re: 'Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' Ep 1 Negativity Thread. Enter at your own risk

Just a couple of random comments on your thoughts...

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One of Tolkien's many goals in his writing was to create a substitute English mythology, because aside from the Arthurian legends, there wasn't a real mythology of the British isles.

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This is spot on and cannot be emphasized enough...

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So, Tolkien wasn't arguing so much for white superiority so much as an English superiority,

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I don't know that I buy into this "English superiority" thought.. I think it was simply an "English" story and it represented the England of his day...

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many of whom have argued that Tolkien's writings are fundamentally racist.

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at the end of the day.. people who see racism in Tolkien's works is due to the twisted lense of their world view that they bring...

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"GOT is dead, woke go broke declarations", it was the largest premiere in HBO history.

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IMO it’s not going to be better than the original. But this includes live and streaming. Streaming wasn’t around for some of their great shows. You literally had to have a full cable set up to watch some if this stuff.

Hbo is more accessible now than ever. Plus they were running deals on signing up for the premier.

HBO Go launched in 2010. So across 12 years(and all of GoT), and the rest of their history, no show has premiered with as high of viewership.

It's worse source material(not saying it's bad, but this is a show derived from a lore project to fill in around his main story) so it would be hard for the prequel to top the first 5 seasons of GRRM's (still incomplete)magnum opus.

Point is, the sort of woke outrage you see on here is not really all that indicative of the larger population's tolerances and aversions. If all you followed was the conversations pre release, this was gonna flop due to wokeness and GoT ending backlash.

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You even declared you would not be watching in response to it.

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bullshite I said that. I said I’m not watching it because Martin’s universe was dead to me due to the failure that was Season 8 and have said if I hear good things from people/posters I trust that I might give it a go a season or two down the line. You’re either misremembering or a fricking liar, which as a communist you are the later regardless.

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Meanwhile, the rest of society just saw a cool show with dragons and it was HBO's most successful launch in history. HBO's second most popular show is about a bi black girl and her trans partner. I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that that broader population is not accurately reflected within the bubble of this board. Or the sort of obsessive sub culture of online people catastrophizing about diversity casting.

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I never said House of Dragon would bomb (especially since the work it’s based on is complete unlike GoT), but I had a hard time getting excited about it and feel like a battered housewife with my husband telling me he’s changed. Nope, not buying it. Maybe it will be good, got a bit of an open mind on that, but no, everything in this Lord of the Rings is pretty much going to suck even if it looks cool.

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I agree, and from what we know about the story from people who have actually seen two episodes and not just a trailer where they are clearly hiding a lot of content the story is good. So we just throw a potentially good story out because they changed the skin color of a few characters whey they probably shouldn't have, and because it has too many powerful women (when the OG LoTR did include multiple powerful women to begin with)?

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The skin color is just an eye-roller to me because I see that as a definite agenda item versus demand. I have never gotten the feeling there's a demand for black dwarves or elves anywhere but a company board room... but the take on Galadriel is different.

Galadriel is strong. She's among the most powerful figures in middle earth at the end of Lord of the Rings. But it is never described anywhere in Tolkein's writings that she took up a sword, rallied an army and directly confronted Sauron in the second age. That IS what the trailers have suggested. That may not be what proves out, but there's certainly reason to believe this is the direction the creators have taken. Again, it's a little insulting because it's less about "strong women" and more about "women better at traditionally male things". Eowyn was a woman. She had served in the traditional sense as a woman in her household and she took up the sword and shield by necessity, not a desire to show up the guys. Galadriel was a sorceress who confronted Sauron through intelligence and leadership, not waving a sword around. Really, waving a sword around was rarely a path to success in Tolkein's stories. It was courage and strength of character that made the heroes. Sam was weak and inexperienced even among hobbits, but defeated a monster that had killed countless more powerful than he. I can absolutely see Galadriel being a strong female character within the story they are telling because she was, but her role was not that of billy-badass swordfighter and the only reason to frame it that way is modern social-engineering, which is stupid and tiresome.

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The Lord of the Rings probably has the biggest most knowledgeable fanbase there is. Sorry, they fricked with the wrong fanbase this time.

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You keep saying this, but there’s like a very small contingent of you on this board bitching about it in all the threads. You’re a very small crowd. Loud, sure, but very small. Not in any way representative of the culture at large.

Y’all may bitch about it all the way, but the show is getting 5 seasons and it will be very successful.

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Did you really think that Hollywood could make this series with an all-white cast? Talk about living in a fantasy world!

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That says more about the direction this country is going than anything. And it's not a good direction.

Black Panther has an all black cast. And that is seen as perfectly acceptable (as it should be). But an all white cast? That is problematic.

Think on that double standard for awhile.

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But that's a distinction lost on many critics, many of whom have argued that Tolkien's writings are fundamentally racist.

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See above. There is absolutely nothing racist about Tolkien's works, and to maintain such is absolute lunacy. These same critics more than likely see *anything* created by white men as racist. Simply because they are white.

Again, the blatant double standard. And inherent racism.

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Marvel.... disastrous

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Yeah, not sure I would call the most financially successful film franchise ever, "disastrous"

Exactly. These choads are just having circle jerks in these threads while the world-at-large is laughing at them.

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As I said earlier, such a show will create a new generation of Tolkien fans who will read the books and experience all the joys that has to offer.

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