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I skimmed over your blog post, and I think you should give The Rings of Power a look despite your feelings about Jackson's films. It's a polarizing series, and you might end up not liking it, but it's very different from the films. The visual style is heavily influenced by them, but the storytelling is much more nuanced and surprising IMO.

I can't really provide details without spoiling the series for you, but if you watch the first season to the end[1] and then review your own blog post, I think you'll at least understand why I thought you might really like it.

FWIW, although he didn't live to see the finished work, apparently Christopher Tolkien liked what he saw of the preproduction, despite his dislike of Jackson's films.

[1] This is important, but again, spoilers. Even if you end up disliking it, or disagreeing with some of the choices they made, I'm confident you'll agree that the writers love Tolkien's writing as much as you obviously do.



Follow-up to my previous reply: after looking through what's available online about The Rings of Power, I realized that this is the series where (a) Galadriel takes a ship back to Valinor, but then changes her mind and jumps overboard just before it arrives, and swims back towards Middle-Earth; and (b) Galadriel is picked up by Elendil and taken to Numenor, meaning that the whole story of the Rings of Power now happens near the end of the Second Age. (And don't even get me started about a "Stranger" falling to Middle-Earth on a meteor who is obviously intended to be Gandalf.)

I had heard of those things before, and my reaction was "ick", and it still is. (a) is completely inconsistent with everything Tolkien wrote about Galadriel. (b) is a huge change in the timeline of the Second Age, for no good reason that I can see except that TV audiences are not supposed to be able to follow a story that covers such a long expanse of time. Which I think Tolkien would have had the same "ick" reaction to that I have. (I'm not sure what to make of Christopher Tolkien's reaction, but I suspect his reaction was much more nuanced, or else he didn't see enough of the preproduction.)

I get that people like to, so to speak, play around with an imaginary world they like. I have no objection whatever to people watching Jackson's films and liking them, or watching this series and liking it. I just don't think the world they are seeing portrayed in Jackson's films is the same world that Tolkien imagined and wrote about. And based on the above, I suspect I would feel the same about The Rings of Power.

As far as loving Tolkien's writing goes, there are many different ways of doing that. I have no doubt that Jackson sincerely loves Tolkien's work. He just doesn't in the same way I do, since what he did with it is nothing like what I would have done. And again, based on the above, I suspect I would feel the same about the people who made The Rings of Power.


Interesting info, I'll consider it.




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