Elon Musk Has Started Beef With Jeff Bezos Over The Men In ‘The Rings Of Power’
"Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice."
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has recently given his two cents on Amazon’s new television series The Rings of Power, writing that “Tolkien is turning in his grave” on Twitter.
Musk, who appears to be cosplaying as Kendall Roy from the HBO show Succession in his efforts to extricate himself from a $44 billion-dollar deal to purchase Twitter, recently lashed at his competitor Jeff Bezos’ very expensive fantasy prequel The Rings of Power.
“Tolkien is turning in his grave,” Musk said in a post on Twitter, continuing to add that “Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice.”
While we all probably presumed the man famous for his pledge to colonise mars would prefer sci-fi to fantasy, the tech billionaires’ comments have raised the hackles of other writers with skin in the game including American author Neil Gaiman.
Elon Musk doesn’t come to me for advice on how to fail to buy Twitter, and I don’t go to him for film, TV or literature criticism. https://t.co/WpyXhQlqIh
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) September 6, 2022
Recalibrating the object of his scorn, Musk later went on to attack Twitter itself by pointing out how many bots had seemingly been attracted to his criticism.
And 90% of my comments are bots 🤖 pic.twitter.com/A7RKyNJZoR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 5, 2022
For context, Musk previously tried to use the subject of bots on Twitter as a bargaining technique in the failed $44 billion takeover. Accusing the company of obfuscating the real number of spam and bot accounts on the platform, Musk officially rescinded his offer to buy the company back in July.
Musk’s comments about the portrayal of male characters in the series echo the criticism from neck-beards and man-children across the internet, who have busied themselves by plastering negative comments en mass on promotional material for the show, angry at the racially diverse characters appearing in the series among other things.