#nobody can pull off long black wigs like chinese actors
at the end of the day, the hair and the costume design are just surface ripples, the very tip of the iceberg.
thereal problem I have with the Amazon series, at this point, is that even if you can’t use the Silm and the Histories, even if you’re trying to be visually distinct from Jackson, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t read them, and why you shouldn’t adhere to them in your production design. It’s a signal, it’s no green M&Ms, it’s proof you’ve grounded yourself in the canon. (yes, I said canon, @symphonyofsilence did a lovely post citing only some of the canonical mentions of long hair, this is in the books, there is no excuse for not having it)
if you aren’t preserving LaCE’s statement that to human eyes elven men/néri/ellyn look basically exactly like elven women/níssi/ellyth, how can I trust that you’ve read The Mariner’s Wife? how can I trust that you’ve studied Númenor’s ethnic groups? will you be visually signaling the differences between the Bëorians and the others? how are you handling the languages? what about the decline of Taliska into Adûnaic? what about the non-Edainic Middle Men and other people living in Middle-Earth? what about the legacy of the First Age, which is massively important and cannot be overstated and should not be ignored? can you talk about Fëanor? are you going to?
“but Celebrimbor doesn’t necessarily have to be Fëanorian!” the showrunners cry hypothetically, and my answer is that you’re right, he doesn’t, but if that’s the version of the story you’re going with, then his massive age difference with Galadriel becomes even more glaringly obvious, and also, inventing a brand new backstory instead of just having him be who he’s stated to be in LotR’s Appendices is never going to be as good as the original. where’s the work being done on that? how are you going to avoid talking about Gondolin if you take that tactic, because that’s what the drafts say? how are you going to handle Narvi? and speaking of Narvi, why is your lone dwarrowdam Like That? why are any of the elves white? why is any of the cast white? you want visual distinction from Jackson that’s a hell of a way to do it!
nothing that this show does, at the end of the day, has convinced me that it cares about the details, and the details build the whole world.
