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@Lemming
Dude, you can just preach then. Tell I lost this to yourselves in this echo chamber. There is a lot to answer for.
Amazon LotR Diverse Casting
Posts
Total:
44
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@RationalMadman
Lurtz was a red/brown color,
Was playable in The Battle For Middle Earth II.
Eh, depictions of orcs in LOTR adaptations vary,
1978 orcs looked small white lizardlike,
Peter Jackson orcs, look more often a bit rotting corpses to me, though there's more variation than that.
Tolkien thought about, but never committed to orcs being elves corrupted by Melkor.
. . .
Eh, I'm half and half thinking that you're doing this as a joke, or 'actually 'really think the way you do.
It's 'some fun for me to talk about LOTR, since I like it a bit.
Though I find the racism outcry a bit silly.
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@RationalMadman
Why are all the caucasian-type races good guys except Saruman.
They aren't. Agmar was a place of evil. A lot of people's in the west had been evil.
Hell, Gondor had a civil strife that caused a bunch of people to flee and join with the Corsairs of Umbar (which this conflict was over the Gondor royal family mixing blood with the long living Numenoreans).
If you actually read Tolkien's works you will find numerous villains among the "Caucasian races" just as you will find heroes and good guys among the "non-Caucasian races".
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@TheMorningsStar
@Lemming
@ADreamOfLiberty
Then I will agree with you, it is possible the directors were racist, not Tolkein.
That is the end of the discussion for me.
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@TheMorningsStar
Personally, I don't much like all this 'new LOTE stuff, because it's too. . . Fanfiction like to me,
Also, too much speculation, expansion.
Though if I'd read the books before seeing Jackson's movies, maybe I'd have not liked the movies,
I tried to avoid watching the Hobbit Trilogy, but unfortunately have caught glances, when other people have watched it,
Or scene's I've looked for on YouTube, not 'all bad, but mostly bad was my take.
Personally, I'd rather someone just created their own new fantasy world,
Either explore many parts of the world while creating all their own takes on fantasy races that they like,
Or create a world that gives explanation to it's being a melting pot of different races and cultures.
Personally, I'm going with the make as many variations of fantasy races as possible,
With my video game hobby,
Goes slow though.
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@Lemming
For me, I figured when Amazon got it that there would inevitably be woke politics influencing the decisions and I thought "Well, stories around the Blue Wizards would allow for that without breaking lore as so much is a mystery!" and had hopes they would do that as the focus in order to be able to inject their political ideas while not explicitly messing with the world Tolkien established... then they decided to explicitly mess with the world Tolkien established.
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@TheMorningsStar
Taking the other view,
I suppose one could argue either side for dwarf women having beards,
"In The War of the Jewels, all Dwarves are described as having beards, including women.[3] However, in later writings published in The Nature of Middle-earth, Tolkien excluded female Dwarves when listing the characters he imagined with or without beards, stating only that all male Dwarves had them.[4]
So I'm not sure 'which way the scale falls there,
D&D and pop culture, took it that LOTR female dwarves had beards, often sounds though.
"Dwarves average four feet in height, with squat, broad bodies[citation needed]. Male dwarves grow thick facial hair. It is often a sign of extreme sadness and mourning for a dwarf to shave his beard. A popular misconception both within the game and among players has it that female dwarves also grow beards[who?]. However, the core rulebook clearly states that this is not the case[citation needed]. Female dwarven facial hair does vary by campaign setting: In the World of Greyhawk some females can grow beards but those generally shave; in the Forgotten Realms they generally grow sideburns but not beards or mustaches, though some can grow beards; and in Eberron they do not grow facial hair at all. In older editions of the game, female dwarves did grow beards in various campaign settings."
There 'were various races of men in the movies, and books I think.
So it's not a stretch to imagine various races of dwarves or elves,
Certainly were a number of different 'groups of elves in the Silmarillion.
'Maybe Tolkien would have expanded on world, if he'd lived longer,
'Maybe not,
I 'still hold to my opinion though, that he was mainly focused on LOTR as based 'mostly around English, Norse, Germanic, so on mythology.
Maybe there was 'more to his world, he just didn't get enough of a chance to explore, but now it's too late for me, to enjoy 'other people's take on it (Mostly)
Something nice about Pre Disney Star Wars cannon, was I think Lucus had to give an approval of writers contributions,
Allowed it to hold true to the creator a fair bit, to my thinking,
Rather than post mortus approval.
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@Lemming
this post you just did there was great. more of that less of the other stuff, thank you.
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@Lemming
I suppose one could argue either side for dwarf women having beards,
I think that while one could try the argument that one side is stronger.
In the works published while he was alive there is only one reference one way or the other in The Return of the King where it says they do.
To go to the sources you are talking about
When we go to his posthumous works we have The War of the Jewels which states that they both men and women have beards since birth and one is only ever seen without a beard if it was shaven in mockery.
Then we have The Nature of Middle-earth, another posthumous work of his, which does not say that Dwarf women are without beards but only says "All male dwarves had [beards]." which some try to use as implying that not all Dwarf women do, and this is where the debate occurs.
However, it is important to note that The War of the Jewels was edited together by Christopher Tolkien while The Nature of Middle-earth was edited together by Carl F. Hostetter.
When accounting for all of that I think that it gives much more weight to the interpretation that Dwarf women were meant to have beards. It might have been something Tolkien was considering changing his mind on, sure, but it does seem to me like the safe bet would always be to take the view of bearded dwarven ladies.
There 'were various races of men in the movies, and books I think.So it's not a stretch to imagine various races of dwarves or elves,Certainly were a number of different 'groups of elves in the Silmarillion.
I have no problem if they think they can fit it into the lore, but I just do not see how they would (not that they couldn't).
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@RationalMadman
If you are done with discussing the topic then don't come back and comment.
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@TheMorningsStar
Well, beard argument I concede.
And for fitting in diversity and using old lore, 'does seem better to me, that they just use a different fictional world for a Fantasy TV series.
But LOTR has 'some class and rep built, so maybe to them it's a better cash option.
Though one could argue LOTR has 'plenty of diversity,
It just doesn't have the diversity that people look for in their own world.
You do realize that part of what Tolkien was doing besides spreading this very subtle Christian Jesus message was trying to show the horrors that were going to come to the planet and to people with industrialization. I believe a lot of the reason that the orecai were dark skinned were because they were covered in the soot of working in industrial cities and in coal mines and oil wells. Does that mean he wasn't racist no idea don't know much about the guy as a person, never really read up on the guy as a person. He is of a certain generation who knows. But obviously the more modern retellings of the story are incorporating in elements that aren't as racist or is at least as not as unrepresentative of today. Honestly just about any fantasy book series based on the European like continent whether it's something like The Witcher or Thor there's going to be a lot of white people in it.
Some of you may be interested: https://www.debateart.com/debates/3418-diverse-casting-in-amazons-lord-of-the-rings-is-desirable
11 days later
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@Jeff_Goldblum
I believe that movies should stay true to the original text or else write their own damn story. I am long past complaining about about the Hollywood's unfaithfulness to my favorite books- I generally agree with Christopher Tolkien's assessment- the LOTR was unfaithful but forgivable. The Hobbit(s) were an abomination. I guess I'm past caring how they fuck up the Silmarillion, although a faithful rendering of that text would not be popular.
To my thinking, at least Tolkien's estate was consulted and compensated. I also think that changes made in the name of improved inclusiveness and diversity are more forgivable- I never imagined Ford Prefect to be a black man but the detail seems less important to that story. Less forgivable is Hollywood's recasting of denizens of EarthSea as white folks when they were written as brown-skinned people with afro-kinky hair. Less forgivable is the removal of Canadian economist Marie St. Jacque as Jason Bourne's wife in the Bourne series or the demotion of Robopsychologist Susan Calvin to Will Smith's girlfriend in I, Robot. Removing strong principle female characters and giving all their intelligence and intuition to male action hero should be a fucking crime.
But deeper reaches of screenplay hell should be reserved for those who rewrite the original author without permission and deepest of all for those who rewrite history. An Asian David Copperfield or a Black Inspector Javert change the context and reality of those characters, their race would have been the dominant fact of their lives in those stories and to depict the residents of 1849 London or 1815 Paris as barely noticing skin color is to give those ultra race segregated times and places a pass they simply don't deserve. My opinions regarding the re-writing of history such as the depiction of William Wallace as the Braveheart at the expense of Scotland's true liberator, Robert the Bruce are well documented on this site.