Here for this content. Also, why is that person not the one who did the Amazon series. The Tolkien fan in me is cringing heavily when observing the "plot" of the Rings of Power
From the moment it opened with elf-children acting like orcs, it was clear not only that she showrunners had missed the mark, but they lacked enough of Socrates "beginning of wisdom" that they couldn't even understand how they were missing it
The series has many issues, but the showrunners not understanding the works of Tolkien is not one of them. Many of the issues arise from the main premise of the series. Like with many recent big-budget adaptations, the showrunners are retelling the story from the perspective of a subset of 21st century Americans. If you are not in the target audience, many things may feel off.
Also, it's good to remember that big-budget adaptations usually fail. Any story worth adapting is likely exceptional. Because you are retelling the story in a new format, you usually have to change many things. But the new things you create are unlikely to be exceptional, because exceptional things are rare.
See: Asimov's "Foundation"
Just read up on how much influence Sir Christopher Lee had on Lord of the Rings movies.
You will find those that trip over themselves to defend ROP (and new Star Trek, et. al.). This is the target audience. I am not sure what convinced this audience that the new content is good - Part of me suspects it's mostly Stockholm syndrome. Those without the courage to adopt a more stoic attitude towards life.
I feel like if more people would quit consuming pointless shit all the time, we might wind up with better pointless shit. As it stands, anything will generate some amount of revenue when you launch it on Netflix. This is really bad game theory for high quality content producers and the risk/reward tradeoff they have to negotiate with publishers.
"We need 2 years to run the traps on lore" and "casting will be an on-going and convoluted process" == you are kicked out of the Netflix green light meeting without any additional courtesy.
The opening theme alone represents the music of the ainur so well, I never skip it.
The tragedy is that the source material for the second age is so great yet they chose to take the show in a baffling and arbitrary direction, almost completely decoupled from the existing lore.
That’s the silliest thing I read today.
For instance attention to detail was a pretty important theme in Tolkien’s works. He was pretty strict about timeframes, military planning etc. in Amazon’s show everyone seems to have a teleportation device, boat hulls breaks the law of physics considering how much stuff you can fit into them and “Galadriel” is the best swimmer in history multiplied by 100…
It pretty much a cheap 90s fantasy tv show with an inflated budget that takes itself way to seriously than it has any right to.