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How Accurate Is The Rings of Power From a Tolkien Book Fan

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I first encountered The Lord of the Rings when I was six years old. Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring was the first movie I ever saw in theaters, and I got to stay up late to see it on opening night. The only reason I was there in the first place was because my mom read the books in the 70s and they had literally changed her life, so when she found out that there were going to be live-action adaptations of the Trilogy, she was determined to go to see them for herself. She was, I think, pleasantly surprised and somewhat impressed, but my six-year-old self was utterly enthralled. The meticulous world building and expansive landscapes began to open up the “Secondary Reality” that Tolkien had created in his books, and for the next two years, I couldn’t wait until we would get to go back to the theater to see what would happen next.

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When I finally made my way through The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit books, I began to see just why they had been so popular: even the films, as expansive as they were, had only touched on the surface of the history of Tolkien’s world, where the themes of good and evil, friendship, loss, and the desire for home ran to the very depths of all his stories. I read The Silmarillion for the first time in middle school and was moved by the tragic backstory of the magnificent glory of the First Age that fell into ultimate loss, only a shadow of which remained at the time of the Third Age.

For a number of years, I wondered what Tolkien himself would have thought of the films if he had lived to see them. After reading Tolkien’s letters and the accounts of those who knew him, however, I finally came to the conclusion that should have been obvious from the start: he would have hated them.

Tolkien’s letters are riddled with his commentary on drafts of scripts that came his way. While the scripts themselves were problematic in a number of ways, he also gave the impression that he would have been displeased with almost any adaptation of his work. Tolkien’s official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter himself, said that Tolkien thought his stories were “unstageable” and that he had no real expectation that his books could actually be successfully filmed. Christopher Tolkien later confirmed this idea, as the man who probably knew Tolkien best said that Jackson’s films “eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25”.

If I am right in that assessment of the film series that won 17 Oscars total, including Best Picture in 2003, Tolkien almost certainly would also have been displeased with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. To be fair, though, he would probably have disliked almost any adaptation of his work. And despite the changes and deviations made by Jackson’s trilogy, the films were a gorgeous display of cinematography and beautifully scripted scenes that brought a whole new generation of audiences back to the original stories, myself included. I think, as well, that this new series, despite its own deviations, can do the same. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what the series does with Tolkien’s canonical work: where it deviates, where it falls short, and where it ultimately succeeds.


The Rings of Power Is Working With a Smaller Time Frame

Perhaps the biggest problem for the series is something that is likely to be the root cause of a number of its adaptive choices: Tolkien never wrote a book focusing on the events of the Second Age, and the production does not have the rights to the book in which he did write the most about it. The material written in the text and appendices of The Lord of the Rings, however, does give a surprisingly detailed account of a number of the events of the Second Age, and so what results is an interesting question of canonical material: what can we glean from The Lord of the Rings about the Second Age, and how is that different from what we find in other sources?

One of the difficulties posed by the adaptation is that it has decided to collapse thousands of years of Middle-earth’s history into a much smaller time frame than Tolkien allowed for. On the one hand, it was done to prevent the lives of mortals from passing by like mayflies while the elves remained unchanged, but that choice does come with the corresponding problem of compressing the timeline of the Second Age and leading to confusion about the sequence of events and the impact of individual storylines on the overall plot.

RELATED: ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Showrunners on Balancing Fan Expectations

Gil-Galad Has Too Much Power and Authority

Certainly one of the most significant problems of the series, when it comes to canon, is the issue of Gil-galad’s (Benjamin Walker) authority. Put simply, Gil-galad would not have had the power, ability, or right to tell an elf to go to Valinor, or to give them passage there. That was a gift from the Valar that he had no authority to grant. Furthermore, the elves had already been given a chance to return to Valinor at the end of the First Age; those who are still in Middle-earth at the point of the start of the series have decided to remain there, and are clearly not burning with desire to return to Valinor just yet.

A further issue of Gil-galad’s authority has to do with Arondir’s (Ismael Cruz Córdova’s) storyline. Gil-galad is canonically the High King of the Noldor, but not all elves are the Noldor. The elves in Tirharad, if anything, seem to be silvan elves, who would not be under Gil-galad’s control. The separate groups of elves had separate power structures, so the idea of Gil-galad having authority over other groups of elves is a stretch of the imagination, to say the least.

The Show Must Make Decisions For Tolkien

Another problem of adaptation, in general, is that, in order to bring a product to the screen, the series needs to make decisions on areas in which Tolkien himself never came to an ultimate conclusion. One of these major points, for instance, is the origin of the orcs. Tolkien in much of his writing considered the possibility that the orcs were twisted elves but continually struggled with their origin, the status of their free will, and their ultimate fate. Towards the end of his life, he seems to have been moving away from the idea that orcs were corrupted elves, but that is a point of uncertainty that the show will probably be exploring, so they have to make a decision where Tolkien himself was unsure.

Another such point is in the character of Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). Her authority was eventually usurped by Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle), who led Númenor to its ultimate destruction, but in one version of the story she struggled against his disastrous tendencies, and in another she supported him. Here, again, the series has to decide.

Tolkien’s Character Building and Voice Is Difficult to Mimic

One of the more complex problems of the story, as well, is that it deals with a number of beloved canonical characters as its protagonists, and the depiction of those characters can be strangely different from the canonical versions established in the text: Gil-galad seems almost wilfully ignorant of the dangers in his realm, where he was actually warier than most of the threat of Sauron. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) can be recklessly self-righteous and single-minded about her vengeance. There is, of course, something to be said for “backing the characters up” and that their character arcs will end up in more familiar territory, but it can be jarring to deal with a vision of a beloved character that does not align with the vision of the text and trust that they will end up in the right place.

The writing is another element of the show that has its ups and downs. Tolkien had a very distinct writing style and had a way of capturing a culture, a history, and a time period in the way characters talked and in the rhythm of his narration. He was perfectly suited to it, as well: he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and a philologist who understood better than almost anyone the nuances of the English language. The writers, however, while they have recognized the beauty of Tolkien’s prose, often struggle to replicate it; occasionally it is successful, but sometimes it just comes off as stilted and unnatural.

The Rings of Power Succeeds In Capturing Thematic Elements of Tolkien’s Work

On the other hand, there are a number of touches made by the show that have been almost perfectly executed and align a great deal with Tolkien’s themes and writings. The dynamics of light and darkness, good and evil are front and center in the series, both in the story and the visuals. It is one of the most distinctive elements of Tolkien’s stories, and it is on full display, as is the theme of the value and strength of true friendship.

There are also touches that can perhaps even strengthen the world that Tolkien created, that do an even better job of capturing Tolkien’s world than the Jackson movies did: the series has given full focus to the issue the orcs have with traveling in daylight, for example, and has emphasized the fact that it is physically painful for them to do so. In terms of the orcs, as well, while there has been criticism for the overly CG warg, the depiction of the orcs in Episode 3 was incredible. They also found a lovely way of meditating on the Elvish perception of time in Tolkien’s world, as the passage of twenty years means entirely different things to Durin (Owain Arthur) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo).

The Show Shows the Majesty of Middle-earth and its Culture

Another area in which the series has done remarkable work is in the visualization of the great cities described in Tolkien’s books. Taking the darkness of Moria and turning the clock back to reveal the greatest glories of the kingdom of Khazad-dûm resulted in one of the most stunning visual sequences in any adaptation, and the reveal of Númenor was similarly excellent. The beauty of Lindon, the awe of the dwarf kingdoms, and the crumbling nobility of Númenor are visualized in stunning detail.

Perhaps their greatest achievement, though, is in the way that the series has constructed a number of beautifully Tolkienian moments that Tolkien himself did not write. Nowhere is there any mention of dwarves finding the right way to dig by singing to stone, for example, but it fits perfectly into Tolkien’s comments on the importance of music to the dwarves and the loving devotion that they have to their handiwork. It also sets up a beautiful, and potentially tragic, transgression: the mountain apparently tells you where not to go, and the dwarves will someday break that rule.

This also happens in Arondir’s storyline, particularly in Episode 3. Tolkien’s work could be haunted by his experience in the trenches in World War I, and the trenches and blasted lands of Tirharad in that episode effectively recall a sort of No Man’s Land in Middle-earth. Also, there might not be a more Tolkienian moment ever put to screen than an elf weeping and apologizing to a tree because he has to cut it down.

And it is perhaps this last point that best encapsulates what the series has done well so far. The theme of decline and loss is present throughout Tolkien’s created history, and the deep, abiding ache that is present because of that loss: the longing for healing that characters hope for, but the reader only ever catches glimpses of. Elrond points this out when he speaks of Galadriel being healed of her sorrow in Valinor, and Arondir interacts with the same idea as he sees the world around him crumbling into corruption. Where the story goes from here is uncertain, but whatever the show’s missteps may be, it exhibits a fundamental understanding of Tolkien’s themes that is respectfully done, and in its best moments, truly admirable.

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