I’m going to be brutally honest: the Gollum movie they’re shooting right now doesn’t look good at all. At 62, Andy Serkis is once again playing the character that made him most famous while still licking his wounds from the failure of his latest film as a director, an animated adaptation of Animal Farm that removes every political reference and leaves it as a bland little story without much to offer. This is the context in which he’s begun filming a spin-off of The Lord of the Rings… controversy and all.
Hobbits, yes. Black people, no.
The actor has received criticism after the cast was revealed, made up entirely of white actors. To defend himself, the actor has invoked the author of the novels himself: “Tolkien was very influenced by Norse mythology, and it shows. The Shire seems like a very, very white place, you know? They’re not worried about what happens at the border, but they know they don’t want anyone coming in”. I don’t think he has thought through that statement very well… or perhaps, and this would be terrible, he has thought it through all too well.
Keep in mind that in other productions like The Rings of Power, the franchise has indeed used a diverse cast to show all the factions of Middle-earth, something the director and actor has expressly refused to do: “Yes, there has been criticism. This film acknowledges it in some way, but I don’t think we’re going to do a politically correct version where we hire actors just to hire them and tick boxes. It only makes sense when it’s appropriate”. And that’s that.
We’ll have to see what comes out of this film that’s supposed to kick off a Lord of the Rings franchise… If it weren’t for the fact that most fans, honestly, are already satisfied with the original trilogy and The Hobbit. A return to Middle-earth that may end up watered down.
