Elon Musk believes JRR Tolkien will be "turning in his grave" over Amazon Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series.

The first two episodes of The Rings of Power debuted Sept 2 on Prime Video to mostly positive reviews from critics and 25 million global viewers during their first 24 hours available to stream, making it the best performance for an Amazon original ever.

The Tesla CEO and founder, however, wasn't too impressed by the series which is based on the novel The Lord of the Rings and its appendices by Tolkien and is set thousands of years before the events in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit stories. 

"Tolkien is turning in his grave," Musk tweeted. 

In a follow-up tweet, he added, "Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice."

In The Rings of Power series, Galadriel is played by Morfydd Clark. The character was previously portrayed by Cate Blancett in Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning movie trilogy.

It comes as no surprise to see Musk attacking the Amazon-produced series: Musk and Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos have been business rivals for several years. 

The moguls'  rivalry currently extends to their competing spaceflight businesses, Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin. They have often blasted each other's operations. 

Musk's tweets drew backlash from many Twitter users, including fantasy author Neil Gaiman.

When asked by a fan to weigh in on Musk's slight, The Sandman creator tweeted, “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.”  

The Rings of Powers series drops new eps every Friday; it'll end its eight-ep first season run on Oct 14. — BANG SHOWBIZ

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos