Out of any franchise out there, The Lord of the Rings is nearest and dearest to my heart. I will never forget the first time I saw The Fellowship of the Ring on opening night. I hadn’t the faintest clue what The Lord of the Rings was, but my dad, aunts, and uncles were all so excited to see it. Having just turned nine years old, the effect that it had on me completely changed the course of my life. The movie kick-started my love for the fantasy genre across books, video games, and movies. And more importantly, it ignited my passion for writing and my desire to eventually publish my own fantasy novel. My dad turned to ask me why I had tears in my eyes part of the way through the movie, and at the time, I truthfully did not know that I was just so overwhelmed in awe and admiration.
However, as we all know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was followed by The Hobbit trilogy. The fact that they made The Hobbit into three movies was immediately concerning, and my worst fears were confirmed when I went to the theaters. To this day, I still have not seen the third Hobbit movie because of how absolutely devastated I was to witness my most beloved franchise regress into this money-hungry, drawn-out mess. Yes, The Hobbit was supposed to have a different feel from The Lord of the Rings; while The Lord of the Rings was dark and serious, The Hobbit was supposed to be whimsical and wondrous in a lighter flavor. Instead, we just got hours of unnecessary CGI and almost no focus on deeper concepts and character building.
That said, I’m not writing this to complain about The Hobbit. With Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings series coming up (potentially in 2021, but unconfirmed after the pandemic circumstances), I’m afraid. At least with The Hobbit, I was able to go in with the attitude of expecting major differences between it and The Lord of the Rings. So, though the Hobbit movies were incredibly disappointing, I was able to live with it. However, the show is set as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, and it’s been advertised in a way to suggest that it is supposed to be as epic as the movies and in competition with Game of Thrones. Considering that the first season alone will cost $465 million, I can barely wrap my head around everything they’re pouring into this series. This sounds great, but there are way too many ways this could go disastrously wrong.
To start, it already seems like it’s been influenced by Game of Thrones with the fact that nudity is going to be brought into the scene. Let me be clear—I have zero issue with nudity, and less issues with Game of Thrones as other people seem to have. However, the Tolkien universe has a certain feel to it, and I’m afraid that feel is going to get lost if they overdo it with too many explicit scenes.
More concerning than that though is the fact that last year, Amazon parted ways with Tom Shippey, a Tolkien specialist who also helped with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film adaptations. Barely any details were given about this departure, so we can only sit here and guess about the plethora of factors that could have led to this and what the repercussions might be. But what I can say is that having the person who specializes in Tolkien’s work leave the set does not bode well in my eyes.
To put it simply, I am terrified that Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings series is going to abandon everything that makes The Lord of the Rings what it really is in favor of flashiness and unnecessary drama. I’d give it about a 50-50 shot that this happens, and I know I’m not the only one who is going to be crushed if it does.