I love comics.
No wait, don't leave. Give me like 60 seconds to set some context for this discussion. I love comics because they use visuals and words to send a message in a very abbreviated manner. I'd like to show you one of my favorite comics now to set the stage for our discussion here.
Now ponder the following caption made regarding that particular comic; I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'
That sums up my thoughts on Ayn Rand pretty effectively. She made a lot of very solid points I agreed with right up until she used those points to draw the unrelated conclusion that it's somehow morally correct to think that everyone else is a lesser form of life to you. It's the ultimate form of bigotry, and it's psychologically untenable for anyone who isn't a sociopath.
Now, Amazon Prime and their Rings of Power series. I have seen a lot of hot takes over the past few months on this show as more and more details about it are released. They range from "this show is making changes to the source material because you have to make changes to adapt a book to screen and that's upsetting the purists because they're all close-minded children" to "this show is defecating all over the work of a master creative because the producers can't help but shove their crap feminist agenda into everything."
Do you see the issue with both of those positions? I hope you can. I hope it's obvious. I hope you understand that no position of extreme is ever, ever going to actually be correct. Ever. Everything has nuance and detail. Everything.
Personally these hot takes have the exact same issue as anything written by Ayn Rand; I agree with them right up until they make a sharp left and jump the guard-rail into lake Holier-Than-Thou. "This show is making changes to the source material because you have to make changes to adapt a book to screen" is a pretty objectively true statement. Even the most perfect book-to-screen adaptations change details of the source material, including the widely acclaimed Lord of the Rings movies. But just the simple fact that the Rings of Power show-runners are making changes to the source material isn't the reason "purists" are upset. Fans of LotR are upset because the changes that are being made are incidental to the story and seem to indicate that the creative team on the show doesn't have a clue as to why they're doing anything they're doing.
Which of course leads to the other take. "This show is defecating all over the work of a master creative" again, from the look of things, seems pretty accurate. Nothing they're changing is going to result in a net improvement over the appendix material they're drawing from, and it instead looks as if they've completely lost their own plot. But that has absolutely nothing to do with shoving a feminist or minority representation agenda anywhere. The fact that there are people of color in the show is not why the show is going to suck based on the details we've seen so far; it's going to suck because the show-runners are artless hacks.
There is truth on both sides of the hot-take war here, but god forbid we actually acknowledge the nuance of the other side's argument. I'm speaking now as what the first camp would probably call a "purist". It's been a while since I read the trilogy but I went through it about six or seven times in high school and early on in college, and I've read the Silmarillion at least three times. I'm no scholar of Tolkien, considering I don't do refresh passes and my memory is crap, but I know the source material they're looking to adapt pretty well. The simple fact is that the only piece of confidence I can draw from the leaks so far is confidence that the show will be a directionless mess. This production has all the hallmarks of someone throwing a bucket of ideas at the wall to see what sticks, rather than someone with a firm vision trying to realize that vision on the screen.
I'd love to be proven wrong, believe me, and there is still every chance that I will be. I would love for this show to turn out to be a tightly plotted and highly energized series of character arcs winding through a fully realized epic fantasy world. I just haven't seen anything that suggests to me it will be. On the contrary, what we've seen so far suggests to me that the show will be a lifeless staggering jumble of uninteresting plot points disconnected by the utter lack of compelling character arcs. We just don't have much of any real detail so far, and where adaptations like this are concerned... well, history has taught me to be a bit of a pessimist.
I just want it to be clear that this has nothing to do with them casting black people, or having female wizards, or whatever. I've seen multiple sources referencing the Wheel of Time series as an example of how "feminist agendas" ruin these adaptations. This is such a terrible take. As a long time fan of the books there are plenty of issues with the Wheel of Time show, don't get me wrong. But feminism or color-blind casting aren't the cause of any of them. The issue isn't that they decided to make Moiraine a lesbian. The issue is that they decided to give her a romantic subplot of any kind for seemingly no reason. If all you can focus on is that the other party is a woman, you've completely missed the point. This causes problems with her character arc and the overall story structure completely aside from her sexuality. They could have absolutely made Matt gay or bisexual without missing a beat because his various romantic interests are a part of his character arc and are interwoven into the story.
That would have been a total "SJW" thing to do, but it would have caused basically no real change to the source material. The agenda wasn't the issue. The artless creative direction was.
And that's where we're at with the Rings of Power. Are Tolkien fans upset with what we're seeing? Absolutely. Is it because we're all racist misogynists? Absolutely not. It is entirely possible to understand that adapting a book to screen requires changes while thinking that the changes being made are the wrong changes. Not because of some misguided understanding of feminism, but because we understand what makes a compelling Middle-Earth narrative and this...
...hmm, it sure looks like this ain't it.
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