Amazon, Warner Bros in Talks for LOTR Series Adaptation: Variety

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{{  So much I wish I had time to comment on here!!   But only time for a question.

Has it been actually officially confirmed the series is young Aragorn. Because whenever I see something about it on Facebook or similar and read the comments below- an awful lot of folk seem to be expecting either LotR's or bits of the Silmarillion (which I dont even know if they have the rights to use or not!) and there is never a response from the 'official series' to any comments to say otherwise. So do we actually know what they are making? }}

As far as I know it is all "according to sources" type stuff.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-tv-show-amazon-aragorn-peter-jackson-ian-mckellen-release-date-a8384016.html

{{Thanks Lance.

So I see this one of two ways- with my extreme crabbit on and the meter set to register the tremors  I would say we are getting some cobbled together fan-fiction based largely on a few paragraphs here and there, the Tale of Years, the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen and probably Aragorns birth and the events covered in the fan-film Born of Hope- which I bring up because it too is a fan-fiction bit of Tolkien on film. But it had some advantages over the Aragorn thing- one they added their own characters and fiction to it by having them secondary to Tolkiens story, its not about Tolkiens characters, so they can be there for the Tolkien parts but not effect or change them in any way which alters Tolkiens original tale- it happens to the side of it as it were, the new characters stories and arcs are directly affected by the events of Tolkiens tale but not altering it.
Here though the main character is Tollkiens. And its everything he does, says and the events around him they will have to invent. To turn the sparse material there is on Aragorns past into a full drama with characterisation, arcs, drama, romance, action rounded secondary characters and all the other things you need for a modern series you have to invent 99% of the material.
So being crabbit, and with thee meter ready to explode  I'd say we are looking at several series of made up nonsense masquerading under the name of Tolkien (and worse licking PJ's versions balls ).

Putting the crabbit meter away and getting drunk enough to hit the fleeting 'optimism threshold' of consumption I would say we could get several series, each focusing on a different character whose story will closely follow what Tolkien has laid out, and whose ultimate purpose would be to lead into a full on Lord of the Rings adaptation, but one to which the viewer would be bringing a lot of background knowledge allowing the adaptation to stay much truer to Tolkien and include many of the call-backs, allusions to past events the books are full of, and which now the viewer would be approaching from the positionof having already seen.

Done right this could actually greatly enrich the viewing experience of a series, giving it someof the depth that comes from wider reading of Tolkien, but in an adaptation.

 

But lets face it that's not going to happen and they are already going to make a complete arse of it just from the concept alone.  (Bugger crossed the optimism threshold on that last buckie and right back to default crabbit!   }}}

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see any real difference between the approach of Born of Hope and a Young Aragorn Chronicles.

As long as they don't The Hobbitize the bejeisus out of it I am in theory ok with made up stuff, and if it has the right cast and atmosphere. I am not so obsessed with the script because its all going to be made up anyway. If it has GoTs great casting, and the look and feel of of LOTRs films it might not be a complete disaster. If they go down the Hobbit route, it will be a disaster because everything was wrong. crappy casting, ott action, horrible plastic looking scenography, so-so music, laughable script, bloody horrible betrayal of the book, the works. even the costumes were rubbish. I think they wont want to make those mistakes.

I don't see any real difference between the approach of Born of Hope and a Young Aragorn Chronicles.- Halfy

{{ Its been a while since I saw it, or since i read the relevant stuff on Aragorn- but if memory serves in both cases Tolkien wrote a reasonably fleshed out account of the events, including characters and even some dialogue. The actual story that the film tells is more concerned with the effects of Tolkiens story on them, rather than it being about the Tolkien characters- who act more like the framework the added narrative and characters is hung onto. Meaning the Tolkien bit can remain largely untouched in terms of being true to what Tolkien wrote on the matter.

With a young Aragorn he is not a new character inserted around Tolkiens events, we dont even know most of the events save in the broadest strokes with the exception of how he met Arwen. There is not a great deal else that is fleshed out with regards secondary characters, dialogue, the minutiae of events, daily life, travelling, companions, encounters etc- so anything they do make up has to making up Tolkien, as opposed to what Born of Hope did which was to work around Tolkien, leaving it intact.

For example if they cover his time in Gondor they have to write how he is with Denethor and his father, how do they interact? What style is the dialogue written in? What becomes the arc or narrative beats of such an encounter- all these answers can be vaguely guided by knowing outcomes, and by clues Tolkien left in his writing, but all the detail has to be invention. And given previous dialogue in Tolkien adaptations I dont have much faith in that. In fact given current trends I expect he will quickly end up in Far Harad where he can team up with a kick ass Haradrim warrior women who is just misunderstood with a rich and deep culture that desreves to be respected. }}

given current trends I expect he will quickly end up in Far Harad where he can team up with a kick ass Haradrim warrior women who is just misunderstood with a rich and deep culture that deserves to be respected.

That's rather penetrating guesswork.

*gasp* Oh no, the Amazon show might include non-white characters and cultures presented with nuance! What ever will do in response to this insult to Tolkien's legacy?

Wait, hang on...

TTT, IV 4 wrote:It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace

UT, The Istari wrote:But the southern regions in touch with Gondor (and called by men of Gondor simply Harad “South”, Near or Far) were probably both more convertible to the “Resistance,” and also places where Sauron was most busy in the Third Age, since it was a source to him of man-power most readily used against Gondor.

Nothing wrong with that Eldy. Another Tauriel though...

the Amazon show might include non-white characters and cultures presented with nuance!- Eldy

{{If you pop to the Dune thread you will see I was arguing that for once they should properly represent the obvious Arab roots in the Fremen and cast an actor who is at least brown. You see that makes sense because the books about that! Shoe horning it into an Aragorn story and letting it dominate the narrative as it has done in so many other franchises by being done badly, whichit usually is- Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Star Wars to name a few high profile examples is not being representational, its just mucking up a story for the sake of being pc. }}

Petty has a point in that there is a difference between an accurate, respectful representation of other peoples/cultures where they fit into a narrative naturally, and shoehorned diversity for the sake of diversity and appeasing SJWs.

As far as this story is actually concerned I think it could be interesting. To see Aragorn's early interactions with Théoden, Denethor, Arwen, Elrond, and Gandalf, as well as adventures in Harad, Gondor, Rohan etc, could be very cool if done well. That's the key, however, to do it well.

Also, as he was nearly 90 during the events of The Lord of the Rings, I hope they don't feel the need to cast some super young actor as Aragorn.

That's where Game of Thrones did wisely: they cast nearly all their young characters as older than they'd be in the books.

halfwise wrote:That's where Game of Thrones did wisely: they cast nearly all their young characters as older than they'd be in the books.

Depending on how "young" he is supposed to be though during these events, they could still get an actor at the accurate age. The adventures of a "young" Aragorn could still be when he is in his 30's/40's.

Unfortunately (depending on how well you like him) Viggo is much too grey to portray any sort of young Aragorn.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:If you pop to the Dune thread you will see I was arguing that for once they should properly represent the obvious Arab roots in the Fremen and cast an actor who is at least brown. You see that makes sense because the books about that! Shoe horning it into an Aragorn story and letting it dominate the narrative as it has done in so many other franchises by being done badly, whichit usually is- Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Star Wars to name a few high profile examples is not being representational, its just mucking up a story for the sake of being pc.

There's a lot that I disagree with here but I don't want to just repeat the same exchange we've had multiple times before, so there's one thing in particular that I'd like to address at greater length.

Eldy: the Amazon show might include non-white characters and cultures presented with nuance

Petty: Shoe horning it into an Aragorn story and letting it dominate the narrative

Setting aside the notion that characters of color dominate the narrative of films they appear in (though I confess I'm unclear how exactly the narrative of any of the recent Star Wars films were dominated by any particular character's race), I'm bothered on multiple levels by the common sentiment that nuanced depictions of characters of color or non-white cultures in Middle-earth--by which I meant in my earlier post, not depicting large groups of people, especially societies, as uniformly and irredeemably evil--is a departure from Tolkien's writing. Granted, even if it was a change I'd still be in favor of it, but it very clearly is not.

The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen wrote:For he [Aragorn] went in many guises, and won renown under many names. He rode in the host of the Rohirrim, and fought for the Lord of Gondor by land and by sea; and then in the hour of victory he passed out of the knowledge of the Men of the West, and went alone far into the East and deep into the South, exploring the hearts of Men, both evil and good, and uncovering the plots and devices of the servants of Sauron. (my emphasis)

To recap: according to the most substantial piece of source material that any Young Aragorn show could draw on, Aragorn spent time in Far Harad. Unless anyone wants to make an argument that the Haradrim are not (what would be considered in the Primary World) non-white, then having Aragorn spend time in a setting where most of the people present are not white is, in fact, entirely faithful to Tolkien's work. Furthermore the Tale states that not everyone in Harad is evil. Does this mean that, to quote Petty's earlier post, the Haradrim are "just misunderstood with a rich and deep culture that desreves to be respected"? Well, in addition to the quotes I gave in my previous post, Tolkien very strongly suggests that the Haradrim and Easterlings were misunderstood by the primary viewpoint cultures of northwest Middle-earth. To quote from The Peoples of Middle-earth (my emphasis):

HoMe XII, Of Dwarves and Men wrote:The Men of Darkness was a general term applied to all those who were hostile to the Kingdoms, and who were (or appeared in Gondor to be) moved by something more than human greed for conquest and plunder, a fanatical hatred of the High Men and their allies as enemies of their gods.

This sort of comment is characteristic of Tolkien, who often cast doubt on the reliability of his narrators and in-universe chroniclers. This is not the only instance of Tolkien throwing the moral superiority of the Dunedain in doubt either, but this isn't the time or place to rehash my essays about that. It's not my intention to go full The Last Ringbearer-style revisionist and suggest that everything negative we hear about the Sauronian side was wrong, but recognizing nuance within Haradrim culture is, again, actually in keeping with Tolkien's creative ideas. And since Harad is (I won't say "canonically", but in the book) part of Aragorn's story, the show would actually be less faithful if it did not question the picture of implacable evil perceived by many of the peoples of northwest Middle-earth.

Lorient Avandi wrote:Petty has a point in that there is a difference between an accurate, respectful representation of other peoples/cultures where they fit into a narrative naturally, and shoehorned diversity for the sake of diversity and appeasing SJWs.

The most obvious issue with most manifestations of this argument is that the real world--both in modern times and throughout history--is a vastly more diverse and dynamic place than most people who complain about "too much" representation realize. See, for example, the people who complain about the presence on non-white characters in stories set in medieval Europe, or who believe that the presence of women in any sort of military context prior to the late 20th century is ahistorical. The other main point is that fiction, by its nature, is made up. Stories almost constantly diverge from "realism" in a multitude of ways. Even if a particular situation was actually uncommon in a given historical context, the inevitable argument that it shouldn't be the focus of stories (not that this variant of the argument has occurred here yet) fails as soon as you consider all the ways in which protagonists and other major characters are exceptional, since that is often what makes them interesting to audiences in the first place.

For example, I don't necessarily expect the Amazon series to, say, have any black characters show up in Gondor, but if they did there would be a cacophony of complaints about how inaccurate and immersion-breaking this is (see also: the first few pages of this thread). Despite the fact that people from Far Harad assuredly traveled (and permanently moved) to Gondor far more frequently than Hobbits, the latter's visits to Gondor somehow do not arise anyone's ire. And in case the argument is that Tolkien explicitly wrote about Hobbits visiting Gondor but not black people (the War of the Ring notwithstanding), then I would simply note that refusing to acknowledge aspects of Middle-earth not directly shown to the reader is not in keeping with the idea of a fully realized Secondary World and is, to me at least, an incredibly boring way of reading Tolkien, quite aside from the question of race.

But this can't be considered aside from the question of race, because race is clearly not an issue people are going to drop. Some of the earliest reactions here and elsewhere--before we even know if the show would be a spin-off or a remake--included complaints about the possibility of diverse casting. We still have no basis for speculation, and yet it continues to be a point of discontent more than a year later. If all of the major characters in the first season are white, we'll get to continue this process four more times over (longer if the franchise keeps going) as each of the subsequent seasons are cast. And if there are major characters of color, the recent history of other fandoms suggests we'll get to hear about how a giant corporation is shoving diversity down our throats and this is the result of meddling and pressure by the PC/SJW cabal who Hollywood is trying to pander to. Which I guess matters because, evidently, the presence of characters of color outside of spaces where they "naturally" fit is seen as problematic.

Setting aside the notion that characters of color dominate the narrative of films they appear in- Eldo

{{ I never said this and never argued this point.

'I'm bothered on multiple levels by the common sentiment that nuanced depictions of characters of color or non-white cultures in Middle-earth--by which I meant in my earlier post, not depicting large groups of people, especially societies, as uniformly and irredeemably evil'

Never argued about this either. Its obvious not only from the text of LotR's not to mention the history of Gondor and Harad that neither side is either good or evil. Where are you getting this from?

"just misunderstood with a rich and deep culture that desreves to be respected"?

This was a joke, a satire of current industry trends to please all folks at the expanse of turning everything into bland inoffensive rubbish in the end that helps no one- it had nothing to do with Tolkien or his writing- its a comment reflecting on current movie and tv trends and taking a dig at them.

'any black characters show up in Gondor, but if they did there would be a cacophony of complaints about how inaccurate and immersion-breaking this is (see also: the first few pages of this thread). Despite the fact that people from Far Harad assuredly traveled (and permanently moved) to Gondor far more frequently than Hobbits'

I made the case for there being a strong likelihood of black descendants of traders from Harad in Dale in the lead up to the hobbit films, never mind Gondor. I have no idea what you think I am arguing, but its not this.

'And if there are major characters of color, the recent history of other fandoms suggests we'll get to hear about how a giant corporation is shoving diversity down our throats and this is the result of meddling and pressure by the PC/SJW cabal who Hollywood is trying to pander to.'

The issue is that there are stellar examples of a well meaning intention to diversify, meet some sort of hiring quota or programming targets (the BBC have both for all sorts of groups) which have been clumsy, heavy handed, badly written, os clumsy as to defy their original intention. The inclusion and arc of Tauriel in the Hobbit- a well intentioned attempt to make it a less male focused film leads to distraction from the main characters and narratives, pointless scenes of no consequence, bad dialogue, and a love triangle, serving no one. Ghostbusters- I think the ground on that one is well trodden. Ray in SW, a female character they were so afraid to show in any sort of negative or poor light that she comes over as blandly flawless and able to do anything at first attempt like a master. Current Doctor Who- hard to know where to start but the general fan reaction to it and that of everyone here who has seen it speaks volumes. And there the desire to highlight a social issue of the week has swamped the core narrative and characters, to the point that in the episode Demons of the Punjab you can actually remove the Doctor, the companions and the aliens from the Doctor Who story and not a thing changes in the narrative. The social issue narrative has over-trodden all else.

There are plenty of current or ongoing examples of where attempts to force diversity into programs, formats, stories or narratives has had a negative effect on the overall product and quality of it. The fear is that diversity is included not to serve the purposes of the narrative better, but just as a show of being representative,of being pc.

My main argument against showing the culture and the like of the Hardrim is only that we know so little about it; social structure, social manners, governance, religious beliefs, worship practises, social structure, marriage rules, favourite foods and drinks, all the stuff you need to make it fully fleshed and representational - you'd have to invent most of it, or worse appropriate from similar current cultures and paste that in.}}

I don't think the complaints are about the natural diffusion of some Haradrim culture into Gondor, or even total immersion and exploration of a non-white culture. The worry is doing it accompanied by badly written, preachy messaging. Good writing would present the aspects of cultural mixing in all their messy reality. It would be highly nuanced, confusing, with watchers and characters unravelling hidden undercurrents and misunderstandings in tandem.

Tolkien valued realistic history over messaging. If the writers will focus on reality rather than 'truth' then there shouldn't be a problem.

'The worry is doing it accompanied by badly written, preachy messaging...Tolkien valued realistic history over messaging. '- Halfy

{{Thats exactly it Halfy. }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I never said this and never argued this point.

Okay.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Never argued about this either. Its obvious not only from the text of LotR's not to mention the history of Gondor and Harad that neither side is either good or evil. Where are you getting this from?

I literally just explained in the portion of my post you quoted that when I mentioned nuanced depictions--the line you subsequently quoted in your first response--I was thinking in terms of depicting cultures with greater moral complexity than you get in a lot of the fantasy genre--and even in the popular perception of Tolkien among many people whose only familiarity with his work is through the movies or general cultural osmosis. That is why I returned to the topic in my second post.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:This was a joke, a satire of current industry trends to please all folks at the expanse of turning everything into bland inoffensive rubbish in the end that helps no one- it had nothing to do with Tolkien or his writing- its a comment reflecting on current movie and tv trends and taking a dig at them.

I actually picked up on the fact that it was a joke (not always a given for me) but it immediately reminded me of the HoMe XII quote and I thought it worth noting that even a comical overstatement of the position has a stronger textual basis than a lot of things that will probably be in the show.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I made the case for there being a strong likelihood of black descendants of traders from Harad in Dale in the lead up to the hobbit films, never mind Gondor. I have no idea what you think I am arguing, but its not this.

That comment was not part of my response to you nor was it intended to be a description of your argument. As I mentioned a couple times, the second half of my post was based on a range of experiences I've had in a variety of fan spaces, of which our conversations are a very small percentage.

I don't watch Doctor Who and I'm not interested in having the "is Rey a Mary Sue?" debate again, but I find Ghostbusters 2016 to be an odd choice to mention here, except insofar as it's been an object of hatred for its female cast since before anyone had a chance to watch the film. (Whether or not you hated it that long or for that reason, that's why the ground is so "well trod".) The film's actual problems, though, as opposed to the reasons why it was flooded with fake IMDb reviews as soon as those opened, had less to do with any sort of social agenda and more to do with its particular style of improv-ish comedy. That style might work in an SNL skit, depending on your sense of humor (plenty of people legitimately don't like it even in short formats), but it's a much poorer basis for a two hour long film.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:My main argument against showing the culture and the like of the Hardrim is only that we know so little about it; social structure, social manners, governance, religious beliefs, worship practises, social structure, marriage rules, favourite foods and drinks, all the stuff you need to make it fully fleshed and representational - you'd have to invent most of it, or worse appropriate from similar current cultures and paste that in.

Part of the point of spin-offs is to invent new material and do things/visit locations not found in the original work.

halfwise wrote:I don't think the complaints are about the natural diffusion of some Haradrim culture into Gondor, or even total immersion and exploration of a non-white culture.  The worry is doing it accompanied by badly written, preachy messaging.   Good writing would present the aspects of cultural mixing in all their messy reality.  It would be highly nuanced, confusing, with watchers and characters unravelling hidden undercurrents and misunderstandings in tandem.

Tolkien valued realistic history over messaging.  If the writers will focus on reality rather than 'truth' then there shouldn't be a problem.

The mere existence of POC in Middle-earth will be enough to spark accusations of the show pushing an agenda at the expense of worldbuilding and perhaps more, as previously seen in the case of the black extras in Dale (which Petty mentioned) and the character of Baranor in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. I'm not taking solely about discourse on here; while I've had my disappointments, this place is pretty sheltered in the grand scheme of things.

To be fair, speaking of Baranor and the extras of Dale, I don't recall any mention in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings about dark-skinned people living in either of those places. Couple that with the LotR movies, and the widely-spread conception of Middle-Earth as a fantastical ancient version of Western Europe, and it doesn't surprise me that the majority of fans would object to the presence of black characters in Gondor or Dale as another step in altering Tolkien's work. That was my response, when I first heard about these cases.

Perhaps it makes sense within the deeper-lore of Middle-earth that Men from the East had settled in some of these places, but that's not common knowledge.

This all, of course, relates back to a cultural disagreement that has spilled into Tolkien's fanbase from the wider world, with "progressives" on the one side and "conservatives" on the other. This division has popped up in my own discussions of Tolkien with my cousin, who put forth the argument that Eowyn is a bad token character and Arwen's flight to the ford with Frodo is badly sexist. Arguments which I refute whole-heartedly and will continue to do so until the pangs of death shake me, but put that aside: the point is that Tolkien's work is not immune to contagion from arguments about social politics or whatever you call it.

I'll be transparent: I prefer the well-developed parts of Middle-earth be Men and Elves and Hobbits and Dwarves who look like people from parts of Europe, not like people from Asia or Africa or New Zealand. This is how I've pictured these people, and how the artists which have helped illustrate Middle-earth for me pictured them as well. This is important to me. I don't want the soldiery of Minas Tirith, for example, to be partially made-up of African-looking soldiers, or South-American-looking soldiers, or Aboriginal Australian-looking soldiers. It doesn't feel like Middle-earth to me. If Tolkien had written the people living in Minas Tirith to look that way, then that would be what I was used to. But I don't remember reading anything of his that challenged my assumption that the Men of Gondor looked pretty-much Western-European (like himself). And according to all of the art-work and casting I've seen done for Tolkien's work up until the Shadow of War trailer, pretty much everyone else has shared in this assumption.

Along those same lines, however, I think it's been assumed and seems to have been described by Tolkien, that East-Asian- and North-African-looking people make up the populations of Men in the Southern and Eastern parts of Middle-earth (which falls neatly into the idea of fantasy-Europe). I mean, we see this described in parts of LotR. And I'm sure talked about elsewhere in his writings. This feels very familiar to me thanks to the European analogue, and I quite like the idea of Aragorn traveling to "Middle-earth Arabia" or "Middle-earth Maghreb" and fighting the influence of Sauron in those places, as well as aiding in the efforts of those resisting the Dark Lord.

If I want a fantasy world to explore that has populations of ethnically-diverse (in the broad sense) humans living together, there's lots of books with places like that, and a lot of settings like that for the tabletop-role-playing games I run. And those places can be a lot of fun. I don't consider (the developed parts of) Middle-earth to be one of them.

Edit: I'm aware of the fact that the European analogue to which I referred had plenty of the movement of different ethnic groups around. The presence of Gypsies (Roma?) and Jews throughout much of Europe, being examples I suppose of this sort of thing. I think it's the jarringly-modern-feeling presence of a character like Baranor that feels so out-of-place to me. I mean, where did he come from?

According to the game-wiki: Umbar apparently. Sent to Gondor as a Hostage of Peace. Alright, that makes sense to me. I no longer find his presence bizarre.

Anyway, whatever. Carry on.

Forest Shepherd wrote:If Tolkien had written the people living in Minas Tirith to look that way, then that would be what I was used to. But I don't remember reading anything of his that challenged my assumption that the Men of Gondor looked pretty-much Western-European (like himself). And according to all of the art-work and casting I've seen done for Tolkien's work up until the Shadow of War trailer, pretty much everyone else has shared in this assumption.

The vast majority of Tolkien artists and a substantial portion of his readership also share in the assumption that Balrogs have wings.

ETA: To try to make this post more than just snark--I've never been one for policing other people's personal mental images of Middle-earth, so if you want to picture everyone from the northwestern part as looking Western European, more power to you. But it would not be accurate to claim that view is supported by the balance of textual evidence, and the fact that a lot of people share in the same misconception doesn't make it not a misconception. When it comes to Gondorians, though, I'm not sure that seeing them as Western European is even the majority view. The Jackson movies, which have obviously had a huge impact on a lot of people's mental images, deliberately picked Gondorian extras with an eye towards having a (sorta) consistent Southern European look in keeping with the overall Byzantine and Italian influences, also seen in the architecture. Though there were limits to this, obviously, as John Noble, Sean Bean, and David Wenham do not have Mediterranean complexions.

ETA 2: In terms of textual evidence: the people of Minas Tirith and Dol Amroth tended to be relatively light-skinned, mostly being of "purer" Númenórean descent (ROTK, V 1). Despite holding power, Númenóreans were always a small minority in Gondor (LOTR, Appendix F), and in most of Gondor--even in Lossarnach, practically Minas Tirith's backyard (Bergil's grandfather lived there)--most people were of mixed Dúnedain and indigenous Gondorian descent. The indigenous Gondorians had darker skin ("swarthier") than Númenóreans and were related to the Dunlendings and the Dead Men of Dunarrhow. Because of Gondorian ethnic politics, people from areas of primarily mixed descent were not fully considered men of Gondor until the time of the Stewards (TTT, IV 5), but during the War of the Ring they were essential to the defense of Minas Tirith. Gondor also experienced considerable movement of peoples during the peak of its empire in the Third Age, particularly (light-skinned) Northmen and (presumably darker, but probably with considerable variation) Haradrim. The case we hear most about is Northmen moving to Gondor for military service, which is probably recorded in more detail because they were allied with the northern/continental faction that won the Kin-strife (civil war) and wrote the history books afterwards. But Harad was a tributary region of Gondor for centuries and must also have seen movement of people back and forth (not just the hostages mentioned in the Appendices), as we know happened with Harad and Umbar for thousands of years. And even as Gondor contracted, people still travelled between different realms, even if the histories only specifically make note of high-profile cases like defecting members of the royal family (LOTR, Appendix A).

TL;DR Not only can you have POC in Gondor, including people who would be considered black in the Primary World, you should have a decent or better range of people represented, because the alternative is, by implication, a world where people don't move around or meaningfully interact with each other unless a POV character is present, which is antithetical to Tolkien's legendarium, IMO.

Eldy wrote:The indigenous Gondorians had darker skin ([i]"swarthier"[/i]) than Númenóreans

Good word! "Swarthy" weather beaten faces are something you almost never see in movies anymore (or even in real life unless you're among homeless people.) Between electric lighting and sunscreen, people's faces just don't turn that ambiguous leathery brown that I remember from some of the old farmers and fishermen who were still around when I was a kid. IMO that's exactly the complexion rangers should have: the face that's been sunburned and weatherbeaten for so many years and decades that it's hard to guess race by color unless  you get a glimpse of unexposed skin under their shirt or hat.

Personally I'd love to see a cast that's entirely in shades of brown with cracked leather faces from a lifetime of squinting into the sun. I picture Gondorians as any color but pasty white.

Btw there is actually at least one black /mixed race Gondorian Ranger in the PJ films, there's a brief shot in the TT (I think) of him sitting eating by a fire in the ruins of Osgiliath:

Perhaps also worth noting that when Tolkien was writing LOTR in the 1940's the UK was an overwhelmingly white country, the total ethnic minority population probably being less than 50,000 (and mostly comprised of foreign university students, or the small but long established native born communities in port-side cities such as London, South Shields, Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow), it's possible Tolkien barely or never interacted with anyone from a ethnic minority background after moving to england.

Tolkien was a man of his time and social class, he was writing based on the environment he grew up in, and the people he interacted with, I have little interest in this TV series so I don't particularly care if the writers inject modern day demographics, politics or allegory into the scripts or not (and I don't have any issue with it if they do), but I think it is worth remembering the time/place the source material was written in, we shouldn't expect a 65 year old novel to reflect a current day environment.

That's a good point: even if he saw good reason for mixing to go on (and Eldy pointed out that he clearly did) he would be writing outside his comfort level to write man/man cultural mixing as opposed to man/elf, elf/dwarf.

good points all, basically if Aragorn travels to the South, Harad, its pretty much a given that they will be portrayed like the Southern parts of Essos, the people will be browner, less clothes because its hot. In Harad you wouldn't expect pasty white faces because pasty white faces live in the snowy North. If you find brown people in the snowy North it looks odd, not because it couldn't happen or shouldn't happen, its just you don't expect brown Vikings or Wildings and because they stand out it takes you out of the moment as you wonder how they got there. Which is different to telling the tale of Ancient Romans at Hadrians Wall, in that case you expect for sure a lot of brown people because a lot of Roman soldiers came from Africa. There is no harm in expecting a tale about Northern Europe to have only white people in it, and I don't see why we should apologize for wanting just white people in it. its not being racist, its just 21st century over-sensitivities which demand that in every single film or tv show every single race be represented, which is fuqing annoying. There are many other tales well told with people from all hues of the rainbow, like Got. If however Aragorn goes to Harrad then of course naturally there will be non white people.