WARNING: Bill Whittle’s audio is terrible. We’re sorry. The glitch wasn’t discovered until after the weekly recording session. We record a new set of shows each Tuesday, so better quality is coming soon.
Amazon’s upcoming portrayal of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings world — The Rings of Power — has some startling departures from the classic series. Fans have already responded with hilarious spoofs of the early trailers. Can Amazon overcome the laughter to bring new audiences into this Tolkien-ish universe?
Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott create five new episodes of Right Angle each week thanks to our Members.
24 replies on “J.R.R. Wolkein: Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’ Draws Hilarious Mockery from Fans of Classic”
Fix Bill’s mic please
Before Star Wars was the Russian version of Solaris – same shabby vision of the future, but way more cerebral. How does an alien life form actually think? They don’t look like us and they don’t think like us.
My teenage go-to books were “Dune” and “Lord of the Rings”. Jackson blew me away with his trilogy. My only complaint was that half the books were cut, the parts where they drank, smoked, and ate. Thankfully, the extended versions included some of that and it made it better. “Dune” is still a bridge too far, obviously not ever done by someone who loved the work as much as Jackson loved LOTR.
Charles Edwards as Liberace made me LOL and snort!
Scott, I would watch the Telletubbies do Chaucer, especially if they get Groucho Marx to guest star. He would do St. Beckett well.
I’ve been following Nerdrotic’s coverage of the “Whinge of Power” with increasing trepidation. I was a tiny bit nervous, as well as excited, watching the first of the Jackson trilogy, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were compromises, but they were understandable. Tolkien himself thought the story was un-filmable, and in his time he was right. I think Jackson did a decent job, because he consciously avoided using Tolkien’s creation to push his own ideas. That’s not happening here.
I read LoTR three times in my teens and early twenties. My oldest friend, a British born Sikh with no English blood was equally into the book. He didn’t need dwarves in turbans or caramel coloured elves to enable him to enjoy it. At school we would come up with our own theoretical cast list for a LoTR movie. It was a big part of growing up.
I can’t say how much this perverted travesty masquerading as a Tolkien story angers and upsets me. The witty and shredding reaction of the massed ranks of Tolkiendom is heartening though. They’ll be dismissed as “wacists” of course, and the massive money machine will rumble on.
As Bill said, what’s important is that we fight.
“I bid you STAND, men of the WEST!”
Oh, where to begin…
“Evil is not capable of creating anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good” – J.R.R. Tolkien
First of all, Peter Jackson was a fan of LOTR. Back when they were assembling the cast and re-writing the scripts – and the internet was still pretty much a new thing – he set up chat rooms where he could throw out ideas and get feedback from the fans. To my recollection, there were 2 main topics that the fans revolted about. Jackson was getting pressure from the studios to remove the smoking scenes. Fans said ‘no’. How can you start the story without Bilbo and Gandalf blowing smoke rings?! He fought the studios and the smoking scenes were left in.
The 2nd one that I recall was his challenge with keeping the romance between Aragorn and Arwen alive throughout all 3 films. He threw out the idea of having Arwen lead the elf army at Helm’s Deep. Again, the fans revolted and tagged her as Arwen, Warrior Princess. As a result, we got the tender scene of Arwen ‘visiting’ Aragorn after he’d gone over the cliff. (And yeah, I know the elves were not at Helm’s Deep, but I would argue that it neither detracted or added to the story.) Sad to say, that is precisely what they have done with the most powerful, beautiful and graceful elf.
Were the movies perfect? No. But to include everything, he would have had to make 4-5 movies to cover it all. I’ve always got the books to go back to. But from a movie perspective, I don’t think he could have done better.
And that’s the difference. The PJ films were made by people that cared about the story and the movie they were making. Even members of the cast that never read the books devoured them so they could familiarize themselves with the characters they were portraying. The crew of The Rings of Power do not care enough to go to those ‘extremes’. They’re so wrapped up in their ideology that they can’t be bothered.
To them, it’s just another vehicle to make a quick buck and spread their stupidity. One nauseating interview I saw online included the actress that plays a Dwarf of color. She was patting herself on the back for being the first female dwarf to appear on the big screen. She’s obviously not seen The Hobbit movies. And there it is in a nutshell. And like Scott, I won’t be watching the travesty of it all.
Why do I hear a disembodied voice saying “Bring me 5 Elves with attitude to become… the Terrible Tolkien Power Ringers!“
There were only Three elven rings….. They’d have to borrow two from the dwarves.
😉
Without getting into all the technicalities of the differences between a real, combat capable sword and a cheap wall hanger — The result is you can beat on an oak tree with a real sword and all you’ll do is dull the blade and get tired. If you do that with a cheap wall hanger it will literally come apart in your hands and might even hurt someone.
People like me that know the difference call swords — swords. We call those cheap fakes “sword-like objects”.
This ‘Rings of Power’ nonsense is a Tolkien-like object.
I’d say you are being generous. Cheap wall hangers at least pretend they are swords.
Heh, you make a good point. Yes, that’s a pun, too.
Have I asked if you watch a youtube channel called Tod Cutler? English knife maker (thus the cutler bit) and sword and other props maker. He has a couple videos where he talks with the lead prop designer of the Witcher TV series and they discuss what went into designing the sword, knives and such they made. Usually have 3 different versions of anything, the real sword for closeup shots and other “have to cut things” scenes, a fake prop for the fights that looks good but isn’t dangerous, and occasionally a good looking blunt that might be used in a fight where close ups are also needed. I haven’t gotten around to watching the series yet, but they put a lot of work into things that sometimes only get 10 minutes of screen time in the whole season.
I’ve watched quite a few of Tod’s videos on “Tod’s Workshop”. They’re very informative on a lot of levels. I haven’t seen the one(s) on the Witcher though, so thanks for the heads up.
Started to write a reply and thought it would be better in a blog post.
A really great commentary as usual, but with one small blemish. Bill has said before and says again here that Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings as an allegory for the contemporary events of his day, but this was something Tolkien actually specifically refuted in one of his afterwards. (That’s included on the audiobooks narrated by Rob Inglis, just to cite where I heard it first.) He even went through the trouble of concocting an alternate Lord of the Rings plot that was allegorical to the contemporary politics of his day (which was the First and Second World Wars) just to show how different the outcomes would be.
Now, you can make the argument rather convincingly, as Bill does here, that Lord of the Rings is meant to be about the events of Tolkien’s day, but you would be doing so in direct opposition to his own words.
Tolkien always denied it.
But it really couldn’t be more clear.
That last credits bit was devastating.
And the funny thing about Astin’s comment was that Samwise really was the hero in the movies. He got some of the best soliloquys in the flicks
I agree with Sean Astin, Samwise Gamgee was a far better man, or hobbit, than Frodo. Frodo was a faithless, feckless weenie who took the word of an obvious villain over that of his best friend, a known honorable and steadfast friend at that. Then he had to have his finger bitten off to be rid of the One Ring because at the end he was going to claim it for his own. Glad he sailed from the Gray Havens and good riddance to him, Middle Earth is better served by his absence. I bet he whined and moped all the way to the Undying Lands too.
😉
As a true Lord of the Rings fan for 50 years I felt Jackson did a good job but not a great one. While I understand the need to leave some things out and modify others to make a movie, his changing of the entire ending was unconscionable! Leaving the Shire untouched by the war was never JRR’s intent! Also, what was with the Elven army at Helm’s deep!! Still, if I try I can enjoy the movies, especially the 1st which was closest to the original story.
On another note, if you are interested in seeing another amazon abomination, try watching their version of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. In my opinion it ranks right up there with the worst things ever put on screen be it movie or television. It is absolutely horrible with very little resemblance to the original story while including enough woke BS to choke a horse..
When I first read the LOTR as a pre teen, I hated the ending. Seemed anti-climactic. As I grew older, I realized that the whole point of the series WAS the ending.
Regarding Wheel of Time, my recollection from the books is that there were plenty of strong female characters that did not need to be pointed out. They were just great characters.
No, it will not be THIS day.