Amazon’s Rings of Power T.V. show is doubling down on the racism accusations as diehard Tolkien fans express their concerns for the next season of the show. Why? Because that seemed to work so well for them before. After all, Rings of Power is only the most expensive show ever created, the budget being close to $1 billion. It can only have been a success with the Rotten Tomatoes at…38% average audience rating. And a 33% completion rate.
I guess that’s what happens when you make a T.V show as accurate to the lore of the original IP as Mormonism is accurate to the Bible.
In an interview with Variety, the actor who plays the “elven warrior” Arondir (more accurately nicknamed by the Internet “Don Lemonlas” and “Discount Legolas”), Ismael Cruz-Cordova said that Amazon provided on-set therapists to help the actors cope with “racist” backlash.
Honestly, they should’ve called in the therapists to help the actors deal with the trauma of reading the script and depression that they’re actually acting in the show.
But what was this “racist backlash”? It was fans of Tolkien’s work commenting and ratioing the official teaser trailers and promotionals because they aren’t accurate to the books and are all about stuffing a message down our throats. Because of this, we in the Tolkien fandom have been labeled as “Racist”, “Misogynist”, “Facist adjacent”, and (my personal favorite), “Patently evil”.
Sorry, not sorry, Amazon. You wrote generic, really crappy fanfiction and gave the entire fandom the middle finger to go along with it. What were you expecting to happen?
It wasn’t just Cordova voicing his opinion on the “racist” fanbase. The actress who plays Tar-Miriel (Queen-Regent Pushover), Cynthia Addai-Robinson said in the same interview, “What I’m looking forward to, as we move on to Season 2, is allowing that conversation to be in the past and just plow ahead. When you have progress, it’s like we’re not going to go backward from the things that we’ve established. I’m ready to acknowledge it and move on from it, because I think we’ve kind of said all there is to say, really. I know that I have.”
Personally, I can respect her response somewhat since it seems calmer than some of the things the other actors have said in the past, but I would hardly claim that insulting the IP that was supposed to make your show a success “progress”. If anything, progress would be admitting to the fanbase that you screwed up and are actually going to try to salvage the show by actually going back to the books, not by going back to the Wattpad LOTR fanfiction and skimming a few articles on FandomWiki.com.
While I’m not usually a fan of big companies cowering to a small minority of people (like Bud-Light cowering to the alphabet mafia and losing money), in the case of Rings of Power, Amazon wouldn’t be bowing down to a small minority. After all, their main market is supposed to be fans of the original Peter Jackson movies and the actual Tolkien nerds. That’s what they were going for when they smacked the name Lord of the Rings on Rings of Power. Without them, I doubt that Rings of Power would’ve even made it to the already abysmal 33% watch through mark. If you want your show to be a success, give the audience what they actually want: characters that look and act like how they did in the books, and a story that accurately reflects the original tale.
The Tanuki Corner 
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