Animavore wrote:I've been watching this show. It's not bad, not great. There's no modern day politics in it I'm not sure where that comes from. Except for maybe people who think the inclusion of non-whites
is political. It's not to me and they don't seem "out of place" at all.
Have you seen the 'superfan' video they put out? I cannot even count how many times these so called superfans felt it necessary to stress how diverse and inclusive the show was. It's
clearly political and they so desperately wanted the show to be inclusive and diverse (which in itself I'm all for) that they forgot to think about how to do it and where it makes sense and where not. Instead, they just had to have white and black elves, white and black harfoots, white and black humans and white and black dwarves. This was clearly politically motivated.
Since this is supposed to be a prequel to LOTR, it should strive to have some continuity. What happened to the black harfoots and all others. Was there harfocide and dwarfocide? Elfocide?
As for dwarves, it does not make any sense for there to be black dwarves (or at least for there to be white
and black dwarves). Yes this is fantasy so in principal anything is possible but even with fantasy there should be some sort of logic to things. The 7 fathers of the dwarves were made by the Valar Aule who grew impatient and did not want to wait for the appearance of the children of Illuvatar (elves and humans, the firstborn and the aftercomers). So he made surrogates, however they did not possess real conscience. But Illuvatar had pity with Aule and breathed true life into his creations but they were laid to rest until after the coming ofIlluvatar's children. The thing is, dwarves live underground almost their entire life. It therefore does not make sense to me that they would have or develop melanin concentrations to cause dark skin. Regardless, it would have been better to have
just dark skinned dwarves. A mix of the two does not make any sense. This was clearly politically motivated and every time I see a dark skinned dwarf I'm reminded of that and it takes me out of the moment.
Keep in mind also that Tolkien's mythology deals with a relatively young Arda (earth) and the timespan of the first, second and third age is measured in thousands of years, not millions. The creatures that inhabit Arda are pretty much created from nothing by Illuvatar as they were. As such evolution is hardly a factor. The inhabitants of Arda in the first, second and third age have the skin color that Illuvator (or Aule in the case of the dwarves) created them with.
There is definitely mention of dark skinned humans in Tolkien's work (although they don't play any role of significance in his writings), they inhabited the south which makes sense. They could have introduced dark skinned humans that way and that would have been perfectly fine with me. Using what's there in the source material and expand upon certain aspects of it is fair game imo.
Apart from skin color, Galadriel has been turned into this sort of typical mega uber woman warrior type that Hollywood is so fond of these days. Their idea of an empowered woman apparently is someone who has never had to struggle, is just awesome at everything from birth, invincible and often totally insufferable. Their portrayal of these empowered women is as asshole men who happen to have a vagina instead of a dick. What's up with that? There have been plenty of strong female lead characters in film history. Just as there have been plenty of excellent black lead characters. Gender or skin color of the actor is by itself
not the issue.
They could have made the show diverse and inclusive without fucking over Tolkien's legacy. The way they have done it I am constantly reminded of how diverse and inclusive and modern day it wants to appear, it comes across as entirely forced.
As for source material, there is an abundance of it with some great tales, but as mentioned Amazon did not have the rights to that. You could easily base 10 seasons on the existing source material. Instead they just took the name and characters and went their own way, wanting to cash in on the brand. If they had made an original show which is not based on Tolkien's work I might have given it a chance but I'm not going to let them destroy the world of Tolkien that exists in my head. Just like I'm not going to watch Star Wars 7-9 for very much the same reason. Parts 1-3 were bad enough already.
If you enjoy the show good for you but I'm not going to watch anymore of it than I've already seen.