YouTuber Nerdrotic Warns Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Is Doomed Before It Gets Out Of The Gate

John F. Trent |

Jan 22, 2021

YouTuber Nerdrotic aka Gary Buechler warned his followers that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV show is doomed before it even gets out of the gate.

Buechler’s warning comes after Amazon released a brand new synopsis for the series through Lord of the Rings fan site, The One Ring.

The synopsis begins, “Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history.”

“This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness,” it continues.

It then reads, “Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.”

As the synopsis ends it reveals a number of locations where the show will take place, “From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

Buechler notes that on the surface this synopsis sounds good. He explains, “On the surface it sounds pretty cool, we are going to get to see the Elven smiths of Eregion forge the 19 Rings of Power influenced by Sauron the Deceiver, who goes off to forge his own ring in Mount Doom.”

“We are going to go inside the Misty Mountains. We are going to see the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm. Moria in it’s prime. You saw it in Lord of the Rings in ruins,” he continues.

He goes on, “And we might see the origin of the nine, the ring wraiths, the Nazgûl, who were all once kings of men, who became slaves to Sauron’s will, a fate worse than death.”

Buechler adds, “They mentioned the Elf capitol of Lindon, which not too many people know about and we are going to go to the fabled island of Númenor and possibly see it in its prime and possibly see its fall.”

Buechler then begins to explain why the Lord of the Rings series is already on faulty ground.

He states, “This is going to be very different from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which are on the road stories. Stories of companionship, stories that take place on journey, but this one is going to be set up like Game of Thrones. We are going to be following different characters in different locations who are going to converge on each other in the end.”

Lord of the Rings

Buechler continues, “They aren’t going to have any Hobbits. There aren’t going to be any wizards. They are going to have, like they said, new characters and new lands. And that is where the big problem is. This is a giant blank canvas. This takes place over thousands of years and that giant blank canvas is going to be filled in with a couple of young, inexperienced showrunners. Does that sound a little bit familiar to you?”

“And those untested showrunners, who have admittedly an experienced writers room with writers from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, are going to have to fill a lot of time with drama and relationship stuff. Modern relationship stuff. And let’s not even get into the dialogue, which you won’t be able to adapt because there really isn’t any like there is in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.” Buechler states.

He then makes comparisons to Game of Thrones, “As you all know things were going great for Game of Thrones through Season 4 until Dan and Dave passed up the books and they couldn’t adapt George’s dialogue anymore. And they tried to interpret what George might have wanted. And George is alive. They could have asked him anything at any time and they still produced the biggest disaster in television history.”

Buechler then questions, “How do you think it’s going to go for [JD Payne] and [Patrick McKay] over there? Obviously, they don’t have J.R.R. Tolkien to talk to. They no longer have the greatest guardian of his father’s work and one of the greatest sons whose ever lived, Christopher Tolkien to talk to either.”

The YouTuber then points to a rumor, covered here on Bounding Into Comics, that there was a shift in the direction of the show following Christopher Tolkien’s death.

Buechler states, “Then, of course, there was the rumored big shift behind the scenes right after Christopher Tolkien’s death. He died in January 2020 and in March 2020 it was rumored from TheOneRing.net that a lot of the writers were fired and they rewrote Season 1 and they removed Tom Shippey, the Tolkien scholar.”

Next, Buechler warns, “And that brings us to the politicking. Are we going to get the nihilist, post-modern, intersectional Lord of the Rings. I think this is a good possibility considering everything we’ve seen from modern Hollywood. Then there’s the fact that we already have a nihilist, post-modern, Lord of the Rings, it was called Game of Thrones.”

Buechler then recaps many of his concerns about the show pointing to rumors of nudity, the hiring of an intimacy coordinator, the change in story structure, and the show being run by two former Bad Robot employees.

He then adds a report that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos mandated Amazon create their own version of Game of Thrones. That report came from Variety and they claimed, “The mandate from Jeff Bezos is clear: Bring me “Game of Thrones.” That’s the word that has the creative community buzzing this week about a major strategy shift underway for Amazon Studios’ original series efforts.”

Finally, Buechler states, “I’m not worried about Game of Thrones debauchery getting into Lord of the Rings. I’m more worried about the nihilism. The post-modernism. Like I’ve said before, it’s infected Hollywood over the last few years. I don’t think they are capable of telling a story of good vs. evil or a story of inspiration or hope when it comes to an already established franchise. See The Last Jedi.”

What do you make of Nerdrotic’s warning? Do you think Amazon’s Lord of the Rings will go the way of Game of Thrones? Will it be just another post-modern Hollywood trainwreck?