The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Amazon Defiles Tolkien
“The biggest threat facing Middle Earth is no longer Sauron or Morgoth, but Jeff Bezos,” says Douglas Blair of The Daily Signal. Specifically, he’s talking about its upcoming series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the teaser trailer for which was recently released.
The series is set long before Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring marched across Middle Earth and focuses on an entirely new cast of characters we’ve never seen before on screen. Some of these characters were invented by J.R.R. Tolkien and come from the reaches of his extensive writing. Concerningly, others are invented out of whole cloth, made specifically for this show.
It is with these completely invented characters that some of the biggest issues arise. Take, for example, Princess Disa, played by actress Sophia Nomvete.
In the series, Nomvete is a beardless black woman. In other contexts, that could be a perfectly fine casting choice. But this is “The Lord of the Rings,” where Tolkien’s lore is quite clear. This is not what a dwarf looks like.
The show’s executive producer, Lindsey Weber, explained the vision: “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like.” But Tolkien’s world, a mythological place based on the British Isles, doesn’t and shouldn’t “resemble 2022 New York or San Francisco,” Blair says.
Diversity must be shoved into places it doesn’t fit; original source material be damned.
The treatment of established characters isn’t much better. Galadriel, an elf depicted by Cate Blanchett in director Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, has had her personality radically shifted.
Gone is the ethereal and graceful Galadriel from Tolkien’s work. She’s been replaced by a generic fantasy warrior, a carbon copy of a million other “empowered” female characters in today’s fantasy landscape. Weber and her team seem to believe that for a female character to be strong, she must be a physically imposing warrior. In other words, she must be a man.
Yet, Galadriel radiates power in her film and book depictions without the need to make her a man.
Even worse, when devoted fans of a series like “The Lord of the Rings” point out issues with these adapted products, they are accused of bigotry for not acquiescing to the left’s butchering of their beloved franchises.
“Rings of Power” is far from the first series to intentionally alienate fans of its progenitor product. But it does constitute a new frontier in the radical left’s Sauron-esque invasion of popular culture.
It’s frustrating to always be criticizing these works of art, but that’s because the Left methodically corrupts things.
By capturing Tolkien’s work for the left, the radicals are sending an ominous message to lovers of his creation: “We own this now. And we will remake it in our image.”
Blair concludes:
Ironically, Tolkien’s own work seems to depict the radical left’s corruption of popular cultural artifacts. In his “The Return of the King,” his Hobbit hero, Frodo, pontificates on the nature of Orcs, a race of purely evil creatures sent by big baddy Sauron to reclaim The One Ring: “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.”
The radical left spreads its ideology not by genuine acts of creation, but by twisting and defiling things people love.