I run in Tolkien spaces where you constantly have to hedge if you don't want to be lambasted by hyperdefensive fans of the show on the one hand or dogpiled by the worst people on earth on the other, so this is very cathartic. It's clear Payne and McKay are big Tolkien fans, but they are also terrible storytellers who failed upward into a billion-dollar deal, sticking some very talented people with the most dogshit material imaginable in the process. (I knew about J.J. Abrams but not about the Lindsay Weber connection, thanks for that.) I wrote about this when S1 finished up, but the whole enterprise feels like a Ring of Power itself: an attempt by powerful forces to artificially extend the good feelings you get from reading the books or watching the Jackson films, but it only grows more tired and withered the longer it stretches on. Butter scraped over too much bread. Thank you for summing up my frustrations!
In a way, the extent to which they're Tolkien nerds may be a liability -- it's clear that a LOT of their mental energy was spent trying to get certain events and story beats as close as they could to the Unfinished Tales / Akallabeth / etc materials as they could without stepping on copyright issues (energy that could have been spent, you know, telling a good story). If the Tolkien estate is intent on never selling any adaptation rights beyond LOTR/Hobbit, and film studies remain intent on making movies based on several paragraphs in the appendices, I'd rather it go to a madman filmmaker who doesn't care about fidelity to the source, but has a clear and compelling vision for a story.
100%. Lots of adaptations work (or don't) for lots of differenet reasons, but my favorites tend to be those that stay thematically and tonally true to the source material (even if not word-perfect) OR those which go completely off the rails.
I think you hit the nail on the head here re: what qualified these guys to write a Tolkien show? Tolkien was a complicated thinker. He was not right about everything and he was serially frustrated by people who wanted to deify his work. He hated most things and especially the fandom that was already growing up around LOTR in his own lifetime. He would have hated this show.
But more deeply than that, there's a deep divide between story-lore that is meant to say "The world is always changing and losing something of what it used to be and attempts to resist that are doomed to fail and even to bring lasting misery to the world," on the one hand, and two dudes saying "Hey, remember how great The Lord of the Rings movies were? What if we had a TV show based on that and felt some of the magic again?" on the other.
Thanks. One thing that I didn't write about, and which made me raise an eyebrow, was the particular way they'd quote Tolkien in interviews. They obviously picked certain quotes to cite verbatim -- which (okay, of course they have to have canned responses for all the interviews they're doing) felt a little flat. In particular, they quote Tolkien's letter 131 in so many different interviews: the bit in which Tolkien said the broader mythos he created might "leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." Which is obviously a useful quote for the showrunners, since it makes it seem like Tolkien wanted to give license for others to bring their own vibes to Middle-earth. (In the actual letter, Tolkien is being a bit tongue-in-cheek about these ambitions, and includes another comment that not much of the Second Age "need be told.") It just felt like they were approaching the interviews like a test they could ace.
I agree with almost all of this (the one exception being that I thought the Celebrimbor/Annatar plot has been the highlight of the show so far, regardless of whether or not it matches the version in Tolkien's writings). Overall, though, you're exactly right -- the problem is that the showrunners don't know how to tell a story. They're missing the fundamentals somewhere. They've done a great job getting the right people on board -- the actors are all well-cast, the art/set direction is great, the music is good, the fight scenes are clear and compelling, etc. I even think they hired good writers, but those writers can't do much with an ill-equipped boss (they got a Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul alumnus -- you can't tell me she's at fault for any bad writing!). I'm happy to enjoy the good parts, but at the end of the day you can't overcome bad story decisions.
I run in Tolkien spaces where you constantly have to hedge if you don't want to be lambasted by hyperdefensive fans of the show on the one hand or dogpiled by the worst people on earth on the other, so this is very cathartic. It's clear Payne and McKay are big Tolkien fans, but they are also terrible storytellers who failed upward into a billion-dollar deal, sticking some very talented people with the most dogshit material imaginable in the process. (I knew about J.J. Abrams but not about the Lindsay Weber connection, thanks for that.) I wrote about this when S1 finished up, but the whole enterprise feels like a Ring of Power itself: an attempt by powerful forces to artificially extend the good feelings you get from reading the books or watching the Jackson films, but it only grows more tired and withered the longer it stretches on. Butter scraped over too much bread. Thank you for summing up my frustrations!
In a way, the extent to which they're Tolkien nerds may be a liability -- it's clear that a LOT of their mental energy was spent trying to get certain events and story beats as close as they could to the Unfinished Tales / Akallabeth / etc materials as they could without stepping on copyright issues (energy that could have been spent, you know, telling a good story). If the Tolkien estate is intent on never selling any adaptation rights beyond LOTR/Hobbit, and film studies remain intent on making movies based on several paragraphs in the appendices, I'd rather it go to a madman filmmaker who doesn't care about fidelity to the source, but has a clear and compelling vision for a story.
Jodorowsky’s Rhûn
100%. Lots of adaptations work (or don't) for lots of differenet reasons, but my favorites tend to be those that stay thematically and tonally true to the source material (even if not word-perfect) OR those which go completely off the rails.
I think you hit the nail on the head here re: what qualified these guys to write a Tolkien show? Tolkien was a complicated thinker. He was not right about everything and he was serially frustrated by people who wanted to deify his work. He hated most things and especially the fandom that was already growing up around LOTR in his own lifetime. He would have hated this show.
But more deeply than that, there's a deep divide between story-lore that is meant to say "The world is always changing and losing something of what it used to be and attempts to resist that are doomed to fail and even to bring lasting misery to the world," on the one hand, and two dudes saying "Hey, remember how great The Lord of the Rings movies were? What if we had a TV show based on that and felt some of the magic again?" on the other.
Thanks. One thing that I didn't write about, and which made me raise an eyebrow, was the particular way they'd quote Tolkien in interviews. They obviously picked certain quotes to cite verbatim -- which (okay, of course they have to have canned responses for all the interviews they're doing) felt a little flat. In particular, they quote Tolkien's letter 131 in so many different interviews: the bit in which Tolkien said the broader mythos he created might "leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." Which is obviously a useful quote for the showrunners, since it makes it seem like Tolkien wanted to give license for others to bring their own vibes to Middle-earth. (In the actual letter, Tolkien is being a bit tongue-in-cheek about these ambitions, and includes another comment that not much of the Second Age "need be told.") It just felt like they were approaching the interviews like a test they could ace.
I agree with almost all of this (the one exception being that I thought the Celebrimbor/Annatar plot has been the highlight of the show so far, regardless of whether or not it matches the version in Tolkien's writings). Overall, though, you're exactly right -- the problem is that the showrunners don't know how to tell a story. They're missing the fundamentals somewhere. They've done a great job getting the right people on board -- the actors are all well-cast, the art/set direction is great, the music is good, the fight scenes are clear and compelling, etc. I even think they hired good writers, but those writers can't do much with an ill-equipped boss (they got a Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul alumnus -- you can't tell me she's at fault for any bad writing!). I'm happy to enjoy the good parts, but at the end of the day you can't overcome bad story decisions.