anghraine

I thought I’d become pretty zen about LOTR on Prime, but a Youtuber I was just watching was like … hey, what if it’s a prequel to the movies? They could share continuity and everything!

me:

Tagged:

#the one(1) thing that makes me pretty chill about it is the possibility of an interpretation of middle-earth that's DIFFERENT #even if it's bad it will be differently bad! #but what if ... not? #like yeah i expect there to be considerable influence bc the films exert /such/ a vast influence on the popular imagination #but aghhhhhhhhh #i mean ... i'm sure it would be complicated legally to do that but EVEN SO it will haunt my nightmares #lord of the rings movies #(i am not saying they are all bad fwiw #or even mostly bad #but they are flawed and theirs is not the sole permissible vision for middle-earth)

[ETA 3/14/2024: ngl it has since become very clear to me that much of "Tolkien" fandom actually disagrees that other cinematic visions of Middle-earth are a good thing, or even a tolerable thing. ROP does have a different vision from the Jackson films, but it's pretty moderately different tbh, and even that is a cause for sackcloth and ashes. Meanwhile, social media keeps bombarding me with defensive arguments against Christopher Tolkien's criticisms of the Jackson films, including "Christopher Tolkien did a lot of good but he didn't get his father the way Peter Jackson did and should have been more grateful to Jackson." I'm not uncritical of every editorial choice Christopher Tolkien ever made—nor was Christopher himself—but the stans who cannot hear a word against the films, including from Tolkien's now-dead son and confidant, while throwing screaming tantrums about ROP at every opportunity? Come on.]