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[Amazon Prime]The Lord of the Rings - Series

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by daywalker02, Aug 4, 2021.

  1. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    The outrage doesn't come from changing the hair and skin pigmentation of the character. The outrage comes from changing characters that minorities can more easily identify with to characters that white people can more easily identify with, in an industry that already mostly caters to white people.

    And the idea that there could be racially diverse elves, dwarves, and men that evolved on Middle Earth doesn't seem too far-fetched to me, relative to all the other unrealistic stuff we are supposed to accept. For me, it does raise the question of how this physical diversity might have come about. Can it be explained in a way that feels congruent with the universe that Tolkien created? I doubt the show runners would want to go down that path. Maybe some creative fans can try to invent an explanation for it.
     
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  2. Blake

    Blake Contributing Member

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    I enjoyed the first two episodes.
     
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  3. Salvy

    Salvy Member

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    I don't get this craze for characters people can "identify" with.... Is a character diminished because one can not identify with it? I love Stars Wars, Jurassic Park, Alien.... I cant Identify with Ripley but damn is she a complete and total bad ass.... Aliens is probably one of my top 5 movies of all time. Same goes for any character in Sci-fi.... Just because I can't identify with them does not ruin the character for me. I enjoy watching movies and play games because I can get away from the stresses of life. Its great seeing well thought characters of different ethnic backgrounds when they are original. Its awful when studios have to meet a quota and simply gender swap or race swap because of woke culture. Each and every character can not and should not have its own representative. One Hispanic spider man for the latinx, one spider woman for the women, one black spider man for the black men, one trans spider man for the lgbt.

    If they want to remake a franchise stay true to the content. If you want to expand the universe you don't have to change the very core of it. Cast the best actors for their respective roles, don't bend and change characters for the actor you already chose due to skin color.
     
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  4. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    There are no colors in LOTR, no one was white or black.....it is all in your imagination.....it is not even close to BLACK Panther which is literally in the name.

    If you have an issue with multiple races in a fantasy setting you are indeed a racist.

    DD
     
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  5. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    It's easier to relate to characters that remind us of ourselves. Just a fact. The other part of this when you're putting out a work that you're hoping will reach a very wide audience is you want as many people engaged with the story as possible and you also don't want to further entrench harmful racial stereotypes (light-skinned people are the good guys, dark-skinned people are the bad guys). Audiences are more sensitive to this today than they were 20 years ago. The producers of the series have to be as well.

    I don't know how you define "the very core" of Tolkien's LOTR universe. You seem to be elevating the importance of the elves/dwarves/men being uniformly white-skinned. It's not a critical element of any of Tolkien's narratives from what I remember. I also don't think racial politics within the various tribes of people was discussed much at all, so choosing a multi-racial cast that isn't merely subdivided into "good characters" and "bad characters" seems fine.
     
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  6. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    On racial diversity among elves, dwarves, mens, and hobbits/harfoots, the following makes the case that at least all elves were probably fair-skinned. Perhaps it could be explained as the rare darker-skinned elf having descended from inter-mixing between elves and other peoples with dark skin.

    .
     
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  7. CCorn

    CCorn Member

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    You gotta be ******** me. People are crying because there’s multiple races in a show about a made up world?

    Y’all really need to talk to a psychologist.
     
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  8. Salvy

    Salvy Member

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    Can you name a single character from a movie that you found relatable due to skin color or gender? Did it make the movie more enjoyable? Skin color and gender in my opinion are the least things to try and have people relate to. Its so general, its so shallow and cosmetic. You can relate to an audience by writing and creating characters that think like you, that act like you in certain situations or that have been in situations many of us have been in also. You can't just throw out a character of a certain skin color and tell everyone of that skin color "here is your relatable character because they look like you"... That's pretty racist in itself.

    So if skin color is not that important to begin with why do some of us care? We care because its forced. Because these shows are being written with woke politics in mind. They are going down a checklist of wokeism and throwing them in the shopping cart like items at krogers... They aren't writing good characters, they appeasing woke culture and remaking everything in sight but way worst than the original. They are changing everything and anything they can just because they are woke.

    Cinderella remake's fair godmother... Cmon, did we need this? Was this necessary? No it wasn't but hey we got all the checkmarks in one go.

    [​IMG]


    You want to have black gay characters? Fine, do it right.... Write a good story with a good original character. Like this

    [​IMG]

    You want to make a movie empowering women, fine... I didn't agree with the woke message but the movie was good. I highly recommend it, they did a pretty good job.
    [​IMG]

    What I don't agree with is taking great franchises and attempting to "fix" certain aspects of it because your woke politics don't allow you to accept these great characters for who and what they are. How they were written and how they should stay. You want to make a woke sci fi adventure film, write it.
     
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  9. KingCheetah

    KingCheetah Contributing Member

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    Is Black Elf from Wakandra?
     
  10. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    Yes. Tolkein did write in racial descriptions of people in his books and in general the good guys have white features and the bad guys non white. A such there are races, of humans at least in Middle Earth the Men of the West as Aragorn himself calls them, standing against Sauron have white features . The Easterlings have Asian features and the Southrons black features. Those men fought for Sauron.

    These people didn’t live in mixed communities as but groups like the Easterlings would invade the lands of the Men of the West every now and then and would enslave those men.

    It seems to me if they wanted to make multi racial characters they could’ve written characters such as Southrons or Easterlings who decided to not follow Sauron and given them a backstory about that. As is just having multi racial communities and characters living together as though that’s what it’s always been doesn’t ring true with what Tolkein wrote it just seems lazy.

    Like I said it’s not something that’s going to get me to stop watching. I think the actors especially the one portraying the Black Elf are doing a good job. This is more acknowledging what the source material is including that it’s riddled with racial attitudes that we don’t find palatable now.
     
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  11. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    Thanks for the background info.

    I tend to agree that another approach could have been taken to get more non-whites in protagonist roles without having to invent the existence of multi-racial elven or dwarven communities that feel out of step with the world that Tolkien created. Oh well. They made their choice, and it's not something that's going to ruin the show for me. I'll just imagine there's some reason for why such racial diversity might have emerged, even if the show never gets into it. I do hope, at least with the Black Elf, that it is addressed at some point. Like a side conversation about his uncommon lineage compared to the other elves.
     
    #91 durvasa, Sep 5, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2022
  12. tinman

    tinman Contributing Member
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    @Xerobull
    so I figured it out on why the elves don't look like elves,
    they are straight up Vulcans

    they got the Star Trek people doing this show
    @Jontro

    this is the Amazon Elf here
    [​IMG]

    At least there aren't any FAT ELVES
    @LosPollosHermanos @AroundTheWorld
    that would be reserved for a Christmas movie
     
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  13. tinman

    tinman Contributing Member
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    When did Tolkien inspire Amazon to make the Elves look like Vulcans?
    [​IMG]

    And explain to me the fake Hobbits
     
  14. ThatBoyNick

    ThatBoyNick Member

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    I'm fine with the show having colored people, as long they keep to their own
     
  15. tinman

    tinman Contributing Member
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    The elves and fake hobbits look like humans though
     
  16. GRENDEL

    GRENDEL Contributing Member

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    I'm not a big LOTR fan but I thought the first two episodes were solid, it wasn't the most gripping thing I've watched but I enjoyed it enough to keep up with it.....
     
  17. boomboom

    boomboom I GOT '99 PROBLEMS
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  18. tinman

    tinman Contributing Member
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  19. Supermac34

    Supermac34 President, Von Wafer Fan Club

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    The black actors was a complete and utter non issue. The first two episodes were...pretty good? Okay? Decent? Somewhat entertaining? Certainly not as good as $1 billion should probably get you.

    I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it. I've read that people didn't like that they made Galadriel a sword toting warrior, but she was the daughter of Finfarin and the Granddaughter of both King Finwe and King Olwe. She's from the mightiest stock there is and was probably trained in combat by Orome himself, so I'm actually OK with her being a warrior like that. She didn't have the elven ring yet and was thousands of years away from being the Galadriel that Frodo meets.

    I would have liked to spend more time on the backstory from the destruction of the trees to this time period. A lot happened that got sort of brushed over. I would have enjoyed a whole episode on the backstory, even if it had a lot of exposition.

    Some claim it is slow moving, but darn it, so is Fellowship of the Ring by Jackson, and I loved that one.

    I'm just not quite sure yet why I don't like it more, even though I've enjoyed it. It may be that I was already connected to the characters of the original trilogy from the books and I haven't quite connected with these characters yet?
     
  20. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    I did not like the original LOR trilogy. The Hobbit was much better. This looks pretty promising so far.
     

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