What is the difference between Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones? One has loads of sex, the other doesn’t.
Ok, there’s a lot more than that. One is filled with magic, whereas the other explicitly played that down. Lord of the Rings was also about building a world rich with historical lore, whereas Game of Thrones is more about politics. George RR Martin seems a lot more nihilistic than Tolkien as well.
But the level of sex in GoT is important to this story.
There is a Lord of the Rings television show coming to Amazon Prime. Set before the events of the book and film trilogy, details are still quite sparse. But fansite The One Ring has reported that casting calls have requested actors that are “comfortable with nudity,” and that there are rumours that an intimacy co-ordinator has also be sought.
There are no sex scenes in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, and neither is there any sex or nudity in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.
Of course, none of this is confirmed, but it would be a pretty fair guess that the possible addition of sex might be the producers trying to make the show more like Game of Thrones. Which would be pretty understandable since that show brought fantasy TV from something discussed primarily on messageboards to something basically everyone in the Western world watched without a hint of embarrassment.
Some Lord of the Rings fans are not happy though.
No one is asking for this. No one wants a Tolkien Game of Thrones. This is just weird as hell https://t.co/2mmZpyO6Si
— Perky Flan, Haunting Your Bones (@perfkylan) October 6, 2020
Tolkien did not spend 1048592 years world building for you to add something he never wrote into his stories. Thank Gandalf for the movies. https://t.co/2J0GTbBExw
— Catherine⁷ 🙂 (@xcatherinereads) October 6, 2020
I always loved Tolkien and hated GOT because of this – Tolkien was about mercy, the little people, and heart to me – not violence and gratuitous sex
— hemant nayak (@hemunayak711) October 6, 2020
Contrary to what the execs think, LOTR’s fanbase and GOT’s fanbase don’t really overlap, I don’t care how much of a Tolkien fanboy GRRM says he is.
Literally no one is asking for pointless sex & nudity in the Amazon LOTR series. https://t.co/R6qqTcb9Qu
— Autobot Kíli – jobot935.bsky.social (@jobot935) October 6, 2020
Nope. This is not the spirit of LOTR.
I loved GoT, but this is not Tolkien.— Kevin Risatti (@KaN_Rizzo) October 6, 2020
Some fans have pointed out that while the LOTR trilogy is basically sexless, JRR Tolkien was not afraid of going a little blue in his other works which were set in the same world.
You uh, you might wanna double check what they’re adapting vs. the Lord of the Rings. Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion have as much sex, incest, and nudity as most of the mythic cycles he took inspiration from. Tolkien was no prude.
— Hellhest (@feral_proton) October 7, 2020
The Lord of the Rings series is set to be the most expensive television show of all time, with Amazon set to spend $1 billion over five seasons. The show is planned to debut in 2021.
