{"id":1640678,"date":"2022-09-14T07:17:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T11:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1640678"},"modified":"2022-09-14T07:18:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T11:18:19","slug":"why-the-rings-of-power-showrunners-keep-writing-themselves-into-ridiculous-corners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-the-rings-of-power-showrunners-keep-writing-themselves-into-ridiculous-corners\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The \u2018Rings Of Power\u2019 Showrunners Keep Writing Themselves Into Ridiculous Corners"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhy-the-rings-of-power-showrunners-keep-writing-themselves-into-ridiculous-corners%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1640678&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Another week, another disappointing episode of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.\u201d Amazon hasn\u2019t treated a Catholic writer this badly since it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/web-exclusives\/2021\/02\/when-amazon-erased-my-book\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">banned<\/a> Ryan T. Anderson\u2019s book \u201cWhen Harry Became Sally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, even as it warps J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s legendarium, Amazon\u2019s show does us the favor of illustrating the problems with the entertainment industry. In this case, the fundamental failure is that the showrunners don\u2019t want to tell Tolkien\u2019s stories; they want to tell their own stories with the big budget and name recognition that being a Tolkien adaptation gives them. But the more they alter Tolkien\u2019s lore to accommodate their own preferences, the more they create difficulties that sabotage the show.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most prominent example is the show\u2019s continued denigration of Galadriel. In this latest episode, she is stuck on the island kingdom of Numenor, whose inhabitants have turned against the elves. There are moments that hint at her status as a great and ancient elven ruler, but then the hot-headed, foolish character the show has established her as returns.<\/p>\n<p>The presumptive goal here, as Jack Butler <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/how-rings-of-power-could-still-do-galadriel-justice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argues<\/a>, is to set up character growth \u2014 an angry and impulsive warrior develops into the wise elven queen we know from \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d But this is incoherent. <\/p>\n<p>Galadriel has already been through the wars of the Elder Days, which she helped start \u2014 she was the only woman of the Noldor to speak during the debate that launched their futile war against Morgoth. The writers cannot convincingly invoke Galadriel\u2019s high stature and thousands of years of life in Middle-Earth only to then have her behave like a dim-witted and ill-bred adolescent.<\/p>\n<h2>Incoherent Changes<\/h2>\n<p>Nonetheless, they have to try to have it both ways because they chose to make Galadriel the main character in the show, even though she was not a leading character in the Second Age as Tolkien wrote it. The writers wanted a strong female lead in the current Hollywood fashion, so they gave Galadriel a sword, a military command, and a standard-issue Hollywood character arc. Therefore they keep writing themselves into corners.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that filming anything of Tolkien\u2019s is a challenge, and the Second Age, which is the most summarized era of Middle-Earth\u2019s history, might be the most difficult part of the legendarium to adapt. But the showrunners keep crippling their own efforts. They are piling change after change on Tolkien\u2019s lore because they lack his <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/09\/06\/amazons-rings-of-power-fails-because-it-abandons-tolkiens-moral-imagination\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">moral imagination<\/a> and therefore don\u2019t really understand, or even like, his stories. But they are not good at making their changes coherent, let alone appealing to Tolkien\u2019s fans.<\/p>\n<p>The showrunners, who are supposed to be presenting a different world to us, are consistently unable to get out of their own heads and the presuppositions of their own circle. For example, they have touted the show\u2019s racial diversity, but they went about it in the dumbest possible way. <\/p>\n<p>If they wished, they could have made the whole tribe of proto-hobbits brown-skinned and it would have fit with Tolkien\u2019s lore, which describes the Harfoots as \u201cbrowner of skin\u201d than other hobbits. But instead, the show chose to have the Harfoots look like so much of Hollywood \u2014 white with one token black guy.<\/p>\n<h2>Ridiculous Moments<\/h2>\n<p>The show\u2019s haphazard approach to following the lore leads to ridiculous moments. John Daniel Davidson has <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/09\/09\/three-big-ways-amazons-rings-of-power-butchers-tolkiens-lore\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">detailed<\/a> some of the show\u2019s major deviations from Tolkien\u2019s tales, but the follies just keep coming. For example, in this latest episode Galadriel discovers Sauron\u2019s contingency plan for Morgoth\u2019s defeat, which laughably asks viewers to believe that orcs are able to puzzle out crude cartographical clues that stump the wise among elves and men.<\/p>\n<p>This silliness would have been avoided if the writers had stuck to Tolkien\u2019s work. Morgoth is Middle-Earth\u2019s version of Satan, and he was conquered because the Valar intervened after he had defeated the elven kingdoms. <\/p>\n<p>There is no contingency planning against that sort of angelic intervention, which is why Sauron sued for mercy and even repented of his wickedness for a time. Holding to the original story, in which Sauron broke his parole out of shame and then fell back into evil, would have been more coherent than pretending that Sauron had a secret plan for this all along.<\/p>\n<h2>Missing Morality<\/h2>\n<p>Sticking to the original story would also have heightened the sense of tragedy in the Second Age. After Morgoth\u2019s ruin, elves, men, and even Sauron had a chance to reject evi, all in their own ways failed. Sauron returned to his wickedness and became a dark lord in Morgoth\u2019s place, Numenor rebelled against the Valar, and some of the elves allowed themselves to be taken in by Sauron. In the end, even the victory of the Last Alliance was squandered, as the Ring was not destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>The history of the Second Age is a tale of civilizational downfall, and the choices of the showrunners seem particularly ill-suited to telling it. For instance, the decision to radically compress the timeline precludes showing how Numenor was corrupted \u2014 the viewers instead arrive on the scene with its moral decline well-advanced.<\/p>\n<p>This thematic failure is exacerbated by the writers\u2019 determination to make their characters the center of everything. Good writers know that characters sometimes need to simply observe, rather than instigate. Otherwise, storytelling through a character turns into making that character the mover of everything. The latter seems to be precisely what they are doing with Galadriel in Numenor, where she is poised to play an implausibly outsized role in the internal affairs of the kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>This sloppy writing leads to dramatic personal clashes taking the place of larger civilizational storylines. Consequently, the characters almost inevitably become dumber and louder, so we\u2019ll probably see a throne room showdown with Galadriel acting like an angry adolescent. Again.<\/p>\n<p>This may be standard Hollywood fare, but people love Tolkien\u2019s books because they are different from, and better than, the usual dreck on offer from the entertainment industry. Thus, pretty scenery is not going to save a Tolkien adaptation whose writers are replacing his stories with mediocre Hollywood tropes.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another week, another disappointing episode of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.\u201d Amazon hasn\u2019t treated a Catholic writer this badly since it banned Ryan T. Anderson\u2019s book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1640678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}