So, I had kind of tuned out news about the Tolkien tv series currently in the works, feeling detached from the project once I realized that I was not their target audience (as opposed to the Peter Jackson movies, which I followed closely from v. early on). Which is why I initially missed the announcement that the people working on the Amazon project are looking to hire extras "comfortable with nudity".* And that they have hired an 'Intimacy Coordinator' to oversee sex-scenes to make sure actors and actresses appearing in them are treated respectfully.
Nude extras is one thing -- say for example a shot of the elves awakening at Cuivienen (I doubt if they were created fully clothed). Hiring an Intimacy Coordinator sends a different kind of message: that this series will be less Peter Jackson and more Game of Thrones. That's not surprising, but it is disappointing.
For a rumination on the issue of nudity in the new series, see the following post from www.theonering.net:
https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2020/10/06/108573-sex-sensibility-amazons-nude-take-on-tolkien/
--John R.
--current reading: LINDBURGH by Scott Berg, a light novel, and David Lindsay's THE WITCH
*BEYOND BREE, Nov. 2020 issue, page 10
What most amazes me about Cliff Broadway's piece is this summation:
ReplyDelete"What fans want most from any Tolkien adaptation is verisimilitude. Something that carries the true spirit of Tolkien and has integrity in realizing it."
Yes, exactly, and that exactly sums up the problem I had with the Peter Jackson movies, all of them: the lack of Tolkien's spirit. It wasn't that they left Bombadil out. It was that, despite all the stuff from Tolkien they put in, the movies were also filled with stuff that wasn't from Tolkien and which didn't fit his spirit, that had no integrity.