Do We Really Need A Lord of the Rings TV Series?

Tolkien’s books about elves, hobbits, and nasty orcs nearly singlehandedly spawned the high fantasy genre. Since their publications, the books have been adapted countless times for radio, TV, and film.

Most of them received mixed reviews or weren’t that successful until Peter Jackson came along and made three back-to-back trilogies where the epic tale unfolded on the big screen in all its cinematic glory. Hugely successful and critically acclaimed, the films picked up several Oscars and paved the way for Jackson to make three more films, loosely inspired by the material in the Hobbit and Tolkien’s appendices. Although not up to the mark as the original trilogy, the Hobbit films with better CGI and several Easter eggs were quite entertaining in their own regard.

Now, the books are slated to get another adaptation, this time as a five-season television series to be streamed on Amazon Prime.

As someone who grew up with Tolkien’s books and fell in love with Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth, I’m not entirely happy with the news. Unlike other series, Tolkien’s books have already been successfully adapted into film, making the need for a new series (or a reboot) rather redundant.

Image Credit: New Line Cinema

Moreover, stretching the story for five whole seasons appears like a desperate attempt to play it safe and milk the fanbase by giving them more of the same content, rather than giving the works of new and relatively unknown speculative writers a chance. Just like Marvel’s repetitive blockbuster films that mostly follow the same lackluster formulaic plots, Amazon Studios is trying to make money off mediocrity, instead of risking something new.

Of course, there’s always a faint chance that the upcoming series might surpass all other adaptations. But then, given how J.K. Rowling’s venture into screenplay writing is already wearing on the fans’ patience and how disastrously the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Game of Thrones ended, I’d rather not be too optimistic about this one. Instead, I’m more excited for the other Amazon Studios’ epic fantasy saga that is making all the headlines: Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, slated to release this November.