Hi there! Hope you're doing well.
I've been paying quite a bit of attention to the Rings of Power series, since I used to watch the original series on at least a bi-annual basis before the advent of streaming services. I should state in advance that I don't really have a whole lot of interest in anything coming out these days. I consider fiction storytelling to be mostly dead and the industry is just trying to pull a "weekend at Bernie's" with the corpse, so my enthusiasm when they announce a new show is... Tempered to say the least. I don't have a large amount of exposure to fiction writing, so perhaps there's some great and popular stuff going on there that ISN'T tied to a much older long running series. I'm just not aware of it presently.
That being said, I have a passing interest in LOTR to the point to listen to what fans of the series have to say. And there doesn't seem to be very much of a positive reaction from a lot of people I respect when it comes to writing and storytelling - or from fans of the original work. I think that the writing and storytelling group probably doesn't have a huge platform of influence as far as the overall population is concerned, but the fans of the original series (and the books) are pretty much everywhere. I mean, LOTR was one of the most commercial successful pieces of literature of all time and the Peter Jackson films some of the highest grossing movies to have existed (return of the king peaked at a 2nd highest grossing movie of all time and still sits at #26 on Wikipedia at least1).
So when there is fan outcry for the series, I'm generally willing to take a listen. Now of course, I see and hear a lot of things online about how it's just another "toxic fandom" intent on just being generally racist. Which, to me, is just getting to be a rather tired argument because generally what I'm hearing from fans has very little to do with the race of the actors. That being said, I can understand where wanting the characters to match the descriptions in the books comes in as well - which goes far deeper than simply their skin color, in my opinion. A most poignant example would be Galadriel's asynchronousity with her character's personality and abilities from the books. In fact, from what I hear, all of the elves from the show are asynchronous with the personality an elf should have.
From the sounds of it, the elves (especially Big G) are overly emotional and unsure of themselves. Which really doesn't make sense for a character who is supposed to be thousands of years old and have been the commander of armies in many conflicts. That doesn't sound like the sort of person who would be inexperienced enough to react emotionally to every little speed bump in their plans or to be indecisive in any way whatsoever. That and apparently Galadriel is some sort of sword wielding berserker now? As far as I'm aware, she was only ever known as one of the most powerful magic users to have ever existed within the elves. Look, here's the first line from the LOTR fandom wiki: "Galadriel possessed a tremendous amount of magical powers, and was said to be the greatest of the Ñoldor after Fëanor."2 In fact, go ahead and read the entire section detailing her powers. There isn't a single mention of her having ever used a sword in that section, or for that matter the entire wiki page (which is literally 12 pages of information about the character, if I ONLY select/print the body text).
It's no wonder that people are upset with how the character is being handled. Honestly if it was just the race of the actors that was asynchronous with the story then it'd probably not be that bad of an issue. It seems to me that fans are more upset about how EVERYTHING about the lore was mishandled, and the characters not matching their in world appearances are just the icing on the cake. And I get where they're coming from to a degree - a HUGE part of the appeal of fantasy is to get immersed into a fantastic world; That's kind of the entire selling point of the genre to be honest. So if you've got a continuity that says "All dwarves have beards, even the women" and you don't follow that continuity, it takes a lot of people out of the fantasy. They start thinking about how that conflicts with what they know about the lore; and every conflict with what they know about the lore takes them further and further from being immersed.
Again, if the lore was done well in general, I don't think it would be a big issue with the fans.
But I don't think it was done well at all.
Here's what I think actually happened. I think the team behind the Rings of Power were far too focused on making a socio-political statement to be bothered with actually telling a story that would appeal to fans and society at large. If it was just the one piece of intellectual property, then perhaps you could get away with calling it a problem with toxic fandom and such. It definitely hasn't just been the Rings of Power that this phenomenon has happened with though. There are tons of examples of popular works being rebooted with the express purpose of doing the story but altering the characters race/gender/sexuality/traits to suit the writer's political ideology - this of course being my opinion from my own observations and not necessarily a fact.
Here's my point with all of that: If you inject your (political) ideology into a piece of fiction, there is going to always be a portion of society that doesn't want to have anything to do with said piece of fiction. It doesn't really matter what side of the issue you are on, it will have an inflammatory effect and it will turn off people to consuming your product. To take a very real example having nothing to do with the current hot topics: I'm sure you have seen or heard of some of those extremely religious versions of movies that have been made in the past. They're extremely divisive for the same reason; and they will never appeal to a mass audience because of it. If you take the same thing and replace the religion with identity politics the same result is going to happen.
Here's the real issue with that though
The people producing these works are not taking a brand new piece of work and using it as a platform for their ideology, they're taking an already extant piece of work with its own set of merits and ALTERING it to be used as a platform for their ideology. It'd be like them taking the original matrix and remaking it but instead of it being the matrix they're in purgatory and under punishment from god, and there's some sort of weird religious loophole that they can use to escape and make it in to heaven or some crap. There would be a ton of people pissed about it, and it would never happen because the backlash would be enormous (and it would be just burning money).
And that's where I suspect the backlash comes from with the fans - They took something beloved by a mass audience and inserted ideology that doesn't have mass appeal.
Here's the interesting thing about it to me though and why I think there's backlash against the skin color of the actors in the RoP: The people producing the movie seem to care more about the color of the skin of the actor, than they do about how they portray the character or tell the story.
and - IS - THAT - NOT - the definition of racism?
You know, judging someone based on the color of their skin and not the content of their character? In my opinion, the people producing the show are showing their racism way more than the fans are in this case.
I don't know, maybe I've stepped in crap here saying that, but I really don't care what color the actors playing in a role are. It's the producers of these shows that are constantly making a big deal of the race of their actors. Like if they just let it be what it is and instead of saying the fans are racist just say "Well, we auditioned hundreds of actors for this role and this person just did such an amazing job during their reading we knew it was the right fit."
But they didn't do that. They know they didn't do that, and they haven't even thought to tell that lie because they don't understand why people would disagree with their ideology. It seems like they thought this would be an appropriate and effective way to promote their ideology. To use these actors as tools to push a message. I think it's THAT part that turns fans off way more than "oh that person isn't white".
I feel like they actually do not care one single iota about telling a good story or captivating an audience.
If they want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and all that energy to buy the rights to a beloved franchise and use it to send a political statement to the people who enjoy it, by all means.
I don't care.
Hire whoever you want to fill those roles, use your own strategy of choosing.
I really don't care.
Change every single bit of lore, change the appearance of every single character. In fact, go ahead and make sure there aren't any men or white people involved in the production at all.
I really, really don't care.
Here's the thing:
If the story is good
and the characters are compelling
and the world is fantastic
and the visuals are awe inspiring
and the drama is entertaining
I will watch it.
And if too much of that is wrong:
I will not watch it.
Simple as that.
Getting away from all the disgusting identity politics stuff: All I think that they did is taken a beloved franchise that they know will have a lot of viewers regardless of what they do with it and hoped that would carry them through all of those difficult to master story telling aspects, so that all they needed to do was focus on sending a message into the world and inserting their own ideologies into it. That's all I think they've done. There's really not much in the Silmarillion that makes me think it should have ever been adapted into a film to begin with, but hey - they can attach "the lord of the rings" to a turd sandwich and people will probably flock to go see it. So maybe they'll make a decent chunk of money on it. You know, a lot less than they could have, but still a win in business anyways. I probably won't be watching the show anytime soon though. The state of fiction has gotten so bad in my eyes that I won't watch a show until I've heard great things about it from a reasonably large portion of the population. I don't expect to hear anything like that about this show. - they're sitting at a nice 39% on rotten tomatoes (audience score - the only score that matters anymore). I could be wrong. That has yet to be seen. Anyways, sigh Thanks for coming by, Image Sources: References:
The Original trilogy transported you to another world. That was their focus.
I don't think they put forth any effort into making sure the story matched the lore of either the books or the original movie trilogy.
I don't think that they put any effort into making sure their characters actions made any sense with their lore.
and I don't think they put a whole lot of effort into writing a compelling story.
and if I am I will be happy about it.
and I really should be proven wrong based on the amount of money spent on it. Their budget should be enough to hire competent people.
But I doubt I will be proven wrong.
Here's to another successful, purposeful controversy!
Here's to another show I probably won't watch!
https://www.pexels.com/@vincent-ma-janssen/
https://www.pexels.com/@bence-kondor-1188017/
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films
2: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Galadriel#Powers