YouTuber Eviscerates Latest ‘The Rings Of Power’ Trailer: Doesn’t Resemble Anything J.R.R. Tolkien Wrote, To Say Otherwise Is A Lie

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel and Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

YouTuber The One Ring shared his reaction to the latest trailer for Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power declaring that it doesn’t resemble anything J.R.R. Tolkien wrote.

Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn, Tyroe Muhafidin as Theo, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

In a video titled “The Rings of Power is NOT Tolkien’s story! This trailer confirms it!” YouTuber The One Ring took to task the latest and what some believe to be the final trailer for Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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He begins the video stating, “This trailer shows us more of the characters and the world that Amazon has created in The Rings of Power and none of it resembles what Tolkien wrote. … And this trailer it dives even harder into that reality. It is truly the novel Tolkien never wrote because he never would have written it.”

The YouTuber is referencing showrunner Patrick McKay’s comments to Vanity Fair when he described the series telling the outlet, “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?”

Leon Wadhman as Kemen, Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Queen Regent Míriel, Trystan Gravelle as Pharazôn, Lloyd Owen as Elendil, Ema Horvath as Eärin, and Maxim Baldry as Isildur in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

The One Ring then asserts, “So let’s take a look at this trailer and talk about all the issues that it has because it does not resemble Tolkien. In fact, there’s almost nothing in this trailer that makes it resemble what Tolkien wrote.”

He then lists out what the trailer focuses on, “In fact here are the things that it concentrates on. It concentrates on rewritten Galadriel, rewritten Tar-Míriel. It concentrates on Arondir, and Halbrand, and Disa gets a line in it. And then, of course, the Harfoots have a long three, four sentence monologue right there.”

“It has Galadriel in Númenor,” he continues. “It has Elrond lecturing Galadriel. It concentrates on the meteor man. All of these things are not anything Tolkien ever wrote. Almost the entire trailer, you can’t point a direct line between what Tolkien wrote and what’s shown in this trailer.” 

He then posits, “None of it, none of it, none of it shows me that they have respected his works or to quote them, ‘Gone back to the books.'”

Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

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After watching a brief clip of the trailer where Galadriel indicates she’s going to avenge her brother’s death, The One Ring explains why it has no basis in Tolkien’s works, “First of all, if she’s talking about Finrod Felagund, her brother, who was with Beren and was killed by Sauron’s werewolves, this is not how it would have happened.”

“Her whole line that she is there to avenge his death has no basis in anything Tolkien wrote,” he continues. “She was with Melian, the Maia, in Doriath, and didn’t spend her time avenging the deaths of her brothers. She spent her time essentially trying to evade the doom of the Valar because she took part in the kinslaying at Alqualondë.”

“So for her to be in this role of avenger is nothing that can be pointed back to what Tolkien wrote. It’s just not there,” he asserts.

Source: Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

He then points to a line Morfydd Clark delivers as Galadriel when she says, “Not fate, nor destiny. Ours was the work of something greater.” The One Ring notes, “That makes her sound like Gandalf when Gandalf would speak of things happening with greater purpose, which is a call to the will of Iluvatar, the god of Arda, the god of Eä, god of the whole universe, and how he wills, he works things to happen.”

“She is running from the doom spoken over her, and for the longest time she could not face it until The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo offers her the ring and she says I passed the test, I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel,” he continues.

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel and Lloyd Owen as Elendil in Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

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He then points out, “The idea that she is the driving force for everything is not supported anywhere in Tolkien’s works. And in fact we see Halbrand, another new character who is not supported in Tolkien’s works.”

“I wish they would have gone back and given us something to say, ‘Oh look this right here, this character, this point, this place, this meeting of characters it is spoken directly by Tolkien.’ There is absolutely zero events like that in this trailer,” he professes. ” There is nothing. Nothing that is like, ‘Oh this right here. This comes from what Tolkien wrote or from what Tolkien even said in his Appendices.’

Charlie Vickers as Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

“So for them to claim that they are using the Appendices is a complete farce. There are no appendices that talk about these characters, that talk about what Galadriel said, that talk about Halbrand or Arondir, or Disa or Harfoots in the Second Age,” he reiterates. “It’s their hubris. It’s their idea that they can write something as good as Tolkien.”

“And they’re just using Middle-earth as this weird sketch pad that is completely not based in what Tolkien wrote,” he states.

Trystan Gravell as Pharazôn and Ema Horvath as Eärien in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power

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Pointing to the trailer’s focus on the Meteor Man, he speculates the character is one of the Istari like Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast that were sent in the Third Age by the Valar to aid Middle-earth in their fight against Sauron.

Given this presumed Istari is arriving in the Second Age, The One Ring says, “They are creating a world that Tolkien didn’t write and for them to say that this guy right here, the Meteor Man, was there. It’s either an Istari or it’s something completely brand new and we’ll find out in a couple of weeks, but it’s not there.”

An orc, as depicted in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Addressing potential critics he then says, “When other folks tell you that like, ‘Wow, why are you upset about this. This is Tolkien, right? Isn’t this great we’re seeing Middle-earth.’ No, this is not Tolkien. This is not what he wrote. These are character that weren’t there and shouldn’t be there.”

“There is a great story that Tolkien told of the Second Age with Gil-galad and with Elrond and with Celebrimbor, and with Celeborn, and with Galadriel and Lorien, and with Númenoreans, and with Erendis, and Aldarion, and all these characters that he could have gone to. But they decided not to,” he laments.

“They decided just to lean into the one character they thought, ‘Warrior princess. We will make her the warrior princess.’ And that’s what we get with Galadriel,” he says.

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel and Benjamin Walker as High King Gil-galad in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

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He then speaks on Tar-Míriel, “And we don’t only get it with Galadriel either, we get it with Tar-Míriel, the Queen Regent of Númenor, who was not the Queen Regent of Númenor. She was the daughter of the king, who died, and then was taken to wife by Ar-Pharazôn to usurp the throne. She was never a ruler. And to pretend that she was goes against, again, what Tolkien wrote. This is not the character Tolkien wrote. To pretend otherwise is to lie, but they do that throughout this entire trailer.”

He does point to a scene with Isildur on a boat and notes, “This could be something that harkens back to Tolkien.”

Maxim Baldry as Isildur in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Moving on to Arondir and Galadriel on a raft in the sea he reiterates again, “This never happened. Again, this is nothing that Tolkien wrote. They pretend. They make things up. Nothing points you back. At least with Peter Jackson’s trailers we got lines from The Fellowship of the Ring. We got characters. We got the storyline. We got places where characters were together appropriately.”

“We didn’t get the Fellowship of the Ring with a black female dwarf instead of Gimli. We got The Fellowship of the Ring. But we are getting something completely different here. They had enough to go back to where they didn’t have to change things,” The One Ring bemoans.

“But they decided that in their own intelligence and wisdom they would go ahead and do it because they knew better than Tolkien,” he posits. “They knew better than perhaps the greatest fiction author of the 20th century. They truly believed that and it’s shown here in this trailer because nothing actually happened like this in Tolkien’s writings.”

Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Finally, he gets to the Hobbits or Harfoots and their monologue, “Here’s the thing, Hobbits are reclusive. Hobbits are not exactly the ones that go out and discover what all the other creatures are in Middle-earth. The whole idea that these Hobbits are migratory and they go from place to place flies in the face of how Tolkien wrote them.

“First of all, there was no recollection of Hobbits anywhere in the Second Age either,” he points out. “They didn’t have to do this. This is nostalgia bait. This is them pushing forward into what they think people want, not what Tolkien wrote.

“Stay true to what he wrote because it has already spoken to millions and millions and millions of people. Creating something brand new in this trailer, trying to push it on us, and say this is Tolkien’s world is a lie. It is not true,” he declares.

Markella Kavenagh as Elanor ‘Nori’ Brandyfoot, Sara Zwangobani as Marigold Brandyfoot, Dylan Smith as Largo Brandyfoot, Megan Richards as Poppy Proudfellow in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Wrapping up the video he proclaims, “There is nothing here that a dyed in the wool, long time Tolkien reader like myself can point to and say, ‘Oh the line from Tolkien is drawn straight to what is shown or said here in this trailer. It’s just not there. And to claim otherwise is completely a lie.”

What do you make of The One Ring’s analysis on the latest trailer? What did you make of the trailer?

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