (better term: tokenism) but still you try to gaslight me as the one against „diversity“. I dont know what you are actually arguing for or against. Doesn’t compute. 

[DMC]

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

That 90% of the cast is white and that those who aren't are playing invented characters does make it all feel like a cold calculation about audiences rather than something that is integral to the story they want to tell.

I don't think this is fair.  Just scrolling through the cast on imdb it looks like about 8 to 10 of 38 names listed are POC.  And while I agree the fact all of the POC characters we know about are invented isn't a good look, I still got the impression at least "Bronwyn" and "Arondir" will play very significant roles and be part of the "main" cast.  Probably the Dwarven princess too.  And while I agree it'd be more interesting if they cast a minority as, say, Galadriel, let's not pretend they wouldn't have caught much more shit for doing so and everyone knows it - including the studio.

[Ran]

Oh, so it's 80%... now, but there's a lot more roles to be announced, and they seem to have shot their shot when it comes to the primary POC performers in the show (I think there's only one other POC of note from the character teaser posters who I don't think has been revealed yet). Just glance at scenes in the trailer with other performers as yet unnamed (for example, the old dwarf lords when Durin IV break the rock, or the high-res image of Gil-galad meeting other elves). 

The fact that they avoided doing something actually meaningful like cast canon characters such as Galadriel or Elrond with actors of other ethnicities just underscores that they're not being brave and they're not interested in rocking the boat, that it's a commercial decision more than an artistic one. 

I think an all-PoC LotR would be cool. We had our mostly-canon-accurate take in Jackson's film and past cartoons, it's fair enough to start treating it like Shakespeare and just go wild with it. That they don't, and then people act as if they're doing something that isn't literally the safest possible thing they can do today, is bizarre to me. There's nothing principled about the show's casting. It's all commerce-driven. Bravery would either have been to stick to Tolkien's canon despite the relative paucity of people who'll loudly complain on social media, or to throw it out the window and actually say something about reimagining art.

 

 

[Lord Varys]

I must say, I don't view the Jackson movies as good adaptations of LotR. There are good elements there - production value, acting, wardrobe, landscape, effects - but the actual writing is pretty bad when they invent new material. Jackson's childish humor has no place in Middle-earth, most, if not all, the artificial arcs they came up with for the core characters suck (Aragorn the reluctant king, Théoden the Moron, the Frodo-Sam conflict in RotK, Elrond the Man-hater (a completely ridiculous idea), the Ents being complete morons, the travesty that's Denethor, the Barad-dûr Lighthouse, etc.

How bad the writing is can also be drawn from silly results like the over-use and subsequent disappearance of Saruman from the plot. In FotR Christopher Lee seems to be literally in every single villain scene and then they literally cut his death from the original cut of RotK. [Not to mention that this death scene is utterly ridiculous in itself, cutting the weird element of the Maia spirit form rising from the disintegrating corpse.]

Over-emphasizing the role of Helm's Deep turns TTT into a shitshow. I mean, cutting the Shelob's Lair cliffhanger from TTT is something that makes absolutely no sense. The same with them failing to make the finale of the other plotline the final confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf at Orthanc. Considering how Saruman was played up as a threat in FotR he, as a person, was much more threatening than his army of mindless Orcs.

I'm still at a loss as to what exactly went wrong in the pre-production process there when they decided to shove basically the second half of TTT into the the third movie, filling the gaps in the material with a lot of invented scenes and drawn-out 45 minutes battle.

Also, it is completely weird how they could cut/ruin things like the confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch-king at the gates of Minas Tirith.

In relation to the new show, I think, we can pretty much stop discussing the thing as a Tolkien adaptation. If they truly have no rights to UT material (or the Akallabêth from the published Silmarillion) then whatever they come up with couldn't be *that* faithful to Tolkien's material anyway.

They could give us the gist of Eregion plot and the gist of the Númenor story, remaining faithful to Tolkien's overall outline and the meaning of the story (which is basically the second fall of both Elves and Men), but if we get down to detailed scenes they would have to invent pretty much everything themselves. They couldn't use stuff which would be directly based on dialogue we get from the UT or the Silmarillion.