Amazon’s half billion dollar TV adaptation of the second age of Middle Earth launched on the anniversary of author J.R.R. Tolkien’s death, hardly an auspicious date. The show has been unpopular with Tolkien fans and general audiences gave it a lukewarm reception, but Amazon is going to finish the full five seasons.
The third season launches tomorrow — on Remembrance Day — a day which is set aside to remember those who died in World War I and World War II. Many of Tolkien’s friends were lost in The Great War, so it seems extra disrespectful for Amazon to launch their show, which distorts his writing, on a day that was marked to remember the war of which Tolkien was a veteran.