#yeah this is a reactionary post to all the gooey rings of power lovers and the ironclad rings of power haters

[oops-i-tolkiened-again]

It bothers me very much how close Rings of Power gets to being moral and then turns around and eliminates the subtle metaphors Tolkien had with every piece of fiction he ever made.

I do like the show. I do believe it’s improving. I don’t utterly hate the thing, but I realize they’re making stupid lore decisions a lot of the time, and band-aiding a flood with only the slightest lore gratuity later.

Let me watch the show as I will, let me enjoy it as I will, but do not assume I adore the hot messes where hot messes abound. I am both interested in and disappointed in this adaptation. It’s got this weird sense of “we have to keep the morality in here for the nerds, but we don’t actually believe it.” The Legendarium was never about expressing political opinions. It was always about exposing Tolkien’s own moral opinions and imprinting them on the world. Wether that was his take on industrialism, treatment of veterans, or family relations, it was always about his philosophy.

He despised allegory, and at this point ROP is barely scraping along as a weak modern allegory.