I'm currently on book 12 of the Wheel of Time series and after that I'll finish the last two books of LOTR and read the Simillarion. I've already read the Hobbit. I am not a hardcore LOTR fan but I am more than a casual fan. My question was if the articles about how racist it is or articles attacking the movies have started yet? Someone on this forum sent me a link to the phases of Geekergate and that is very spot on. I figure as we get closer to the Amazon show we will see all sorts of people who "have always loved Lord of the Rings" while tearing it down and gushing about the new series.
I plan on giving it a chance, but considering the time we live in and considering how they plan on doing the Wheel of Time........ I have little hope.
Say what you will about Tolkien's personal opinions, but we've crossed a line where you cant even reference a race's positive moral or social characteristics without being labeled a racist. LotR's setup falls neatly within the reach of this because it implies that some races are better at certain things than others, and that the races in the books had distinct physical descriptions that don't allow for a lot of interpretation. They're either going to disregard these aspects completely, or invent and inject their own invented (superior) ethnicities into the series and handicap the originals.
We're in a world now where everyone must be the exact same, so they'll take the rich and diverse LotR landscape and portray it as a flawed, ticking time bomb where war is inevitable.