We are in the Golden Age of streaming! Netflix and Amazon Prime are creating streaming versions of every literary franchise ever written. That makes good financial sense. When you start with an established audience, you know what they like. If someone bought a book or saw a movie, they should want the streaming version. Besides, a popular and beloved story could attract big-name actors and writers. Most importantly, if you need a lot of money for your project, a well-established property with a dedicated following can justify the cost.
Of all the properties out there, the biggest and most enduring is J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy tale, Lord of the Rings. Before Tolkein, publishers would never publish a story about wizards and elves, and adults would never read it. That was kids’ stuff. But it was LotR that created something new, mass-market fantasy.
20 years ago, LotR was made into a massively successful trilogy of movies and earned $3 billion. Amazon Prime wants a piece of that success. In 2017, Amazon Prime bought the rights to… “The Silmarillion”. Wait a second! Weren’t we talking about “Lord of the Rings”? What is The Silmarillion?
Well, LotR is a long (1,200 pages) adventure about friendship, loyalty, betrayal, conflict, and loss in another world, called Middle Earth. The Silmarillion is also set in Middle Earth, but it’s definitely not LotR. Rather than an adventure, The Silmarillion is a 4,000 year long history, essentially the back story for LotR. It’s a Middle Earth version of Genesis, telling us important stories… how Gods and angels came to be, how Middle Earth was created, the birth of the first Men and Elves, the origin of dragons, how the Rings of Power were forged… and more. If LotR is a thrill ride in a theme park, then the Silmarillion is a college lecture on comparative religion. That’s a HUGE problem for Amazon.
LotR sold hundreds of millions of copies and the movies made $3 billion. All due to a fanatic fan base, which watched the movies many times, bought every version of the DVDs, played the video games, held Tolkein fan parties when the movies streamed, and even bought the pricy Action Figures. Just one LotR game sold 4 million copies. Unfortunately, The Silmarillion sold just 1 million copies. That’s normally a big success, but it’s not enough to make this a successful series.
Amazon needs a blockbuster… a Super Blockbuster. Story rights cost $250 million and Season One will cost $465 million. Add in marketing and you easily hit $1 billion. It will be the most expensive series ever made. Yet, Amazon barely mentions “The Silmarillion” in their marketing. As if they have no confidence in their property. Is this a hint that Amazon plans to rewrite the source materials until it is unrecognizable?
Tolkien’s fans demand “authenticity”. Before the Peter Jackson movies, fans feared that Jackson or corporate executives would add something stupid, or “re-interpret” critical characters, just to sell a few more toys. Instead, the movies were true to the books. Artistic decisions focused on what to cut, not what to change. And it worked. It worked really, really well!
Now, Amazon MUST do the opposite, and create new stories. It comes down to math. The movies used 1,200 pages of source material to produce 9 hours of screen time. That’s 130 pages per screen hour, a pretty rich foundation. Amazon’s series will be measured against Game of Thrones, the most successful streaming fantasy series (so far). The GoT series was based on 5 books (4,200 pages), and ran for 63 hours. Not quite as text-rich as LotR, but it’s a respectable 67 pages per screen hour.
Amazon has already told us that their series will run for multiple seasons. Given the cost, they need 5 to 10 years of storytelling. “De-Throning” Game of Thrones means at least matching their 63 hours. Yet, with under 400 pages, they have a mere 6 pages per screen hour. Not only is that really thin, the Silmarillion is an homage to ancient history, intentionally archaic, with very little dialogue, at best it can be an outline for the series. The writing team must develop just about everything.
As we saw with the movies, changes are seen as disrespectful. No matter how talented the writing team is, whatever they write is likely to make fans livid. Except. And this is a very, very sensitive issue. Except, the lack of diversity in the books has become a problem. Every significant LotR character is White. Well, that’s not completely true. Evil characters (Orks, spiders, Nazgul) are black, or dark, or only live in dark places. Dark races are not only evil, they are often inferior versions of Good races. Orks are twisted Elves. Trolls were imitations of Ents… the walking tree people. A lot of fans want this fixed by adding diverse characters. Tolkien’s writings are indeed racist, but not in the way that we think of racism today.
First, Middle Earth is not our earth. It’s a different planet. It was created by magic. It doesn’t have the same continents as our earth. It doesn’t have the same people. If you sail to the east, the books explicitly tell us that there is no Asia or Africa. Fans have asked, “Can’t we have multi-racial Hobbits? Or female Wizards?” It’s fiction; writers can write anything they want! But… fans may not want to watch it.
Second, Tolkien was a professor of Language and Literature at Cambridge. Lord of the Rings was inspired by Norse mythology, Arthurian legends, Welsh lore, Finnish folktales, and Wagner’s operas. Tolkien didn’t whitewash his stories, the source material (much of it over 1,000 years old) merely reflected what the writers knew best, their own world. Like most ancient works, the writers were simply ignorant about life beyond where they lived.
Finally, Tolkien’s works are undeniably about race. LotR opens with, “It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf-Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power.” Tolkien organized his world by races, with each race having unique attributes. Some races are superior (Elves are fairest and wisest). Some we meet later are evil. And this world sticks to its stereotypes. Have you ever seen a good Ork?
LotR is a fairy tale. A very big, very complex, college-level fairly tale. Fairy tales simplify the world into good guys and bad guys, light vs. darkness. Big themes are explored, Kings and Queens (and maybe a Wizard or two) rule the world. I we don’t know how Wizards choose their leaders, Monarchs are destined (by God?) to rule, and all the little kings that follow are qualified based on the purity of their blood. Now THAT is really, really racist!
Yet, the succession of Kings is the foundation of LotR, The Silmarillion, and most fantasy worlds. From the tales of King Arthur to Harry Potter, a “destined” character is at the core of these stories. In the real world, however, the Monarchy is less romantic. Consider the real-world Prince Andrew; despite his lineage, he falls short of being Prince Charming. But his bloodline does make him magically immune to prosecution (in the UK). In Tolkein, “proper” Kings are good. Rulers from outside the true bloodline are… inferior. Occasionally, Tolkien does tell a story about the mixing of bloodlines, but the story usually ends in the Kingdom’s destruction. Are fans willing to kill off their noble Kings in order to further diversity?
Let’s summarize. Amazon is making the most expensive series ever made, but not the series they’ve advertised. The extraordinary cost demands extraordinary success, they must earn more money, be the favorite of critics, and they need to keep their fans happy. Unfortunately, despite what they paid, they have enough don’t have enough source material for a multi-season series. No problem, they can pad out the hours by writing new stories. But they are writing for fans that are easily insulted by corporations that would dare to rewrite Tolkien. At the same time, many of these fans… maybe even the same fans… desperately want the most racist sections rewritten, and are easily insulted by corporations that ignore the wishes of the fans. Oh, and they’ve got until September 2nd to release the first episode. Now that’s a Quest for the Ring! Good luck to Amazon. Good luck to the writing team. And good luck to the rest of us, because a well-written new Tolkien adventure would be very nice.
What do you think? Does the plucky band of writers at Amazon Prime stand a chance? Can they overcome their tribulations and deliver the cash machine Amazon executives need to keep their jobs? Can the series ever hope to be… Good? How do you think this story will end?