A Return to Optimism for Amazon's Lord of the Rings Series

As a lifelong Tolkien fan I've been keeping tabs on the Amazon show ever since it was announced (having written about it twice before: here and here). The Silmarillion, the portions of which take place in the Second Age, always had good potential for adaptation, but I wouldn't have guessed the War of Elves and Sauron would be its focus (as you can see in my first post--I thought it would be the fall of Numenor and its aftermath). Over time, my enthusiasm for the show has been taking a beating due to the fact that most adaptations are terrible (be they well intended like The Hobbit trilogy, or more typically when in the hands of mediocre TV writers like The Witcher). Adding to that concern was the ideological approach of Prime's CEO Jennifer Salke (echoed by your friendly neighbourhood CIA--goose-stepping for the oligarchy never looked so diverse). Fortunately for my sanity, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I stumbled across Tolkien Tube and, while I don't agree with him entirely (he's just realizing his dream of a Celebrimbor-fronted show is doomed), he brought hope back into the picture for me.

Let's briefly elucidate my concerns so you know where I'm coming from. From the beginning I wondered how faithful Amazon would be with Tolkien's material, since despite whatever limited voice the Tolkien Estate has in the production, the true guardian of the canon (Tolkien's son Christopher--think of the more laissez-faire attitude of his son Simon) is no longer with us. The typical result with genre adaptations are poorly written disasters. The examples of this are endless, but just a few: The Witcher, The Shannara Chronicles, all the Dungeons and Dragons films, A Wrinkle in Time, Eragon, and the 2011 Conan the Barbarian. The writer's room for the show seems unremarkable and ill-suited to the task (see below), headed by a pair of rookie showrunners coming from the J. J. Abrams' graveyard known as Bad Robot. In addition, fan site TheOneRing.net and Tolkien scholar Eddie Stanton have been running around combating criticism of the show--something that feels like damage control. Broadly speaking, much of the fan coverage has been doom and gloom (unlike the proliferation of 'wow isn't it awesome?' sycophany for the upcoming Wheel of Time or Dune). Casting announcements for LOTR have been met with a collective 'meh' due to the complete absence of big names, and now both of the Peter Jackson PR connections are gone (John Howe and Tom Shippey)--given all that, why has my attitude changed?

Just like Eorl the Young on the Field of Celebrant, my shifting perspective came unlooked for. I stumbled across this video, where Tolkien Tube addressed Nerdrotic's complaints (the most prominent outrage YTer to talk about the show). It goes without saying that Gary isn't interested in a balanced perspective, he just wants something to generate superchats. This lazy approach typically goes unchallenged, since his normal targets don't require that level of effort (Star Trek and Star Wars), but here his concerns are addressed by TT and within that signs for hope are found (an aside: it's amusing that Gary used an Ursula K. Le Guin quote thinking that it was Tolkien's).

“Hope without guarantees." [The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #181]

As anyone familiar with me knows, one of the key concerns I have with any literary adaptation is faithfulness to the source material (eg). TT believes that we will get that both because of the cost of the show and the impact of the Tolkien Estate. In terms of cost the first two seasons (they were shot back-to-back) are said to be more than 400 million, although I suspect the price for the IP (250) was squeezed into that total for PR reasons--at 85+ a season it's on par with The Witcher season one and Game of Thrones season eight [This is incorrect: the plan was to film the seasons back-to-back, but that did not occur, so the cost for the season is in the 170+ territory, much more than the aforementioned shows]. As for the Estate, TT might be naïve about what they would approve of--we can't be sure how particular they are now that Christopher Tolkien is gone, nor do we know how vast their powers are. We also don't know what qualifies as 'good' for Amazon--plenty of horrendous shows and films have been approved of by their executives (lest we forget WB exec's standing ovation for Batman v Superman). What these factors suggest, however, is that the approach to the show is distinct from other comparables--if it is received poorly, it's a financial disaster that negatively impacts careers and will be an embarrassment for Amazon. This is the IP, after all, that Jeff Bezos demanded equal Game of Thrones in terms of success. That pressure is a positive for fans, although it raises the question (again) over what Amazon deems as 'good'--we simply don't know.

While I went over the creative team previously, I did so very briefly and it's worth reviewing them more fully because I think it gets ignored far too often.

Showrunners: Patrick McKay and John D. Payne; we know very little about the pair who worked for J. J. Abrams at Bad Robot. The only work they've done that we're aware of is uncredited writing on Star Trek: Beyond (2016; the credited writers are Simon Pegg and Doug Jung), and at some point writing a now discarded script for Disney's animated Flash Gordon (on which the pair also have producer credits, but that's unlikely to include active involvement). While inexperience is scary for fans, what's encouraging is there are no awful inclusions on their resume. Unlike a David Benioff, Alex Kurtzman, Lauren Hissrich, or Damon Lindelof, there's nothing horrendous that the pair were responsible for to look back on. We can't know how good they are, but conversely there isn't a bad track record to worry us. As for why they were hired, my guess is that Kevin Jarzynski (the Amazon exec in charge of the show) hired them based on their mutual experience at Bad Robot.

Producers: ignoring those who are also writers, we have:

• Eugene Kelly (impressive credits including Westworld, Boardwalk Empire, Rome, and Band of Brothers)
• Lindsey Weber (from Bad Robot, who has seemingly moved on to an untitled Star Trek show)
• Callum Greene (has a J. J. Abrams connection, as he EP'd The Rise of Skywalker, as well as a Peter Jackson connection, EPing The Desolation of Smaug)
• Sharon Tal Yguado (who last produced Outcast)
• Bruce Richmond (his first EP credit since 1998's From Earth to the Moon)
• Belen Atienza (I'm not sure how thorough her involvement is, given that she also EP'd The Innocent which came out this year)
• Director J. A. Bayona (I doubt he's much involved beyond those episodes he directed)

Kelly has the most impressive past, albeit outside of Greene none have a background in fantasy (and Greene's is not well-regarded).

Writers (all have varying producer credits unless noted)

• Jason Cahill - Scattered credits going back 25 years, but has barely worked as a writer in the last thirteen (producing Fear the Walking Dead is his latest credit). He has some genre experience from J. J. Abrams Fringe (possibly where McKay/Payne got to know him), but nothing about his work stands out as specifically applicable
• Justin Doble - Got his start with J. J. Abrams' Fringe (yet another connection), but his most recent experience is at Stranger Things (seasons one and two). Like Cahill above, none of his credits stand out (Fringe was an interesting show with problems; Stranger Things is popcorn entertainment--neither have the weight of a Tolkien enterprise)
• Gennifer Hutchison - Her writing career is almost entirely via the Breaking Bad IP, which is excellent, but antipodal to what she's engaged in now; outside of writing, her career goes all the way back to X-Files and related material (quirky, but in the Fringe-vein rather than the gravity of Tolkien)
• Bryan Cogman - His career was launched by Game of Thrones and he wrote some of the better episodes; unfortunately for fans, his primary role was to help set-up the writer's room rather than help shepherd it long term (desired, presumably, because of PR reasons and because none of the other writers had prior fantasy experience). His task done, he's no longer with the show (he just wrote The Sword in the Stone screenplay)
• Helen Shang - Coming off a producer/writer role on the third season of 13 Reasons Why, none of her limited experience screams Tolkien just like the writers listed below, so my guess is her work on Hawaii Five-0 (produced by Alex Kurtzman, ergo Bad Robot) is why she's here
• Stephany Folsam - Has very limited experience that's completely unrelated (Toy Story 4 and Star Wars Resistance--the former, it should be noted, is just a story credit and she's one of eight people with that credit), offering little reason to think she has the chops for this kind of project; she seems to be off the show already, as she's already working on another (Paper Girls) and written a screenplay (This is Jane)
• Glenise Mullins (no producer credit) - This is her first serious writing job, which is odd; her prior experience is as an assistant editor on shows like Kingdom; why she was given the jump to writer from assistant editor, I have no idea, but lack of experience is not a vote of confidence (a guess is that producer Ron Ames is married to or related to Jennifer Ames, who worked with Mullins on Kingdom)

Looking at the resumes of those involved it seems like the heavies are the showrunners themselves, their former colleagues at Bad Robot (Cahill and Doble), Hutchinson, Cogman, and perhaps Shang. Both Folsam and Mullins, given their inexperience, likely have far less impute. Understanding that this group (outside Cogman) has zero relevant writing experience, what they do bring to the table is an understanding of spectacle, drama, and to a lesser extent, comedy. While Breaking Bad has gravitas, nothing in their collective experience is akin to this IP (even via Cogman, as we have to remember that George R. R. Martin, like most modern fantasy writers, have tried very hard to run away from Tolkien's elevated style). The temptation to modernize the material is strong, particularly as The Silmarillion isn't remotely as popular as The Lord of the Rings. However, the moment the show devolves into modern fantasy is the moment you cease adapting faithfully and we're left with generic fantasy filled with Tolkienian features (The Shannara Chronicles come to mind). Can they avoid that temptation? We shall see.

Of the various controversies about the show, the one that's most perplexing is related to Tom Shippey. The noted scholar, who among other things wrote the excellent but dense The Road to Middle-earth, along with the simpler but more readable J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, was brought in to the show in part for PR reasons (as he was prominent in the extras associated with Peter Jackson's films). He's no longer with the show and we don't know why. Shippey departed production in early 2020 and there's never been a reason given. There were conflicting reports at the time (from it being a planned hiatus to being fired). The timing was roughly when New Zealand began its Covid response, but if Shippey left for health reasons there would be no need for secrecy. If he'd left because his work was complete there would also be no need to keep it quiet. What we do know is that he wasn't fired, but is seemingly no longer involved. The only word we've had comes from a friend of Shippey's who said what happened is 'not as black and white as it seems.' Most people parse this as meaning there was a difference in opinion between Shippey and production over what was or wasn't in the spirit of Tolkien, and so they parted ways. Broadly speaking, fans would side with Shippey, who certainly knows better, but without specifics we can't jump to that conclusion.

According to TheOneRing.net there are other Tolkien experts with the show, but this has never been confirmed so we simply don't know if it's true. Even if there are such people on staff, we have no idea if they would be good advocates or have a "the books are the books, the show is the show" attitude. [This paragraph is corrected from my original post btw, as when I saw this information it wasn't sourced and stated as fact--I only found out later it was from TORn.]

One of the stranger aspects of the casting is the handling of its diversity. For a show unlikely to have many prominent POC characters, the female representation is proportionally higher than the male (the show's main cast is 25% diverse overall, but 33% for women). I'm not sure if there's an intention in that, but it's interesting (30% of the main cast is female). In-lore (for humans explicitly), the most diverse peoples would be ethnically Middle Eastern, North African, and Iranian, but there's no reflection of this. What we have instead is an inchoate collection of POC's that excludes East Asians and seems (if anything) predominantly black. The exclusion of East Asians could hint that there's an intention in who was cast, but without more information it comes across as random and impacted by American attitudes about representation. We also have no idea who might be under prosthetics (playing Dwarves, Orcs, and what not), besides Dylan Smith and presumably Ben Fransham (both of whom are Caucasian).

Adding diversity is a good thing abstractly and that includes in adaptations, but it needs to fit within the lore of the IP. Swaps are almost always a bad idea because it's usually an arbitrary change (as in, it doesn't impact the character or story in a meaningful way). The other problem with swaps is fans have spent years imagining that character as described (or shown), and when it's altered that very intimate relationship suffers (while often framed as a racial issue it really isn't, as can be seen from the hate both Michael Keaton and Hugh Jackman received when picked for the roles as Batman and Wolverine respectively). An example here would be Morfydd Clark (who is Caucasian): if she doesn't have distinctive golden blonde hair as Galadriel, fans will be upset because it's an important part of her character. There is a counter argument to this idea, albeit a poor one. The claim is because it's a different medium, you shouldn't expect it to follow the source material, but that's one of those incomplete statements that is nonsense once you drill down--it certainly doesn't apply carte blanche/willy nilly to casting and as a strategy it rarely works with fans.

What I hope the show is doing is creating original characters that fit within the milieu of the IP. That is what I wish all creators would do rather than the arbitrary swaps. I would be interested in seeing how the Easterlings, Haradrim, folk of Khand, etc interact with Sauron, so hopefully that's what we have rather than the callous checking of boxes.

We had what are supposedly the final additions to the main cast announced:

Charles Edwards (53 in October) - A steady British actor

Will Fletcher (early 20s) - Stage actor fairly new to TV/film

Amelie Child-Villiers (13) - This is her second project

Beau Cassidy (13ish) - Her first project

RDI added two more names (granting these aren't likely main cast members):

Robert Nairne (32) - The British actor who does creature performance and may be involved for that reason

Birdie Sisson (25) - The Kiwi's role is unknown

Tom Budge, who left the show over creative differences, has to be replaced and Fletcher seems to be that person (despite the age difference). It's not clear if the child actors will really be around long term or are simply there for a season or flashbacks. This brings the cast count to 40 (assuming I'm right that Fletcher replaces Budge, otherwise it's 41). It's not easy to slot all the casting calls from the list that's been floating around for a couple of years (keeping in mind that initial casting call may have changed, as there's still no sign of anyone fulfilling the role of 'Asta' from that list--a well-known, older actress of colour).

It's now clear that Budge was originally playing the character dubbed "Loda", as the reported auditions from September must have been held to replace him (with, as we can strongly surmise, Fletcher). We also have had it confirmed that Nazanin Boniadi is indeed playing "Kari". The latter has been my guess for awhile for a number of reasons (the most obvious being that Muhafidin, who plays "Kyrin", her son, can pass for that). I did not get the "Loda" guess right at all, as Budge was under the suggested age range for the character. Incidentally, I'll throw it out there that Benjamin Walker looks like Mark Ferguson, who played Gil-galad in Jackson's films (although he was cut from the prologue). That's probably meaningless, but food for thought (I personally think Ferguson doesn't look remotely elf-like, so it's not a physique I'd want duplicated).

Gauging relative interest in the show is extremely difficult because the advertising cycle has barely begun and there are few obvious parallels (I was looking for as-yet unreleased in-production fantasy series which have also not truly started their promotional sequence). It's important to point out that because of how ubiquitous LOTR is in terms of popularity, dredging Google Trends will give it extra buoyancy, but all the other titles included have (in theory) the same advantage. The first chart gives you an idea of how much bigger things get on release versus the background noise outside of that.

Broadly we can see how much bigger both Stranger Things and the first season of Witcher were vs Loki, but also that LOTR rests atop the other IP (which is no surprise). In the other chart we can see the damage caused to the Game of Thrones franchise by its horrendous ending (with minimal impact for House of the Dragon, despite various attempts by HBO to shed light on it); we can also see that Moon Knight had more excitement when announced than by its casting; the middling quality of unending Neil Gaiman adaptations have tempered excitement over The Sandman (a darling in its day), and that Wheel of Time's push for publicity has had little impact (I think it will bomb out of the gate--Daniel Greene, who leads the charge of positivity for it, seems to have started packaging other material within his WOT videos which smacks of limited interest).

We now arrive at the news that dropped while I was writing this. We have a release date for the show, which is September 2, 2022 (that date perhaps picked because Tolkien died on that day in 1973). Given that filming just completed, the date is far beyond what is needed for post-production work, so re-shoots have likely been booked for it. The image included seems to show the Two Trees of Valinor from the First Age and, if so, is certainly a flashback or prologue. I think the woman in the image is Galadriel (with her hair up in a bun or braided). There's a lot of reasons to believe Galadriel is the focal point of the show: she's connected to the major events in the First and Third Age, narrates the opening of Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring, and is the original strong female character in epic fantasy (something very appealing to Salke and Amazon). She happens to be one of my favourite characters as well, so expectations for how she's portrayed are very high. It's the kind of role that could launch Morfydd Clark into stardom...or not.

The bait from this teaser is interesting: it's showing lore, rather than focusing on a character. That means the marketing is aimed at the existing Tolkien fanbase and not the Peter Jackson fans or casuals. This is interesting, since the number of people who went beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to read the legendarium is proportionally small, but they are the hardest of hardcore fans. I have to wonder if it's partially intended as a distraction from the negative things floating around about the film--to give them something else to chew on. I suspect there's some awareness at Amazon that the reaction to the limited publicity thus far has been muted, so this is one way (however vague) to try and swing Tolkien fans in their favour. Will it work? Thus far I'd say yes.

The odds are the show will ultimately disappoint. Other than the early seasons of Game of Thrones, we simply haven't had a good fantasy show on TV. Success on film has been marginally better, but typically adaptations of the fantasy genre are poorly done. With that said, it's too early for doom and gloom and at least until the trailers hit (probably next spring) there's room for optimism. In the meantime, it's an excuse to pull Tolkien volumes off the shelf and re-immerse yourself in the lore. One other YT channel shoutout before I go: Girl Next Gondor's videos are worth exploring.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)