I appreciate your desire to defend the show and your love for Tolkien's works, but this quote is why the show is ultimately indefensible to me: "But given how important the length of the Second Age is to the idea of how important questions of longevity and immortality are, with all their ramifications for events and character, it does make sense why some people would react so poorly to this part of the Second Age story being changed." I don't think these themes can be left out without destroying the entire integrity of the show because then it just becomes an ill-conceived story written by people who didn't really understand the mythos within The Lord of the Rings.
I appreciate your desire to defend the show and your love for Tolkien's works, but this quote is why the show is ultimately indefensible to me: "But given how important the length of the Second Age is to the idea of how important questions of longevity and immortality are, with all their ramifications for events and character, it does make sense why some people would react so poorly to this part of the Second Age story being changed." I don't think these themes can be left out without destroying the entire integrity of the show because then it just becomes an ill-conceived story written by people who didn't really understand the mythos within The Lord of the Rings.
I wrote an entire piece about the importance of Death and Immortality (and the Machine, and much more) in Tolkien's writings earlier this year: https://deathinthegarden.substack.com/p/the-tales-that-really-matter-part