Well the story has the legendary Gladys. Or whatever she calls herself so that is really quite important. And the story is how the elves came to middle earth in the first place. She's not only collected one bod but has collected well... see in episode 3. The minor elf I dunno who's going to emerge their but he is directly in the path of sauron and all that so who knows. The other elf is actually talking to the legendary dwarf lord from the books so is he a vehicle to introduce the dwarfs agenda? The hobbies seem pre-shire obviously and maybe introducing the wizards more than being important that lenny Henry is a wise one. Overall there seems quite a bit of desperation to "diversify" the looks of the cast as is the case with house of dragon. Seems a reflection of earth 2022 than the fantasy tale but it's not like lenny Henry is awful. The hobbits seeming to be accented off tyson fury's family as travellers is rather racist however. Bit silly tbh.
Is that Lenny Henry, I didn't recognise him! . Partially face blind, I'm terrible at recognizing people I have seen in a long time. Definitely seems to be a lot of wokeness in the casting, doesn't really bother me. I'm used to BBC shows now I guess when medieval Europe was 30% black... Even Netflix vikings spin off has a black viking queen. A black hobbit and a black elf doesn't bother me... It's fiction not historical reenactment. I noticed that about the accents too and rose an eyebrow. Even the background music evokes the same sort of picture of Irish-Gypsy travellers.
It's just to coax a bit more market. Just to show they recognise. I have no recollection of reading Tolkien and seeing the descriptions of elves being all white with blond hair but it's not shock me given the story is very much of west v east. Who knows. I am.not sure what audience amazon have decided to base their interpretation of hobbit ancestors upon but I can only assume they have done this part to show backward and wild hobbits so the trope is not unprecedented given such shows as star trek tng having an episode having wild goat farming harlots Irish and an austere preprinted colony thst needed to be forced together. It's lazy imo but it is an easier target than picking a minority such as mauri or American Indians who were all migratory by nature
It is a bit weird that people are willing to believe in elves, dragons, orcs and whatever, but not that a hobbit could have dark skin. some people do read a little bit of racism into Tolkien's work purely due to the fact that the main human goodies/elves appear to be northern European (and therefore white skinned) and the baddies (orcs and Southron humans) are dark skinned.
It's like when they did that Harry Potter stage play and Hermione was cast as a black girl and people freaked out, but Rowling's commented saying "I never once in the book described Hermione as being white so it's a fair casting"... And she's a fictional character anyway. How does a black Hermione make it less emersive? You're 100% right though... Not sure how it can be less believable having black hobbits than having ANY orcs. Again, it is fiction afterall. I don't know if Tolkien said Elves were all fair haired and fair skinned or not, I haven't read anything Tolkien in over 30 years. It's possible he did say that and from a historical.perspective would make sense. A lot of fiction historically has held the concept of "pretty" = good and "ugly" = evil. (Think Disney, Bond Villains with facial scars, Fairy Tales, Dorian Grey, etc). Tolkien's time "fair haired and skinned" was considered a beauty ideal. Might not have been deliberate racism just a cultural bias of the time (unintended racism) saying noble higher races like the Elves surely must be blondes. Even in this new series, the black elf is about the whitest looking black actor they could probably find. Possible colourist bias going on behind their attempted shield of inclusivity. I did read one article when the complaints of black elves first came out saying that Tolkien himself spoke out against racism many times, so I'm not claiming any deliberate racism from Tolkien... Just an unfortunate cultural belief from those days that to be pretty you had to have pale skin and hair.
Well absolutely "Irish" are an allowed group to racially stereotype in America. Others are no longer allowed without getting criticism. But talking about Star Trek. Notice how all the Klingons look black (I don't know if the current redesign do, haven't seen them yet, I don't get Paramount+ so can't watch any new Star Treks from the last five years). Klingons. Black men. Not very smart but very warrior like and have high aggression. Copied in the Orville by the Maklons who are basically just Klingons who are gay but have all the other same racial stereotypes. Kinda surprised me in the Orville with Seth McF being such a liberal and putting so much PC content elsewhere into the Orville.
They dehumanised klingons in the new movies and darkened skin. Compared to worf ds9/tng Not many areas to get star trek here either so it's a lot of cartoons now. In general though it is all a trope of one kind or another. In the end you'd high elves, woodland elves and dark elves in lotr etc. It's expected to have differences
Well in the absolute ****e that is Discovery they redesigned Klingons total, but half ditched that for the 2nd series and didn't feature in S3. For the hated redesign they became less 'human' looking and were way more 'alien' looking with them being more greyish. I always though Klingons were based on Norse and Viking mythology more than anything. So far they haven't featured in Strange New Worlds, which by the way is back to the classic ST format and is pretty good. (don't bother with Discovery its ****)
From what I've read, I'd probably prefer Strange New World's. None of it is an option for me without paying more though.
Watched Episode three and whereas it hasn't put me off watching it, I'm still a little underwhelmed. Beautiful special effects. The fight scenes all seem a bit "Marvelesque" and cringeworthy... I feel like after a decent episode two they're going back to special effects and world-building at the expense of plot. Apparently though it broke all the records for viewing numbers on Amazon getting 25million viewers of the first episode in just the first 24hrs.
Are you talking about Rings of Power? I'm in the middle of episode 2 now. Have to say, i think it's pretty good so far. Anyone who thought E1 dragged clearly hasn't read the ****ing books and all it's appendices (and that's from someone who's read them a number of times).
That's not a good advert for the books. The world of middle earth obviously requires a lot of exposition and it's a tough task for anyone to get done right. They could have broken it up by not trying to start all four story lines in episode one. An hour is plenty of time to gently introduce characters in one story line and still have some plot an action and feel like you got somewhere. Episode one could have focused on blond elf. Episode two could have shown a little more of Blondie but focus more on starting Elrond's story, maybe start the hobbits too. Episode three could have focused on soldier Elf and continue the hobbits. With just a little glimpse at the other story lines. Would have been a more gentle introduction to the world building and spread the entertaining parts out. Too much exposition starting four story lines in one episode. World building is better in bite sized chunks.
You've got to have all this happening as it's on a timeline. Gladys has been chasing sauron somehow for centuries, totally unexplained. He is up to something and she has to find it and all roads will inevitably converge with rings of power binding the Kings of men and elves mad dwarves. Its not a secret is it? As episode 3 is then watched we have seen isildur in it and obviously at somepoint he will in the future cut the ring from the hand. Prequels do give a lot away lol. Obviously elrond and isildur will be there. Obviously the dwarfs will be building the city under the mountain Obviously the hobbits inherit the shire. Obviously somehow gandalf and the wizards will be established. The issue there is which wizard is this as we do not know if this is the first one or many fell at once etc. We all have an assumption. This is the issue, the end point of all this is known so how they get to it is the story
You can tweak the timelines to make it fit. It's not like they're 100% following Tolkien's work as this is supposed to take place over 1000's of years and yet is only going to take place over a handful of years in the actual show. Doesn't matter now they have all story lines set up, but think it would have been smoother to introduce them one at a time and wouldn't have messed up the plot.
Sorry... Don't mean to turn this into the LOTR thread... But I have a question to anyone who has seen the first episode of the Amazon series: Why don't boats sink at night?
I just think some of them can't accept it as the earlier movies (all 6) had hardly any diversity despite several mythical creatures. If this is "before" and hobbits were diverse then how come the "after" are all basically little white folk who are innocent and childlike but very grumpy, nasty that's who are property grabbers at the same time Anyway on the other aspect, There's scumbags out there that call rival football fans "orcs" to sub humanise them. Everton fans are well known for this. I'm sure Tolkien merely falls into hundreds of other story tellers to did the same in their own times. Let's face it cowboys, white hat and black hat. There's a huge list if these
The only explanation is a Hobbit Hitler goes through a period of ethnic cleansing between the Amazon show and the Movies.
I ran Hobbit Hitler through the AI image generator and it generated this. An older AI didn't give me anything good for Hobbit Hitler... But this is apparently what Hobbit Nazis would look like.
That lot that bilbo doesn't like were probably genocidal. They were fairly quickly to get in and Rob his house blind
