ShardWarrior

Yet again, Tolkien himself refuted this kind of analysis. His own words - The word allegory means "a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one." Repeating this from Tolkien's own words - So quite clearly you have it wrong, unless you want to try and say Tolkien was lying or did not know what he was talking about. Shakespeare and Tolkien are two completely different animals. And again, Tolkien described quite a lot of diversity in the worlds of men in Middle Earth.

It is not disingenuous at all and you are misunderstanding what the word allegory means. Yes, Tolkien was drawing heavily on Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology to create an alternate English history. That does not mean he was looking to make some kind of moral or political message. Again, he was famous for stating his creation was not allegorical. He was just looking to tell a good story. I think you are misunderstanding the context of the conversation and what he is saying in the interview. Again, political drama/satire has its place. I believe trying to compare works like Citizen Kane, Milk, JFK or All the King's Men to Tolkien is just wrong as they are entirely different. You are trying to compare apple to oranges. Tolkien was looking to tell a good story to entertain, not express a moral or political message. There is plenty of documentation available around Tolkien that enforces this. It is also one of the many reasons his work still endures to this day. Above all else, it is a great story.

I can understand his reasoning for bringing Arwen into the story as she is an crucial figure toward understanding how Aragorn behaves. She also has an important role in introducing the theme of death into the story. As I remember it, Tolkien had wanted to find a way to work her into the story proper but never found a sufficient way of doing so, which is why her story with Aragorn is relegated to the appendices. Sad to have Glorfindel replaced by her yes, however it is one of the changes Jackson made that I can understand. I may not fully agree with it, but I can understand it. Now, had he kept the version of her where she goes full Xena Warrior Princess at Helm's Deep, that would have been utterly terrible in my opinion. Having her rescue Frodo and barely make it back to Rivendell is not totally horrible in my opinion. Exactly. For the record, I totally agree about the Hobbit films deviating wildly from the source material. It never should have been dragged out into a trilogy in my opinion. I get that they wanted to try and tie it into the LoTR trilogy, however this is a great example of studio interference hurting. Totally agree. I think you are trying to compare apples to oranges here. There are books/films written where the clear intent is to be political or to tell an allegorical sort of story. Of course there is a place for such works. With that said, Tolkien's work is not among those. He famously refuted any attempts to attach allegory of any kind to his work. That is what Gore is objecting to in the interview. This could very easily be done by exploring the untapped worlds of men in Middle Earth. Again, people objecting to the diversity being introduced into the elves and dwarves in the Amazon RoP series is a valid criticism. Tolkien's work is based heavily on Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythologies, where there would have been few if any people of African descent. It is not him being a racist, it is him trying to stay true to historical fact in creating his fantasy mythology. This is no different than the African stories and lore lacking anyone of caucasian descent and why fictional places like Wakanda lack ethnic diversity. It is just part of the fictional world in the story. Tolkien did however mention quite a lot of diversity in the worlds of men.

Chris Gore is a film reviewer in case you did not know. He has been doing this for a long time. You misunderstood the conversation in the video and it is definitely not a hit piece. You will note he did not say the new show is going to be a failure. He is only speaking to what he has seen so far and offering his opinion on that. He is not claiming to be a Tolkien scholar and commenting on who deviated from the books more. With regard to the quotes by Jackson and the Amazon crew, he is addressing the motivations behind altering the story of an existing property. Jackson said they made it a point to leave their personal political beliefs and baggage out of the writing process. The Amazon crew said the opposite. His point was their job as writers and creators is to entertain, not preach and push their personal beliefs and political agenda because in his experience, the work ultimately suffers for it and thereby the fans. To be honest, you are the one coming off like an entitled pissed off person who feels they have more of a claim to fandom. None of what you wrote here makes you special or entitles you to declare yourself more of a fan than the next person. You have no more claim on the fandom than anyone else.

Just leaving this here

For the third time, I have issues with changes Peter Jackson made to the source material for his films as well, so there is no double standard here. Yes, this is not a scene written by Tolkien and I never suggested it was. It does however show that spell casters can be shown to be very powerful without needing to be decked out in armor wielding a sword to vanquish their enemies. Sauron may have been weakened here, but your average person in armor with a sword would never have stood a chance against him.

You have what is happening in the scene totally wrong. Did you miss the part where she single handedly banished Sauron and the Ringwraiths using her magic alone? Something Elrond and Sarumon were unable to accomplish. No sword or armor needed by her.

You must have watched a very different movie than everyone else. Looks like using magic and not needing a sword and armor worked just fine for her.

So for you it would be perfectly fine to re-cast Black Panther or Falcon as a dwarf of Arabic descent or an Asian and to re-imagine Wakanda as all Chinese?

That is fair. I never said the series is sunk, rather that I have my reservations about it just as I did with the changes Jackson and crew made for his LoTRO and Hobbit films. The series may be a smash success, it may not. From what I can see and have read so far, it is pointing to the latter. There is no harm in expressing concern nor is there any harm in objecting to changes to established lore. If this is the intent, then the production staff is not going about it the right way by berating fans who question their creative choices. As for appealing to different demographics, this is proceeding from a very false assumption there are very few women or non-Caucasian fans of the source material to begin with. Again, there is a vast amount of untapped material out there and opportunity for diversity in the worlds of me with the Haradrim, Easterlings, Northmen etc. This is false too. Were it true, creators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Tolkien, James Cameron and countless others never would have had any success. Just look at the volume of characters and worlds created by someone like Jack Kirby and the success they have had over the years. Rehashing/re-imagining/re-booting the same material over and over is stifling creativity and a big part of why most of what is coming out of Hollywood today is utter garbage.

Circumstances are irrelevant. Quite clearly Tolkien had no problem describing characters wielding their swords. There are plenty of references to find. From the Fellowship of the Ring - If being armored up and wielding a sword is what Tolkien had intended for Galadriel, it would appear on the pages as such. Yes it was called making money. Christopher was not his father, so I personally will take Tolkien's own writings, no matter how brief, as the closest we will get to Tolkien himself. Sure, Christopher was privy to all kinds of knowledge the average fan did not have, however the material was still subject to his personal interpretation.

The fact that Megamind never got a sequel (or 10) is one of the great crimes of the 21st century, if not in all of human history.

Would it not be the published version that his son Christopher helped put the finishing touches on?

As @PeregrineFalcon said, this was canon to the books as written by Tolkien. If you can find a reference in any published work written by Tolkien that clearly shows Galadriel in full armor wielding a sword, I would be happy to admit I am wrong. To my knowledge, this was never the case for her.

^ The simple and elegant thing to do. Only 1 per power.

Being among - if indeed not the most herself - the top spellcasters in Middle Earth, she had no real need for sword and armor. I think this has more to do with wanting equity and equality over anything that can be found in the Tolkien writings.

I play STO fairly regularly. I have various alts from the recruitment events I am slowly working on as well as play the seasonal events daily. The free stuff from those are always nice. Mostly I am soloing story content, patrols or doing tasks for Endeavors. I dislike teaming for TFOs as the amount of VFX vomit is totally out of control there. It makes teaming near impossible as you literally cannot see what is happening due to the over saturation of VFX. Sad really, but Cryptic does not seem interested in changing anything about it. The newer story content has been top notch.

I fully admit I could be wrong as I have not read the Simarillion in quite some time either. However, from what I do remember Galadriel was never a decked out in full armor with a broadsword type warrior.

For me personally, it all depends on how far a departure the changes are. There were quite a lot of deviations from the source material in the Peter Jackson LoTR films. Some were unfortunate albeit necessary to keep the film to a reasonable length, some were true improvements, some were just awful in my opinion. I will say that from interviews I have seen, everyone involved with the Jackson LoTR films were very careful and consideration about the source material and keeping as close to Tolkien as possible. Many of the changes I am seeing with this Amazon series seem to be motivated by political correctness over anything else. I do not think that is a good place to start from.

I have seen those videos where the producers and writers are already insulting actual fans who are (rightfully so in my opinion) questioning some of their creative decisions. This is definitely a huge red flag for me. Honestly, I am no Tolkien scholar, however I do not think Galadriel was ever Galadriel Warrior Princess. This is just one of several things I notice so far. I get that there will always be some liberty being taken, however deviating too far from the source material is never a good idea, at least to me.

Not sure about this one to be honest.

Is that voice at 1:18 who I think it is? :)

No. This game does not need sweeping defense nerfs. The HC folk are moving in the right direction by adding higher difficulty levels to content.

Your support for the base NPC is noted, thank you. Again, perspective was provided in the original post. If the team here needs additional insight, I would be happy to gather a group of his friends from in game to provide them with more. While a base NPC is a nice idea, I am not sure it would be good to have competing memorials, and restricting these NPCs to bases that he had built is not going to be feasible in that I am not sure there is anyone else in those SGs who can edit them. There is precedent for adding the characters of very special members of the community into the game with meorial NPCs characters like Curupira and Gloryhound in ICON and Croatoa respectively. Steve was a very special member of this community and deserving of the same special treatment in my opinion. His main character of Heraclea had the strongest connection to Cimerora. I think Steve would smile knowing Heraclea will be there forever standing watch.

Reading the original post in this thread provides the background and the suggestion as to where and how to memorialize Heraclea.