Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Aurgjelme]

Diversity in media is not a problem at all.
But when you change Source material and events, and characters to fit your agenda that just means you dont give a shit about what was there in the first place.
These people are too lazy to write their own plot and instead they vandalize the work of one of the most celebrated authors.

[Joszef Kiprich]

Don't care about skin color but the casting just seem off. All characters look like they came straight out of the shower

[Easo]

I can only agree that it really does look like generic clean (literally! Why is everyone so clean and model like???) fantasy 101 and elves simply are cosplayers, especially Galadriel. At this budget? Jesus...

P.S.
That comment section, oh boy At least it is funny in a way.

To me, if they do this they had better commit to it. Dont let it be token. They are exploring, till this point, unexplored parts of middle earth. Dont make it the Princess who just happens to be black when no one else is. Have her whole ass kingdom of dwarves be black. Give them an identity. Dont make it that "Oh it just happens that one in every hundred dwarf births are black".

Making an entire tribe/clan of dwarves, or at least majority, being black/brown-skinned would be a good thing to do

This, do this. Don't sprinkle random black/asian people in and call it a day, make it believable.

[ArenaDk]

So for someone who never read the books and only watched the movies.
The dark elfs are basically made by a different maya than the normal elfs and something happens/ they already leave for the eternal island before the hobbit plays time wise ?

or are they completly new and just a copy from dark elfs / drow from dnd added by amazon ?

[Dhrizzle]

Diversity in media is not a problem at all.
But when you change Source material and events, and characters to fit your agenda that just means you dont give a shit about what was there in the first place.
These people are too lazy to write their own plot and instead they vandalize the work of one of the most celebrated authors.

Tale as old as time - see Robin Hood, King Arthur and the pantheon descending from the proto-Indoeuropean gods.

Heck, see Tolkien and the way he "vandalised" Germanic myths and legends.

Honestly I think he'd be fucking stoked to learn the stories he wrote for his made-up language had reached a point where future societies are adapting them to fit their sensibilities.

- - - Updated - - -

So for someone who never read the books and only watched the movies.
The dark elfs are basically made by a different maya than the normal elfs and something happens/ they already leave for the eternal island before the hobbit plays time wise ?

or are they completly new and just a copy from dark elfs / drow from dnd added by amazon ?

All the elves are made by Illuvatar. The High Elves (eldar) went to dwell in Valinor and the Dark Elves (Moriqiendi) are those who stayed behind. There are also grey elves (Sindar) who set off on the journey to Valinor but settled in lands on the way to the coast.

[Wilian]

It keeps amazing me how all these massive budget productions manage to look visually so cheap outside of some sweeping exterior shots.

[Dhrizzle]

It keeps amazing me how all these massive budget productions manage to look visually so cheap outside of some sweeping exterior shots.

It really doesn't look much better quality than Inhumans but at least we knew that was a Marvel side-project ABC were pumping out on a low budget. Also some of the CGI looked like video-game cut-scenes.

[Nerovar]

I’m just seeing the same quote over and over, mostly in Russian…

Must be those damn Russian bots I keep hearing about.

[Corvus]

So for someone who never read the books and only watched the movies.
The dark elfs are basically made by a different maya than the normal elfs and something happens/ they already leave for the eternal island before the hobbit plays time wise ?

or are they completly new and just a copy from dark elfs / drow from dnd added by amazon ?

The Dark Elves don't refer to skin colour in Tolkien's writings. There are no dark skinned elves. Dark Elves are just the elves that never travelled to Valinor and never saw the light of the Two Trees. There is no real physical difference between any of the types of elves.

So the black skinned elves (and dwarves and hobbits) in the TV show are completely made up and we will probably never get told why either.

[Nerovar]

Tale as old as time - see Robin Hood, King Arthur and the pantheon descending from the proto-Indoeuropean gods.

Heck, see Tolkien and the way he "vandalised" Germanic myths and legends.

Honestly I think he'd be fucking stoked to learn the stories he wrote for his made-up language had reached a point where future societies are adapting them to fit their sensibilities.

The difference is that when Tolkien wanted to give a spin on established stories or characters like Macbeth, he didn't "rewrite" Macbeth but created his own secondary world with its own characters and then alluded to these stories and myths that inspired him.

Tolkien - a conservative Catholic who hated the Americanization of the world, consumerism, modernity, modernism and the ideas associated with it - who spent his life studying ancient and medieval literature and language and who wrote his books as an escape from the modern world to a pre-modern secondary world, in which the signifier still represents the signified, would surely be overjoyed to see his work bastardized for modern sensibilities.
Fantastic take.

[tikcol]

The prime video comment section of the trailer on youtube is looking exactly as it should. Youtube removing dislike counter only made people showing it in the comment section

[Thaneo]

I’m also bothered by the Dwarf Queen. Again, not because of the color of her skin—I don’t care about their skin color history—I just think she looks way too pretty to be a dwarf. We didn’t need to have a sexy dwarf just because sex sells.

O sweet summer child... they need to make the dwarf queen sexy because game of thrones was popular. Someone is going to bang the dwarf and you are going to watch it.

[Dhrizzle]

The prime video comment section of the trailer on youtube is looking exactly as it should. Youtube removing dislike counter only made people showing it in the comment section

At least it encourages the whiners and terminally offended to use a bit of imagination.

[Nurasu]

and we will probably never get told why either.

Because it literally doesn't matter. An elf is an elf is an elf. If you can suspend your disbelief to imagine you're looking at a fictional humanoid fantasy race but can't extend that an iota further to the actor's skin color...

I get that elves are supposed to be superior, so of course they have to be white, but oh actually they don't.

[Dellis0991]

Dwarf women with no facial hair what so ever and a fucking elf with a buzzcut.... Really? I guess elf have magic to trim hair like modern razor and not just blades like everyone else. People didnt have faded buzzcut, because electric clippers arent a fucking thing in medieval time, fantasy or not. People cut their fucking hair with blades. Theres no electric grooming.

That black elf rocking one crispy ass fade lmao

[Toppy]

Because it literally doesn't matter. An elf is an elf is an elf. If you can suspend your disbelief to imagine you're looking at a fictional humanoid fantasy race but can't extend that an iota further to the actor's skin color...

I get that elves are supposed to be superior, so of course they have to be white, but oh actually they don't.

Everyone knows that the way skin color works is that people are just randomly born with certain skin colors.

The problem is tokenism. It doesnt seem he (or the dwarf) are from another group of dwarves or elves that are none-white, rather, they just randomly are.

If they want to claim they're all for diversity they need to actually commit to it rather than putting in token characters and going "PRAISE US". Its the same as pride month when you suddenlly see rainbow stuff everywhere but only pride month.

Hell Walmart got in a bit for something like this recently: They were playing music from black musicians during black history month. And only black history month.

They stopped doing it in less than a week due to the backlash. Didnt help they were only playing older music at that.

[Ihavewaffles]

Honestly, this makes me cheer for Sauron, Orcs n the forces of evil, at least they make sense, so plz kill all the humies dworfs n elfs

[Nurasu]

Everyone knows that the way skin color works is that people are just randomly born with certain skin colors.

The problem is tokenism. It doesnt seem he (or the dwarf) are from another group of dwarves or elves that are none-white, rather, they just randomly are.

If they want to claim they're all for diversity they need to actually commit to it rather than putting in token characters and going "PRAISE US". Its the same as pride month when you suddenlly see rainbow stuff everywhere but only pride month.

Hell Walmart got in a bit for something like this recently: They were playing music from black musicians during black history month. And only black history month.

They stopped doing it in less than a week due to the backlash. Didnt help they were only playing older music at that.

I'm just picturing you doing calculations in the grocery store about where someone's lineage must trace back to before you can ask them where to find the bread. Hyperfixation on race isn't healthy, especially not in the area of the arts. There are 1,000 reasons this series is probably going to suck and none of them have to do with actors' skin colors.

[bledgor]

I'm just picturing you doing calculations in the grocery store about where someone's lineage must trace back to before you can ask them where to find the bread. Hyperfixation on race isn't healthy, especially not in the area of the arts. There are 1,000 reasons this series is probably going to suck and none of them have to do with actors' skin colors.

See this to me is funny, because calling out tokenism/insertion of a specific race into a scene/book they weren't is hyperfixation, but the showrunners always feeling the need to insert a token minority in a few spots isn't?

[Nurasu]

See this to me is funny, because calling out tokenism/insertion of a specific race into a scene/book they weren't is hyperfixation, but the showrunners always feeling the need to insert a token minority in a few spots isn't?

Where did you come up with the assertion that they were cast for their skin color? With a cast that large, it makes sense there would be minorities included naturally for their talent, no?