We’re watching The Rings of Power, Season Two. And we’re enjoying it. But I do confess, I wish these movie-makers wouldn’t fuck around with their source material so much.
Or, if they really – as they invariably do – feel they have to, at least to do so in a manner more in keeping with that source material. When that source is Tolkien, I feel it deserves more respect.
But I can’t be arsed to expend any energy pulling apart the myriad ways this departs from Tolkien’s ’canon’. In some respects it’s a bastardised realisation of something I believe he wanted to achieve.
I recall reading that in creating his Middle Earth mythology, Tolkien aspired to create a form of British or indigenous alternative to the faulty weak mishmash of Arthurian type stuff.
Something more akin to the darker more complex Northern tales he studied in his philological work. And something that could be built upon by others. Well, the genie’s out of the bottle.
Quite what Tolkien would make of how his legacy is evolving, I’m not sure. I think in some respects he might be pleased. At least that folk thought his myths compelling enough to further elucidate.
But I also think he might be more than a little horrified, at having spawned rapidly evolving empires of imaginary worlds, and the rather capitalist ’product’ type nature of it all.
From Game of Thrones to what is being done to his legacy. I may be wrong. But I think, for all his stuff about ‘fairey’, that he was primarily concerned with culture. Not just entertainment.
And certainly not the hollow pursuit of big bucks.
FOOTNOTE:
It’s fascinating how much of a Tolkien’s work is being dredged through, in the search for yet more publishing bucks. Hopefully there’s also genuine love for and interest in it, as well as the relentless pursuit of profit?
Personally I’ve really enjoyed how his offspring have helped finish some of his unfinished fiction. And I’ve also loved how some of his academic work, or stuff related to it, such as the Sigurd & Gudrun stuff, has been published.
In posting this article – a review, I suppose? – I’ve become aware of yet more posthumous Tolkienian publishings, such as this:
