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

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Others might however consider Tolkien's work to be pro-monarchist and problematic. If a work having problematic elements justifies changes in the adaptation, why should a Tolkien adaptation not implement changes to get rid of the pro-monarchist elements? What makes your opinion more "right" then theirs?

Varys (lol irony that Lord Varys is councelling against a monarchy) and fionwe already gave good answers to this, but I'd also add this: your scenario doesn't beg a question of representation like the ones we are discussing. I'm close enough to being the person you described there that I've made comment here and there in the past about the continued prevalence of bloodline-exceptionalist kingship in hero stories- Aquaman and Black Panther for example - and I don't think the concept itself is good. But it doesn't discriminate against whole ethnicities and groups of people by either not showing them or depicting them as empirically worse than another group as a whole.
Add to this, although yes Tolkien indulged in the bloodline right and goodness thing, a huge part of the entire point of LotR is that people seen as 'lesser', smaller, not important are in fact just as important.

Thirdly: adding PoC to the story doesn't really change much about the whole story, whereas making Gondor a republic would pretty much make LotR an impossible story to tell. If you're at that point, you'd really just be advocating for it never to be retold at all. Which isn't an invalid viewpoint but it's a bit at the extreme end of things.


So while my opinion isn't more inherently 'right' than that of the person you posited, I just don't think that position has much relevance to a viable modern adaptation of LotR.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Olorin is a Maia of Fire

Wasn’t Olorin a Maia of Dream under Irmo in Lorien (Valinor’s Lorien)?  The “Maia of Fire” are the Balrogs who were Melkors minons.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

I suppose, as others said, it's only that there isn't exactly a strong pro-monarchy drive anywhere in the world. 

Many people do think that there is a big pro-authoritarianism drive in the world and monarcy can be counted as a authoritarian  system

32 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

But it doesn't discriminate against whole ethnicities and groups of people by either not showing them or depicting them as empirically worse than another group as a whole.

But are the vast majority of characters in Tolkien's not nobles or otherwise people of a higher social standing (Samwise being the exception). Does that not imply that they matter most?

32 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

hirdly: adding PoC to the story doesn't really change much about the whole story,

But apparently they do change something about it otherwise there would not be such a push.

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, Arakan said:

Regarding elves: there are still the Avari out there! Why not use them as a whole people instead of a random character?

The characters of Arondir and Bronwyn are from the "Southlands" and Bronwyn is from the village of Tirharad, which indicates a location in the south, so near Harad. Arondir is identified as a Silvan Elf, probably of Nandor descent, and perhaps descended from the intermingling of the Nandor and Avari that Tolkien identifies took place in the Vale of Anduin long before even the Ruin of Beleriand.

Or, to put it another way, they've already addressed the origin of some of the POC using book-appropriate explanations.

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

Cowboy Bebop went over its budget by an absolutely staggering amount due to the shutdown caused by John Cho breaking his foot, the COVID shutdown and then the COVID precautions when they came back to start shooting again. Given the show's lack of marketing and its apparent commercial failure on release (not cracking the Netflix Top Ten and apparently being massively out-viewed by Wheel of Time on the same day on the less-watched Amazon Prime service), it being cancelled was not a huge surprise. The alacrity of the cancellation shows that Netflix had probably already decided to kill it, the only reason they hadn't already was in case they got absolutely massive viewing figures (the same issue as Y: The Last Man, for that matter).

I have no doubt that The Rings of Power, at least the first episode, will have a far, far bigger audience. The combined 250 million views of the trailer is a clear sign of that. The dropoff will be interesting.

More prosaically, no, because they start shooting Season 2 in a matter of weeks, if not days, and it will by mostly in the can long before Season 1 drops.

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As someone who enjoys seeing scientific accuracy in fiction, I think they should change Tolkien's completely ridiculous world creation events. The sun formed first, then Arda, then its moon, and so on.

 

I'd be down with that, because Tolkien himself eventually concluded that it was silly and he was going to change it himself. But I believe it was one of the last big changes he decided on, just a short while before his death, and he never implemented it. It would have also required a near Page-One rewrite of The Silmarillion, but given all the other changes he wanted to make (to names, to the orc origin story, making Galadriel and Elrond more prominent etc), it appears it's what he wanted to do.

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So I guess your answer is that change is fine until it is not and that the needs of the audience does not factor into it?

There's no such thing as "the needs of the audience" as a singular entity. There's millions of individuals who will go into this with wildly varying levels of interest and knowledge of the source material, and they will like it or not.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There's no such thing as "the needs of the audience" as a singular entity.

Never claimed that. However this whole thing was started the claim

On 2/15/2022 at 4:34 PM, mormont said:

That's how storytelling works, folks. A storyteller who idolises the original author and has no regard for the audience is a bad storyteller. 

Which implies to me that the adapter needs to consider their audience. I was asking how far this is supposed to go. For example: Should PJ have changed Shelob's appearance for the sake the arachnophobes in the audience. Their experience could have been improved by that after all.

[Raja]

9 hours ago, DMC said:

But so what?  That's no reason to impugn the producers for constructing a cast that's generally as representative as many if not most other shows.  Certainly, most other shows wouldn't receive such scrutiny if they had a cast with such a racial makeup.

Agreed. I also think if we waited for a certain percentage of the producers or the show runners to be people of colour before deciding 'yes, we should cast people of colour' then we wouldn't be able to cast people in *so*  many things because guess what? Hollywood is still very white ( and male) especially behind the camera and even more so when it comes to heads of studios etc

LOTR, James Bond, Star Wars etc are institutions when it comes to film & Art, and people of colour will forever be gatekept from these institutions if we wait for a certain percentage showrunners, producers or directors to be people of colour in these institutions before casting people of colour

Now, you might say we people of colour deserve their own Art/ instutions/ IP and we should be seeking to create *new* IP that are more diverse than the ones I've mentioned above, but that ignores the fact the studio system will always bet on these institutions given their legacy, and the money that goes into them just doesn't go into new IP, by and large.

You can use the same tired old arugments brought up in this thread indefinately to gatekeep people like me from being cast in these shows, and it has been indeed disappointing to see that here again, but people of colour deserve to see themselves in these institutions of film and art that we have historically not been a part of.

[Ran]

25 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Tolkien himself eventually concluded that it was silly

He was wrong. It wasn't silly. It was astonishingly beautiful. It's only "silly" because of the pretense of trying to match it to our real cosmology, but he wasn't planning to incorporate evolution, so what was the point? CT was right when he acknowledged that his father got increasingly stuck in minutae and dead-ends. He was not, in his final years, the creator that he was in his most vital years. 

[Clueless Northman]

8 hours ago, The hairy bear said:

The thing about Hamilton is that its diverse cast works very well with the theme that the revolutionaries were a mish mash of oppressed immigrants from different origins that joined together to fight for a common cause (it's not by chance that the only 'white' member of the original cast plays King George).

And this is the, imho, totally insane US view of "race". "non-white" basically means "non-Anglo". Pretty much anyone outside the US would consider a lot of Puerto Rican people (and basically most Latino people) as "white/caucasian", because that's definitely their primary ancestry. Heck, I'm always amazed to consider that Obama, who's mixed race and only half-Black and truly half-White, actually has blacker skin than a lot of people considered as "Black" by the US.

With that kind of uber-racist and insanely limited view of race, one could consider Spanish or Italian people as non-White. White doesn't mean blonde with blue eyes, FFS, most White people actually have brown eyes and darkish hair.

2 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Harad all followed Sauron, no dissention, no contradictory voices deciding it doesn't make sense to make a deal with the devil just because he offers strength against the Numenorian colonisers?

Humans under colonial rule, of any skin color, do not make pan-societal deals with the devil. It is hugely offensive to suggest otherwise, and beliefs in that kind of nonsense was used to justify colonial rule in the first place. Yet this kind of depiction of the Haradrim is what you suggest is a way out increase diversity in the show?

It's not that all Harad people decided to worship Sauron because Numenor was bad to them. Some of them picked the other tough guy in the hope he'll defend them and would be less oppressive. Besides, odds are that they actually sided with Annatar, not with Sauron in full bad guy regalia. Since there are so many episodes, some secondary plot with Haradrim showing how torn they were, how even well-meaning people could end up siding with Sauron instead of Numenor, would've been good.

We even have Faramir pondering the dead Haradrim, assuming he wasn't a bad guy but one who was taken by evil leaders and sent far away to make war. Not all Germans serving in the Wehrmacht were baby-eating Nazis; not every Red Army soldier was a genuine Stalinist. It's just that at some point, most people living under an autocratic militaristic regime have not much choice - and Tolkien didn't elaborate much on this point because he hadn't any Haradrim as characters, so of course they appeared just like your random Mongol or Hun would appear in some Western ancient story reporting past invasions. If movies or series actually implied that the entire people from Harad or Rhun or wherever were fully evil, I would be very annoyed.

Thankfully, late Numenor, specially Ar-Pharazôn, is a great way of showing there are plenty of evil shits among White people of Middle-Earth; eventually, the bulk of Numenoreans turned to Sauron and despised the Valar - and were punished accordingly.

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

We even have Faramir pondering the dead Haradrim

Samwise, not Faramir. But that was a touching scene, and I think belies this idea that the Haradrim were evil people. There was nothing innately evil in them that doesn't exist in every other group of men -- the Edain included. 

There's a quote somewhere, probably in the Letters, where Tolkien suggests that the Men in his story are just like Men in our world, with the same foibles and flaws. This would go for everybody.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

59 minutes ago, Ran said:

Samwise, not Faramir. But that was a touching scene, and I think belies this idea that the Haradrim were evil people. There was nothing innately evil in them that doesn't exist in every other group of men -- the Edain included. 

There's a quote somewhere, probably in the Letters, where Tolkien suggests that the Men in his story are just like Men in our world, with the same foibles and flaws. This would go for everybody.

 

Faramir speaks over the body, not Sam (in thr film at least)

[Corvinus85]

18 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Faramir speaks over the body, not Sam (in thr film at least)

In the film yes, in the book it's Sam.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Faramir speaks over the body, not Sam (in thr film at least)

That’s Sam in the books.  Books are canon.

[SeanF]

@The Marquis de Leech once asked why would more or less decent people serve the Dark Lord.  The answer is because they've been wronged by the "good guys" in the past, and the envoys of the Dark Lord promise them redress.

The Dunlendings were driven out of Western Rohan, as one of the Rohirrim notes during the Battle of Helms Deep, and no doubt the process involved considerable bloodshed (as well as, no doubt, intermarriage and peaceful co-existence at some times and places);  Gondorean kings who called themselves "South Conqueror" or "East Conqueror" were almost certainly not gentle to the defeated;  some of the Rohirrim hunted the Druedain for sport. And Numenorean imperialism was exploitative, long before they turned to the worship of Morgoth.  Numenor's tax farmers and moneylenders were probably as rapacious towards the subject peoples as those of the Romans, even if they refrained from enslavement until the last years of Ar Pharazon. 

I don't think there's any reason to believe that the peoples of Harad or Khand were any better or worse, overall, than the peoples of Gondor and Rohan.

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

But, I think one could explore - through what is essentially a piece of fan fiction - that the people of Harad etc. actually have very genuine grievances against the Numenoreans.  Nor do I think it would be untrue to the author’s intent, given his views on imperialism.

That one could certainly do. One could also have one of the future Nazgûl as a good and honest prince who ends up getting his Ring and falling under Sauron's sway without realizing that he has been duped until it is far too late.

But as you say - that would be fan fiction.

We should assume that Tolkien had a reason to not bother fleshing out the Haradrim and Easterlings. It is quite telling that he never even bothered creating actually countries for them but just calls them collectively Southrons and Easterlings. He isn't interested in them. Period.

Insofar as the ethnic hierarchy in Tolkien's works is concerned I feel confident saying that Tolkien admitted that the folks in North-west were not completely corrupt, etc. Tal-Elmar seems to be pretty much an oddball in his community, a man in whom the 'old blood' is stronger than in the others ... which is why he his tall, fair-skinned, and fair-haired, unlike his family and peers. That is pretty telling, actually.

But even if Tal-Elmar's entire community were good guys in the end ... they are still men living in the North-west. They aren't Haradrim or Easterlings. And we have no reason to believe that Tolkien viewed the Haradrim or the Easterlings in a similar manner (or the real world ethnicities and cultures they are based on) as he viewed folks who may be somewhat related to the Númenóreans.

Intuitively I'd say that Tolkien definitely viewed Sauron's followers as human - which is why they are not dehumanized and treated like Orcs - but they are still heathens and primitives who need the strong hand of Aragorn to abandon their heresy and corruption and stop worshipping the devil. They are not really treated like equals by the Dúnedain and their allies - after all. even the Rohirrim are aware that they are not as worthy or capable or great as the Dúnedain, so the idea that Sauron's lackeys would be treated like them or better is not very likely.

It is a mistake of the reader, I think, to assume that the author agrees with his most noble characters. It is a sign of moral excellence that Frodo forgives Saruman and Gríma - but Tolkien doesn't. He kills them both. Manwe is morally excellent because he doesn't understand evil ... but Tolkien thinks a fallen world needs a warrior like Tulkas to deal with Melkor.

I'm pretty sure as a good little Catholic he also thought the light of the gospel should be brought to primitives and heathens - and in the end that's one root of colonialism, and one Tolkien would likely never view as a bad thing.

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

Actually, I’d find it entirely believable that people on the receiving end of Numenorean/Gondorean/Rohirric aggression would view Sauron or Saruman as the lesser evil.  

All of them? 

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

The Finns and Balts allied with the Germans in WWII, because of their grievances against the Soviets, for example. And plenty of people who had no love for communism saw the Soviets as preferable to the Nazis.

Again, this isn't true for every single citizen of any land. 

That's the problem with Tolkien's work. Anyone of color is the "other" who gets lumped into one big blob that he uses as convenient allies of the enemy who make the lives of out noble heroes harder. They are not characters with motives and goals that he cares to explore. 

You can claim all you want that exploring these lands in greater detail is somehow more true to Tolkien that what the show is doing, but it is not. And you can claim it's a better way to increase representation, but as long as the show treats it as canon that all the Haradrim and Easterlings supported Sauron in the Third Age, Sam's musings on the lone soldier notwithstanding, then it would be perpetuating that flaw. 

[SeanF]

17 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That one could certainly do. One could also have one of the future Nazgûl as a good and honest prince who ends up getting his Ring and falling under Sauron's sway without realizing that he has been duped until it is far too late.

But as you say - that would be fan fiction.

We should assume that Tolkien had a reason to not bother fleshing out the Haradrim and Easterlings. It is quite telling that he never even bothered creating actually countries for them but just calls them collectively Southrons and Easterlings. He isn't interested in them. Period.

Insofar as the ethnic hierarchy in Tolkien's works is concerned I feel confident saying that Tolkien admitted that the folks in North-west were not completely corrupt, etc. Tal-Elmar seems to be pretty much an oddball in his community, a man in whom the 'old blood' is stronger than in the others ... which is why he his tall, fair-skinned, and fair-haired, unlike his family and peers. That is pretty telling, actually.

But even if Tal-Elmar's entire community were good guys in the end ... they are still men living in the North-west. They aren't Haradrim or Easterlings. And we have no reason to believe that Tolkien viewed the Haradrim or the Easterlings in a similar manner (or the real world ethnicities and cultures they are based on) as he viewed folks who may be somewhat related to the Númenóreans.

Intuitively I'd say that Tolkien definitely viewed Sauron's followers as human - which is why they are not dehumanized and treated like Orcs - but they are still heathens and primitives who need the strong hand of Aragorn to abandon their heresy and corruption and stop worshipping the devil. They are not really treated like equals by the Dúnedain and their allies - after all. even the Rohirrim are aware that they are not as worthy or capable or great as the Dúnedain, so the idea that Sauron's lackeys would be treated like them or better is not very likely.

It is a mistake of the reader, I think, to assume that the author agrees with his most noble characters. It is a sign of moral excellence that Frodo forgives Saruman and Gríma - but Tolkien doesn't. He kills them both. Manwe is morally excellent because he doesn't understand evil ... but Tolkien thinks a fallen world needs a warrior like Tulkas to deal with Melkor.

I'm pretty sure as a good little Catholic he also thought the light of the gospel should be brought to primitives and heathens - and in the end that's one root of colonialism, and one Tolkien would likely never view as a bad thing.

Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman are very plainly in the wrong, and fighting for them is clearly fighting on the wrong side.  But, I think there’s plenty of evidence that those who fight against them have plenty of moral flaws of their own, and have perpetrated a lot of injustice themselves.

[Ser Drewy]

TORN did a Q&A with Vanity Fair about the show.

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

but as long as the show treats it as canon that all the Haradrim and Easterlings supported Sauron in the Third Age

All Easterlings and Haradrim surely did not support Sauron in the Second Age and Third Age. Tolkien envisioned that groups of Easterlings and Southrons did in fact resist him, helped in some cases by the Blue Wizards, and that their resistance reduced the numbers of Men who Sauron were able to send to war against Middle-earth.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That’s Sam in the books.  Books are canon.

The TV series that’s the subject of this thread begs to differ

[The Marquis de Leech]

Is LOTR monarchist? Sure. Except that it doesn't advocate replacing republics (or other systems) with a monarchy. Gondor is already a de jure monarchy - as ruled de facto by a different dynasty. Denethor is not advocating republicanism, any more than Sauron is advocating liberty, fraternity, and equality. You can't call something monarchist propaganda when monarchy is the default setting.

(Meanwhile, Aragorn is notably keen on self-government. No Man may enter the Shire. The Ents and Woses get similar autonomy. Et cetera).