It’s been a while since a new TV show or movie had to work as hard merely to justify its existence as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon’s adaptation of parts of J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings not directly depicted in The Lord of the Rings (and preceding those events by centuries, in-universe) has gotten a unique mix of excitement, curiosity, and scorn since its announcement several years ago, and through its extensive promotion.
For the scorners — and for many of the curious — the dominant emotion through this period seems to have been fear: fear that showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay, even with all the millions at their disposal, would merely preside over the ruining of another franchise by modern entertainment. In the case of this work specifically, there was concern, amplified by ambiguous or sometimes outright-ominous quotes from those involved in the production, that the intricate lore devised by Tolkien would be junked in favor of modern tropes or — worse — woke pieties. A quote from Tolkien himself began to circulate in YouTube comments and message boards: “Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”
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