“Tolkien is turning in his grave,” Elon Musk says in reference to Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings” series.

The billionaire echoed criticism of the show voiced by online trolls when he stated that he thought the male characters were made to look weak.

 

Elon Musk tweeted that the late author J.R.R. Tolkien is “turning in his grave” as he slammed the $1 billion fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power on Amazon Prime Video.

 

Musk tweeted that “nearly every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both,” adding that “only Galadriel is brave, brilliant and pleasant.” Musk went on to explain why he didn’t like the show. The main character of the series, Galadriel, a warrior elf who is thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is portrayed by Welsh actress Morfydd Clark.

 

Notable is that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Elon Musk have a protracted quarrel and rivalry that has grown more heated as Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin directly compete with one another. The CEO of Tesla frequently trolls or shitposts about Bezos and his businesses due to the animosity between the two richest individuals in the world.

 

Rings of Power has so far been a major hit for Amazon, garnering 25 million views for the first two episodes—the highest-ever premiere on Prime Video. The show has received a favourable response from critics as seen by its scores of 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 71 percent on Metacritic. On the other hand, low audience ratings have given rise to claims of review bombing.

 

Musk’s whining reflects a lot of the objections that the show has received from online trolls who object to Rings’ emphasis on Galadriel.

 

Trolls have also criticised the show for portraying characters who are not white. According to Richard Newby of The Hollywood Reporter, the criticism of the show’s portrayal of black people was unfounded.

 

Lenny Henry, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Nazanin Boniadi, Sara Zwangobani, Maxine Cunliffe, and Sophia Nomvete have, by this point, heard every justification in the book for why they shouldn’t portray harfoots, elves, dwarves, or even humans in the Middle-earth where Amazon’s series is set, claimed Newby. The most prevalent claim is that Tolkien left people of colour out of his stories. This is incorrect not only because harfoots are characterised as having “browner” complexion, but also because Tolkien rarely made a point of describing skin tone, instead favouring the vague “fairer than…”