That looks like a deliberate use of "The Rings of Power" in the title, when as far as I know Tolkien never wrote anything with that title. The article doesn't point exactly which parts are "The Rings of Power" that Tolkien wrote, yet a big part of it is about the Amazon show (of that exact title), and comparing the inspiration of the book to the inspiration of the show. So, my only conclusion is that this is deliberate misdirection to make it sound like Tolkien actually wrote the Amazon show in some way.
I think the opposite is true. It really seems like the show runners and writers at Amazon really, really dislike Tolkien. They don't like him, or his stories, so they decided to change it substantially, and anyone who is familiar with the stories (as many are, since the whole point of buying the IP is that there is an existing fanbase) can immediately feel on the first episode.
They're going to have to do a lot of coping and begging. Why is anyone surprised that if you serve steaks at a vegetarian restaurant the customers will be unhappy? Either adapt Tolkien faithfully or create your own IP.
>They don't like him, or his stories, so they decided to change it substantially
Nah. They just didn't had the rights to anything that hasn't already been adapted. So they took parts from here and there and made up their own. It is "inspired by Tolkien stories" but not "based on a Tolkien story".
They did have a license to LotR, and cite the Appendices of LotR as what it's adapted from in the show credits. It radically departs from these to the point where there's really nothing in common other than a few character names and the idea that some people made some Rings.
Tolkien did not write that much on the Second Age - of course most of the story would have to be made up! Even including all Tolkien writings, the Appendices of LotR still constitute probably the biggest source on the SA. I don't expect anyone thought they could do otherwise. But rather than filling out the outlines of a story, the writers chunked it in the trash and made their own thing with the same label. (And frankly, the writing is not very good, particularly for a billion-dollar show. It's watchable, but nobody is ever going to mistake it for a tour-de-force masterpiece. The writing is the quality you'd expect from a low-budget scifi channel show.)
I don't see anything necessarily wrong with that[1], but I am puzzled why people seem determined to defend it as "they did everything they could." They definitely did not, they made a creative decision. Probably the best thing to do for someone who likes Tolkien is to regard this as someone filming their AU fanfic and to come into it with zero expectations.
[1] The thing that is wrong with it is that Tolkien would have hated it, as he would have the movies. I do find this very depressing. But I don't think a series that Tolkien would have liked could have been made in 21st century America, so I didn't come in expecting that.
I think the opposite is true. It really seems like the show runners and writers at Amazon really, really dislike Tolkien. They don't like him, or his stories, so they decided to change it substantially, and anyone who is familiar with the stories (as many are, since the whole point of buying the IP is that there is an existing fanbase) can immediately feel on the first episode.
They're going to have to do a lot of coping and begging. Why is anyone surprised that if you serve steaks at a vegetarian restaurant the customers will be unhappy? Either adapt Tolkien faithfully or create your own IP.