‘The Rings of Power’ recently premiered with the first three episodes. The first season of the show was highly controversial due to changing some events from canon, and some unwelcome additions when it comes to characterization. Now season 2 is seen as an improvement, mostly when it comes to technical aspects of the show as the story is once again being “updated” by writers in a sense that many fans believe clashes with Tolkien’s core writing.
Orcs are, in season 2, depicted in quite a different light. Apparently, the monstrous race has families, as one orc can be seen holding a child, and they do not have any drive to fight with Sauron – you see, the orcs in ‘The Rings of Power’ are just misunderstood.
The evil depiction of orcs has become a standard in fiction in general, they are more often than not shown as being a force of pure evil and brutality with mostly nothing to fill the void in their skulls, so going so off-base by depicting them as “misunderstood” is truly brave, a bit foolish but brave.
Fans naturally mocked the idea brutally, since it kind of ignores the previous decades of lore in which orcs were shown as nothing but chaos. I guess all that murder, pillaging, raping, cannibalism and similar atrocious deeds were just beacuse they were misunderstood. Orcs most likely treat their own kind as the scum of the earth as well beacuse they are misunderstood.
A similar thing happened with ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte,’ the most recent and most controversial Star Wars release. Jedi are portrayed in bad light, while traditionally evil characters are given “good reasons” for why they are evil and are depicted as simply being misunderstood.
The prime example of that was Qimir, a newly introduced Sith. You see Qimir wants to be free and wants to use the force as he sees fit, he does have some “past” with the Jedi order but has decided to denounce it to practice pure chaos.
Qimir wants to be left alone so badly, that he decides to reveal himself to the Jedi on Khofar (keep in mind that the Jedi are completely unaware of the existence of the Sith at this point in time). He decided to pick a fight with them and brutally murder a dozen of them, beacuse he wanted to be free and left alone. His thirst for vengeance is shown as being “righteous” as he reveals scars that reportedly his Jedi Master has given him.
Sith ideology is depicted as being “misunderstood” once again, I guess all that killing, hatred, and chaos they have in their creed is beacuse they want freedom. I guess Sith treat themselves with hatred and contempt beacuse they want to free themselves from within as well.
It makes no sense as you can see, you can try to shoehorn as much rationalization as you want in both ideologies, but decades of established lore cannot be rewritten and reprogrammed with a few scenes. I get what they were trying to do, they were trying to go beyond good and evil, all sides are flawed, etc, etc. But quite frankly, just like ‘House of the Dragon’ attempt to make some kind of a deep allegory about sexism, the show failed badly in their attempt, and it feels like the decisions were made last minute and with no thought about the source material.
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