"The Rings of Power" Vanity Fair article

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Snowdog

... a lot of the ones who hate this so bad think PJ did an awesome job presenting Lord of the Rings. They didn’t mind the many wholesale changes made to that complete book story, saying ‘it needed to be done to appeal to the masses’.

Well, I'm at least spared an accusation of inconsistency, since I hate the Jackson movies!

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

While there are extremes of both opinions, and while this site is perhaps more anti-Amazon inclined, is it even possible anymore to present moderate opinions on the matter without being accused of being an extremist one way or the other? Can we all take a step back and calm down a little? It's a show. We will dislike things (for myself, Galadriel's portrayal is an example), we might like some things (for myself - the random references to Two Trees and such scattered in bits of costume), we might have no firm opinion either way on some things (for myself - Gil-Galad: not how I imagined him but not ghastly off either). Can we express opinions on these things anymore without forgetting that disagreeing with the showrunners doesn't make you a die-hard hater, and liking or defending the show's decisions doesn't make you a die-hard fanatic? It's a show. We can debate and discuss it and chew it over peacefully to the extent that it gives us pleasure to do so. And when it comes out, we will watch it (or not) to the extent it gives us pleasure, and the moment it starts giving more grief than pleasure we turn off the screen. It should be this simple, but it just somehow got very complicated. I feel like this thread has been escalating ever more, though there have been multiple attempts to pacify things. Please let's not forget that in the end, all this matters very little? With the debate getting ever more heated and emotionally involved, and the posts coming in so frequently, I am beginning to feel a bit like Hui and getting the itch to ++vote.

^All of this, basically. Just because the world at large wants every idle thought to be a rock-solid opinion and every opinion to align with the most extreme position on a subject, doesn't mean we have to join in.

What really winds me up (elsewhere!) is people insisting their read of the text is not just the best, but the only possible interpretation. I've had an amusing conversation on Twitter where I said that Beleg's whetting spell opens the possibility of a lightning-vs-fire-sword duel in Middle-earth (see Celeg Aithorn, and have Eonwe fight a Balrog), and someone has been insisting that those lines not probably are, but must! be metaphorical. There is no possibility that they could be literal, because... Sting was once described as a blue flame, apparently.

Also, if the Valar had a world-breaking lightning sword, why didn't they send Gandalf back with it?!?! After all, he could already destroy armies single-handedly, so he should have it!! (On being queried on this point, they asserted that because Gandalf the Grey could equal a Balrog, of course Gandalf the White could destroy armies. Thaaat's when I stepped away.)

And the odd thing is, holding and expressing a nuanced opinion - like "this thing is possible, though not really certain" - seems to wind that kind of person up just as much as their unsupported certainty does me! They really, really wanted me to be saying that the whetting spell was definitively literal. It was funny. ^_^

Anyway, in the spirit of finding weird hills to die on, I think we can all agree that if anyone in Numenor has any carpet other than this one, it will be proof that they are in the direct pay of Morgoth and intend to steal, spit on, and burn all our Tolkien books.

hS

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Snowdog

... a lot of the ones who hate this so bad think PJ did an awesome job presenting Lord of the Rings. They didn’t mind the many wholesale changes made to that complete book story, saying ‘it needed to be done to appeal to the masses’.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Well, I'm at least spared an accusation of inconsistency, since I hate the Jackson movies!

I am reminded of a quote by the composer Rossini regarding Richard Wagner, which for me would also be apt for Peter Jackson. To paraphrase:

"He has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour."

[William Cloud Hicklin]

BTW, Corey Olsen is dead wrong; Tolkien absolutely, positively did write that Dwarf-women were bearded. War of the Jewels, p. 205.

"For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their days, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womankind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls."

Note that means that Dwarf kids have beards too!

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

BTW, Corey Olsen is dead wrong; Tolkien absolutely, positively did write that Dwarf-women were bearded. War of the Jewels, p. 205.

...

Note that means that Dwarf kids have beards too!

By the same token (or should I say, "by the same Tolkien?"), he absolutely, positively... left the door open. Nature of Middle-earth, p.187:

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

When I come to think of it, in my own imagination, beards were not found among Hobbits (as stated in the text); nor among the Eldar (not stated). All male Dwarves had them. The wizards had them, though Radagast (not stated) had only short, curling, light brown hair on his chin. Men normally had them when full-grown, hence Eomer, Theoden and all others named. But not Denethor, Boromir, Faramir, Aragorn, Isildur, or other Númenórean chieftains.

The emphasis, if we trust Hostetter, on male Dwarves is there in Tolkien's text (and I think this forum can generally be trusted to trust the editors!).

Does Tolkien specifying that male Dwarves are bearded equal a syllogism that excludes female Dwarves from being bearded? Absolutely not, but it would be very odd, in a footnote where Tolkien goes out of his way to tell us the bearded status of nearly every male character of importance, that he would tell us that male dwarves are bearded and not simply say "all Dwarves are bearded" unless he meant by implication that NOT all female Dwarves are bearded.

Of course, if you think Tolkien was a pure, logic-driven machine, then the two statements are easily reconcilable: all Dwarves have beards, all male Dwarves are a subset of all Dwarves, therefore, all male Dwarves have beards.

(I don't mean "you" to be William Cloud Hicklin here specifically, though I suppose I am arguing against your post, so much as a rhetorical "you.")

I think it should be clear to anyone who's read the HoME that Tolkien tended to forget ideas he'd jotted down before, and also that he was quite willing to revise previous ideas--his main constraint was that he considered things that had appeared in print to be "canon" (see: the Problem of Ros), except that even here he was totally willing to revise what was in print (see: the 2nd Edition)!

All of which is to say... any adaptation of Tolkien is going to involve judgement calls simply to fill in the gaps, but there's the FURTHER--and even more fraught--judgement calls where Tolkien said more than one thing!

(As an aside on Dwarven female beardedness, I think the pro-beardians have the better textual authority: besides WCH's quite definitive quote above, there's the published text of Appendix A, which has usually been interpreted this way, which is two texts against NoME's one. And, to cast a little extra aspersion toward Amazon, I doubt they could have read NoME early enough in their creative process to have considered it.

As an aside to my aside: I wish we WERE seeing bearded dwarf-women, if only because the Aganzir-sect of this forum have inclined me to expect them and because I think it would be an interestingly canonical subversion of expected appearances. Amazon hieing away from this is actually a case counter to the dominant story of Amazon being "oh so woke"--at least if I can make the assumption that "bearded Dwarf women" would likely have been seized on, had they gone that way, as somehow transgressive and thus woke.)

Ultimately, I expect the series to fail to live up to Tolkien because that has been my unshakeable instinct as the ultimate fate of all adaptations since I first saw the animated Rankin-Bass Hobbit in about 1999. No adaptation has yet proven me wrong, but that doesn't mean there haven't been good things in the adapations--gold amidst the dross. And just because I don't expect to much enjoy it myself doesn't mean that others have to share my exact level of apathy or the reasons for it.