Amazon’sLord of the Ringsspin-off series,The Rings of Power, has a famously enormous budget, with season one said to costupwards of half a billion dollarsalone. Well, a teaser forThe Rings of Powerlanded over Super Bowl weekend, and yes, this show looks VERY expensive. However this turns out, the aesthetics are not going to be a problem. Twenty years later,The Lord of the Ringsstill looks incredibly beautiful, andRings of Powerlooks every bit as lavish and lush. Good! Living up to Peter Jackson’s (original) standard is half the battle.
The other half of the battle is, of course, the story. Which is a ??? because the writers ofPowerhave cobbled their story together from ancillary Tolkien texts like《精灵宝钻》, and it’s set 3,000 years before the events depicted inThe Lord of the Rings. Because of elves and fantasy rules and such, someLOTRcharacters will be included inPower, but as their younger selves, such as Galadriel, here played by Morfydd Clark (lately ofSaint Maud), and Elrond, now played by Robert Aramayo (aka Young Ned fromGame of Thrones). But there are a bunch of new characters, such as the elf king Gil-galad, played by Benjamin Walker, a very good actor who deserves WAY better than the crap Hollywood has been sticking him with. Let’s hopePowerworks out better for him thanAbraham Lincoln: Vampire HunterorShimmer LakeorThe Choiceor whatever in the ever-loving HELLThe King’s Daughteris.
Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about a beloved piece of pop culture without a controversy. You may have noticed in the trailer that there are now elves of color, such as Arondir, played by Afro-Latino actor Ismael Cruz Cordova. There is also now a Black Dwarven princess, Disa, played by Sophia Nomvete. Some people are mad! Because some people suck! Those people can get bent! That’s super cool when Arondir catches that arrow and spins it around and fires it back. That’s the kind of slick sh-t that made Legolas so popular inLOTR.
When I think of the elements that identify the world ofLOTR, I think of elves doing cool stuff like that, and Hobbits singing about breakfast and friendship. And I might also think about how blindingly white the original trilogy is. And I am aware of all the, er, reasoning behind it and how “Tolkein’s elves are supposed to be extrapolations of X, Y, Z, and Black people never…” But I don’t give a sh-t. It’s a fantasy world. Tolkein was a medievalist who used European history to jump into his made-up realms, but they are just that. MADE UP REALMS. And if you’re arguing about why Black people couldn’t really exist there, you’re wasting oxygen the rest of us could use.
