Neil Gaiman Has Already Made Up His Mind About Amazon's Rings Of Power
Amazon's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" prequel series takes place during the thousands of years of Middle-earth history that predate and eventually lead up to the Dark Lord Sauron's quest to find the Master Ring. It'll have dwarves, orcs, humans, elves, kingdoms, epic battles, and even a few kind words of hobbit wisdom here and there — everything a J.R.R. Tolkien fiend should love, right?
To be fair, millions of "The Lord of the Rings" fans are as hyped as can be, with most of the entertainment news outlets that have received advanced copies giving it anywhere from modest to effusive praise (via Rotten Tomatoes). But this is the internet, where we're not allowed to have nice things. Entertainment Weekly is already saying it's committed every offense that a prequel can do after only two episodes, and the BBC is ever-so-gently picking it apart with criticisms like "the first episode struggles slightly under the weight of establishing the world and setting up all of its threads; some of which are more interesting than others."
One critic whose words may carry some extra weight is none other than Neil Gaiman, author of the "Sandman" series as well as countless other fantastic literary works ("The Sandman" was adapted for a Netflix series in 2022 as well). He's already expressed a very strong opinion on social media that may be shocking to some of the show's harshest critics. And he does not mince words at all.
He's ready to watch the whole series as soon as it drops — with enthusiasm
When a fan on Twitter asked Neil Gaiman his opinion on "The Rings of Power," he replied in a quote tweet that it was "Really, really fun. I remember buying the Silmarillion as a schoolboy when it was published and it very much not being the prequel I was hoping for. This is the sort of thing I wanted to experience back then. I'll watch the whole series when it drops, with enthusiasm."
Some fans balked at Gaiman's reference to "The Silmarillion" in his tweet, given that the Amazon series is based more on the lore expressed in the appendices than any other source of J.R.R. Tolkien's work — plus, the creators only had access to "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," none of the other texts (per Vanity Fair). But Gaiman is taking the criticism in stride and trying to emphasize the point that just because one's expectations aren't immediately met doesn't mean they can't grow to love and appreciate a work of art later once they've had a chance to mull it over. When replying to a sympathetic fan expressing confusion over the harsh rebuttals to Gaiman's initial tweet, Gaiman had this to say: "Getting irrationally angry at a 16 year old me seems to have made them self-righteously happy in their anger. So that's all right." That's a master class example of how to handle social media trolls if ever one existed. Suffice to say that Gaiman's steadfastness is encouraging — and certainly adds to the hype surrounding "The Rings of Power."