Its just modern day blaxploitation. Some day in the future we'll look back and realize we got played again by corporate America. They don't care about equality or representation, they just want to pander to audiences so they can get their money! I'm a huge JRR Tolkien LOTR fans myself! But respect the lore and keep politics out of it. Give us black folks a serious role for once that fans won't have to diss for legitimate reasons, instead of forcibly inserting characters that don't match the original source material.

Dwarves would be white because they live underground so there would not be melanin in their skin. Elves were described as fair skinned. All they had to do was show some Easterlings as black, tan, etc. There are 2 blue wizards that are barely mentioned in the books so they could have been a different race other than white and it would fit just fine.

I'm black and I think this will have an negative effect on black fantasy. We don't need to imitate white fantasy to be included. We already have amazing black fantasy stories that never get touched.

All true. It's sad that this wise dude is only allowed to speak the truth cuz he's black himself. Cheers man, with all respect from Northern Europe

As a Middle Eastern, I want to see Tolkien's world as it is and the way I like it: British mythology taken from Norse mythology. There are no blacks or middle eastern looking people except in regions like Harad, Rum and far places like these. And trust me, if we would have been offended we wouldn't be huge fans of Tolkien in the 1st place, and if we wanted black or other race fantasy, there planty of other universes to explore. Just give Tolkien's world as Tolkien's imagined it.

As a minority myself I would say not even humans because this is EUROPEAN fantasy and JRR Tolkien was very specific on the looks of his characters.

Jay -- the one good result of the Amazon Rings of Power debacle is that it led me to your channel. You are a whole entertainment industry in yourself!

It is sad that Christopher did pass away not that long ago. He would have shot down those lunatics at amazon for trying to disgrace his father's work. Nothing that was publicly said about this upcoming abomination fits anything that the Tolkiens ever said about his work, his life and his letters. I'm glad we had Christopher as custodian for his father's IP. And I'm sad we lost him. We would have needed him.

Imagine spending and dedicating TWO entire lifetimes (Tolkien and his son Christopher after him) to craft the most consistent, overly detailed, coherent world so good that there are actual Tolkien scholars that research it their entire lives and even then are only able to scratch the surface, only for a company who ships dildos to people's doors to shit all over the entire philosophy of that work.

Man, you're amazing! Thank you for your opinion and your love for Tolkien's universe. I'm from Russia, and Russians are often called racists because they are often not happy when the characters change their race in cinema. But it's not! We are not racists, because our country is also multinational. We just want to see the adaptation of the books as the author intended. Without modern political agendas. Tolkien's legacy should be timeless and beyond politics.

As a black man, I’m happy to see you say these things too, and that it’s not just the white fans who are scratching their head like…. Wut???

It's nice that there are more people who want the work to be faithful to Tolkien. A few people I've encountered are just like, "I don't care whether it's true to the source material, I just want more Tolkien content." It's such an asinine answer. Those people aren't fans of Tolkien or his work.

I tell you words of gratitude, as a Kyrgyz from Central Asia, who respects and loves the canon of the world and who would quite fit for Easterling in the world of Tolkien (and I don’t get hurt by the fact that the Easterlings are on the side of Sauron, because for me personally it’s only even more attractive, because the boundaries of the world have become even more extensive and interesting).