Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[eschatological]

Just because Tolkein didn't want to write about Orc female warriors doesn't mean there's no place for them ever again.

[Lady Atia]

...Because Tolkien stated that there must have been orc women but we don't know much about them because we only see orcs as soldiers which implies that these soldiers aren't women. Also Elven women generally aren't warriors.

Yeah, probably because Tolkien came fresh out of WW1. Which you know, mostly had man fighting, atleast for frontline duty. A modern interpretation would and should be different. But I guess you will hate me because I'm "woke" and want my representation in my fantasy story.

Also, Galadriel was described as amazon, so I don't know where your "elven women aren't warriors" come from. Just because Tolkien didn't say "and every 3rd elven warrior was a women" doesn't mean there wouldn't be any.

[Nerovar]

Yeah, probably because Tolkien came fresh out of WW1. Which you know, mostly had man fighting, atleast for frontline duty.

That's still very much the case in 2022 in case you haven't been paying attention.

A modern interpretation would and should be different.

Why?

Also, Galadriel was described as amazon, so I don't know where your "elven women aren't warriors" come from. Just because Tolkien didn't say "and every 3rd elven warrior was a women" doesn't mean there wouldn't be any.

You already said that according to the world Tolkien lived in men fighting would have been the default and natural assumption. There's also the fact that you can count the number of female elves who actually fought on one hand. But what's the point in arguing about the lore when you've already said that the facts of the setting don't really matter to you because you want a ""modern interpretation""?

Have fun with your trashy amazon flick, I guess.

[Koriani]

Or, and hear me out, there's LOTR fans out there, like me, who don't judge media before it actually comes out, recognizing that PR and promotional material is often bad and unfinished, or overexposed, or just outright misleading.

Like the amount of vitriol that gets spewed on these projects before they ever come out makes me wonder how y'all get through a normal day in the real world. And the idea that "megacorporations have corrupted media" as if Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy wasn't made by a megacorporation called New Line Cinema, or every film since Spielberg et al created blockbuster cinema in the late 70s wasn't the product of some massive production company, is comical.

*Raises Hand*

One of those fans as well.

I don't so much question other people's ability to survive in the real world though, at least not just based on how they present on a forum .

I absolutely watch almost none of the early bullshit about anything, anymore though, because of how people like to pick apart any two minute teaser they get a hold of. Which is just more about fear or wish projection than anything really being 'told' in a 90 second video clip.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

Well, the problem arises from the fact that it's pretty much untread territory. Female orcs are never shown or even mentioned within any of Tolkien's writings and for good reason. The only mention of them is from a letter where Tolkien concedes that they must have existed but are never seen as orcs only really appear as soldiers . Therefor it begs the question what you stand to gain from the inclusion of female orcs. Either you portray them like the (male) orcs we know and love/hate by turning them into soldiers (which already contradicts the only mention of female orcs that we have) or you simply make shit up about their "domestic lives". The latter could also open up an entirely different can of worms because showing orc women or even children unnecessarily humanizes them in a way that wasn't really intended by Tolkien because it completely defeats their purpose in regards to his stories.

Or they could go for the oppression route, and have those females having similarities with the Tleilaxus...

[Deadite]

Have fun with your trashy amazon flick, I guess.

They said it in the article that was linked above.. "Amazon is taking the time to rethink many of the familiar elements from Tolkien's world, including Orcs." Authenticity is so passé. It is all about adaptations now.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Durin's Bane was only a single Balrog. There are in fact multiple Balrog as written by Tolkien. There's no reason to imply there cannot be female Balrogs, or that the Balrogs can't be written in a sympathetic light. Tolkien never said they were explicitly evil, just giant fiery demonic entities that served Morgoth.

Imagine the audacity of giving sentient creatures agency....

[uuuhname]

all I get from these arguments is I should not care about Tolkien's work. I'm not particularly interested in these incredibly shallow morality tales.

I can at least applaud attempts to inject some new ideas into these stagnant franchises.

[Biomega]

Imagine the audacity of giving sentient creatures agency....

To be fair, it's a world with supernatural beings and objective good/evil. Things like "agency" become problematic once gods can meddle and mess with the substrate of reality.

Balrogs are effectively spirits. They're not animals. They don't have to be able to reproduce or be subject to free will or anything like that. There don't have to be male OR female Balrogs (indeed the concept of gender doesn't have to make sense to them any more than it does to, say, a rock or a star or whatever).

With orcs it's a little complicated since they were ostensibly "ordinary" beings (elves, if I recall) which were simply "twisted" into their current form by Morgoth. That IMPLIES they're organic beings that come about by the usual forms of reproduction, though we also see in the LotR movies that apparently you can just make them out of mud or whatever who knows.

What Morgoth's influence does to their agency and free will is hard to say. Tolkien's letters imply that their orientation towards "evil" is a severe bias but not immutable, but there's no primary materials suggesting anything of the kind. Then again, "good" or "evil" are tricky to evaluate with real-world philosophy in a setting where they are pretty much objective forces rather than subjective concepts.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Also, Tolkien never finished the orcs creation, so there is no "real canon" of how they came to be, he had like, 5 theories written, the last one, and prob the one that make most sense(taking account how orcs work, the timeline, etc) is that they were in truth corrupted men, not elves. Of course the elven theory is more popular because his son chose to publish that one.

The Elven backstory also makes more sense because Melkor hates the elves. The Valar went to war against Melkor in the first place for the sake of protecting the elves. He was captured and imprisoned for three ages for their sake. The elves were the favorite of his archenemies. It is no wonder then that Melkor would try twisting them into a mockery, trying to get back at the Valar, whilst favoring the race of Men, whom the Valar had seemingly abandoned. Even Sauron played up the Valar's favoritism of the Elves to stir up the Numenorans against them.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

To be fair, it's a world with supernatural beings and objective good/evil. Things like "agency" become problematic once gods can meddle and mess with the substrate of reality.

Balrogs are effectively spirits. They're not animals. They don't have to be able to reproduce or be subject to free will or anything like that. There don't have to be male OR female Balrogs (indeed the concept of gender doesn't have to make sense to them any more than it does to, say, a rock or a star or whatever).

With orcs it's a little complicated since they were ostensibly "ordinary" beings (elves, if I recall) which were simply "twisted" into their current form by Morgoth. That IMPLIES they're organic beings that come about by the usual forms of reproduction, though we also see in the LotR movies that apparently you can just make them out of mud or whatever who knows.

What Morgoth's influence does to their agency and free will is hard to say. Tolkien's letters imply that their orientation towards "evil" is a severe bias but not immutable, but there's no primary materials suggesting anything of the kind. Then again, "good" or "evil" are tricky to evaluate with real-world philosophy in a setting where they are pretty much objective forces rather than subjective concepts.

I'm not going to go too much into the Balrog of it all...that was a very weird, very extreme attempt at a hypothetical analog.

Tolkien acknowledged female orcs must have existed...so there's not really any real argument regarding this shows choice of involving female orcs.

Objective good and evil existing doesn't make agency problematic at all. Being pre-disposed to something does not mean you lose agency. You can still make the choice to go a different way. And, as you yourself just said, Tolkien said that orcs being evil is not a immutable fact...so he left the door open for non-evil Orcs.

[rogoth]

Or, and hear me out, there's LOTR fans out there, like me, who don't judge media before it actually comes out, recognizing that PR and promotional material is often bad and unfinished, or overexposed, or just outright misleading.

Like the amount of vitriol that gets spewed on these projects before they ever come out makes me wonder how y'all get through a normal day in the real world. And the idea that "megacorporations have corrupted media" as if Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy wasn't made by a megacorporation called New Line Cinema, or every film since Spielberg et al created blockbuster cinema in the late 70s wasn't the product of some massive production company, is comical.

because of past experience 'we' know full well just how bad this shitshow is gonna turn out to be.

not only have they rewritten already established characters with predefined lore, making whatever these new characters are purely fan fiction from the producers, the company that is bankrolling this doomed to fail project does not have ANY of the publishing rights to ANY of the material needed to make an adaptation set in this world during this specific time period, that information is held within the pages of the silmarillion and other works that go alongside that.

lets not get started on the whole shoehorning in these 'harfoots' creatures that have been fabricated out of thin air by the show runners and do not exist in the lore of the universe created by Tolkien, not even touching on the severe lore inaccuracies of the female dwarf, as well as the buzzcut black elf who in this fantasy world would have almost certainly never existed but here we are, the man who birthed this masterpiece of literature and fantasy made these works as a fictional history for Britain, and as a way to ESCAPE the troubles of the real world, and here we are a century later these woke disciples calling themselves producers are forcing gender and race politics onto this fan fiction mess 'to include the real world as it exists today' < (an actual quote from the principal showrunner), proving beyond a shadow of a doubt these people have no desire nor the skill needed to make a faithful adaptation of source material and instead are stealing a beloved IP to push their fan fiction narrative.

lastly, in every single 'influencer' gathering there have been gifts and what equates to essentially bribes given to those invited in order for them to come out and give it rave reviews despite it being illegal to do so in the vast majority of developed nations around the world, Amazon has deleted almost all of the negative comments it received on its' trailer videos (numbering in the 10's of thousands of comments borderline 100's of thousands overall), they are actively trying to censor any criticism of the show and they are no longer doing so quietly, they are brazenly doing it in full view and no care to who sees it.

this is going to be such a shitstorm i genuinely can't wait for it to hit the fan and for the woke brigade defending this indefensible mess to try and come out in force to smokescreen it to the normies who are clearly the target audience since no actual fans should be touching this with a 40ft pole, and if you enjoy it, that's great, just know you're likely going to be in the absolute minority and that all the warning signs have been made clear as day to anybody and everybody, it's on you and others like you if you choose to ignore those warnings.

[Nyel]

The question is, will this be even worse than Wheel of Time? From everything we saw, this TV show looks absolutely horrible and like a cheap cringy rip off of the Tolkien universe.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The question is, will this be even worse than Wheel of Time? From everything we saw, this TV show looks absolutely horrible and like a cheap cringy rip off of the Tolkien universe.

It will be worse because of how mean spirited this project is.

[Xath]

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Seems like Tolkien put a lot more thought into this stuff than """fans""" of his work care to. Imagine that.

And Men can be pure evil you realize that right? Orcs are corrupted beyond belief it's arguably the most horrible thing that Morgoth did.

[bledgor]

It will be worse because of how mean spirited this project is.

See I might disagree with you, as the executive producer for The Rafe of Time series was going around saying he will ruin fans favorite characters if they said something mean on twitter, and boy did he ruin a lot of characters. Not to mention the lore, the magic system, the history, just about everything. Not saying it isn't possible for the Ring of Power to do the same, but it is a step hill to climb.

[Xath]

Yeah, i dont know anyone who loved and grew upp with Tolkien that isnt excited about this show. All the hate and drama is hilarious.

Some even think they are "protecting and defending" Tokiens honor. Like, daym..

Grew up loving Tolkien my mom literally read me the hobbit in bed cover to cover by the time I was 6. He's one of the biggest reasons I ended up reading so much. I am not excited by this show it looks like an absolute dumpster fire made by people who want to tell their own story and are using Tolkien's world to do it much like Rafe of Time. Why do they do this? Usually because their ideas are terrible and would never get made if not attached to an established work.

[ONCHEhap]

Isnt that Goblins who dont like light? there were orcs at Minas Tirith siege during the day, as well as many other places during the day time

Orcs don't like sunlight, but it doesn't straight up kill them like stone trolls.

With the right amount of fear put in their heart by their masters, they will march under the sun. It'll suck every step of the way, but they'll do it

[s_bushido]

It will be worse because of how mean spirited this project is.

In a thread bemoaning the evils of fanfiction, people sure do like inventing their own headcanon about the showrunners' motivations...

[Biomega]

The question is, will this be even worse than Wheel of Time?

That's an achievement in and of itself, but I suppose there's always room to expand at the bottom