I think there are several places across the Silmarillion and other books where it’s mentioned that some Men are mistaken for Elves. If I recall correctly, this happened with Túrin, who was given the name Adanedhel (“Man-Elf”), which he got because he was so alike to them.
The Wizards are given the appearance of old men, but the Men think that they’re elves. Gandalf’s name comes from the Old Norse for “wand/staff elf”. In-universe, in the north he was known as “The Elf of the Wand”, because Men mistook him for an Elf.
Also, I’m not sure that calling them a “different species” is accurate. They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
> They certainly can produce offspring with Men just fine.
While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
Every single individual has long hair? What, not a single one of them cuts their hair? I call bs
Not giving them some distinguishing physical characteristic sounds like a great way to make the work more difficult to understand. Personally I don’t mind the change.
> I remember reading they had long hair, regardless they are called something different and have completely different lives.
Some of them had long hair, but presumably others don’t. I’m not aware of any part of the Legendarium which suggests all elves had long hair. That would seem like an uncharacteristic thing for Tolkien to write about them.
> While true, in fantasy all kinds of mixes are possible that result in creatures like minotaurs, half-orcs, half-demons, half-dragons, etc., and those are obviously not human.
This is not D&D. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the Legendarium suggesting there can be unions of anything other than Men and Elves, Men and Orcs, and Elves and Maiar.
A union of an Elf and Maia happened exactly once, and is a bit of an odd becuse Maiar choose the physical form they take. Melian presumably clothed herself in the body of an Elf, at least as far as mattered.
The Men and Orcs thing is unusual in two ways. One is that it’s not explicit how they were combined. Saruman did it… somehow, but the implication is that it was through his art (magic). yhe other is that, depending on the day, Tolkien considered Orcs to be anywhere between corrupted Elves/Men, fallen Maiar, or something like animals. He wasn’t ever comfortable with the ramifications of any of these different origins had, but I think that at the time of writing Lord of the Rings, the idea was that they were corrupted Elves. I’m not super sure on that though. Either way though, I can see a lot more philosophical justification for Men and Orcs being crossed than Men and dragons, balrogs, or anything else that isn’t an Elvish/Mannish being.
Anyway, this is a long way to say that just because it happens in other fantasy settings doesn’t mean it applies here. Tolkien thought about this kind of stuff a lot, and wrote extensively on it. If you’re interested in reading more about this kinda thing, I highly recommend the History of Middle Earth series of books, especially Morgoth’s Ring, which deals a lot with the nature of existence (both physical matter and things like souls) in the Legendarium.
Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth[1] has a long section discussing this. Tolkien regarded elves, men, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs all as races of one species, who thus could interbreed.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Racism-Middle-earth-Robert-St...
And all of 10 people would have watched it. IP is for name recognition more than anything else. What percentage of people who watched the Peter Jackson trilogy actually read a book from the trilogy? I'd bet way less than 50%.
Jackson didn't adhere 100% to the source material either. There are length lists, including many substantial non-narrative related changes, for[1] each[2] film[3].
[1]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_F...
[2]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_T...
[3]: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_R...
The trilogy was great because of the writings of Tolkien. Peter Jackson did his best respecting that and telling Tolkien's story, not his own. I think that's why they were successful.
What's the point of adapting a source material if you think it should be changed to begin with? Just don't adapt it... but of course they want the massive fanbase even though they're not acknowledging why it's big in the first place.
As far as I can tell, outrage over controversial changes to the IP (e.g. Game of Thrones, The Last of Us 2, Star Wars 7-9) is _positively_ correlated with popularity.
The Star Wars Trilogy critically flopped and only 5x their budget compared to +20x for the original trilogy.
The follow up Star Wars content didn't really work out besides the Mandalorian maybe.
The Foundation series is a complete flop as well.
Laughable statement. Where did Gandalf hit Pippin when they talked to Denethor in the books? That was in complete contradiction with the Gandalf from the books so please dont tell me this was faithful in any way.
The movies are great, but by no means some sort of gold standard of faithful adaption of the source material.
You optimist. Probably less than 5% :-)
Just like how in the Marvel cinematic universe Spiderman's MJ is mixed race and not a redhead, Thanos in the comics doesn't care about halving the universe's population, he wants to kill as many as he can to court the embodiment of Death, or most of the Eternals are gender and race swapped from their comic versions.
Elves are now closer to humans, and they can be black, but the old material with white, tall, long haired elves is still there for you to enjoy... is it really a big deal?
This was very clear with Game of Thrones with George RR not being able to finish his saga, and this being so obvious after season 4 (or 5). The quality dropped dramatically and it all crashed and burned by the last season. Had they planned it more carefully, so that George was in charge of the story until the end, I think we would have seen the most successful fantasy show of the century.