“He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and lust for domination…” – The Letters of JRR Tolkien (#183)
There’s a memorable (but terrible) scene from the 1980 cartoon of JRR Tolkien’s “Return of the King” where a gang of orcs sing about the plight of their slavery with the tune “Where there’s a whip there’s a way.” The cartoon’s not as critically acclaimed as the 2003 movie of the same name, but it’s certainly memorable.
The question is where on the spectrum of terrible to award-winning will we find Amazon’s upcoming “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”
After years in development, the series will debut next month, a prestige-format, Game of Thrones-esque prequel that takes place thousands of years before the events of the Peter Jackson films. It’s billed as the most expensive TV show of all time, with Amazon having spent $250 million just for the rights to “The Lord of the Rings” from the Tolkien Estate and New Line Cinema, with production bringing the total cost to $1 billion.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon many years ago selling books out of his garage, and as a purported fan of the series, it seemed like he was coming full circle with this move.
But Bezos didn’t spend that money for nostalgia. Cross-promotion with as lucrative a product as Tolkien’s books could make Amazon billions. People can watch the show then buy branded T-shirts, action figures, costumes, and other merchandise directly from Amazon. In their lust for pride and domination, every Amazon shareholder could be wearing a smile as big as the company logo.
But alas fan reaction to “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has been negative at every step. As everyone but paid shills have pointed out, this plan cannot possibly succeed. See, Amazon doesn’t have access to enough of Tolkien’s legendarium, like The Silmarillion, to actually do this and they are basing their entire series on LotR’s appendices, which frankly read more like a textbook than a novel.
Furthermore, there’s just over 100 pages of them, so Amazon spent about $2.5 million per page for an unfilmable history book.
No one could turn this into a successful narrative, least of all those so creative the best title they could come up with was one that re-used the same words four times. The Hunger Games and Harry Potter roll off the tongue; The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power does not.
Most of the backlash to TLotR:TRoP is because of threats to (oh boy) “modernize Tolkien for the 21st Century,” code for vandalizing a property with woke identity politics and revisionist thematic choices. News also broke early on that they were looking for an intimacy coordinator – because of course what has always been missing from the legendarium is gratuitous sex scenes – and fired world-renowned Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey because he wasn’t playing ball with their revisionism.
Amazon didn’t pay a quarter-billion to leave unmolested a book written by a devoutly Catholic Englishman born in South Africa.
Because of this, fans have gleefully attacked the show online: not a good sign of a fanbase who’ll be buying a lot of merchandise.
Predictably, the backlash to the backlash has been a series of carefully orchestrated attack-pieces under a strategy of “Watch our show and buy our toys, you racists!” Amazon’s plan to make this show a success is to desecrate a beloved world, then attack fans for not liking it. This is obnoxious from other studios, galling from a company as corrupt as Amazon.
See, while Amazon distracts customers with rainbow flags and vapid promises of sustainability, the company’s offenses are far greater than making a bad TV show no one asked for. This includes monopolistic practices, tax avoidance, crushing small businesses, plagiarism, selling counterfeit goods, manipulating news reports, spying on their customers, and selling how-to guides for dog fighting and pedophilia. The most persistent criticism of Amazon is their brutal mistreatment employees in their warehouses, delivery trucks, and even Chinese slave labor camps.
Where there’s a whip there’s a way, indeed.
Amazon is a ruthless empire built on globalist exploitation so its founder can play in a super-yacht between his trips to space. Bezos may have started well, considering the economic well-being of others, but now he’s gone the way of all tyrants. When TLotR:TRoP fails, fans everywhere will smile.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will debut on September 2, 2022, the 49th anniversary of Professor Tolkien’s death.
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