I thought it was really clear in the Silmarillion that they were elves taken captive by morgoth and corrupted through torture. So like there's obviously a sympathetic way to approach this.
The Silmarillion is like fifty percent t Christopher Tolkien piecing things together. The guy changed his mind a few times regarding orcs and became more sympathetic to them each time but to work that in Christopher would have to change a lot of the silmarilliom to match. In lord of the rings itself (the books) You do get examples of orcs talking among themselves and they are intelligent, have independent goals and ideas and different cultures based on where they come from. The orcs guarding Cirith Ungol talk about how they hate their boss and would rather be back in the mountains just being normal bandits.
Definitely, I'm not arguing against that. I think its good that people are consciously moving away from the evil races trope. I just don't think what Tolkien thought about it one way or the other is that important.
I thought it was really clear in the Silmarillion that they were elves taken captive by morgoth and corrupted through torture. So like there's obviously a sympathetic way to approach this.
The Silmarillion is like fifty percent t Christopher Tolkien piecing things together. The guy changed his mind a few times regarding orcs and became more sympathetic to them each time but to work that in Christopher would have to change a lot of the silmarilliom to match. In lord of the rings itself (the books) You do get examples of orcs talking among themselves and they are intelligent, have independent goals and ideas and different cultures based on where they come from. The orcs guarding Cirith Ungol talk about how they hate their boss and would rather be back in the mountains just being normal bandits.
Definitely, I'm not arguing against that. I think its good that people are consciously moving away from the evil races trope. I just don't think what Tolkien thought about it one way or the other is that important.