A prequel? What could possibly go wrong?

Not to get all judge a prequel to a book adaptation by it's canonically questionable streaming TV spin-off's title but it's terrible right? Huh? What even am I talking about? Why this:

Huh. I guess every other combination of words
in the English language were already taken? 

Above: some early concept art

If you've not been following, or if you're like me and have kind of fell off the whole Lord of the Rings thing after the meandering nonsense that was the three movie adaptation of the Hobbit, there's to be a Lord of the Rings TV show and it's called "The Lord of the Rings The Rings of Power" and no, I didn't forget the colon, evidently there just isn't one. And it's weird. Weirder still is the the use of the word "ring" twice, which is awkward. And yes, I'm aware of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and yeah, I'll say it, it was good show, but it had a dumb title. 

In a bold move, Amazon has tapped
two white males to write the show.

The series, which is being produced by Amazon, will be a prequel to the Peter Jackson movies. According to this article in Variety, the writers/show runners, J.R. Payne and Patrick McKay think it's brilliant:

"This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J. R. R. Tolkien's other classics."

-the collective entity comprised that 

is J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay

No really, the article quotes them as a single unit, which again, weird, right? Yes. And for the record, literally any book could sit on the shelf next to Tolkien's. Preferably they would be ones written by authors whose last names also start with "T," but any book could sit on the shelf. This doesn't however change the fact that their title is boring.

Nor does it change the fact that it was already used by a Sega Genesis game.

They go on to talk about the premise:

"Lore lore lore, lore lore. Lore?
Lore! Loooore. Lore lore." 

-McPayne, "writing"

"The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth's Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númeanor, and the last Alliance of Elves and Men. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring -but before there was one, there were many...and we're excited to share the epic story of--"

-J.D. Payne and Patrick Mc--let's 

just call them McPayne, it'll save time

"The hoots of men are easily clerupted."

-Glerdriel, the elp

Ok, I'm going to have to stop them there. They just used "epic" twice in two consecutive sentences. And look, if you've ever read my blog before, you know it's rife with errrors. But this is just the internet and nobody's paying me. Payne and McKay are professional writers working for one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. Did Amazon not spring for proofreaders?  Sorry, I don't mean to be so negative. Maybe the show will be great...probably not, but maybe...

I don't know, between the unimaginative title, and writers's description being full of lore and world building instead of character or story, I just don't have a good feeling about it. And not for nothing, but Tolkien's family famously disapproved of the Peter Jackson films on the grounds that they felt J. R. R. would have objected. One can only imagine how he'd feel about a company that drives bookstores out of business churning out a CG-heavy cash-grab prequel to his work.

Pictured: noted British fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien, 
is almost certainly spinning in his grave like a lathe.