If they do this, despite having seen every single Tolkien vehicle ever made, I will never watch it. Amazon needs to come out and state that they are not doing this.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/lord-of-the-rings-actress-wants-amazons-new-gandalf-to-be-a-woman-192708223.html
That would be horrible. LOTR is heavily based on Catholicism, and Gandalf, Sauron, and Saruman are similar to angels which are only of the male gender in the Catholic faith. I wouldn't expect Amazon or any other modern company to really care about the religiosity of Tolkien's work though; they just want crazy action scenes and heads getting chopped off. Maybe they will even follow the recent trend of making the antagonist an anti-hero and forcing the viewer to question who the 'good' guys really are. Maybe Middle Earth would be better with Sauron in charge. Maybe he'll promise free healthcare and pensions for everyone in return for eternal power.
shareNo need to go all the way to the Bible. Tolkien already wrote "They were "clothed" in the bodies of old Men, as the Valar wished them to guide the inhabitants of Middle-earth by persuasion and encouragement, not by force or fear."
shareSure, but without understanding or appreciating the religiosity of Tolkien's work, it might not seem like a big deal to make that kind of change. It's only when you know that LOTR is explicitly a Catholic story that it becomes clear who Gandalf really is and why he must be of the male gender. Hollywood screenwriters aren't going to see the importance of that. They might just think that Tolkien came up with the gender on his own and therefore that can be changed in modern times because he was writing in a different era where men dominated society.
shareDon't know how far you can go with that. There are 14 Valar who are considered archangels. Seven of them are female.
shareThis is just some bit-parter throwing out a half-baked personal opinion in an entirely unrelated forum. She has nothing to do with the production of this show and every shithead 'journalist' who's trying to trump up this non-story in order to drive clicks should reconsider their careers.
No one should be gullible enough to be manipulated into assuming a position of outrage over this clickbait bullshit.
This story is getting big play in the media, turning up on virtually every site.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ian+mckellen+female+gandalf
The media knows how to get what they want though. They were running headlines for years saying "the next James Bond should be a black person / the next James Bond should be a woman." And now the next James Bond 007 is a black woman if the rumours are correct. Rumours, gossip, and clickbait can quickly become real life as a result of the media pushing their agenda.
shareActually, though, if Amazon are only doing the Second Age then Gandalf shouldn't even be in it.
shareOlorin the Vala was around during the 2nd age and earlier, although the persona of Gandalf didn't come along until the 3rd.
There's absolutely no reason that Olorin couldn't incarnate in a form other than that of Gandalf during the Numenorean age, and that form could appear to be either male or female as preferred. So I'm perfectly happy to have someone in the new series revealed as Olorin in human guise, AS LONG AS the name of Gandalf isn't used.
I've heard that Gandalf will appear in the second age in this show but not as a women at all. But to contemporize it and be more inclusive, he will be known as Gandalf the Gay.
shareAnd as it was much more progressive than the Third Age, the incarnations of Radigast and Saruman in the Second Age also had slightly varied names. There was Radigast of Color, and Saruman the White...Racist. No word yet on what the blue wizards names were at that time.
shareThey should make Sauron a female. And instead of of an eye have it be a large breast.
shareI'm as certain as I can be that Tolkien would be well against this, and I would have a distrust of anybody making up stories of Arda who is so disdainful of Tolkien's vision for those worlds. If somebody made Gandalf female, it's turning this saga into a PSA and, while it might be done with good-hearted intent to be inclusive, I would avoid a show so clearly bent on its own disservice.
Now, if they wanted to cast a woman to play a male Gandalf, that's another matter (Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There, e.g.) and I would haven no problem with that.
For sure, though not sure they care what Tolkien would think. Let's hope the Tolkien estate has some control over these matters though.
Also: if someone wants to see a female wizard (wizardess) why don't they compose their own story?
I think it's difficult to meet Tolkien's nuances even when well-intentioned and in love with the books, let alone when one is contemptuous of them. For instance: Peter Jackson dedicated so much effort that it's obvious his love of the literature, but even he missed matters of HUGE import. The end of the third Hobbit film mangles the last conversation between Bilbo and Gandalf in an attempt to add continuity between the Hobbit films and the Lord of the Rings films. Plus, the rumble in Mount Doom is altered in a way which Tolkien would surely have disapproved of.
Amazon just wants to make money. The woman who commented and blabbed off about a female Gandalf is obviously looking for work and/or brownie points with the cultural jailers. I don't know if those working on the show care or don't care.
My greatest worry right now, honestly, is that they will attempt to emulate Game of Thrones and fill the series with sex, nudity, and violence instead of focusing on the fantasy, mythology, and philosophical/theological subtleties of the books.
Yes, PJ mostly respected the material and didn't harm it too much. Certainly better with LotR than The Hobbit. Let's face it: some things just have to change when adapting from book to screen. I don't think he made any of those changes without good reasons. People want to see more women in movies than Tolkien wanted to put in his books. People don't want an anti-climax like The Scouring of the Shire. And so on. These movies have to make money or else they don't get made. All of them could have been a lot worse.
Yeah, I'm worried that Amazon won't have the same level of respect. But we should wait and check it out when it appears.
Yes, making a raunchy Middle-Earth is a distinct possibility. If they can do it with the upcoming Sanditon by Jane Austen, they'll do it here as well.
Some of the changes I didn't mind. Like, Arwen's expanded role didn't bug me, or the fact that Tom Bombadil wasn't in it - that was fine. It was when they'd miss the symbolism behind it that irked me because he'd get so close and then he'd miss something that seemed so obvious.
Of course I'll wait and see. If it looks good, I'll check it out.
If they raunch it up, I'm out. I know I'm coming off like a prude right now, but it's not raunch in and of itself, it would be that if somebody tried to exploit Tolkien like that, I'd just feel like it wasn't Middle Earth - this isn't the same world and it's just Lord of the Rings in name only.
Definitely. Bombadil didn't work there. It almost doesn't work in the novel itself.
I guess what bothered me most were those magic rabbits in The Hobbit, and making Radagast such an undignified character. Had hoped for more.
Yes, definitely they should not do that. Hope the creators are reading.
Yeah...magic rabbits...
The thing with the Hobbit trilogy, I feel, is that it just didn't know what it wanted to be. I think this started when Del Toro dropped out. He'd been developing it in his way, it got stuck in Development Hell, and Del Toro left. They scrambled and used Jackson to plug the leak, but his heart wasn't in it and he was stuck with his work from the LotR trilogy, Tolkien's original novel, and Del Toro's pre-production work (however much he had done). That combo turned into an avalanche of confusion.
That's why, I think, you get goofy Radagast with the rabbits, then you have creepy Gollum, or serious epic battles running on the heels of puns and cross dressing jokes. They never knew what they were making and nobody had that vision to steer or the passion to fight. They phoned it in.
The worst part, in my opinion, was the utter waste of talent. Ian McKellen (have you seen the clip of him crying on set? It's tragic), Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, and Martin Freeman, just to name a few, perfectly cast as characters we wanted to see and hear from. But...nothing.
So, because of this, I'm wary of the Amazon series. If they don't have a clear vision or path, they'll flail and flounder On top of that, if they try to sensationalise it (clear vision or no) it will - at best - be a Game of Thrones knock-off. At worst...well...might be no rock-bottom on this one...
Yes, and I have wondered if the critical element wasn't time. When the switch happened they had very little time to redevelop or fine tune anything.
shareIt was rushed. 100%. Absolutely.
shareYeah, and when that happens, you tend to get broader rather than finer strokes.
Say, I was thinking the new series would be primarily about Numenor, but now it looks like they're going to have events in the mainland as well. Or else why have Galadriel? https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/12/18/amazons-lord-of-the-rings-series-casts-young-galadriel
So I guess we'll have at least two main storylines, and probably a third for Sauron.
Apparently the estate is putting limitations on what Amazon can change: https://screenrant.com/lord-rings-tv-show-tolkien-rules-restrictions-amazon/
On the other hand, PJ worked under restrictions as well.
I'm not thrilled that the showrunners and writers are from the JJ version of Star Trek though.
It's disturbing too that they have hired an actress to play "young Galadriel". The First Age lasted 590 years. Galadriel was born even before that, in the Years of the Two Trees -- YT 1362. The Years of the Two Trees lasted 1500 years. So even if the series begins on day one of the Second Age -- which I doubt since the exciting parts come much later -- she would already be 728 years old -- hardly a spring chicken.
Yeah, I didn't know the writers were Abrams' guys... I appreciate Abrams as an action director, but his films are thrill rides, no depth or transcendency (I know that's not a word).
Young Galadriel isn't a good sign, either, although flashbacks could go back further, right?
I hope the Tolkien estate has enough power to veto dumb ideas like female Gandalf.
Ran into a thorough explanation of what went wrong on The Hobbit. Appears the studio caused a lot of problems.
https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-made-The-Hobbit-trilogy-a-bad-set-of-films
see the answer by Brent Hui
I heard they were going to make her Gandalf the Black, and have her as a black woman playing the part?
shareI suppose that if it takes place in the second age, if Olorin does show up, it will be in a different avatar than Gandalf since he didn't appear until year 1000 of the third age. So they could make it male, female or whatever, so I'm sure they'll use that excuse
sharethe future is female
share