Rings of Power, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Tolkien

As of September 2022, I had read The Hobbit once and The Lord of the Rings twice. The first read was when I was 12, because my reading age had allegedly stagnated (actually I didn't understand why we were doing an identical reading comprehension test as six months earlier, so gave the same answers) and my parents wanted me to read Proper Literature.

(Joke's on them, now I read Jane Austen for fun and they think it's super weird.)

The second read was because it was 2001 and the first movie was coming out.

And, like, it was fine. I didn't really connect with Tolkien's prose, but everyone said it was good, so I assumed they were right. And I walked out of every single movie -- and the first Hobbit film -- going, "You know, maybe this isn't for me? Maybe I just don't like Tolkien?"

So it's 2022 and along comes Rings of Power, which is clearly a cynical cash grab and going to be very very bad. But we figured we should watch it to see what everyone was talking about, and also watching it alongside House of the Dragon (another cynical cash grab that was clearly going to be bad) might be fun.

It turns out that all I have ever wanted from Middle Earth was Hobbit Harfoot girls having adventures and Tolkien's long-running allegory for grief and war trauma but in a lady. And also Bronwyn and Arondir, my hearts. I loved the whole season, from the slow pace (thank you for trusting the audience to follow along and let you establish your worldbuilding and characters, I wish House of the Dragon had done the same!) to the costumes to the characters. (Could there be more than one female character in every group? Yes. Only the Harfoots get to have multiple women, apparently. But you compare that to the books and films, well...)

Now I have reread the books (I'm into the LotR appendices and have The Silmarillion lined up next) and watched the extended editions of the LotR films (they are very long indeed!) and I'm going to watch the Hobbit films even though they're bad, purely because (a) I hear Elrond is in character; (b) the White Council; (c) my brother's review was "I very much enjoyed the stories they chose to tell, especially when those stories were The Hobbit," and this intrigues me.

In this journey, I have reached a bunch of conclusions: 

• Tolkien fandom is THE WORST -- there is so much gatekeeping, racism and early '00s style misogyny, it is genuinely the most unpleasant fandom into which I have ever dipped a toe. And I say that as a Trekkie and Star Wars sequel trilogy fan.
• Tolkien himself is GREAT -- like, yes, his ideas are very old fashioned and I would like to buy him a drink and tell him to be a bit less racist, BUT his ideas and his world are vast enough to accommodate the changing mores of his audience, and I respect that
• Also, there's this whole THING where Middle Earth was flat until the people of Numenor tried to invade Elf Heaven, and in the cataclysm that followed, the world became round. THAT IS BONKERS. I LOVE IT
• Like, why are people fretting about volcano physics when the world is flat but soon to become round? Why are people mad that Galadriel can see over the curvature of the planet WHEN THE PLANET IS FLAT
• this is Dune level absurdity
• I'm so happy
• the fact that Tolkien fandom is too busy being upset about women and Black people having stories to tell newbies that THE WORLD IS FLAT BUT SOON IT'LL BE ROUND just proves my point about it being THE WORST
• Tolkien is great
• Peter Jackson is THE WORST, or, at least, his films diminished every single character except Gandalf (and there I think it's mostly just Ian McKellan saving us all) and arguably Aragorn, and the visuals are great but the storytelling is sad and small
• Rings of Power doesn't have consistently amazing dialogue, but it's full of people from all walks of life who are curious and kind -- or trying to be -- and that makes all the difference
• Galadriel can fight a volcano if she wants to
• I need to rewatch RoP once I'm done with the Hobbit films because I zoned out in every single scene featuring [the dude who turned out to be Sauron], and from the way Tumblr is going crazy for him, I feel like I missed something
• OTOH, "Liz totally blanks the Dark Lord because he's the most generic white dude you ever saw and she had him confused with someone else for a while" is extremely on brand for me

(For the record, I also really enjoyed House of the Dragon, I just thought it rushed through its first two decades of plot. And, like, do I love HotD, or do I love watching the cast interact on TikTok? It's genuinely impossible to say. Negroni sbagliato, anyone?)