NOW I’m Angry

     At this stage of my life there aren’t many things that can catapult me into a full-blown fury. I’ve seen enough, and endured enough, to have developed fairly thick calluses over my rage nerves. A good thing, too: with my blood pressure, the consequences could be maximally serious. So I mostly stay fairly calm, with occasional bouts of profanity – Dad was a Navy man, you know – to let off occasional accumulations of steam.

     But every now and then...

     I’m sure the “literati” would dismiss me as an unlettered Philistine for this, but in my opinion, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is the greatest literary achievement in the English language. It doesn’t just tell a memorable adventure story; it delineates human (and Elven, and Dwarven, and Hobbitish, and Entish) challenges and difficulties of many kinds and depicts various characters striving to surmount them. It embeds those challenges within a mythopoetic setting of a grandeur that no other novel – or novelist – has ever approached. And it does all this without descending to irrelevancies or artifices of style that would detract from the underlying tale of ultimate moral crisis.

     Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy could not capture all of that, even in nearly twelve hours of film. He tried his best, but as the late Joseph Sobran noted, he failed to capture Tolkien’s moral vision. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, structured The Lord of the Rings around the Scriptural tale of the Fall of Man and the Christian moral framework. His extraordinarily rich “backstory,” the essence of which he related in The Silmarillion, makes that abundantly clear. That’s tough stuff to get onto the silver screen.

     But now we have this:

     Amazon Prime’s “Lord of the Rings” series set to release in 2021 has been eagerly anticipated by devoted LOTR fans around the world. The $1 billion series will be set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, which spans 3441 years, before the events of the LOTR movies.

     Unfortunately, it looks like the creators of the series, which they claim is based on J.R.R Tolkien’s original work, may be trying to imitate “Game of Thrones”-type nudity and “rapey” storylines. This, no doubt, will delight the left, who have long detested Tolkien’s writing and distinctive Christian influence on popular culture.

     According to TheOneRing.net, the casting agency for the series put out an open call for actors who “must be comfortable with nudity.” In addition, Amazon Studios has hired an “intimacy coordinator,” and the writer and producer from “Game of Thrones,” Bryan Cogman, has officially been hired as a consulting producer.

     “Game of Thrones,” made by Amazon for Amazon, could not be more different from Tolkien’s beloved, classic books about Middle Earth, so of course, LOTR fans are worried.

     Please read the whole article. “Worried” doesn’t nearly cover it. I’m outraged by the mere possibility.

     Their moral clarity is one of the main reasons for the immense popularity of Tolkien’s works. They pit good against evil, freedom against enslavement, and heroes against villains, vacillators, compromisers, and the “let me think it over” types whose sole concern is to be on the winning side. Those who insist that “there’s no black or white, only shades of gray” can never be comfortable with such a premise.

     Please don’t confuse moral clarity with prudishness. No, there are no sex scenes in Tolkien’s stories, but that’s irrelevant to the larger issue. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, best known by the title of its first volume, A Game of Thrones, is founded on a completely different moral perspective: one in which essentially everything goes and who was in the right is determined, after the dust has settled, by the victors. It’s not founded on a clash between good and evil, but on what the movers and shakers are willing to do to triumph.

     A simple touchstone – “Would you prefer to associate with Tolkien’s heroes or Martin’s?” – dramatizes the differences between the two conceptions, and the reason for the far greater (and more enduring) appeal of Tolkien’s oeuvre.

     Amazon’s project managers had better think hard and deeply before they make any irrevocable moves toward “Westerosizing” Middle Earth. That fall from grace could destroy them.