Lord of the Rings The Rings of Power

[LagunaD2]

And otherwise - where's the hearth in Theoden's hall? In the middle of the floor. How does the smoke get out? Through a louvre in the roof (you can see it in the outside shots). Now that's what I call attention to detail. And the mass audience took all that in its stride.

But the interior of Meduseld - including the fire and the louver in the roof - is described in minute detail in the book. So, yes, I agree, it was well done, but in that case there was an explicit description and all they had to do was reproduce it, which film industry professionals with deep pockets are good at. In the first instance, the attention to detail was Tolkien's, not Jackson's.

But there is no analogous explicit description of the interior of an early Second Age hovel in soon-to-be-Mordor. We do see clearly that there is a huge gap in prosperity between the poor wretches of Middle-earth and the high-living, fat-and-sassy Numenoreans. That seems like the most important take-away.

Tolkien actually felt that he'd been condescending to his audience in The Hobbit and wished he could have rewritten the whole thing. But the Shire as it was (Victorian anachronisms and all) was legacy by then: people knew and loved it, he could hardly change it. So some of the quirks you also see early on in LOTR are just artefacts of the writing process, the volte-face from fairy-tale to epic fantasy and how The Hobbit could have done with being more serious in style itself, Tolkien having underestimated his audience as he later realised. So none of that is any reason to dumb down the story of the Rings of Power, the endless excuses you make for them notwithstanding.

But you see, there is more than one valid style possible. Tolkien (and his son) proved it. Yes, The Hobbit was (relatively) light and fanciful, Lord of the Rings quickly became dark and ominous, and much of Silmarillion reads like the Old Testament. Fairy-tales and epic fantasy can have differences in tone and emphasis, just like books and TV series can have differences in tone and emphasis.

As always, I'm not trying to suggest there's no room for improvement in RoP. The fireplaces just wouldn't be near the top of my list of places to start...