Close to a billion dollars. How's the new LOTR? (Page 2/2)
ls3mach SEP 05, 07:32 PM

quote
Originally posted by Raydar:


Apparently some of the reviewers are trashing the "diversity" of the production.
They're being called "trolls", and the reviews have been shut down, until the mods can kill the "troll" comments. Sounds fair to me.

Me? Haven't seen it. Probably won't. Don't have streaming capability, just now.



It isn't diverse enough? I'm old, but what am I missing? Transvestite hobbits? Frodo and Bilbo were totally gay, so I guess.
olejoedad SEP 08, 07:19 PM
I've watched the first two episodes three times.
It's well done, and based on Tolkien's work.
The time period is much earlier than The Hobbit and TROTK, and the story line concerns the creation of the Rings of Power.
As for the 'diversity' criticism, it's overblown so far, IMHO.
Jonesy SEP 10, 03:55 PM
It takes place during the "2nd Age".. Which is the time period before "The Hobbit & LOTR".. Basically if you remember at the beginning of "Fellowship of the Ring" (the first in Jacksons's trilogy) there was a massive battle going on, and Sauron had the one ring cut from his finger. That was basically the ending of the 2nd age, and the Hobbit and LOTR books happen a few thousand years later.

Tolkien never wrote actual books on what happened during the 1st and 2nd ages of middle earth.. Just letters he wrote, giving some basic details of the "main events" of those era's. And also personal details about some of the characters. Like Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, are all Maiar (angelic like beings from beyond) and not humans or elves, or dwarves. So the writers of the Amazon series don't have much material to work with. So I'd say about 25% of the story (the main overall plot, and some character details) are Tolkien's work. Everything else is being made up by the show's writers.

There has been some backlash about a lot of the changes the writers have made to some of Tolkien's characters. Like having black elves, when there were none before, but apparently there is only one, which i find strange. Making Elrond the king of the elves gay for some reason, and showing female dwarves in the show, and making them quite feminine. Part of Tolkien's lore for the dwarves was nobody was quite sure female dwarves existed, because you can't tell them apart from the males. And also added in black dwarves, where again, there were none before. Keep in mind Middle Earth is a fantasy version of medieval Europe. There really were no black people there in that area at that time period, and none in Tolkien's stories. So the show writers, and twitter don't like that and are changing things like that around for "modern audiences"..

If your ever interested in reading Tolkien's books, read The Silmarillion first, then read the books. The Silmarillion is the collection of letters he wrote giving some of the back story about the previous ages (like the original Dark Lord, Morgoth), and some good details about the characters, and what they are and where they came from. Makes a lot of the things they do during the books (or even in the movies) make much more sense when you know those details about them before hand.

[This message has been edited by Jonesy (edited 09-10-2022).]