The Rings of Power
Credit – Amazon
The ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ is being ridiculed by fans everywhere, and we’ve only seen 80 seconds of footage. 80 seconds that foretell a lack of experience, bad CGI, and a company, Amazon, that is stuck in a world where they think that culturally appropriating established lore, with a 21st century social media mob version of diversity and inclusion, would endear fans of The Lord of the Rings to their cause. They were summarily wrong. Amazon, and it’s writers and producers, are appropriating a franchise for lack of a better word, that fans hold sacred. The Lord of the Rings has its own culture, races, and diversity, that doesn’t need to be tainted with Hollywood’s version of what they think America looks like or acts. Fans of franchises like The Lord of the Rings don’t care if you have culturally appropriate diversity and inclusion in entertainment, just leave our established franchises alone and create something new. But Hollywood can’t do that, because the irresistible urge to get their message across, of being inclusive and diverse, is so much easier and lazier to do with franchises that have a built in fanbase. ‘The Rings of Power’ is no exception, and Amazon can’t help themselves either. And what ends up happening, is Hollywood ruining these franchises, losing boatloads of money, losing credibility, and losing the fans, and in the end, blaming the fans. But the tide is turning, and fans are winning the war on woke. Movies like ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’, ‘Dune’, and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ are proving that with respect…we won’t reject.
Hollywood is Afraid of the Radical Psychotics on Social Media
Hollywood’s obsession with rebooting and transforming franchises like Ghostbusters, Terminator, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Star Wars, is getting old, and is a thumb in the eyes of fans who have grown up loving these franchises. Fans erupting about the changes in ‘Lords of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ is just the last straw, in a string of franchises that have been systematically rewritten to appease an identity politics narrative. An identity politics narrative, that has only produced failure after failure, and a hate for fans that voice their opinions. This marathon to rewrite and reboot franchises in the name of diversity and inclusion, all started with Ghostbusters 2016 and never looked back. These reboots, with Twitter mob acceptable replacements of established characters, were only made, because Hollywood was afraid of the radical psychotics on social media. Hollywood thought that if they bent the knee to the blue and purple haired crazies, that everything would be alright in the world, and everyone would peacefully co-exist. Well that didn’t happen, because the fans started to talk back and reject the garbage that was being produced. As a result, Hollywood thought it was suddenly acceptable to vilify the fans that had an opinion, calling them misogynistic, Nazis, white supremacists, and racists. And, when all of these franchise reboots, remakes, and bastardizations started to fail at the box office, and not sell any merchandise, Hollywood and social media got a twofer, by blaming the fans for that as well.
Credit – Amazon
Amazon is Conveniently and lazily Using The Rings of Power as a Vehicle For Their Diverse Messaging
Now that the ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ anemic trailer has dropped, and has been ratio’d, Amazon is in full defense mode, calling on anybody in the entertainment mainstream media to defend this possible piece of crap, and once again call out the fans, blaming them for their ignorance and racism. Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon, and Den of Geek, just to name a few, have all come out and defended ‘The Rings of Power’. Executive producer of ‘The Rings of Power’ Lindsey Weber, said in a Vanity Fair article, that she thought ‘The Rings of Power’ should be representative of our world.
“It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of [author J.R.R.] Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like. Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together.”
Really? In two sentences, this producer, who I would dare say truly knows little of Tolkien’s work, has managed to say that ‘The Rings of Power’ needs to be inclusive of all races in our world, while using Tolkien’s own inclusive and diverse culture in his books, as a point of defense. It’s absurd. Tolkien created an Anglophile world that was inclusive and representative of the different cultures in Britain. Would it be ok to say, take the folktale of ‘Thunder and Lightning’ from Africa, and say we need more representation, so we are going to add white people into the mix? Of course not, because ‘Thunder and Lightning’ is established mythology and lore, just like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is. Why is it so important for these producers and studios to have established franchises have a message of diversity? It’s a rhetorical question because we all know the reason for it. Convenience and laziness.
Related: Bob Chapek is Part of the Problem
Amazon is Already Desperate to Change the Narrative
In addition to Vanity Fair, Amazon had a trio of Lord of the Rings “super fans” tell us how grateful they were to see a black elf and a beardless dwarf queen.
“I would say like expansive because we’re getting this whole new look into the Second Age on screen. And it’s going to be so amazing. I also want to say representative because we’re getting like more diversity within this series. Like we’re seeing our first black Elf. We’re seeing the first female Dwarf. I’m very looking forward to looking at that.”
“Now, diversity especially on screen as an actor means a lot to me because growing up I hardly saw that watching TV and watching a lot of films and stuff. I never saw people of my color so it’s exciting to see that diversity is being explored in The Rings of Power.”
“I’m very excited for it because Tolkien’s work was always about being inclusive. I mean we see it through The Fellowship. Like a bunch of people from different backgrounds coming together in order to face a common enemy being Sauron.”
“And just seeing the casting decisions it’s really really exciting to see. It’s just gonna mean so much to me personally because it’s getting that representation in Middle-earth. Young kids are gonna see that on screen and it’s just gonna be really nice for them to be like, ‘Oh, hey, there’s someone that looks just like me.
This regurgitation of how important their representation will be in middle earth, continued ad nauseam throughout the interview, and also showcased the “super fans” absolute ignorance of Tolkien’s work. It also revealed just how desperate Amazon is to get some positive spin on ‘The Rings of Power’.
Amazon Has Lost Before its Begun
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’, is off to a rocky start, and could possibly be the worst failure of Jeff Bezos’ career. Amazon has hired John D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who have no other producing credits, to be show runners on ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’. This is a franchise, in my opinion, that deserves an experienced crew running something that has 500 million invested in its success. In my estimation, ‘The Rings of Power’ is doomed before the first episode even hits. It’s not a good sign, when you already have a built in fanbase that hates this thing, before it has even left the gate. Jeff Bezos and Amazon are going to lose popularity over ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’, and its all self inflicted. Bezos is supposed to be this die hard Lord of the Rings fan, yet has allowed the sanctity of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work to be tarnished with unnecessary identity politics. If he was an actual true fan, he would realize that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is already representative of different cultures and beliefs, and left well enough alone.
The Fans Will be Laughing as Amazon Tries to Blame Them
So why does Bezos and Amazon feel the need to reflect what they think the modern world looks like in ‘The Rings of Power’? Do they think we are stupid and can’t see that for ourselves? Does Amazon feel that the message of diversity isn’t clear enough in the original Lord of the Rings? Do they feel the need to hit us over the head with it, in order for us to comply and acquiesce, just because it’s another favorite franchise. All of the above and more. Companies like Amazon are condescending, and think they know what’s best for the world and the fans. Bezos has plenty of money, but having a 500 million dollar bomb on your resume, will surely lose points with a lot of fans. It might cost him monetarily as well, with fans cancelling their prime membership over this debacle, in similar fashion to when Disney Plus lost a ton of subscribers over the firing of Gina Carano. Amazon and Jeff Bezos will find a way to blame the misogynistic racist fans for their failure. But the good thing is that no one will be listening to the tired trope of fans bad. The pendulum is swinging the other way, and there’s good entertainment out there. Look at what Sony has done in the last year. They have given us good solid entertainment devoid of politics. So have at it Amazon, and destroy the Lord of the Rings with your identity politics. No one will be watching, and the fans will be picking up the Lord of the Rings books and laughing at you with the turn of every page.
