Excited: It’ll explore new areas of Middle-earth
J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing explored acres upon acres of Middle-earth, including reams’ worth of maps. Peter Jackson’s movies – both his Lord of the Rings movies and his Hobbit movies – explored a lot of Middle-earth, but there are still plenty of corners of the realm that he left unexplored.
Worried: Peter Jackson already nailed it
Peter Jackson already nailed translating J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings stories to the screen with his Oscar-winning blockbuster trilogy. There’s no point in adapting something that was already done perfectly the first time around. It’s a crazy stretch to think that any new adaptation of The Lord of the Rings will be anywhere near as great as Jackson’s efforts, but even if it is, what would be the point?
The best-case scenario is a show that might be half-decent but doesn’t need to exist, while the worst-case scenario is a show that is pointless, unwatchable, and terribly disappointing.
Excited: It will at least have spectacle
Now, as we’ve seen time and time again in Hollywood, a high production budget is obviously no guarantee of a high-quality show, but it is a guarantee of a gorgeous, spectacular, cinematic show, and when we’re visiting an immersive fantasy world like Middle-earth, that’s an essential element.
Worried: The producers are jumping the gun with a planned five seasons
The producers of the new Lord of the Rings series are diving head-first into an absurd commitment. They’ve pumped $1 billion into getting a planned five seasons underway. What if the first season tanks with the critics and is barely watched by anyone? It’ll be kind of embarrassing for them to release another four seasons, just because they already spent $800 million on them.
Jumping the gun rarely works out in Hollywood. Marvel took baby steps towards building the MCU, but there are many other examples (the DCEU, Dark Universe, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, etc.) where the producers jumped in too quickly and failed miserably.
Excited: It can learn from The Hobbit’s mistakes
While Peter Jackson nailed the portrayal of Middle-earth and the characters that populate it in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, then he went and spoiled it all by making The Hobbit trilogy. It focused too heavily on the worst aspects of the original trilogy – cringe comedy, superfluous action, overlong runtimes, etc. – and failed miserably by dragging out a slim little kids’ book to the same length as the Biblically epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Worried: It won’t have any of our favorite characters in it
Excited: There’s a lot of talented people attached
Writers and production staff from such TV series as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Stranger Things, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Hannibal have been brought on board the series. Meanwhile, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay haven’t had any produced scripts yet, but they’ve written screenplays for a Star Trek movie and a Flash Gordon movie that generated a lot of buzz in Hollywood.
Worried: The storyline they’re doing is less interesting than the main one
The real story of Middle-earth – the one that deserves to be fleshed out into a five-season TV series – is Frodo taking the One Ring to Mount Doom. The Second Age is just backstory to that; it’s just not as interesting.
Excited: It could be the next Game of Thrones
We’ve just finished following a cinematic multi-part story set in a medieval fantasy world where warring factions fight for their alliances. Although the eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones might not have been universally adored by critics and fans (it was actually mostly despised), the show was wildly popular for almost a decade as audiences were whisked away to Westeros every week, engaging in the ongoing storylines.
Worried: It’s yet another rehash
Hollywood has always followed trends, but the latest trend is the most shameful of all: rehashing old movies and TV shows. Instead of telling a bold new story in the Star Wars universe, they’ll give us another rebellious force blowing up another evil empire’s superweapon.
