battlewraith

You should read that interview with Christopher Tolkien I posted. He hated the Jackson movies and said they eviscerated his father's work. When given the opportunity, he would not meet with Jackson. This was the foremost authority on respecting the source material. I've been over this again and again in this thread--Jackson made significant changes to the story in order to make it entertaining and appealing to his audience. It's arbitrary and hypocritical to across the board say that similar changes cannot be made in another derivative work. Execution matters. If it's done well, it will be a success. If not, it will fail. Even if it fails it might draw in new fans to the series. To give non white actors an opportunity to take part in the project. To signal to fans that there is diversity in this world--rather than waiting on some hypothetical epic concerning the easterlings or the Haradrim that probably nobody is thinking of doing. To cater to people that would like to see a few people that look like them. We've been over this. Hearing reasons like this again is not going to sway you if it hasn't already. That has to do with your politics as much as the showrunners. People huh? Who are these people? You're not just griping about what you want are you? Luminara's post from Friday about adaptions and their relation to source material was very eloquently stated. If that didn't get through to you, nothing I say is likely to either.

I honestly don't know how you can ignore what's staring you right in the face. These elves are, as you say, dark because they had not seen the light of the blessed realms. They weren't just unwilling to take the journey west, They ignored the call to do so. This doesn't mean they were evil, but it is absolutely indicative of a moral failing in the context of the spirituality of this world: they were not following the dictates of the higher powers. Now, aside from that we know next to nothing about them. So casting a non-white ethnicity as a dark elf in a derivative work would be bad because.................................................why? I was going off of the Silmarillion wikipedia entry. If you dig through their citations there are some interesting sources. The most relevant one to this discussion is probably a rare interview that Christopher Tolkien gave the French magazine Le Monde. https://web.archive.org/web/20170423160837/https://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/my-father039s-quotevisceratedquot-work-son-of-hobbit-scribe-jrr-tolkien-finally-speaks-out When Tolkien died, Christopher received his papers--70 boxes, each stuffed with thousands of handwritten pages. Hardly anything numbered or dated. Even worse, to protect the original documents the son worked from photocopies, which made dating things even more difficult. In the article, Christopher describes himself as a historian and interpreter of the work. He had this to say about the Silmarillion: First in England, then in France, he reassembled the parts of The Silmarillion, making it more coherent, added padding here and there, and published the book in 1977, with some remorse. "Right away I thought that the book was good, but a little false, in the sense that I had had to invent some passages," he explains. At the time, he even had a worrying dream. "I was in my father's office at Oxford. He came in and started looking for something with great anxiety. Then I realized in horror that it was The Silmarillion, and I was terrified at the thought that he would discover what I had done."

I looked it up. I misread a passage about Tolkein not specifying the origin of their culture (rather than their actual origin). However the rest of what I said is accurate. To the extent that they relate to the people of Middle Earth, they are antagonists: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Easterlings The Nerd of the Rings video you posted leans heavily on the recently published The Nature of Middle Earth, which is based on a variety of fragmentary Tolkien writings that have been compiled into this book. Even the Silmarillion is considered suspect by a lot of critics because it was published after his death and had two editors who had to flesh out some of the sketchy material. Interestingly though, in going over this stuff it turns out the first beings that men encountered upon awakening were "dark elves", called Avari. These elves who refused the call to go to the west may have also been the elves that were later tortured and turned into orcs. Maybe the showrunners are exploring Tolkien's diversity.

I'm not pushing for equality and equity. I'm addressing the people who have their panties in a wad about nontraditional casting of 2 characters out of what is no doubt a large ensemble cast. As has already been discussed, Jackson deviated from Tolkien's story to add more female content to the saga. If that was a success, maybe these liberties will work out as well. "But he didn't write it that way" is already true of the Jackson version. There's no account given for the diversity of men in the lore. The god may not have created them--they may have arisen from Morgoth's corruption of reality, same as trolls and dragons. What is stated is that the Easterlings fought for Morgoth. The Haradrim fought for Sauron. The Numenoreans who sided with evil were called black Numenoreans. You see a pattern here yet? Thematically, anything good is associated with light. Anything bad is associated with darkness--including depictions of the dark skinned men when they actually enter into the narrative. I don't think it's racist but it comes across as the weakest aspect of the writing imo.

This is why Tolkien's quote strikes me as naive. It supposedly had no inner meaning because it wasn't topical (ie related to current events) or allegorical (which I take him to mean a direct correlation--Gandalf as Christ for example). As if these two options are the only gateways to meaning. The structure of the narrative embodies well established tropes about a people who have fallen into decline due to corruption or human weakness. The fated hero of the series is God's chosen representative who will return to restore order and prosperity to the land. It reflects a certain worldview. Saying there's no meaning in this structure is like saying there's no meaning in Arthurian legend. I suspect that what Tolkien was trying to actual signal here is that he wasn't sending a message. His work was not meant to proselytize.

The question is more or less answered in the thing you quoted. You just don't get the objection. If Kirby's Wakanda was like Tolkien's Middle Earth, Kirby's marvel stories would be set in Wakanda. The Eternals would all be dark skinned. And the Celestials would presumably all be dark skinned. Lee and Kirby making Wakanda was their progressive politics btw. Well that's very nice of you! The forums could probably use a lot more positivity and people giving hoots for each other.

No, you don't get it. Does Gandalf the Grey dying and returning as Gandalf the White mean something? Does the white tree in the courtyard of Minas Tirith mean something? Lol if there's no meaning to any of this, why is it even written this way? Did Tolkien just arbitrarily throw things in there that he thought were cool? Tolkien was a scholar and translator of other literary works. For example Beowulf: Ten years after finishing his translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on the work, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", which had a lasting influence on Beowulf research.[64] Lewis E. Nicholson said that the article is "widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism", noting that Tolkien established the primacy of the poetic nature of the work as opposed to its purely linguistic elements.[65] At the time, the consensus of scholarship deprecated Beowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that the author of Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem.[66] Where Beowulf does deal with specific tribal struggles, as at Finnsburg, Tolkien argued firmly against reading in fantastic elements.[67] In the essay, Tolkien also revealed how highly he regarded Beowulf: "Beowulf is among my most valued sources"; this influence may be seen throughout his Middle-earth legendarium.[68] So you think its reasonable to assume that someone who's professional work is to preserve the meaning of texts from one language to another, along with arguing for specific critical understandings of key texts, decided to forego any of these concerns in his own literary work. In the process, scrubbing clean the meaning any of his relevant sources would have had. Got it. Give me a break. History has shown that LOTR and the Hobbit have universal appeal. It also shows that there's a generation of fans that haven't even read the books and is taking Peter Jackson's vision as cannon. This project is a prehistory of the LOTR that takes place in an earlier age. I don't even know if the showrunners consider this an update. In my opinion these complaints we've been discussing are pretty trivial. The script, acting, overall production value, etc. are the things that are things that are going to make or break this thing. Well to begin with there are a contingent of triggered "fans" who will hop from franchise to franchise and raise hell about anything that offends their political sensibilities. And there are influencers who feed this and profit off of it. So when a controversy like this erupts it's honestly difficult to tell whether these people even matter. They may have just whined themselves into irrelevancy. Look at the Star Wars franchise. First one was a classic. Second one was my favorite. Third one sucked. Then the prequels came out and I thought they were pretty bad. Lucas got fed up with the fanbase and blamed them for ruining it. Then he walked away from it. The new movies are some of the most reviled by the triggered anti-woke contingent of fans. Problem is they made billions of dollars. Obviously there were lot's of fans of these movies. So are companies wrong to more or less ignore the ones with the vitriol? I started watching that video you linked earlier and I had to stop. A film critic that says 99 percent of big budget films are bad and something like 50 percent of indie films are bad. He's positioning himself to appeal cool to a certain kind of consumer. I can't take him seriously, sorry.

Reading comprehension? You quote me as saying it's not about demographics, then reply by talking about demographics.

Yeah, I'm well aware of that quote. Frankly I think Tolkien was being naive here. For one thing, I doubt that he expected the LOTR to become a huge phenomenon that people would be interested in reinterpreting. Secondly, he did not want people to view it as relating to WWII. Anyone with a brain can see the meanings and ideology of LOTR. If there is no hidden meaning in the text it's because it's blatant. But let's run with this. There is no deep meaning or significance to the story. It's just an entertaining yarn. Then what is with all the griping about minor changes to the representation of characters in a derivative work? Why, for the sake of entertainment, is it not alright to update aspects of a filmed work to cater to current aesthetics and sensibilities rather than slavishly following those of Tolkien's generation? What's the damage gonna be, particularly when the books will still be there unchanged? You are literally sawing off the branch on which you're sitting. "Shakespeare and Tolkien are two completely different animals." Correct. Shakespeare has long been considered the greatest author of the English language. The stakes were far higher in discussing/interpreting Shakespeare than Tolkien.

I think any reasonable analysis of Tolkien's work shows this to be false. Tolkien is absolutely telling a moral tale. LoTR is talking about the nature of power, human corruption, mortality, etc. In many ways it's a riff on Christian ideology with a battle between good and evil that hinges on some divine plan involving the return of a messianic figure that will restore order to the world. It's naive and pretty insulting to the narrative to just write it off as just a simple fantasy yarn. People complain about politics in media when it's not their politics. I wouldn't even call any of this controversy political. Political would be telling people to avoid Amazon altogether because of their union busting. The problem is that Tolkien's mythology is not simply about a certain demographic of people at a certain time. It traces back to the gods. The elves and wizards are their progeny and/or incarnations on Earth. And they are lily white. Galadriel, the elfiest of elves is both mightiest and fairest of the elves. So the question is this: does Tolkien's narrative have universal themes or is it inextricably bound this notion of a white history. Shakespeare went through this. Shakespeare was actually used by the British to "educate" colonized people about what civilized culture was. Eventually people realized that Shakespeare's work did not need to be tied to a certain historical and ethnic perspective. The changes I see in these teaser images are super minor. If the whole narrative collapses because of the addition of some pigment, then it must be built on a weak premise to begin with.

I don't disagree with you in general. But the problem, in my opinion, is that you can go too far in reading into the intent behind films. On some level, all major entertainment is a cynical cash grab because--it is. It is business. New Line Cinema made the Jackson trilogy to cash in on Tolkien, not as some kind of public service. But within this economic structure, there are professionals--writers, actors, costumers, matte painters, etc. who are doing their damndest to make this worthwhile. We should be hoping that it's decent. Even if this thing turns out to be shit overall, good things can come from it.

It's very plausible that Amazon is making casting choices in order to stir up controversy and drive publicity. It's also possible that there are a variety of interests represented in this venture and that some people love Tolkien's world and would simply like to see some people that look like them in this world. Even less likely but still possible is that there were simply some good actors that auditioned for parts and got them. There was no apparent reason (for me at least) to cast Zazie Beetz as Domino in Deadpool 2. But she rocked that shit. I'm sorry about your friends in the Ukraine.

The point about not reading the books is that he's attributing the success of the Jackson's movies to his faithfulness towards the source material. Not budget. Not cast and crew. Not Jackson's experience as a director vs. somebody else's. Not the fact that LOTR is Tolkien's is the masterpiece of the series. Faithfulness. Except that, as you and I have already discussed many times, Jackson did make changes to the material. Why is it that Jackson's Arwen defeating the nazgul or Galadriel driving away Sauron are not being seen as Jackson injecting his political beliefs/ideology/baggage etc.? Isn't this some woke message about girl powa? When I've pointed this out to you, you've said "oh well I had issues with Jackson's version as well." But then you post Chris Gore making the same trash one-sided analysis and completely glossing over the hypocrisy of it because he's never read the source material. I get that you and others think I'm the entitled one. Maybe when I start making blanket statements about "what we want" or "alienating the fans" there will be some truth to it.

Try to reason this through: how do you know that someone has respected the source material if you haven't read the source material? "You're no more entitled to the fandom here than anyone else but you certainly sound like you should be entitled to it." Thanks? Is English your second language?

The funniest thing to me about that interview is that the guy talks about how great Jackson's initial trilogy was and he relates this to how Jackson intended this to be Tolkien's story. They weren't going to add any of their own baggage, etc. But then the guy admits that he's never read the books. So how the hell does he know that Jackson was faithful to Tolkien? LOL. It's a hit piece. Take a favorable quote from Jackson about LOTR (not the cash grab Hobbit movies). Contrast that with the most contentious quote from the miniseries (as if it's all about the casting and the showrunners have no concern with Tolkien's world). "You are going to alienate the fans that have lived with these stories for decades and probably read them as children..." From the guy who never read the books. I read the Hobbit and LOTR probably 2-3 times a year as a kid. Saw the Rankin Bass versions, the Bakshi version. Have seen the extended version of Jackson's multiple times at the theater and watch it with the family every year around Christmas. I try to forget that I saw the Hobbit movies. These entitled pissed off people do not own the fandom.

Hmmm..I assumed that was a photomanipulation.

Holy crap you're tilted. I responded to you once with a link to a wikipedia article that you obviously didn't read. Maybe when you've calmed down you can reread this conversation and point out where I called people evil racists.

The point you're ignoring for the nth time is Jackson deviated from the source material in order to appeal to an audience demographic and/or make something visually dramatic. Those films were well received despite these deviations. It was a success, it did not destroy the IP despite the fact that I saw the Hobbit movies once and don't intend to watch them again. The complaint that Galadriel was never described as wearing armor or wielding a weapon is inane when you're pointing to a scene that never happened in the books to bolster the case that she works really well without armor or a weapon. Galadriel is described as having taken part in multiple armed conflicts during the age of elves. Against other powerful elves. The idea of her strolling out on to a battlefield, unarmed and dressed like this is utterly stupid. Tolkien was writing mythology, not making movies. Anyone wanting to flesh this stuff out would do well to at least make some concessions to practicality. Elves like to shoot arrows, you know. Maybe armor would help with that. Or maybe she just disintegrates them with her mind. Or mind hacks all the archers on the other side before they can fire. The average person in armor with a sword would never stand a chance against Boromir, lol.

If I'm not mistaken, Tolkein didn't specify anything that happens in this scene. Sauron anticipated the white council's move and left before they even got there. This example you're using to prop up your stance is Jackson's version. Another double standard about not following what Tolkein wrote. And no, I didn't miss anything. She frees Gandalf and zapps an orc. Sauron starts trashtalking her with the black speech and she crumbles as the nazgul approach. Sarumon and Elrond fight them off. It they didn't, it stands to reason she would've been shanked. After the nazgul are dispatched and she's spent a few minutes just spread out on the floor, she gets her shit together and *banishes* Sauron--meaning he leaves and goes to Mordor. Keep in mind that this is a Galadriel that is 1000 years older than the one in this miniseries and has a ring of power, facing down a weakened ghost version of Sauron. And how stupid is this entire scene? These heads of state decide to trek over to Dol Goldur alone? They don't even bring any of their guards?

Lol yeah it works when you have Sarumon and Elrond preventing you from being shanked while you lie there gassed out on the ground.

You're asking two different questions--is it acceptable? Would there be outrage from the fanbase if this were done? Black Panther and Falcon are not tertiary characters. Black Panther had his own hit movie and Falcon had a miniseries after featuring prominently in the Captain America films. Could changes like that have been done back when they were only in the comics? Maybe. Look at all the variations of Captain Marvel. Acceptable in what sense? 1. Artistic. Sure why not? There could be some aspect or facet of these characters to be explored by changing their background. 2. Social trends. Probably not. Because major non white superhero characters are few and far between to begin with. Roles for black actors have been very limited historically. Etc. 3. Commercial. Media companies exist to make money. If doing this would make money they would be expected to do it. Outrage from the fanbase is perpetual these days. The fact that major companies like Amazon are swinging towards inclusive casting suggests to me that that is the more commercially viable way to go.

Lol. I have a background in theater. Gender bending and color blind casting is old hat. One of the best Shakespeare productions I saw was a Julius Caesar set in 14th century Mali with an all black cast. So yeah, if there was an actual compelling artistic rationale for your contrived examples I would be fine with them. It's also hilarious that you think these examples are on a par with anything we've discussed.

Yes you may have objected to these changes in the Jackson trilogy, but the point is that those movies were a major success. The Arwen change did not sink it. So why is this glimpse of Galadriel in the teaser such a big deal. It may be the case that the whole thing sucks, but I don't think that's established yet. And I don't think it's a fair criticism in principle given what Jackson got away with. Regarding the key issue: the agenda here is to appeal more to women and other racial demographics. This is as much a business decision as a political one. Certainly not everyone who wants manly vanilla Tolkein is a woman hating racist. But there is certainly a cottage industry of right wing critics who want to play the victim and stir up outrage over this sort of thing. I think the shouting is aimed at them. And I also think it's part of the business plan--feed the controversy and get people talking about the series. It's like a rap feud for nerds. Why not explore new territory rather than distorting established characters? Because it doesn't pay off. It's very difficult to attract an audience to new creations compared to doing variations of existing ones. Go to a comic convention and look at what artists are selling. Endless variations of existing popular characters. People respond more to a known entity. Even then there may be problems getting something off of the ground. Look at how huge a hit GOT was, but the planned prequel series never got off the ground.

But getting triggered over Galadriel behaving like a warrior is odd. The character is thousands of years old and lived through violent times. Is it implausible that she would've picked up some skills as a warrior? Is that a bad sort of thing for a filmmaker to infer for some reason? Well you say that Tolkein didn't write it that way. Ok, but if I remember correctly Tolkein didn't have Arwen whip out a sword and face down the Nazgul who were after Frodo. That was Glorfindel. We didn't get him. We got Arwen instead because Jackson and co. wanted to have more female presence in the movie to appeal to women. Did that ruin the IP? Did it make the film bad. Where is the nerdrage over that transgression? Particularly when Galadriel is inherently more badass then Arwen. Derivative media like films and miniseries are always going to reevaluate and adapt source material in light of contemporary sensibilities and aesthetics. I still know crusty nerds that are salty that Wolverine in the Xmen movies wasn't an extremely hairy 5' tall man. Tough shit. Nobody wants to see that but them. Most people were very happy with Hugh Jackman. I personally would much rather see an armored warrior Galadriel than than the one in the shitty Hobbit movies who treks all the way over to Sauron's hideout in her robes and the proceeds to flop over and swoon until Elrond and Sarumon show up to fight off the Nazgul.

The other outcome which seems more plausible to me is that our descendants will no longer be what we currently consider to be human. The solution to survival in other areas of the universe might be less about finding or creating earth like conditions than making future people less reliant on those conditions.