It’s hard to know where to start, but based on the first five episodes, it’s safe to say that Amazon’s $1 billion fan-fiction TV series Rings of Girl Power will be a catastrophe of epic proportions. There are many legitimate reasons to utterly despise Amazon and their vapid “showrunners” for their wanton acts of cultural vandalism. Whether it’s the amateurish script, the awful casting, the terrible acting, the gratuitous race swapping, the inept world building, the plastic costumes, the cheesy set design, and last but not least — the hackneyed female empowerment propaganda, this expensive star-crossed TV series is a comedy of unforced errors that was destined to fail.
Beyond all of those serious problems, Amazon has committed an unforgivable sin: they have desecrated the work of J.R.R Tolkien with their arrogance and foolishness. The famed Oxford professor would be furious if he knew that Jeff Bezos and his band of woke millennial amateurs and even his traitorous grandson Simon Tolkien, have debased his creation. Unlike the tawdry and cartoony Marvel and D.C. Comics franchises, the professor created a fathomless universe with incalculable depth and brimming with invented history, culture, races, and languages. Tolkien’s timeless legendarium is a herculean work of creation that the world has never seen.
Tolkien’s universe is so masterful and vivid that it has become real to millions of fans world-wide. And, it is for precisely that reason, that millions of Tolkien enthusiasts will not suffer the fools at Amazon gladly. The identity-Marxists at Amazon, Big Tech, and their lap dog legacy media will not be able get away with blaming this debacle on “racist internet trolls” like they tried and failed to suppress previous populist revolts such as Gamergate.
The universal outrage expressed from legions of true Tolkien fans can be distilled into a simple sentence from Elon Musk:
The world that Tolkien created is sacred ground for his devotees. Even the slightest hint of disrespect can and should be considered blasphemous. It is foolish for Amazon to think they can deceive millions of Tolkien fans with their bloated abomination.
The War on Tolkien’s Elves
By far, the biggest act of vandalism by Amazon is the scandalous debasement of Lady Galadriel and the elves. Tolkien’s angelic elves were near immortal beings who exuded a dignified sense of holiness and virtue. Lady Galadriel who at this time is thousands of years old, should have been be portrayed as a wise, maternal, regal queen — much like the Queen of Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Instead, we an given an unlikeable, petulant warrior princess.
Amazon’s elves are too human and pedestrian. Both of the main male elven characters look more like Keebler elves than Tolkien’s refined elves. The rest of the elves are a rag tag bunch of pointy eared men with no sense of cultural, ethnic, and racial cohesiveness.
In contrast to Amazon’s debacle, Peter Jackson’s careful casting of the elves was brilliant and respectful. Jackson and his wife took great pains to ensure that the elves in all 6 of his films perfectly matched Tolkien’s descriptions in both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books.
Behold Morfydd Clark’s Guyladriel
Both the writing of Galadriel and the acting by Morfydd Clark is downright abysmal. Clark’s Galadriel comes across as a contemptible, misandrist harpy. She’s easily one of the most unlikable and detestable characters I’ve had the misfortune to ever watch on a TV series. Via her sophomoric dialogue and girl power posturing, she’s oozing with conceit, arrogance, hubris, and pride.
Amazon’s Galadriel treats the male elves like around her like human refuse with a total disregard for their welfare and is quite happy to let one of them perish in the frozen tundra. It’s pretty shocking how reprehensible she is. How the writers, showrunners and directors allowed this to happen is a mystery for the ages, unless, it was on purpose — which is even more troubling.
A commenter on this YouTube video made by Matt Walsh made this astute observation:
If anyone truly believes these writers comprehend the concept of “character development” then I have swampland to sell them. Never mind that Tolkien’s Galadriel is thousands of years old, married, with a daughter, and WAY past any significant altering of her character (we know the lore means zip), there is demonstrable proof that these “writers” cannot manage complex concepts like plot, dialogue, or character arcs.
Spot fucking on!
Diversity Pornography: The Disrespectful Practice of Race Swapping
Many reviewers have purposely avoided lambasting Amazon for their contemptible race-swapping in Rings of Power for fear of being labeled a racist. I will not hold back.
The various races in Rings of Power such as the Numenoreans, the elves, the dwarves, the Harfoots, and the Southerners are comprised of a hodgepodge of real life races that have no business being in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. We’re not supposed to notice any of this discordance but since it’s done in the name of diversity and representation we *are* supposed to notice. During the recent Comic-Con, the Ring of Power actors talked at length about how stunning, brave, and important they are for being the first (insert minority here) in Middle-earth.
Digging even deeper into this cinematic morass, it’s evident that each distinct race in the Rings of Power lacks cohesive ethnic facial and anatomical consistency. It’s a crude mish mash of real world races that is needlessly jarring and distracts from the suspension of disbelief that a fantasy series should be striving for.
If one travels to Spain, one expects to see indigenous people that look Spanish. Spanish people look different than the French who share a common border with them. French people look different than the English. Italian people look different than the French and so on.
Films like the recent reboot of Dune did the exact same thing, but since Dune was a far better effort, the race swapping was was overlooked by most viewers. Both Dune and the Rings of power imposed a 21st century ideological imperatives multiculturism and racial diversity onto groups of people that should have been racially homogeneous.
Another example of race swapping is the overweight negro female dwarf queen in Rings of Power. Since she spends most of her life underground would have no need for dark pigmentation because there is no sun underground to be protected from.
The insular and mean-spirited Harfoots AKA Hobbits are equally discordant in their racial appearance and are led by a miscast negro English comedian called Sir Lenny Henry. They’ve even been criticized by the Irish Times:
Rings of Power: Why are the harfoots hungry simpletons with stage-Irish accents? We ask the showrunners
Like all the other races, the idiotic Harfoots are depicted as being mixed race with Caucasians and negroes. This also makes no sense because over the span of many years any differences would have been gradually have vanished as they would have evolved into a homogeneous looking race.
Race Swapping Dishonors Tolkien and the European Culture He Honored
Everything Tolkien created was done to honor Northern Europeans and their culture — especially the English people. Tolkien delved into many European myths — especially Finnish — to arrive at his masterpiece. His universe was made to honor my European ancestors — not the ancestors of Africans, Asians, Persians, Indians or any other race. As a white European, this is my legacy, this is my culture, this is my neighborhood.
I won’t blame nonwhites for this. This is being done solely by woke, self-loathing, virtue signaling whites — most who are feminist women — who in the aftermath of the unfortunate death of George Floyd and the subsequent violent moral panic, felt they had to do all the can to prove that they were not racist. Amazon’s Rings of Power diversity casting was one of the causalities of this unfortunate madness.
The race swapping of the elves is also appalling. There are no such thing as negro elves in Middle-earth. The inclusion of a negro elf for virtue signaling purpose cheapens the Rings of Power and is the height of disrespect to Tolkien and the millions of fans worldwide who cherish his works.
Imagine if one day, some woke clowns in Bollywood decided to start putting white actors into their films? Imagine if Hollywood decided to make an all-white version of the Lion King or cast Tom Hanks as Martin Luther King Jr? There would be immediate and justifiable outrage.
Fan Baiting and Using Diversity as a Shield
A few weeks ago, the Critical Drinker, created a video entitled: Why Modern Movies Suck – They Hate Their Own Fans. In the video missive, he remarked about a devious trick that woke Hollywood has been using to attack fans who don’t approve of their neo-Marxist propaganda. It’s called “fan baiting”:
Here’s the tweet referenced by the Critical Drinker:
While I take issue with this person calling people who disagree with gender and race swapping “bigots”, she does a good job of deconstructing this cynical and odious strategy. Since the Gamergate movement, the legacy media, the corrupt video game media, and various feminist charlatans have been using variants of this technique to smear anyone who criticizes them.
Amazon like Disney, has been using this dishonest strategy to attack Tolkien fans who express legitimate outrage at the gratuitous race swapping they have shoehorned into the Rings of Power. One YouTube commenter expressed revulsion for the insulting practice of race swapping:
LOTR has always been “accessible” to everyone, and no one ever cared much about the skin tones of its characters (or the actors playing them) until the past few years of woke, PC culture. Just as I’ve never had trouble “accessing” tales like “Roots” or “The Color Purple” without being black myself, or “The Jungle Book” without being a little Indian boy myself. I don’t need to “see characters who look like me” in order to relate, empathize, admire, or enjoy a well-written tale. When you remove the world that the author created, you erase the creation itself. When an author describes a character’s physical traits in detail, and you try to forcefully change that, you’ve ruined the character and dishonored the creator. The “accessibility” argument is a load of bunk. Tolkien wasn’t racist. His fandom is not racist. The only racists are the current woke mob who can’t see anything BUT skin color everywhere they look. Their obsession with demanding characters who “look like them” is just more indication of how self-absorbed and entitled the current generation is.
Thousands upon thousands of Tolkien fans have not suffered the fools at Amazon gladly and have showed their quality with insightful comments like this since this despicable series has launched. No amount of money, no amount of manipulation, no amount of trickery will fool Tolkien fans who see right through their smoke and mirrors.
The Smoking Gun: Amazon Film’s Jennifer Salke Cares More about Diversity and Representation than Honoring Tolkien and Creating Excellent Entertainment
In a previous article, I warned about Amazon Films divisive Marxist diversity and representation agenda. The smoking gun which explains their race swapping is found in original L.A. Times article:
The Culver City studio’s inclusion policy aims to improve racial, ethnic and gender diversity on screen and its hiring decisions and provide better documentation of its efforts. Amazon Studios said for films or series with three or more people in above-the-line roles, it aims for at least 30% of positions to be filled by women and people from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups. The studio said it plans to increase this to 50% by 2024.
True to form, Salke gives gives a predictably politically correct boilerplate exhortation that is commonplace in corporate America:
“We know how much work there is to be done to improve representation both on-camera and behind the scenes, and it starts at home, with us,” said Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, in a statement. “With clear directives and a commitment to accountability, these guides provide a path toward a more equitable future, both on- and off-camera.”
The imposition of diversity quotas is an affront to artistic freedom and is nothing less than the manifestation of identity-Marxist ideology which seeks to socially engineer humanity. Jennifer Salke is a empty-headed, vacuous, stone cold identity-Marxist propagandist. There is simply no excuse for this type of person running Amazon Films or any other studio.
The buck stops with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. He brought this useless harridan to Amazon and she in turn brought the merry band of amateurs and dilettantes like Lindsey Weber, J.D. Payne, and Patrick McKay into the Amazon fold.
The Curse of the Millennial Generation
I believe that the current malaise in the entertainment industry is due to a convergence of many things; the rise of the social media, rampant immorality, modernity, the abandonment of Christianity and Christian virtue, and the feminization of civilization are all major factors contributing to the decline. But looming over all of this is the glaring shortcomings of the millennial generation. Millennials are the most entitled, selfish, and worthless people that humanity has had the misfortune to produce.
Great art does not come from spoiled and pampered children. Great art comes from pain and struggle. If you are acquainted with either of these, you have a chance at being able to create art of value that resonates with other people.
Today’s entertainment industry has consistently demonstrated that they are unable to create anything of lasting value. These inept fools have painted themselves into a corner and are only able to take the work of others and pump out endless reboots of existing franchises and comic book/superhero pulp.
In his post-apocalyptic novel “Those Who Remain”, G. Michael Hopf remarked:
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
There can be no doubt that we have more weak and useless people than ever inhabiting Western civilization. What’s even worse is that these people are so narcisisstic that they believe that they have been anointed by Providence to fulfill some grandiose destiny. Newflash: you are not special because you are a millennial and being one is not an accomplishment.
While there are some things that I admire about millennials, we’ve gotten to this point because of their biggest generational flaws: pride, hubris, and arrogance. The baby boomers who raised the millennials have a lot to answer for this as well. Unlike other generations who faced many struggles, this pampered generation was spoon fed a poisonous diet of self-esteem and safetyism by well-intentioned helicopter and snow plow parents.
It also didn’t help that people like Apple’s Steve Jobs commissioned millennials to go out there and change the world. Well, change the world they did, and not for the better. The iPhone generation also changed Middle-earth: they ruined it and turned it into a joke.
Like all of us, Millennials are prisoners of the zeitgeist they are born into. But they lack the good character and authentic virtue that our ancestors developed via the challenges of war, disease, famine, and depression. Therefore, they lack the life experiences that great authors and artists had in centuries past. Instead, they are inspired not by life but by the art and entertainment created by people that were inspired by the joys, trails and tribulations of real life not depictions of life in film and on television. They are unoriginal. They are copiers, not creators. Like an old Xerox machine, what they create are copies of copies of copies that degrade even further each time they are copied.
Previous generations, demonstrated the virtues of duty and sacrifice. They stormed the beach at Normandy, they served in Korea, and Vietnam. What have the millenials done for humanity?
Millennials don’t have much to teach us and their pride prevent us from teaching them. This created a perilous situation where the young refuse to learn from their elders, as a result the continuum of human advancement is broken. This is why millennials are so susceptible to the ideological panacea of discredited ideas like communism. These lost souls are the unfortunate human collateral damage of a decaying civilization. In absence of any real conflict and living lives of comfort, they gravitate to ephemeral, destructive causes such as social justice, trans rights, climate change, and whatever the popular fad is on TikTok.
For all these reasons, this is why millennials can never emulate or honor J.R.R. Tolkien with the deep respect he and his world deserve. Their thinking they can create something that equals Tolkien is shocking in its naivete and audacity. Hopefully, this catastrophe will should disqualify them from any kind of serious artistic and culture endeavor in the future.
Jeff Bezos: A Dark Lord of Our Age
When you get right down to it, we must finally confront the Dark Lord himself: Jeff Bezos. Bezos — an admitted Tolkien fan — knew what he was getting into. Even his own son told him: “Dad, don’t fuck this up…”. He rolled the dice on a group of unqualified people and he lost.
Amazon has a bad track record of throwing billions of dollars at various vanity projects, only to have them flop. Amazon Games’ underwhelming New World MMORPG is another good example of Bezos’s bad habit of hiring unqualified people to work on vanity projects.
Another example of Amazon hiring poor leaders is yet another MMO that is led by ex-EverQuest CEO John Smedley. Despite being in the video game business for 26 years, Smedley’s only success of note has been the original EverQuest MMORPG. Smedley’s track record is one of failure after failure.
In the past few years, we’ve all heard the horror stories of what it’s been like to work at Amazon. We’ve heard of the small mom and pop businesses that have failed because of Amazon. To think that Bezos and a bunch of Hollywood hacks used all this pain and suffering only to have wasted a billion dollars in a vanity project like this, just enrages me to no end.
Conclusion
The very best art reveals the heart and soul of its creator. The Rings of Power has a soullessness and sterility about it that prevent it from coming even remotely close to equaling the love that Peter Jackson put into his extraordinary films which deeply honored the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Thanks to a troupe of highly detestable and unlikable characters, I despise this series so much that I’m now rooting for Sauron, his people, and the homogeneous male orcs. I almost feel sorry for them and the Dark Lord whomever he is. At least the unapologetic orcs don’t have to put up with nagging feminist orcs, female empowerment, diversity, or representation hectoring. As a straight white Christian man, I can relate to their plight. I would join with the orcs in a heartbeat if was forced to share a world with a detestable and sanctimonious overlords like Amazon’s Galadriel.
The only way I have derived any value from Rings of Power is by treating it like comedy series. Another way to enjoy the series is to sit back, laugh, and point out its never ending series of flaws Mystery Science Theatre 3000 style. I must confess that watching the endless cavalcade of brilliant videos mocking this debacle, has provided endless hours of entertainment for me. But, that too, has become tiring.
The cardinal error in Rings of Power is that Amazon created a TV series that is so awful, so poorly written, so irresponsibly casted, and so terribly acted, that viewers don’t care about the characters. If you don’t care about the characters, you can’t become emotionally invested in them enough to last 5 seasons.
Without a doubt, Amazon cared more about infusing wokeness into their show, than they cared about infusing qualities of authenticity, likability, and vulnerability in their characters — especially with Galadriel who is the star of the series. In the case of Galadriel, there was no need for them to reinvent the wheel. Tolkien had done all the work for them. All they had to do was read the books and portray her with the respect and reverence her character is due.
Perhaps the biggest problem of all, is that I fear that Jeff Bezos, Jennifer Salke, J.D. Payne, Patrick McKay, and Tolkien Estate trustafarian Simon Tolkien, may have irreparably tarnished the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien for generations to come. The Rings of Power comes off as a cheap soap opera version of Middle-earth that is laughable, pedestrian, and lacks any of the grace and timeless magic that the good professor lovingly infused into his fantasy world.
There might be a few silver linings in the aftermath of this debacle. I believe that Rings of Power might be the stake that is plunged into the heart of the vampire of Hollywood wokeness that once and for all destroys this cancerous ideology.
The other silver lining is that, millions of sleeping giants — world-wide Tolkien fans — have finally awoken and been red pilled. They can plainly see that the establishment elites in Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Hollywood hate them and their values. Since culture is upstream of politics, this might be the beginning of a populist revolution that will save Western civilization.
The Rings of Power is a tragic and completely avoidable billion dollar boondoggle that will do down in history as the biggest plunder in television/streaming history. There’s nothing redeeming in the slightest about this insufferable show. I fervently hope that everyone associated with this disaster will be forever scarred and unemployed in the film business henceforth. Every last one of them read the script and agreed to be a part of this unholy desecration of Tolkien’s world, so there is simply no excuse for the damage they have done and abetted.
Amazon’s Rings of Power is unwatchable. Do yourself a favor avoid it like a plague.
Great Planet of the Apes reference in the header image. But these fools knew what they were doing.
The actors did often very well. They just cannot do better with a fully diverse, woke setting and script. I guess they would have hired some more high profile actors if they could have convinced them.
The writers of Rings of Power claim Tolkien rights and take a dump on his universe and do their own thing. Turns out it isn’t what most people wanted. Some people claim to love it. But seriously, if one doesn’t watch it, nothing of value is lost. This isn’t Tolkien. It is an insult to Tolkien’s work. Shame on the Tolkien estate/heirs.
Take away the Tolkien background, how good is then show, woke cast and woke Mary Sue main character? It’s not very good. It’s a work with an agenda and not a work of love, and it totally doesn’t get Tolkien at all. Or just doesn’t care.
But Amazon just declared every criticism unwarranted hate for their masterpiece. You may vote 4 or 5 stars, if you vote 4, prepare to defend yourself… lol. Every lower rating is supposedly hate.
The woke and diversity stuff is a hallmark of Amazon studios, unfortunately. Their shows are the better the less of it is in them, interestingly.
The actors did often very well. They just cannot do better with a fully diverse, woke setting and script. I guess they would have hired some more high profile actors if they could have convinced them.
True, the actors have to make due with the script they are given. Peter Jackson hired an stellar cast of highly accomplished actors and that probably made a big difference. Making sure your film has some semblance of star power has been a truism in the film industry since it began. But, Amazon figured they knew better. What idiots.
One thing that really bothered me was the male actors who played elf warriors in her scouting party. Notice they looked like Harry Potter teenagers? This was done on purpose to make Galadriel seem more mature, stronger and capable.
Another thing I noticed is how Amazon have snuck female soldiers into the Numenorean army/guard. Seems they took cues from Steve Danuser and Blizzard. No medieval or feudal society would ever have done that. There were distinct male and female roles in those societies.
The show is a complete disaster. I refuse to watch any more episodes. I haven’t since episode 5.
Musk was quite right and brought it to the point for a second time in a row when he said almost every male actor is a weakling and fool. Unless he is of color, then he is cool. The latter added by me, before someone claims a misquote… but also true…^^
You are right, the male elves looked more like kids. It was an incredibly stupid scene. An irresponsible Galadriel and juvenile Elven warriors. Supposedly she is the leader of the Armies of the North. So that was part of the “Army of the North” and a horse charge into a village (LOL) in Udun was apparently the army of Numenor in action. Ohhh… kay.
The showrunners are unknowns as well. This is their first big project. But they convinced Amazon and the Tolkien Estate. Ahhh… well.
Who protects Tolkien’s legacy from them? And this “Tolkienprof” on Twitter enjoyed the show as well after meeting the makers.
I hope Amazon doesn’t ruin my ebooks. The next Kindle probably has LGBT-color-display… SCNR. What a ridiculous world we have to endure.
Also, full plate rogue Galadriel, alternately wearing ball dress… I just have to seriously ask, why not a pink or purple strain in her hair? Or full rainbow?!
I prefer to remember Galadriel as described by Gimli in Lord of the Rings. This is a travesty of bad taste.