The Rings of Power (why fans are angered)

Laughed myself silly with this a while back LOL! Especially with the “Peaceful protests” and “Cheap wire work” bits!

You already know the answer to that question:  NONE.

The only “rights” they got was from an appendix.

Rings of woke is NOT allowed to use ANY stories J.R.R.Tolkien wrote.

Just the background appendix Tolkien wrote for reader reference ONLY.

After all, Tolkien wrote in one of his many letters that if he never wrote an actual story for Middle Earth, then it was NEVER meant to be made into a story.

So, IMO, the rings of woke goes directly against the wishes/writings of Tolkien HIMSELF!

Bad fan fiction of perverting the lore is all rings of woke will even be.

@DragonLady Saw that video and @Roas own video on the subject. Oh, boy. Just gets better and better doesn’t it.

I suppose it could be worse – At least it wasn’t bought by Disney or any other studio at Hollywood, but I still feel trepidation over what it means for the future. It just feels like a further commodification of the mythos which Christopher Tolkien fought so hard to stop his father’s legacy from becoming.

This is what Christopher had to say about the Peter Jackson films in the lead-up to the Hobbit movies:

“They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher said of “The Lord Of The Rings,” revealing he turned down an invitation to meet Jackson. “And it seems that ‘The Hobbit’ will be the same kind of film.”

“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” he pondered. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

If this is what he had to say about the Peter Jackson films, which are generally held in high-regard by fans in spite of their flaws, imagine how he would feel about even the suggestion of spin-off movies or even theme parks.

I remember at the time Christopher made those statements and quite a handful of people were at best dismissive and at worst incensed, accusing him of being a grumpy old git who couldn’t appreciate perfectly good movies, accusing him of gatekeeping and even claiming Tolkien Sr. would’ve loved the films. LMAO. Really? You think you know the man better than his own son, do you? There were attempts to make Lord of the Rings films back when JRR was still alive and he shot them all down: As I recall the Beatles wanted to make a musical, which would’ve undoubtedly been a garish spectacle, and there was another pitch, which, bizarrely, would feature a sex scene between Frodo and Galadriel. Thank God Tolkien made sure those never saw the light of day.

It’s quite easy to look at Christopher’s statements and think he’s just ragging on the Jackson movies. But this, IMO, is a failure to examine what he’s really saying: His true lamentation is, no matter how Peter Jackson might try to stay faithful to the spirit of Tolkien, the profound themes that make the moral core and beauty of the story would go right past the heads of the audience and all they’ll see are just cool fight scenes and witty dialogue and that is what they want more of.

Even back then in 2012/13 I sort of knew what he was talking about. Way back even further, back when the trilogy was being released in theaters and I was a teen in secondary school, it had to only be myself and a very small circle of friends that actually cared about the story and the setting. All of the other kids had gone to see Lord of the Rings, too, but literally all they cared about were the fight scenes and pretty actors to swoon over (I still recall one girl, who had not read the books, saying her favorite character was… Shadowfax. A freakin horse). Trying to get them to talk about anything beyond that was an exercise in futility, met with either bemusement or derision. It was obvious they had no actual interest in Middle-Earth or reading in general. They only watched the movies because they were the popular, “cool” movies of that time period.

Just a personal anecdote, I know. It’s easy to dismiss it as “kids just being kids.” But at that time I took it as a learning experience. And we’ve seen that this sort of behavior does carry over into adulthood. If you’re vapid as a child chances are you’re going to be vapid as an adult, too.

To illustrate a larger point let me highlight some quotes from the actress Sophia Nomvete (which I think someone may have brought up before):

“We are redressing the balance within the film and television, television industry and of course, this franchise and I hope, lots of franchises moving forward.”

“Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together.”

“You’re trying to look at this through a modern lens and the world is global and people now expect to see this kind of world globally represented.”

“Part of the story we’re trying to tell is you have people of different races coming together to defeat a common enemy.”

“For new generations this is their version of Tolkien, this is what my daughter will see of Tolkien’s works.”

…Absolutely subversive and nasty. I don’t have the energy right now to tackle what’s wrong with these statements, maybe I will at a later date, but hopefully for now they’re self-evident. The only way someone could have ever interpreted Lord of the Rings this way is by watching the Peter Jackson films on a surface-level, and not know anything about what JRR Tolkien personally believed. It is a myopic failure to understand what Sauron actually represented and the malignant viewpoint of a disgusting urban parasite.

Much as I like the Jackson films (even the Hobbit trilogy), they did end up setting a bad precedent in terms of commercialization – It’s not a matter of whether or not these were good adaptations that were faithful to the book. In the mind of the average normie, it’s just another product to be mindlessly consumed. And with Christopher dead, why would the industrialization machine, which both Tolkiens hated, not ruthlessly exploit that cash cow?

@Mustangride1 I’m aware Tolkien sold the rights for a movie to be made, he obviously wasn’t against bringing the story to a visual medium in of itself, that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I do understand Christopher’s perspective is not necessarily that of his father’s, but it’s doubtful that meant he would’ve completely disagreed with his son in regards to the depiction of an adaptation.

Tolkien shot down all attempts to make a movie while he was alive because no-one who pitched a screenplay during that time got the spirit of the story or changed too many things, bringing in what was essentially modernist concepts which were at odds with Catholicism.

People tend to act as though Peter Jackson’s films are spotless with no-flaws-what-so-ever. If someone has not read the book, then sure, I can understand how one might think that. But this also leads to the opinion that Tolkien himself would’ve loved them unconditionally, which I think is a bit of a short-sighted view to take. Perhaps he might’ve appreciated some aspects of them, but Christopher wasn’t wrong when he called them action movies because that’s the sort of director Peter Jackson was. I think there are definitely parts in the films that Tolkien would’ve disliked (changing Faramir’s character, for instance. Yes, I’m aware of Jackson’s defense and I’m personally fine with his reasoning. But Tolkien was very fond of Faramir and I doubt he would’ve been satisfied with Jackson’s explanation).

The Peter Jackson films are excellent on their own merits, and clearly have a reverence for the source material, which is more than what can be said in regards to Hollywood’s typical attitude towards it. But Tolkien was a man of his time, and he probably would’ve found the overall tone and style of those movies rather dreary and not really reflective of his work.

I mean, it’s a fun scene to watch for someone like you or me, but, yeah, not hard to understand why Christopher would take issue with something like it.

@FallenOmegaStar

I’ve read both ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ before watching the films…and I had no problems with the Legolas scene on ‘The Two Towers’😜! And I’m pretty sure most other women that read them and seen them probably felt the same way too😂!

I am not angered. Let it burn. Serves them right. They have ruined pretty much everything I used to once love. So, I am done with it all. I watch Korean and Japanese shows/movies/anime and don’t have to worry about any of the woke or identity politics. I read manga now, not comics. Manga is superior to most comics made in the USA in the last 20 years. Hollywood and the USA Media have forced me elsewhere, and I frankly enjoy it.  So yes, let it burn. I’ll be immersed in Nihongo TV/Movies and reading Manga when it is all ashes.