The Orc Problem (in Rings of Power and generally) 

That shot of that orc family cuddling together feeling sad about their uncertain future is possibly the stupidest thing i've _ever_ seen on screen in my life. I still can't believe that they actually did that. It blows my mind.

The fact that orcs reproduced sexually does not necessarily mean that they had loving families or even pair bonded.

Great video. You nailed what I think the problem most Tolkien fans have with the show: the show runners are making choices (lore-breaking or not) which have consequences that they do not understand, and they have neither the interest nor the skill to handle them properly. In the films, Arwen rescues Frodo instead of Glorfindel, which breaks canon. But I doubt anyone really cares that much because it doesn’t cause any problems and makes sense to avoid introducing a whole new (badass) character. But introducing Gandalf in the second age certainly does. Ignoring the fact that his stupid mystery box was a mystery to no one and that his whole two-season arc has been about finding a stick and mishearing a name, his presence in the second age is a real problem. What is he going to do? Anyone who has watched even one episode of the show knows the answer: he will be a wandering hobo carrying a #10 can of deus ex machina. If you think Sauron and the rings just acquire whatever powers are necessary for the scene, you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s lazy, frustrating and completely unnecessary. Same with not-Saruman. The story of the blue wizards could be the entire show and, if done right, could be amazing. But the show runners lack the imagination and talent to even attempt it. So they gave us a dementia patient and Darth Butterfly instead. 🤦‍♂️

He said that Orcs spawned Orcs not that they had loving, protective families. Their personalities would certainly suggest that maybe they weren't brought up in a very nurturing environment. They seem kind of insecure.

Imagine being a fly on the wall during that Amazon writers block meeting in which they came up with that bird brain idea??? Bet they were all high fiving each other, thinking they were doing some groundbreaking stuff showing an Orc mom and dad clutching their little Orcling? 😂

I hope the Barlogs get humanized in Season 3. We could see a nice happy of Balrogs: papa, mana, and baby. That would be so cool.

Orc family life would be too brutal to depict to any audience. That's a horror movie.

To me the Orcs represent the absolute worst of humanity given form. Take a Man (or Elf) and squeeze out of him all the compassion, selflessnes, loyalty, charity, wisdom and virtue and amplify his anger and hatred, his sadism and selfishness and destructive tendencies. Draw out all his worst impulses, hidden deep in his uncounsious mind, and you have an Orc.

My problem is, that all i hear is: we just want to live peacefully, but what i see is one of them licking blood off the knife he used to kill a horse.

The problem with orc families in RoP is how do you fit the image of a merciless killing machine that might eat their prisoners and even eat each other, but then they have a nuclear family and they worry about their kids and act with affection in front of others? It's just silly. If they had to, they would have much better luck showing orcs raising their young ones like Spartans or something. Raising them in collective camps while training them for war. The nuclear family image is completely incompatible... They probably did it to give Adar's cause some merit, but it had no merit in the first place.

You don't need to know anything about Tolkien lore to effectively criticize this show - because it completely falls apart totally on its own (but it does help to know the lore, since you will see it fall apart even faster)

In terms of the Rings of Power Im jaded and think the writers were following the more modern trend of making villains as a misunderstood/unwilling PG-13 level of evil. Dumbed down, family friendly, trash. Love the sweater BTW. :)

Yes, this was something I commented on to people with Adar in season 1. Giving the orcs interiority is not, in and off itself, an impossible task, and many other settings have tried (and some succeeded) in trying to explore the moral life of "evil" characters and races. But, right from the start is was clear that RoP was simply aping this trope, essentially thoughtless symbolic mimicry in the J. J. Abrams mystery box vein, hoping to generate an immediate emotional reaction in the audience, with no thought to broader theme or intent. And you can see this in the way the orcs whipsaw from sympathetic portrayals when Adar is around to being spiteful and vindictive and cruel in almost every other scene. There is never a question of whether it is right to kill orcs, not just when Galadriel does it, but when Arondir or Theo or Isildur does it either, including when Arondir kills apparent deserters. So it's a false moral nuancing, essentially a cargo cult attempt at depth in their work in a way that they themselves ignore when it is inconvenient.

The weird thing for me was during the battle I didn't care who won. The show had given more time with the orcs than with the elves. So for me the elves were the other. An unthinking faceless group that had idiotically allowed sauron himself to take control of their city. And the emotional moments with the orcs just felt cheap so I didn't care about them either. Also I thought the orc family was just tossed in there to give that orc dude a reason to betray adar.

I always thought of the orcs like sharks. Sure, they're "born" from other orcs, but they don't get nurtured and raised. Lots of animals (like sharks) give birth then let the children fend for themselves. I feel like orcs would immediately put their children into some sort of pen where they would fend for themselves where only the strongest orcs could escape and join the horde. Also, AI does influence (heavily) a lot of modern Hollywood. Years ago, studios started using AI Management Software that helped determine with great accuracy the profit margins of a movie. So, the scripts that were chosen were run through these machines and without having to tell writers anything, the "notes" they'd receive were based on what the AI determined. So you get A LOT of injection of the concept of "family" without any real connection to the story. Hence, orcs with families because ... reasons.

If anyone trying to humanize orcs could stand on the battlefield at Helms Deep and watch them tuck into a fresh elf corpse because they wanted some 'man meat', they definitely wouldn't be inviting the orc and his family round for tea and biscuits anytime soon for a chat about changing they're life goals lol

In a interview Tolkien talked about how in his stories, there is the underlying theme that the rightful king (Aragorn) is a good king, because he is the rightful king. But (as he laugh) that does not mean he actually think England needs to be lead by a king. He is very much against that kind of government. But in his fiction, kings are good, simply because it is a romanticism of the king.

How about the Orc's attitude towards the environment, the natural world, vulnerable living things? They aren't without agency; they literally delight in choices that bring about violence, destruction, pollution. They have no reverence for life, even towards thier own kind.

The main issue the ROP characterisation of orcs is that it ignores the archetype and purpose they were clearly made to fill and instead inserts modern allegory whereby the orcs are oppressed by Morgoth, then Sauron, and actually just want to have family bbqs or something (suggesting that they are just like humans only ugly and forced into evil, whereas Tolkien clearly intended that they were evil by nature via corruption of their souls). This just creates endless problems and doesn't really fit into the world. If they really wanted to make the orcs more interesting perhaps they could have portrayed them as somewhat tragic, playing into the issue Tolkien had whereby orcs obviously have souls but are so twisted and corrupted that they don't even have a chance at being good, maybe playing on themes Tolkien weaved in like the issue of evil existing at all, and his answer seemed to be that without evil, what is good, there are no hero's without adversity. (Eru illuvatar said that Melkor's discord actually increased the majesty of his creation, or something along those lines, it was obviously Tolkien ruminating on the deep philosophical questions about the existence of evil whilst also having an all powerful and good god). Basically the problem is that ROP was clearly written by people who don't really understand (or choose to ignore) the deeper themes in Tolkien's work. It doesn't matter if something technically fits the letter of the lore if it completely subverts the themes of the book. Also the idea of writing a Wide Sargasso Sea type story about middle earth whereby we assume the position of 'evil is good' via some sort of paradise lost style characterisation of Melkor, might work as some sort of philosophical work, but you would lose what makes Lord of the rings compelling story.

Honestly, the writers of RoP were clearly just jumping from highlight to highlight in favour of telling a coherent story. They aren't even close reaching an approach that would give them the space to do anything interesting with the orcs. It's all about single moments, which why you have the reveal of the effect of the ring on Adar, right next to him getting shanked, followed by a bit later Glug getting off. It's all "damn snap" moment. They never truly explore the characters, hence Galadriel's stupid over the top sadistic genocide speech, all that leads to is her having a generic discussion with Sauron afterwards about going to far without every having learned anything. It's all surface level.

Thanks for your time to put this together. I think you are giving show runners more credit. I think they are using them to represent groups in the real world but are in a crack because the two groups that they want us to be sympathetic to are now battling each other. Not much vision or planning. Same exact situation in the wheel of time.

It's a very common misconception that Tolkien said his experiences didn't influence his work. What he did say was that he as the author did not intend any specific, single "true meaning" for anything in Middle-earth that "actually represents" anything in the real, modern world. The Dead Marshes are not the Somme in the sense that he didn't *intend* for the Dead Marshes to represent the Somme in the mind of the reader and therefore make some point about the Somme or the Great War generally; the Dead Marshes are the Dead Marshes. If you think of the Somme when you read about them, that's your experience of the story and that's just fine.

The problem was that the orc family should have been a fantastic and monstrous new creation, unlike any family found in nature. Imagine two burly male orcs fusing together, growing a new (tiny) orc from yeastlike buds sprouting from their own bodies. Then allow the audience to feel compassion and pity for that!

It is meant to be read as myth and legend. Guess where most of the monsters in Greek mythology came from? The issue is trying to paint evil as good and good as evil. Tolkien said being orcish is evil, as noted in the snippet he had of an idea for a sequel, so trying to show it as otherwise, the show loses sight of what makes Middle-ERth unique.

I don't know why so many creators (not you) ignore the keystones of Tolkien's actual words. It is simple, Tolkien had two keystone thoughts on orcs: 1. Tolkien did not want anyone to feel remorse for killing evil meat robots. Orcs are literally evil incarnate. 2. Then Tolkien was thought, "oh but Melkor does not have the power to create anything with a soul." So many people think these two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Aule created the dwarves, but without the Fire from Eru, they would have been Aule's meat robots too. So Melkor 100% made the orcs in mockery of elves, but did not give them souls (because he was unable to) and thus both keystones of Tolkien's wishes are met. Regarding "othering", this is 100% intentional for the orcs. They are not individuals in Tolkien's eyes and this is contrasted by the "evil" men of the South and East. These men (humans) are children of Eru (God) and thus have souls. Never in the stories are these men slaughtered without recourse. There are even explicit lines in the books to make you feel sorry for them. Were they forced to fight for Sauron? What families are they leaving back home. This is because they are children of Eru, not Melkor (the Devil).

You are the only person on RU-vid who is able to critique new-Tolkienverse stuff while remaining normal. Thanks for the nuance!!!

Great video, thank you for taking a much more nuanced take on the Orc problem compared to many other videos.

Fantastic exposition, Liene, truly. I’ve enjoyed all of your Rings of Power and Wheel of Time videos, but this was the first one that I’ve watched in which you delve into writing as a craft. You presented your points succinctly, but with enough explanation that I followed your line of reasoning without any problem. I also learned a few things about the complexities of writing a good story. It’s no small feat to make a 37 minute RU-vid video fly by, but you did just that. Thank you!

I've heard that Tolkien came up with the word "orc" from "Oxford Rugby Club," which was rather thuggish

The fact that they multiplied and orc women would have existed does not confirm the existence of the orc nuclear family unit.

Nice sweater

The given fact that orcs multiplied doesn’t imply that they coalesced into loving families. The only example of an orc family is that we know from the Appendices that Bolg was the offspring of Azog … PJ’s depiction of that takes liberties of course, but in canon the relationship is all we know. We do however have multiple examples of orc culture and especially how orcs behaved amongst themselves. For instance the way the Isengard orcs interacted with the Mordor orcs (book only) when taking Merry and Pippin to Isengard, the conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag at Kirith Ungol, as well as the murderous mini-orc-civil-war subsequent to that, and also how the two orcs tracking Frodo and Sam in Mordor (book only) treated each other … from all these we can see that orc culture was course and extremely violent. Of course my wife and I have humorous speculations about orcs: are there orc nerds? Do orcs have restaurants (“Meats back on the menu boys!”), etc. They certainly have artists as they carve the hilts of their swords and daggers.

I really enjoyed your videos, thank you! I have read The Lord of the Rings many times over the last few decades, I have read the Hobbit and the Silmarillion a couple of times, that’s the extent of my experience of professor Tolkien’s work. There’s a quote from the movie “Galaxy Quest” which I think is quite appropriate: “It doesn’t take a good actor to recognize a bad one.” One does not need to be a Tolkien lore expert to recognize that The Rings of Power is not Tolkien at all. The reason The Lord of the Rings is so beloved by so many for generations is its universal core values like good vs. evil, friendship, sacrifice, fellowship, mercy, etc. that resonate with so many of us. It is utter arrogance for writers/ producers to think they can somehow “improve” or “modernize” such a masterpiece, not to mention that TRoP is just objectively bad writing. Just my humble opinion.

A good example of a not lore breaking change for Jackson's LOTR is omitting Bombadil, or (against my better judgment) including Elves at Helm's deep. The best example of Lore breaking from Jackson's adaptations was how dirty they did Farimir, such a radical and completely unnecessary change.

I think this is an excellent analysis story wise of TRoP. The Orcs in Tolkien's world aren't just avatars of evil, but their whole spirit is controlled and dominated first by Morgoth, and then Sauron. Orcs were created by Morgoth to serve as slaves and soldiers, which is the true corruption of Eru's original intent for the Elves and Humanity. Elves and Humans were created by Eru to be free to make their own choices (and live with the consequences). When Morgoth and Sauron are destroyed the Orcs lose all discipline and order and scatter to the winds in a panic because their sole purpose was to obey the will of their masters, who are embodiments of evil and destructive power. Without the will of their masters controlling their minds and spirits they fall into fear and fighting amongst themselves. That is one of the shortcomings of TRoP (and the Jackson trilogy in my opinion), they have no grasp of the spiritual power embodied in Morgoth and Sauron. They completely ignore that in the LoTR characters such as Galadriel, Gandalf, and Sauron are embodiments of spiritual powers that have "real world" and physical effects on Middle Earth. The One Ring is the physical embodiment of Sauron's spirit and if he manages to reunite the physical and spiritual he can dominate all of Middle Earth. Without it he can only dominate the spirit of his followers but cannot physically manifest, so his power revolves around "whispers" from the One Ring affecting it's wearer or through visions in the palantirs, affecting the minds of those who look into them.

Good analysis! Fantasy writers have been struggling with this problem since Tolkien, I think. As an easy example, this is a huge theme in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. At first, the Parshendi are a nameless alien evil. But then we see their perspective and what they have gone through. Kaladin eventually becomes paralyzed by not knowing who to fight for.

So on point. Especially the observation about GRR Martin's White Walkers. Existential threats do not need or require humanization. It is harder to rationalize or justify the eventual fate of the orcs (probable extinction via slaughter) if they are shown to be capable of empathy.

Also, since you so very well explained why Orcs' actual moral/spiritual/"human" (or "elvish") state, my perspective on Orcs was pretty clear since I learned how Tolkien described them (like the man who is surrendered to the lower instincts of war); creatures existentially stuck forever in that bloodthirsty, mindless, berserker mindset that a person totally lost in the horror and rage of battle is in danger of losing himself in. Such a creature is a natural enemy - he kills you, or you kill him - a person, even an enemy soldier might have family, loved ones and a whole family, might be a stellar person outside the battlefield, but you don't meet him in the heat of the charge - you meet an abstract of humanity, and the orcs are as if you had a whole race of creatures stuck in that perpetual mental and emotional state, totally subject to the lowest instincts war can inspire in man. I never got the sense from LotR that one would be celebrating whenever killing orcs, or saying things like that horrible stuff they had Galadriel saying (which is unacceptable from a heroine no matter what creatures she's talking about), but also never the sense that you'd go over to an orc and close its eyes after it's dead. Wisely, Tolkien left the matter of their metaphysical fate on the air, since they are Eru's creatures, not Morgoth's, in the end, but that potential redemption is in the realm of metaphysics, not on Middle Earth on which their actions take place. Idk, that was my take. After all, Tolkien wrote in mythological, not historical terms. It's like when heroes slaughter thousands of enemies (and let's be real, ofter those enemies are nobler than the heroes themselves, much less orcs, or how gods slaughter thousands of demons to show their prowess. It's not allegory, but metaphor).

Wow, what a well thought out video. That made me realize how hard it is to write good stuff. Recently I've seen a very good example of this struggle of portraying vilain characters in the anime Frieren. Have you ever seen it? There demons are evil but they may deceive good-hearted people who doesn't know their true nature. It's a pitty we didn't have clever writing for these series, it could have been epic.

I haven't watched 1 second of the series. But I'm here to support the people who suffered through it.

Your sweater

one of my many issues with the showrunners is that they're so lazy and stupid they just copied the jackson trilogy's aesthetic for most things including the orcs, but they also want to think they are doing something new and original. no, no, no - if you want to explore the idea of sympathetic orcs (personally i actually like the idea IN THEORY), the visual design has to reflect that, like a del toro film. you can't just copy the jackson trilogy and simultaneously be original

Yeah, the orc family here was pretty poor shorthand at an attempt to get us to care about the plight, and understand where Adar was coming from. It seemed (as you provided the example of the inverse perspective) that was what they were shooting for with Adar and his "children" storyline, but then just sort of floundered out with an "Evil can't change" note... after humanizing them. Its not like their reproduction goes away after it was revealed. On the whole though, this idea was great and well executed on your part- great work explaining and exploring one of the more complex problems in modern fantasy (beyond just one adaptation!)

Orcs were created by Melkor out of hate for the Elfs and to spite Eru, basically why his drive to destroy everything Eru wanted to create. Then bred as an instrument of this destruction what is percieved as evil. There was good in the first elfs that were captured but then tortured into hatred and obedience. After those first orcs its safe to assume that they are all obidient slaves to evil and destruction. Lore is everything or you have created something different. Or more specifically, if you are operating within an already existing story, storyline, timeline, world, characters, lore is everything. If you dont follow that lore in that existing story you break it and have created something completely different. If Amazon promoted RoP as "loosely based on" but an "alternative story" fine... But please understand that they are changing an already established story, characters, timeline etc etc, not only lore. This is the reason for the uproar in the Tolkien fanbase. They are changing and perverting something already established. And in addition in a very incompetent way. What happened in the age/ages after the TA? There you would have the freedom to invent a bit. Not sure if Im clear, but eg we already know who Galadriel is as a character, period. Cant be changed. Why? She is a main character and then the whole universe changes, this is the path they choose and changed everything in an already established everything. Dont work and why the total mess. Its like re making King Kong with an octopus...we all know Kong is a giant gorilla, its established if its King Kong. You could do it but...

Thank you Liene, I find your analysis very insightful and you have managed to verbalise succinctly the problems with this. I have similar lore knowledge with you (but have read the Hobbit) and I cannot think of any problems with your argument lore wise. I also agree that the essentialism of the orcs can be problematic if one takes them allegorically, as it has happened with several people who have come out to accuse Tolkien for being racist. Perhaps this is why Tolkien had so vehemently denied his books being allegories, because he realised the problem this would cause and how he and his books would be perceived, especially following WW2 and in the knowledge of what happened there. The Jackson movies brush over this by depicting the orcs as nothing more than bloodthirsty and evil. The show tries to play it both ways and fails miserably. I don't know what they were thinking. They are almost suffering from the old curse of episodic TV series where every episode was regarding the problem of the week and anything that happened to the characters would reverse back to square one for next week's episode. This week let's explore the humanity of orcs. Next week they are back to being bloodthirsty evil goblins. One could even suspect that they are not writing a cohesive story but lightly touching upon various 'themes', as if the writers and showrunners were too many, uncoordinated, and inexperienced and didn't know what they were doing... Oh wait! 😊 Anyway, thank you for the well written analysis again

Cool video, clever and thoughtful. Liked it and subbed.

Great video. It's always great to hear objective analysis of Tolkien.

If they were going to do an interesting deconstruction story about the elves and orcs, they should really have also included a bit about the Petty Dwarves, whom the Elves hunted for sport and quite probably ate before they met any other dwarves or were convinced that they were intelligent creatures worth any more than other dumb animals.

It's genuinely a limitation to process ALL stories in a literal sense. The purpose of stories might cover simulating reality, teaching lessons (hence the cautionary tale), or being way more abstract. In a realistic story that hasn't signalled being metaphor, it makes sense to process things in a more straightforward way. But if you're watching a lynch film or a fairy tale, you need to understand you're dealing in the realm of poetry. We're trained to see stories in limited ways. When Ziegler says Snow White's prince is a stalker, I get why she arrived at that conclusion. And it's difficult when stories could have multiple functions simultaneously. Something could be an allegory and be understood as such, but still have the human brain interpret it in a more literal way. If you think of the human brain as a computer, it could be running two programs simultaneously. Maybe one is poetic_understanding.exe running in the foreground and another one is gleaning_information.exe running as a daemon (background process). And there are other problems. Sure the rings are tainted, but I think they have to slowly corrode people where they have an opportunity to simply take them off. It would be a problem for free will if you could slip a ring on someone's finger while they slept and it would mean that their soul was forfeit. So when you see the Nazgul, I think you have to assume they made their choice.

The comment you referred to is how I've always understood it from the books and, if anything, further shows ME orcs to long be evil incarnate. Breeding pits would be more appropriate, not white picket fences.

Family Values= less war, negotiations, trade, other values... by the nature of Fear or Loss

23:05 _That kind of power is reserved for the good guys._ Not even so but rather only Eru van really create souls. Aule had created the dwarfs but they only became animate when Eru greenlit them.

Excellent video, Liene. Saruman's forces are spawning Uruk-hai in one of Jackson's films, right?

I agree, the show itself is just bad on its own. Outside of it outright insulting everything Tolkien and his work it's just a bad, very poorly written show. Someone said it perfectly by stating that Rings of Power is Tolkien for dummies written by dummies. The original Jackson trilogy wasn't exact lore but he got the feeling and base of it correct. He might have changed who said what or when. Or changed a few characters who did things or made them more important than they were in the books, but he kept the entire spirit and feel of the books. Which is all that one can ask for. The Hobbit films though were a bigger break. He got the base correct and the theme correct but he added far too much to drag it out to three films. I have said many times that the Hobbit trilogy should have been a duology, cutting out the elf love story and the white orc side story and it would have been 100% better in being closer to the book, even with the other changes.

Excellent video about this. With the 'nuclear family' depiction, personally I didn't like it, but it would have been interesting to see them actually do something with this. I'll avoid spoilers for people, but I thought it was just a cheap way to setup an event later on and give motivation to that orc (don't get me started on how that particular sub plot also makes no sense)... and that event along with pretty much every other scene with the orcs felt in direct conflict with the concept that the orcs aren't all bloodthirsty evil monsters. This is only one of many issues I have with the show hah. Anyway great video.

20:47 I think we have to be careful about terminology here. This segment talks about Orcs "breed"ing and "multipl"ying. And yes, "orc-women" were acknowledged. But breeding and multiplying doesn't - and shouldn't - systematically imply the sociological concept of family existing in orcdom. I like to see Orcs as some type of ant-like insects with colonies. They breed and multiply, but they do not have what western sociology would qualify as a family. I do agree that Orcs shouldn't be seen as some weird problematic analogy for a people, and I do believe Tolkien did not mean to depict Orcs as a "people" like Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and Men. Consequently, I don't think we should use the term "orc-wives" interchangeably with "orc-women", or "orc-children" with "orc-spawns". "wives" and "children" imply matrimony and family, and I don't think orcs were meant to be seen that way. In summary, orc-breeding is a thing, but orc-families are likely not, and does not feel on par with Tolkien's intent. This whole push to over-intellectualize and make everything morally ambiguous is, in my humble opinion, overused, and should not apply to everything, namely orcs in that case.

Tolkien often talked about the most feared beings in middle earth, the Pedantists. Most dare not confront them and simply flee at their sight…

Tolkien once wrote “we were all orcs” when describing his experience in the trenches of World War I. I personally think that Orcs represent the worst aspects of humanity (greed, cruelty, malice) in contrast to Elves which represent beauty, art, and nature. I honestly didn’t think the Orc family scene was that bad (Tolkien’s later ideas of Orcs had them “multiply in the same manner as the children of I’luvatar). Just because you have a family doesn’t make you less capable of being a villain (look at Darth Vader, or even human beings in real life that are horrible despite having families). Media nowadays leans more towards morally grey characters, redemption arcs, or making good and evil more nuanced. I think you can make that work in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but the level of writing in ROP doesn’t lend itself to much depth and nuance, which would be needed to pull that off in a satisfying way.

In my view, the orcs should only be humanized through the perspective of Adar, who is at least in concept an interesting character. If they wanted to show how orcs are actually a race and have a society etc, they could have done that, but they were clearly concerned that they would invoke racism and eugenics. What they should have done is lean into it, and show orc mom and dad running away from their 20 screaming sharp-clawed and pointy-teethed babies. They could have made the orcs so ridiculously destructive that everybody would agree that they simply have to go, like the jakovasaurus in Souh Park. In ohter words, Peter Jackson did it right.

I like orcs being evil monsters. However, a story about their potential redemption could be interesting but only after the fall of Sauron. While Morgoth and Sauron are around, the thought of redemption for orcs is moot for those two would have simply crushed it. Evil must be vanquished for orcs to be restored. The Rings of Power had a kernel of a thought wanting to depict them other than mindless monsters but lacked the foresight and critical thinking necessary to make it interesting or engaging to follow. One moment an orc has a family he cares for, the next his brethren are cackling evilly about killing a horse. There was no nuance or deeper exploration of what makes orcs tic or what the influence a Dark Lord has over them.

"I smash your Orc army." -- Bëorn

This is a very good video essay, I’m sharing it with my tolkien nerd friends 😊

I'd say this essay hit all the right points. I'll add that an exploration of orcs as having feelings, etc. could be fun *in a brand new story*. They shouldn't tell that story by bending someone else's story until it snaps.

I think you are spot on with this analysis as the showrunners really don't understand themes of tolkiens writing so they try to do this post modern take on without really thinking about the ramification on the world it loses all suspense of disbelief and when you start to think about the characters little more deeply you see how rooting for the good guys in this show doesn't make any sense as they are as horrible as everybody else.

You might like Unfinished Tales.

Actually, Tolkien wasn’t entirely certain regarding the origin of orcs … he indeed experiment with the idea that they were originally corrupted elves, but he wasn’t quite sure later in life.

Thank you for this really interesting analysis. One direction it might be worth digging into is the specific problem of Orc salvation. I have heard that Tolkien did not want any character to be irredeemable and soulless (more or less, it’s complicated). Gollum/Smeagle is a case in point. There are theological implications in much of LotR, and the troubling ones (to a devout Catholic) troubled Tolkien, as I understand it.

Not only were they the embodiment of evil but they just became extinct after Sauron's essence was swept away (not destroyed since as a Maiar he could not be destroyed) since there was nothing to sustain them.

Came for the problem, stayed for Liene's Lore...

You've hit on the paradox of manichaeism in high fantasy and why dark fantasy and grimdark took off lately. Why it lay be true that the orc family thing goes nowhere on screen, as many other threads, I am not convinced that the side effects of it are unintentional. It fits the modern trend of moral relativism, which I personally don't really have a problem with per se. It can be argued that changing the perception about known characters is what this show has been about since the beginning, so this is actually _consistent_ with the rest of the story. I seem to remember the runners of TWOT doing the same with trollocs at the beginning of S2. As if they shared notes... 🤔

If you think about an evil monster like King's Pennywise I dont think trying to flesh out a detailed backstory or details on how the monster 'works' would have made the monster more effective story wise. It is a HUGE mistake to think humanising or offering detailed explanations on the day to day life of inhuman monsters like Sauron or the orcs makes the story better in any way. In fact Jackson's movie did the opposite and made Sauron LESS human and more nebulous than the books, to great and terrifying effect.

While I don't disagree with your analysis, I do see things slightly differently, so here's my two tharni. It is true that Orcs "breed and multiply after the manner of the Children of Illuvatar" but this means they reproduce, not necessarily that they have families. Now, as I understand it, the orcs -- being "monsters" -- were exemplars of bad behavior and as child-rearing is meant to be good, it was not likely an orcish trait. Now, let's explore this thought a little further. Since orcs were meant to be the foot soldiers of the dark lords, in my own personal head-canon, not only do I see them as fatherless and quite possibly "motherless" (I.e. unnurtured), I see them as reproducing quickly. Where we humans take a couple of decades to mature, I see orcs reaching maturity in only a few years, ready for battle, full of anger and lacking sympathy in parallel to their own tortured lives. Is this what Tolkien intended? I dunno, even doubt it, but when a dark lord "fabricates" a race of disposable warriors, I don't see them investing a lot of time to make sure "the kids" grow up right. ;)

One sweater to rule them all! Forged in the looms of Mt. Doom. It reveals the unseen spirit world, and keeps the wearer warm even in sub zero temps of Forodwaith.

You’ve spoken really well about this. We’re meant to think of orcs how the monks of Lindisfarne thought about the Danes, how the Romans thought about the Huns, how the Saracens thought about the Mongols: they are existential, anti-civilisation - barbarians. In his further musings Tolkien fleshes them out to be as your father describes: fallen, twisted, outside of the natural chain. To me the dual threat of orcs is always twofold - firstly that they are an immediate physical threat, but secondly that if you are not careful you could become like this one day. This could be you. Every heroic character and culture of Tolkien must contend with this. Some indeed fail.

Thanks for another great video with entertaining insights, loved the blooper reel! 😂

Dude. The time you took to explain your position on lore I watched the entire 2nd season twice 😜

For me, the portrail of orcs having families ended any legitimacy this show ever had. If any. Edit: Insert "That's not how the .....works!" meme. Orcs would totally eat their young

The bookshelf is sauron, the shadow in the middle, makes sauron. That's cool

From "The orcs had life and multiply after the manner of the children of Ilúvatar" to orcs having "loving families" like is shown a rings of power there's a huge distance. That's a huge leap. And orcs showing love or any kind of empathy does breaks lore.

If orcs have families then they have something to lose. That means they also can reason and if they can reason there is no reason to constantly be in a state of war. The orcs need to be pure evil or the story makes no sense. This applies to storm troopers, or tralocs or the cgi armies in an avengers movie. In a morally grey stories you have individuals in conflict, like GOT or Marvels Civil War.

This is generally correct, I just want to mention a few things: Towards the beginning of Tolkien's legendarium, the Orcs were basically created by Morgoth, he only later came up with the rule that evil cannot create anything truly original, and in particular life, so in those days, the problem was basically nonexistent because they were basically just evil robots. He then came up with the idea of them being corrupted Elves, but he never settled on any particular origin, the others being that they are corrupted Humans or that they had an origin in the Maiar. That's my personal favorite because it makes the problem mostly go away: they are basically shards of Maiar that are able to reproduce because they come from an original spirit, that was however fallen before the world was even created and thus could not realistically be expected to change its ways. In LotR, the Orcs for the most part are displayed as undifferentiated evil, thus it's not much of a problem that they are slaughtered. This changes as the books go on though, and by the third book you have a humanizing conversation between the Orcs capturing Frodo that complicates things already. This already creates some dissonance with Legolas and Gimli betting on how many Orcs they can kill, but it's mostly contained because the characters in the books aren't exactly cruel towards the Orcs and are mostly on the defensive against them, and because these Orcs, while humanized a little, are still pretty evil overall, and also because its place in the story is long after the bet. But Tolkien was also clear that, regardless of their nature, there were bounds on what was allowed with Orcs: in "Myths Transformed", which was among Tolkien's latest writings, he wrote "They might have been irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men) but they remained within the Law… Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defense of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded." By the way, I have this from a video of Girl Next Gondor on the topic "Are Orcs Redeemable", which is pretty interesting. Finally, the subversion of the Tolkien mythos you outline has already been done, twice in fact, both times in Russian: once by Kirill Yeskov in "The Last Ringbearer", a subversion of LotR where Mordor is a force of science and progress while the Elves and Gandalf are sinister powers trying to keep them under control, while the other is Natalia Vasilyeva and Natalia Nekrasova's "Black Book of Arda", which does something similar for the Silmarillion.

Liene , The Hobbit is such a swift , cozy little read .

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series touched on these ideas many years ago. Pratchett liked to poke fun at tropes in fantasy and fairytale stories and write them from different perspectives. In the novel, 'Unseen Academicals' the main character is an orc who doesn't know he's an orc and is placed in the city as an experiment to see if he would fit in and overcome his natural orcish tendencies. Spoiler, through trials and tribulations, he can and ends up being a key player in a fantasy college football team, lol. But Pratchett wasn't trying to remake Middle Earth he was doing his own thing. There is space for other ideas but personally I wish Middle Earth to be Tolkien's Middle Earth.

The last Ringbearer is a Russian novel that is about the orc's POV of LoTR. It does have an English translation, though Ithink it's webpage only thing since the story is a copyright landmine to publish in the western copyright system.

an enlightening presentation,according to lore,the Elves being the original creation of Eru,initially looked down upon the Dwarves and actually hunted them out of fear and disgust 🤔

That shirt is amazing!

I've read somewhere (it was a long time ago so I could be wrong) that Frodo and Sam in Mordor overheard two orcs talking about settling down after the War of the Ring and starting a mundane kind of lifestyle (I want to say farming as weird as it would be to see an orc toiling away on his farm.)

Great video. I almost skipped it because I haven't watched season 2 of Rings of Power (yet, at least), but it was well worth it for the things you said about "the Orc Problem" in general (and the other related issues you addressed), very well expressed and explained.

Bang on Liene, you said my position better than I could! On an unrelated note, I see a bit of swelling on your neck; are you okay?

The Orc problem is one of redemption. Orcs cannot be redeemed, so it becomes pointless trying to give them virtue. Especially the way Rings of Power tried to which was the equivalent of "the elves are taking our jobs," from series one.

The only reason I subscribed to your channel two years ago was because I hated Rings of Power.

y'know...Orcs as Zombified Elves works pretty well imo

I agree, Orcs should be viewed more as a concept than as individuals. In reference to Orc propagation, I think of them like an animal. They breed, and then the male goes back to war while the female raises the Orclings. Like a bear. They do not form loving family units.

I think they could have crafted a truly successful storyline for the orcs, keeping with Tolkien's themes, if they had leaned into Adar's former elven nature - he's their progenitor, sure (we're never even told why exactly he wanted children in the first place, couldn't he just have his own?), but he still holds onto some bit of his original self, and he refuses to see that his spawn is naturally bloodthirsty and feral, and they can't truly conform to what he considers familial and social bonds. We should have had Adar just barely keeping them in line during the second season especially, believing if they have their own home and stop being persecuted they'll manage to make their own society and live free, but orcs only make an effort out of some sense of respect and gratitude for the care he shows them, and because Sauron wanted to make them slaves - so when Sauron meets them again and sweettalks them, this time emphasizing their true nature, promising to let them have all the slaughter they want and telling them Adar doesn't understand and wants them to go against their nature to become like defective elves, that's when the orcs rebel against him and kill, and become basically slaves of their own free will. That way Adar's death isn't totally stupid - like, even the orcs wouldn't have been so stupid as not to know that killing Sauron was the only way they wouldn't find themselves on the other end of his wrath. So the story becomes about a father who couldn't see his children's true nature and wanted to believe there was some chance for them to live like people, bound with emotions and loyalty, and Sauron who offers them basically eternal slavery by pandering to their lowest instincts - the orcs choose and thus they are damned, both led due to their innate nature, but also by their own choice, so the essentialism of them being born "evil" is mitigated, while leaving their final spiritual fate as a species totally on the air, as it should. They *are* done dirty by birth, but it's they who choose to lean into it.

Would have been worth pointing out that in the Jackson films, Saruman makes the Uruk. Exactly how is left to the imagination... maybe something akin to a farmer breeding livestock, maybe something akin to the "Alien" incubation thing. Just notable that the Jackson films, at least in the context of Isengard, DO address the issue... in a much different way to ROP.

In your corner Liene.. i am an OG Tolkien admirer and am here to say.... speak your mind freely and fear no nerd!!!

The biggest difference between good and bad fanfic is if the fan author leans into the changes they make to the canon. Too many make massive changes chatacters or events but the story unfolds exactly like the canon timeline.

You would make a good Professor or Teacher.

Very thought provoking! I think you’re definitely right that the people ultimately responsible for Rings of Power aren’t primarily interested in the art of storytelling; they’re creating a product to be consumed that they think audiences will like and their treatment of orcs reflects this. I should add I don’t think this the attitude the actors, directors, and writers have-this purely comes from the top. Tolkien’s orcs are biological constructs and that Melkor would twist the beauty of creation in such a heinous way is a reflection of his blasphemy and his depravity. Here Tolkien criticizes any attempt to reduce personhood to something purely utilitarian. I personally imagined orcs birthed from some kind of pod like we see in Jackson’s Uruk-hai, something almost industrial and unnatural, rather than born into families, but I can see where that raises its own unpleasant questions that aren’t suited for the fable the saga of Middle Earth is. On the bit about mass murder, I remember seeing something which claimed there might be an elvish superstition that those who take life (any life) are less capable of restoring life through healing magics and that Elrond not being a soldier is one of the reasons why he’s such skilled healer, but I don’t have a source or anything on that. I agree though-atrocities against orcs are wholly wicked. Another related problem arises when discussing orcs outside of Tolkien using Tolkien’s categories or trying to understand Tolkien’s orcs using someone else’s categories. Orcs in Warcraft are similar in some ways, but are altogether different from orcs in Tolkien. Effective deconstruction of a text or narrative is both helpful and entertaining, but a person who deconstructs a concept should first understand it as it was intended or at least received by audiences.

Imagine if it was just an adopted human baby the entire time. I can't recall seeing the Orc baby, unless the show runners confirmed it?