My favorite take on Rings of Power is that we viewers are in a no-lose situation. Either the show becomes great and we get to watch great TV, or it becomes terrible and Jeff Bezos spent a billion dollars on drek. Either outcome works for me. My least favorite take on Rings of Power is “it isn’t what Tolkien would have wanted.” I am not claiming the show is an amazing piece of work yet because I have lots of issues with it. However the hand-wringing over Tolkien’s potential reaction annoys me to no end.
At the most basic level, Rings of Power is supposed to be entertainment, not scholarly work. Because the show take many liberties with the source, it is easy and possibly correct to claim the result is not what Tolkien would have wanted. Would something more closely aligned to Tolkien’s work be a more entertaining television product? Books and TV are two different forms of media and require different forms of story-telling. Neither is inherently better than the other no matter what some partisans might say. If Rings of Power ends as a fun and entertaining ride then it will have done its job.
A more mercenary argument against an author’s feelings is simply money. Amazon is spending almost a billion dollars on the show. The Tolkien estate received a cool $250 million simply for the rights. At the risk of sounding like a corporate sycophant, with that kind of money being thrown around I am not going to worry about the author’s feelings. I respect the Tolkien estate securing the bag now while their property has value. Ignoring probable changes to copyright laws, Tolkien’s work gets less valuable as it gets closer to public domain. And Game of Thrones has already primed audiences for big budget fantasy television. Amazon wants to pivot towards streaming. I am happy Tolkien’s heirs are cashing in on all these factors. I also feel that once money changes hands, the original owner loses lots of claim to the purity of the product. Starving artists may have the creative high ground, but they’re still starving.
Entertainment and money are small reasons why I dislike the “Tolkien would not be happy with this adaptation” argument. The largest reason is very simply. Why should I care what Tolkien wants? I understand that many people study Tolkien much more than I ever will. They are probably correct that Tolkien would dislike Rings of Power. But I still haven’t see a good reason why that should matter. I listen to podcasts and I read articles and I say to myself, “Yeah, I agree. It seems like Tolkien would probably not like what Amazon is doing here. What should I do with this new information?” It shouldn’t be taken for granted that the author’s opinion actually matters. Many people assume it is a strong argument, but I disagree. I want someone to convince me that I should be concerned with the opinions of someone I’ve never met. Amazon isn’t taking Tolkien’s work and using it promote white-supremacist conspiracy theories. Tolkien as a person doesn’t look any worse as a result of Amazon’s adaptation. Amazon’s only “crime” is taking work that was singularly created and refined over decades by one of England’s 20th century literary geniuses. I can’t imagine Tolkien would approve of any adaptation involving so many people and so much money. But if the only other option is to never adapt his work, we owe it to ourselves to ignore his feelings.
I do have complaints with Rings of Power. I am not going to listen them here, but all the problems I see would be problems with any television show. Nothing is specific to Tolkien. My favorite podcast covering Rings of Power is Dug too Deep by Bald Move. One of the hosts is simply a casual fan of Tolkien and his takes are refreshing because they are all about the actual product on the screen, not the lore and other drama that is dividing the Tolkien fandom. I am still enjoying Rings of Power, although not as much as I had hoped. If I had to grade it, I’d give it around a B-minus but I have hope it will improve.
The Keasy Depot 