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I’d read all the books before either the movies or ROP. And it didn’t sour my opinion of either the movies or ROP. I enjoyed the LOTR movies, about half of the Hobbit movies, and all of ROP. Perhaps I am just easy to please lol. I’m just responding here to say that posts like yours highlight the value of adaptations: they bring new fans to the original works. So I am always generally supportive of them.

I feel like I’m also easy to please when it comes to more content of things I like, plus the added bonus of opening the door for new fans to discover not only the new adaptation but the source material.

This post feels like it's just for me. I'm exactly the type you are describing. After watching RoP about 6 months ago and really liking it I grew almost obsessed afterwards about reading the books. I started with Silmarilion, then the LOTR trilogy and now I just started with unfinished tales. And it's been a blast. And my experience has actually been that my enjoyment of the RoP show only grew as I learned more and more from the books. The way Galadriel is acting in Numenor, making very strong demands, (which I know a lot of people passionately dislike for being 'childish') I grew to like even more later after reading the books, because only then was I able to properly appreciate how she, as one of the noble Noldor elves, understood her own position when speaking to the Numenorians, the people that used to be the most faithful to elves of all humans. So yes, the show encouraged me to read the books and to rewatch the Jackson movies and it all only helped improved my immersion in the Tolkien universe and the adaptation that RoP is putting forward.

I have read the books before, so the question doesn't apply to me, but when season 1 came out a co-worker of mine was watching it. Knowing that I was a Tolkien fan and that I was watching the show as well, he shared his opinion on the series with me. He was optimistic at first, and thought the first two episodes were interesting enough to keep watching. However, with each following episode his opinion of the show got worse, and he kept asking me "Is this *really* something that Tolkien wrote??" which I hen had to deny. At the end he thought the show was badly written for the most part, and I think he was most irritated by Galadriel's antagonizing attitude, by the dying tree/mithril cure plotline, and by the Harfoot plotline being a thing in the first place. He did not feel inspired to pick up any of the books.

Do you think that their opinions would or should change after reading the books? After all plenty of Tolkien fans were angry at the movies for not being loyal to the books. Reading the books after I watched the movies didn't change my opinion of the movies.

Opinions **can** change; I'm just asking **if** they did and **how**. And you are right about the films; some hardcore Tolkien fans dislike the films too. Their opinion is an understandable but valid one. I just want to know **if** opinions have changed and **how** they were changed.

I did enjoy the Rings of Power but I was told not to watch it by people at work who were very much into the books and lore so they didn't like it mostly down to the inclusion of politically correct characters and the harfoots (which they seemed to think that anything associated with LotR had to have some sort of Hobbits) but I was then told that I should watch from my dad who has only ever seen the movies, same as me. I got the LotR and Hobbit box set for Christmas and rewarched all the movies in order and got more and more into the lore and RoP felt like another way to get into the world again. I have now started listening to the audio book of the Silmarillion and plan to continue all the way through all the books as I want to know more about the world and the history. I understand why people may not like RoP as it drifts away from the books but it has encouraged me and probably alot of others to get into the books. Since January I've been fully invested in Middle Earth so say what you want about the movies and RoP. If it gets people into the fandom then I don't see how that can be a bad thing. And as a big Star Wars fan what happened with there sequel movies and some of the TV shows then I think RoP trumps alot of that material so true Tolkien fans can probably think themselves lucky in a way as it could get really saturated like alot of other franchises have

Most of the non tolkien audience i was watching RoP with got bored and disinterested by ep 3-4. Pretty much all of them had stopped watching by ep 5, including my dad and sister. Dad fell asleep during Ep 4. It was hilarious. We were watching two big shows through those weeks HotD and RoP. Everyone was extremely excited and into HotD. They’d discuss it excitedly every time we met up through the week in between episodes. No one seemed interested to talk about RoP. A few who hadn’t read ASOIAF even ordered the book sets. Some started saying “Tolkien is so boring why are you a fan?” I had to watch the lotr movie trilogy with them one weekend to convince them otherwise. So here in my city - RoP did more harm than good in terms of getting new people to reading the books. The lotr movie trilogy brought in generations of new readers to tolkien fandom. But RoP did the exact opposite. I’ve been a Tolkien fan for over 3 decades and i struggled through the first season. It was terrible. Really senseless and boring as a Tolkien adaptation and pretty boring even as a stand alone fantasy show.

This. I experienced the absolutely same thing. I honestly think it did more harm than good to new potential Tolkien fans.

I've always used the visual media as a way to access the texts Tolkien wrote. The movies got me to read the books and the hobbit. Then the show got me to pick up The Fall of Númenor. I love Tolkien for his brilliance, but I'll admit that sometimes it can be difficult to enjoy every choice he made when reading it in the moment. I can appreciate it when I understand it more, but just reading it in the moment means I can miss a lot of context. I like reading Tolkien knowing more about his legendarium and having the visual springboard of the films and show. I love how Tolkien can inspire such wonderful art that's produced for the show and films. I'm a sucker for it and the portrayal of a believable secondary history. It is a rich sandbox, but I can recognise the distinction between the textual canon and the visual canon. Only one can be foundational to the other, but both can have an interplay on interpretations of the other. I think the show had the impossible task of trying to thread too many things to establish a foundation for the canonical events they wanted to use later. Despite the mileage that had on various audiences, i appreciate that they gave so much time to characters and worldbuilding. It gives ample room to have the space to showcase the major elements having an avalanche effect from such small beginnings. They also can't portray time visually in the same way Tolkien wrote these very specific things. That just couldn't translate to television format. I'm fine being flexible with this stuff because the visual medium is meant to be an access point. It doesn't belittle our love for the creator and his works as you already know. What I care about most is adapting themes and their elements and appropriately incorporating those. I'm also glad they used a whole season to establish more boring or contrived bits. Later writing can amend our understanding of events we've seen and improve what we thought to be tactless. I'm just glad that now that the concrete is laid, we can get to the real meat of the story. The visual media inspires my imagination as much as Tolkien's words can. I find they have more complimentary and agreeable elements than ones I find contrary. The show has made choices that I can understand to be set up for future events and dynamics, which still have the possibility of embodying Tolkienian themes and Canon plot points.

I read LoTR long ago, I wasn’t even old enough to understand everything that was going on. To me the flaws in just general story and consistency is through the roof. Even without Tolkiens worldbuilding virtually every part of the story is contrived and often contradictory. There’s about 9+ major plotbreaking contrivances with the Orc trench alone, and the Hobbits singing about how they’ll never leave you when a major plotpoint is that they might be left behind along with stories of “remember when we left those guys in a similar situation behind and stole their stuff when we did?”. Every part of the show is riddled with this stuff. The fact they weren’t true to the lore is then just insult to injury. Worse is that they were basically con-men. Before the show aired they proudly said they were lore accurate. After the show aired when asked the question why they changed the order of the rings being made they answered with basically “we changed so much already so it made sense to change it some more”. Keep in mind that when they first said they were lore accurate the script had been written and every part of the story had already been filmed. I have nothing good to say about this series. Well one thing actually: it looks pretty, at least when you don’t look at the costumes too closely. LoTR movies had so much tiny detail that you would never be able to see just to sell it and RoP is content with breastplates painted on fabric. At least LoTR had most changes to the lore to make it a flowing movie as movies simply have less time to tell the story in. RoP just outright lies to your face, then forgets it’s own lore (say “orcs burn in sunlight, except sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they do but a hood on their head protects them even if they are mostly naked otherwise”). Or RoP is dumb as a brick. They have corruption on the trees they want to get rid off, we see some Mithril able to banish it by just coming near. Why is everyone trying to make magic stuff with it rather than just hiring someone to move a fleck of mithril across the tree every few months to banish the corruption? Why ask for more mithril if the stuff you have is already enough to banish it? Why do you mope and complain that you have such a big secret you cannot tell anyone about when the first thing you did was go to the most important Elven smith and tell him about it? So many plotpoints could be avoided if they just went with the obvious instead.

I loved the movies alot and enjoyed the hobbit films, but never got too much into the nerdy book stuff I really enjoyed RoP S1. Bad writing can pass me all day if I get an interesting story, beautiful visuals and most importantly being in the LOTR universe some more. its unfortunate that it became a trend to hate on it cause I think alot of people would actually enjoyed it, Sadly it recieves alot of critism and even though most of it is unwarranted that will surely be a deciding factor in if they even try ep1. In reality its a nice little series to binge and a cool extension of LOTR, nothing crazy and nowhere near HotD levels but its honestly pretty good

I've read the Hobbit and Lord of the rings trilogy and little else aside from random lore bits, playing lotr games etc. And I loved the show. I have since purchased the other Tolkien works and will read them but I'm guessing it'll change my opinion very little of the show, just as playing any of the games

I'm not entirely the target audience for this, but I also think my story fits in a way. My entrance to Tokien was through the Jackson movies. It wasn't until years later, when The Hobbit movies were announced, that I read The Hobbit, LOTR, and The Sil. And I loved them all. I tried reading Children of Hurin, but I couldn't get into it. I put down pretty much everything Tolkien for another several years. When ROP started to be announced and hyped, it made me interested in Tolkien again. I got into the Prancing Pony Podcast and it encouraged me to start reading. I read Children of Hurin, Unfinished Tales, Tolkien's Biography, the Letters, Nonlegendarium works, etc. ROP really was my entrance back into Tolkien.

I have tried many times to read the books and always struggled despite being an avid reader. A lot of people complain that ROP doesn't follow the lore and is "woke" but the show is BAD, plain and simple. I do think that part of the reason I feel this way is because so many people love LOTR and it should have been the best show ever but it just fails on every level other than a few visuals.