Elon Musk never misses an opportunity to troll on Twitter, and the richest man in the world apparently doesn’t think much of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
“Tolkien is turning in his grave,” Musk tweeted yesterday. Ouch.
He went on to criticize its treatment of male characters, saying the show makes all of the men “a coward, a jerk or both.” And says that “Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”
Ouch. Is this because rival Jeff Bezos fronted the money for it, or did he actually just hate it?
The Sandman creator Neil Gaiman clapped back at Musk’s tweet, saying that Musk “doesn’t come to [him] for advice on how to fail to buy Twitter, and [Gaiman] doesn’t go to him for film, TV or literature criticism.”
The Rings of Power, Amazon’s billion-dollar Tolkien inspired fanfic… er… opus... has come under fire from many longtime fans of J.R.R. Tolkien. The media is running with the narrative that it’s toxic white dudes that hate the addition of non-white actors in the show. Tolkien purists are unhappy with the series for a variety of reasons, chief being that the series is barely based on Tolkien’s work, looks cheap despite its big budget and that characters like Galadriel are too different from their book counterparts.
Technically speaking, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is neither based directly on a work of Tolkien, nor is it a canonical prequel to the Peter Jackson films, despite sharing a similar visual style. This is due to complicated legal rights issues. Jackson himself was set to receive a draft of the script for review, but was “ghosted” likely because of the potential legal entanglement.
The Rings of Power has become the latest piece of pop culture to be fought over in “the culture wars.” Amazon has frozen user reviews on the series claiming it was being review bombed. While this might be true to a certain degree, it’s also been reported that Amazon simply cannot let this series fail as the future of Amazon Prime Video depends on it.
Amazon sent out its own press release claiming that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power drew in over 25 million viewers on its first day, although there’s currently no independent verification.
As of the writing of this article, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power currently sites at 84% critical score and 39% audience score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
While most critical reviews have been positive, some have been absolutely scathing. YouTube reviewer Grace Randolph echoed Elon Musk’s assessment of Galadriel, claiming she was both a “Mary Sue” and a “Karen.”
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