It’s hard to know exactly what to make of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power so far, for several reasons. The series has veered wildly in quality, with its second episode a vast improvement on its stunning but directionless pilot. It’s hard, too, to crosscheck with the source material, given that the entire shebang is cobbled together from a bunch of Tolkien’s appendices.
But the main reason why it’s difficult to form a consensus is the internet. Even more so than usual, it is being especially internetty about The Rings of Power, churning up no end of controversies about it in service to the discourse. Here’s a quick compendium of what we’ve all endured so far.
The racist backlash
The most pressing, and yet most depressingly inevitable, controversy has been the wave of keyboard warriors ranting about “wokeness”. Lenny Henry, for example, plays a proto-hobbit, which has caused a noisy minority of viewers to complain that Amazon has ruined their favourite thing. They were so excited about this series, and now it has all been spoiled. It’s exactly what happened when Star Wars and House of the Dragon introduced non-white characters – the whole thing is miserable.
Amazon blocking reviews
All of the above caused Amazon to enforce a 72-hour delay on user ratings for the show, to prevent the sort of ugly review-bombing that has hurt everything from Ms Marvel to Bluey in recent months. The delay was brought about so that a team of moderators can parse all the reviews and weed out those deemed to have been written in bad faith. The hope is that this will create a more honest picture of how the show has been received. However, Amazon is banking almost everything on The Rings of Power, and the worry is that it will protect its investment by deleting reviews by people who legitimately don’t like the series very much. We will have to wait and see how successful the strategy is.
More racism
Although the diverse casting has done a lot to slow it, some viewers have still made a point of reminding us that JRR Tolkien’s books were very much of their time. In a private letter, Tolkien described his subhuman orcs as “repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types”, while his books describe them as having “swarthy complexions”. There is also plenty of evidence that Tolkien opposed racism, but his critics point to orcs as a potential blind spot.
Accents (and even more racism)
One of the oddest choices is to make all the harfoots – the aforementioned prototypical hobbits – Irish. They all speak in hammy accents, are charming peasants and their every move is soundtracked by composer Bear McCreary’s aggressively annoying Celtic trilling. It’s one thing that the accents are dreadful, but the internet has also pointed out their resemblance to John Leech’s stereotypical and wildly unflattering anti-Irish cartoons from Punch magazine in the 19th century.
Disa’s beard
In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, we are told that male and female dwarves are indistinguishable from one another due to their heavy facial hair. Well, a female dwarf appears in The Rings of Power – Sophia Nomvete’s Princess Disa – and she only has minimal facial hair. It’s very easy to distinguish her from the male dwarves. This is either a very good thing or a very bad thing depending on what sort of viewer you are and, oh God, fantasy fans are the absolute worst.
Galadriel’s armour
A promotional image for the series showed Galadriel, to all intents and purposes the show’s lead, wearing armour. Some diehard Tolkien fans pointed out that the armour bore the symbol of Fëanor. You may remember that Galadriel and Fëanor were allies until the first kinslaying, which led to the House of Fëanor being banished as Galadriel swore an oath against him. Was this an oversight? Is this proof that the producers of The Rings of Power have taken their eyes off the ball? Has this symbol on one piece of armour ruined everyone’s enjoyment of the series? More importantly, has all this fuss overtaken the actual show itself, to the point that you can barely summon the energy to actually watch the thing any more, or is that just me?
