What Kind of Rings Are We Talking About?

In the category of things few people were asking for, we have the revelation that Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings series will feature nudity and sexual content.  I have friends who are huge LotR fans who write porn, and they are not down with this decision.  There's no need to... uhhhh... insert 'adult content' in Tolkien's oeuvre- can't these producers leave well enough alone?

The only people who really want sex and nudity in their Tolkien are people who write Legolas/Gimli slashfic.  There's no need to 'Game of Thrones' a 'Lord of the Rings' series by ten percent.  Hell, do we really need a LotR series so soon after the movies, which I really didn't like, came out?  Can't the film/television industry stop dipping into the same well, especially if they are determined on polluting it?

 

Seriously, originality seems to be absent from the entertainment industry, which is cautious to the point of stagnation... they want an elfy fantasy series with boobs, blood, and problematic content, and they want to attach Tolkien's name to it, which is a pretty offensive way to treat the Good Professor.  I'm not against an elfy fantasy series with boobs, blood, and problematic content, but Tolkien's Middle Earth is not where it's at.

 

Published the same year as Tolkein's The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is just what the show-runner ordered.  It's even elfier than 'The Lord of the Rings', being the story of a child stolen from a home in the Danelaw by an elf-earl and the changeling left in his place, and the wyrd which intertwines them.  Poul Anderson's elfs are immortal, like Tolkien's elves, marginally less cruel than the trolls with which they continually war, and indeed, the humans which both Faerie species dazzle and torment.  Anderson pretty much stuck to a main narrative, throwing elf-fosterling Skafloc and soulless changeling Valgard into a predestined conflict set in motion by a victim of Skafloc's Viking father

 

‘’Tis long since the elves have been abroad among men,’ said the witch.

 

‘Aye, we have been too busy in the war with the trolls,’ answered Imric in his voice that was like a wind blowing through ancient trees far away. ‘But now there is truce, and I am curious to find what has happened in the last hundred years.’

 

‘Much, and little of it good,’ said the witch. ‘The Danes have come from the east, burning and plundering and breaking English lords. They are nigh to overrunning all the western islands.’

 

‘That is not bad.’ Imric stroked his long mustache. ‘Before them the Saxons came with fire and death, and before them the Picts and Scots, and before them the Romans, and before them the Brythons and Goidels, and before them – but the tale is long and long, nor will it end with the Danes. And I, who have watched it almost since the land was made, see naught of evil in it, for it helps pass the time. I were fain to see these new folk.’

 

‘Then you need not ride far,’ said the witch, ‘for Orm the Strong has taken land here and his hall is but the ride of a night or less to the east on a mortal horse.’

 

‘A short trip for my windy-maned stallion. I will go.’

 

‘Hold – hold, elf!’ For a moment the witch sat muttering, and only her eyes had life, gleaming red out of the firelight’s monster shadows. Then of a sudden she cackled in glee and screamed, ‘Aye, ride, ride, elf, to Orm’s house by the sea. He is gone a-roving, but his wife will guest you gladly. She has but newly brought forth a son, and he is not yet christened.’

 

At these words Imric cocked his long pointed ears forward and his ivory-white face tautened. ‘Speak you sooth, witch?’ he asked then, low and toneless like wind blowing through unpeopled heather.

 

‘Aye, by Sathanas I swear it.’ The old woman rocked to and fro, squatting in her rags before the dim coals that spattered her face with red. The shadows flowed out of corners and chased each other across the walls, huge and misshapen and noiseless. ‘Go see for yourself.’

 

‘I would not venture to take a Dane-chief’s child. He might be under the Aesir’s ward.’

 

‘Nay, elf, nay. Orm is a Christian, but an indifferent one, and his son has yet been hallowed to no gods at all.’

 

‘Ill is it to lie to me,’ said Imric thinly.

 

‘I have naught to lose,’ answered the witch. ‘Orm burned my sons in their house, and my blood dies with me. I do not fear gods or devils, elves or men. But ’tis truth I speak.’

 

 

Anderson drew upon the same Northern European Dark Ages sources that Tokien drew upon, but his prose was more akin to that of the pulps than philologist Tolkien's was.  There's plenty of sex, some of it problematic (in particular, the conception of the changeling Valgard deserves a content warning), and the battle scenes are bloodier and more 'cinematic' than Tolkien ever wrote.  In this relatively slim book, Anderson conjured up short passages which nowadays would be the basis of multi-volume series of fantasy door-stoppers:

One year Imric outfitted a dozen longships and went a-roving. The fleet crossed the eastern sea, and harried goblins dwelling along the rocky coasts. Then the warriors rode inland and made a raid on a troll town, burning it after they had slain its folk and taken their treasure. Sailing north and then east through a weird white land of mist and cold and drifting icebergs, Imric and Skafloc and their men at last rounded the cape and went south. Here they fought dragons, and harried among the demons of the land. They followed the continent westward again, until it turned south, and then north anew. Their hardest fight was on a desert shore with a troop of exiled gods, grown thin and shrunken and mad in their loneliness but still wielding fearsome powers. Three elf ships were burned after the fight, there being none left to man them, but Imric was the victor.

 

They saw somewhat of humans, but paid no great heed, the more so since their warring was with beings of faerie; and the humans never saw them at all, or only in frightened glimpses. Only four ships returned of that fleet, three years after it set out, but they had a huge booty of wealth and captives. It had been a glorious voyage, of which great report went about in Alfheim and the neighboring lands, and the fame of Imric and Skafloc.

That half-page has more action in it than most modern fantasy series- I'm looking at YOU, Robert Jordan.

Wouldn't that make a for better special-effects extravaganza than the relatively subdued 'Lord of the Rings'?  It could have been storyboarded by Jack Kirby.  The novel is a proto-grimdark tale, as bloody as a doom-laden Norse saga, and should make a film/TV producer salivate.  Anderson deserves wider renown, especially since fans seem to be rebelling against what Sword and Sorcery author Michael Moorcock termed 'Epic Pooh'.  Even the biggest nerds of all, Dungeons and Dragons players, can be divided into two broad categories- those who think the game is based on Tolkien's fantasy and those who have read Poul Anderson.

Leave JRRT and his works alone, if you want boobs and mayhem, there are better options out there.