Amazon Fires Lord Of The Rings Scholar For Trying To Stop Them From Ruining Tolkien?
A self-styled Tolkien super fan is angry!
There is a rumor starting to make the rounds about Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The rumor originates with YouTuber George Molho, aka George the Giant Slayer, and is being touted by Bounding Into Comics among others. According to Molho, eminent scholar Tom Shippey was fired from the production because he wouldn’t stop warning the creators they were “polluting the lore.” From what we can tell there are more trustworthy sources in the New Jersey mob, the Legion of Doom, and the entire Attorney Bar Association than there are on George the Giant Slayer’s YouTube account, but we’ll let you know what he had to say regardless.
In a video posted earlier this week, Molho claims he’s heard from “three separate sources” that Tom Shippey was not fired, as many had previously believed, from his consulting gig on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for violating a non-disclosure agreement by giving an unsanctioned interview to a fan site. Instead, according to Molho, his “three separate sources” claim Shippey was fired for “weekly” telling Rings of Power showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay that they were “polluting the lore.” You can watch his video yourself, if you enjoy consuming arguments as empty as the large percentage of most potato chip bags, below.
Right out of the gate, George the Giant Slayer clearly appears to have a religious agenda in his rumor-spreading. He refers in the beginning of the video to Amazon “hiding their sins,” and his main point of contention in the video is what he calls the new Lord of the Rings series‘ “carnal nudity” and “lascivious sexuality.” Because apparently — like the folks Gimli was talking about in The Two Towers — Molho thinks in Middle Earth everyone is born by just springing “out of holes in the ground.” Amazon’s goal, in Molho’s words, is to “snuff out the light.” He sounds more like a preacher than any pop culture insider.
Of course, regardless of his agenda, he could still be right but the fact that he treats facts the same way Ezra Miller treats their career doesn’t help make his point. Before showing his receipts, Molho claims new photos “emerged” showing that Amazon was “hiding” its sinful practices. The photos he refers to didn’t “emerge.” The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power images were given to Collider by Amazon, which seems like a pretty strange way to hide something. He later says that Jeff Bezos told Variety in 2017 that he wanted the next Game of Thrones. But if you bother to read the story he’s referring to, Jeff Bezos didn’t tell Variety anything. The site refers to unnamed sources telling them what Bezos allegedly said.
This horribly sinful image he refers to, by the way? Yeah, it’s the photo above. There’s Morfydd Clark on the left as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, lost at sea, holding her hand out. This image in which you can barely see Galadriel’s face much less any other parts of her, is what Molho calls a “wet t-shirt contest.” We really hope he’s able to handle it when he finds out there may be scenes in the series when women show ankles and elbows.
