Bernard Hill, the actor who played King Théoden in Peter Jackson’s seminal The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has slammed Amazon’s controversial The Rings of Power series as a mere cash-grab, “not like the real thing”.
The 77-year-old British actor, immortalised in cinema by such scenes as Peter Jackson’s adaption of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, in which he leads the Ride of the Rohirrim against Sauron’s army, gave his verdict on Amazon’s series in comments to Metro.
“No, not interested,” he said when asked if he had watched the corporation’s attempt to adapt Tolkien’s Second Age at the cost of around half a billion dollars and rising, making it the most expensive television series of all time.
“It’s a money-making venture and I’m not interested in watching that or being in it,” Hill continued, leaving his interlocutor in no doubt that his opinion of the show was actively negative rather than merely indifferent.
“Good luck to them and all that stuff but it’s not like the real thing,” he added for good measure.
The Rings of Power has been panned by many fans over showrunners’ perceived attempts to insert a woke agenda into the world of Tolkien, a conservative, traditional Catholic whose saga was heavily inspired by European legends and folklore.
Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits in Amazon’s series were made multi-ethnic, for example, in defiance of Tolkien’s descriptions of them, and Galadriel, a standout character in Jackson’s film trilogy, was reimagined as a masculine, sword-wielding warrior derided by some detractors as ‘Guyladriel’ — with Sauron a jilted incel driven back to evil by her spurning his advances.
The difference in the series’ reception by left-liberal media members and regular viewers has been striking, with professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes giving it an aggregate score of 85 per cent compared to an aggregate audience score of just 39 per cent.
Amazon even went so far as to interfere in viewers’ ability to review the series on their own platform, moderating individual submissions to “to weed out ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact.”
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