That's not at all how I saw it. It's a major plot point that the Numenorians have hated elves for generations. The foreigner who came there with the elf immediately tried to steal his way into the a guild, but fails and gets into an ugly fight (a scab basically). He's consistently shown as very unsympathetic before and after this.
After that fight the plebs basically have a "build the wall" rally, and a nobleman calms them down by assuring everyone that they are babies for losing their shit over a single elf, which you could read as the writers attempting a critique of racism. But this is also a fantasy universe where I'm pretty sure elves are strictly superior to humans in every way so analogies are weird.
I think Bezos is smart enough to not only broadcast blatant propaganda, but honestly the scenes here were kind of incoherent so idk.
As much as I liked the LOTR trilogy, the elves were given more favoritism than even the original source material. Legolas effortlessly outdrinking Gimli is the most glaring example. One of the basic plot points of the Hobbit novel was that wood elves got blasted on wine and that helped Bilbo sneak around to free the dwarves.
was that wood elves got blasted on wine
yeah, elf wine, who knows what they put in that stuff
Erm well akshually it was wine from the ahem hills of Dorwinion which was almost certainly populated by descendants of the Edain
human snork wine reigns superior
Unless I somehow missed that part each time I read the books, the point still stands that elves didn't have magic alcohol immunity powers and there wasn't any particular scene I can recall where elves outdrank dwarves just to show how power fantasy indulgent they were.
Unless I somehow missed that part each time I read the books
nah I was joking
Lol the noble only diffused the situation by outdoing the racism of the mob (and buying drinks). He basically said “I give you my word no elf will ever work here, this place will stay in control of humans!”
I agree though the politics are a bit incoherent
What stood out to me is framing the bad Numenoreans as racist isolationists instead of racist imperialists and framing the good Numenoreans as interventionists instead of just friends to the elves.
