The Rings of Power (Prime)
 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...-works-1054978

"The Lord of the Rings could be the next big TV adaptation

Warner Bros. Television, whose feature film counterpart produced the feature film series, is in preliminary stages of discussions for a potential TV series based on the J.R.R. Tolkien best-sellers. Amazon Studios, who has a new genre-focused push under company CEO Jeff Bezos, has emerged as a potential buyer. Amazon Studios and Warner Bros. Television declined comment.

Sources stress that a deal for a Lord of the Rings TV series is far from official. Talks are said to be focusing on rights issues with the Tolkein estate; the project has yet to even go out to search for a potential writer.

The news comes four months after Warner Bros. and the Tolkien estate settled an $80 million lawsuit after a five-year battle. That came after Warners offshoot New Line and the Tolkien estate waged a courtroom battle over profit participation from the feature film franchise that consisted of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) as well as 2013 prequel The Hobbit. The property is a multi-billion-dollar worldwide franchise.

That Amazon Studios has emerged as a potential home for the LOTR TV series comes as little surprise given the genre-focused programming bush Bezos has mandated. The retail giant and streaming platform has been on the hot-seat for its lack of a breakthrough hit, with Sharon Tal Yguado initially brought in to oversee a push for genre fare."

Re: Lord of The Rings Series
 

If you’ve seen Fellowship, you’ve seen it all.

Re: Lord of The Rings Series
 

No No No. Seems like pie in th e sky now with law suits closing down productions. Tht never works out for production companies.

The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

I am looking forward to this, but with no small amount of trepidation, mostly due to the source material they are drawing from being IMO the weaker of the Tolkien stuff.

What are they drawing from?

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

I guess I can't argue that it's weaker, but I think it's weaker more as a book than as a starting point, if that makes sense. The Silmarillion is a denser read, by design, but the underlying ideas and themes and all that are very creative and interesting and promising. The showrunners here have to fill in more blanks than they did with the films, to be sure, but the overarching stuff is just as good or maybe sometimes better.

Anyway, yeah, very much looking forward to this, even while believing/expecting there's gonna be some dumb elements to it. :laugh: But the production value is gonna be great, a lot of talented people will be involved, and there's some really potent stuff in the source, so there's tons of potential, even if it ends up kind of uneven taken as a whole.

Ah, sorry Sedai, Yoda answered my question right after I asked you. I haven’t even heard of that text, let alone read it.

I will shut up now and just be the non-intellectual sitting over here in the corner thinking “the shire is pretty, hobbits are cool”.

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

I just kept getting the feeling as I watched The Hobbit stuff, that Jackson had sort of broken the mold with the original trilogy. Hopefully this crew manages to recapture some of that same magic...


Sorry, I already occupy that corner! I am sure I can find room for some company, though...

I haven't read it yet, or at least not more than bits and bobs. But yeah it's basically the history of Middle Earth, or even really the universe as it exists. Got a whole creation story and everything.

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

The Hobbit was my favorite book growing up, and it still is my favorite. So that bastardized version we got from Jackson felt like a school kid asking for a retest after scoring a 98.

The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit is the best version, but I've seen the theatrical cuts so many times that I can't stomach watching the graininess of it.

Hopefully, this series doesn't leave an equally sour taste.

EDIT: I have still yet to watch The Hobbit: The Bible Edition, so my opinion might change if that's any better.

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

I now have a bunch of the other Tolkien books (I've had them on my Amazon wishlist and just bought them in hardcover as they cropped up on sale), including: The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Luthien, The Children of Hurin Narn/Chin Hurin.

Now I just need to find a list of the best order in which to read them (eventually). :D

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Amazon series and will definitely give it a chance (or two).

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

By the way, I found that list of reading order:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/faq/

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

I really feel like it should have been the 22nd September :lol:

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

i dunno if they gonna film cause there was few cases in nz at the moment =/

Surviving to watch this series, really looking forward to it, one of my weaknessesis is still believing/living in imaginary worlds, people escape to them when they can't see what is for what is. My expectations are low though, the book which it'll be based is hard, the green screen nowadays is over used, everything seems fake. Peter Jackson builded Hobbiton, he planted flowers and let them grow, that's why it's still a tourist attraction, I doubt Amazon producers will go through that effort, people seem to be easily impressed nowadays. Let's wait and see. To accomplish the dedication placed in The Lord of the Rings seems unimaginable to me, I don't know if people are inspired to make such thing. Lord of the Rings was said to be the movie impossible to make.

Re: The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Series)
 

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

and it works as a great 3DsMax Particle Systems plugin avert! ;)

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Am I bad for saying that I'm not bothered by this at all?
And this is coming from someone who loved The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
Found The Hobbit trilogy good to ok.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Ehhh, I liked the original LOTR trilogy. The Hobbit trilogy was disappointing but still watchable.

I'm not looking forward to this, but I may end up watching it at some time in the unforeseeable future.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Based on the title, it looks pretty certain the series will introduce Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, and tell the story of how the rings of power are made and given out. After all, we already known Galadriel has been cast and will feature in the series.



Based on the earlier promo image Amazon released, I'm also expecting some kind of opening prologue—similar to the one in Fellowship of the Ring—that explains the war with Morgoth, the destruction of the Trees of Valinor (shown in the image), etc. in order to introduce the Second Age.

I've read the showrunners are sticking close to Peter Jackson's films in terms of look/feel, tone, and aesthetic. That's a comfort. It'll be good to see the new series share some connective tissue with the film trilogy, but still stand on its own with new creators at the helm. My only concern is that they'll fall into the trap of graphic violence and sexual content, which seems to be prevalent in a lot of post-Game of Thrones fantasy/sci-fi shows. I'm cool with it when it's appropriate, but for my tastes it's definitely not appropriate for Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 2022
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhqGCPMfkNM

Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.

Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

New reveals in today's Vanity Fair article:

https://i.imgur.com/44sfcVQ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/bACVA1G.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/gR4qvfW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/c02txfi.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DLM9Ga4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/n9Ws8qW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/jxA45pd.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/reyjbe1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/jf1wKSp.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/zKA8WKW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iA5aQRk.jpg

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Cool pictures, though the talk of new characters could be trouble. Kind of already a lot of characters and, no offense, but I'm not sure they're gonna improve on the ones already there.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

I'd HATE to be the sound guy on set in that last pic. the wind coming in, the echo off those horns, constantly stabbing people after mistakenly grabbing one of those spears instead of the boom. wow. hope they got good insurance ;)

Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey (who is serving as a consultant on the Amazon series) actually addressed the addition of new characters back when the show was first announced:

Thanks, definitely interesting. :up:

Unfortunately it doesn't totally assuage my concerns, though, because I was less worried they'd alter major events (it's hard to imagine a show like this being that tone deaf these days) and more worried they'd just spend time on their own inventions rather than Tolkien's. Which, let's face it, are bound to be inferior.

Also, you can keep the surrounding events the same but still be telling ostensibly LOTR stories that don't really jibe with what Tolkien was trying to say, too. Or just co-opt his message for your own, etc.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

I'm more optimistic with that trailer. And I'm more okay with them telling offshoot stories of their own making. But there is still caution. It looks absolutely beautiful, though. That's a start, but of course beauty won't make up for terrible storytelling. So, we wait.

We've hit that point in the summer where I keep thinking "September" anything is really far away. It's only about a month and a half now.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

My problem with series like this, as well as the Fantastic Beasts franchise, is the fact that...the bad guy loses. I already know he loses. It leaves me in a state of zero emotional investment.

I think I know why you're saying this, if you mean this because it's a prequel so we know how things ultimately end. But all prequels have this issue, and yet I don't typically let that bother me. If the series is well written, the writers are banking on you knowing these things and they work with it. Case in point: Better Call Saul. I watch that amazing series knowing exactly what happens to Saul later in Breaking Bad. But it in no way lessens the experience of that prequel. In fact, I know they work with that certain knowledge, and it's fascinating to watch just how Jimmy morphs into Saul and spirals downward.

I'm not sure how far back The Rings of Power goes as a prequel, or whether they hope to piece it together to then fit in with the beginning of the first Hobbit movie, but if it's well done, knowing things coming later shouldn't deter from the experience of this series.

I hope. :)

https://youtu.be/uYnQDsaxHZU

Doesn't look that bad. Will give it a watch, when it comes out.

Meanwhile, everyone is predictably making the Eminem Sauron joke on the Internet.

I saw the first two episodes earlier today at a special theater screening.

So far, it's wonderful. This series has a lot of heart and was clearly crafted with great care. It also very definitely has the vibe of the Peter Jackson films, but on a grander and more immersive scale. Middle-earth continues to feel both breathtakingly vast and yet lovingly intimate at the same time.

I'm sure purist fanboys will complain about the close-cropped haircuts and POC characters, but even those gripes miss the bigger picture. This is a fantasy world you're meant to get lost in. You'll have more fun if you take the plunge.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

After two episodes, it's not as bad as I expected. Sure, it feels more like a run-of-the-mill fantasy world from D&D than Tolkien's MIddle-Earth, but if you can forget the source material, it may end up being a decent watch. It saddens me to see such mistreatment of Tolkien, and I hate how his name is only a marketing tool for Amazon, but the first two episodes didn't ruin my day (the first was rather decent, actually, but the second was definitely worse).

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

I guess I could only hold out for so long...

My wife and I watched the first episode last night, and it was pretty awesome. I was pulled out of the story a couple of times by annoyances, but overall, at least in this episode, the show did a lot right. The Harfoot stuff is fun, with a quirky cleverness to their society that I enjoyed, the vistas and effects are all top notch, and most of the characters are well-played so far.

Galadriel is a bit of a Mary Sue so far, which I guess I kind of expected, but the girl playing her is fine, and hopefully they have her go through some failures and hardship in the future. I was also annoyed by the kid in the tavern who seems to only exist to be a racist in the show. Really ham-fisted and obvious - subtlety would go a long way here - you don't need a character gesticulating wildly while yelling "You People!!" to get the idea across.

Lastly, on the so-called "Woke agenda" complaints I have seen leveled at the show: I am just not seeing it here, at least so far. Much ado about nothing, perhaps? At this point, people saying everything is woke is starting to annoy me just as much as stuff that is actually woke.

Anyhoo, will continue to watch this for now! The show runners have done a fine job at recapturing the magic of the films, delivering what looks to be a well-drawn fantasy world populated with interesting characters and nasty antagonists.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Eh, I dunno if it's "purist" to not want a property you love twisted beyond recognition for some other end. It's purist to freak out over some tiny change, not to disapprove of a major shift in tone or focus.

My theory is that it looks irrational to anyone who doesn't love the source material, but that those people almost always have their own treasured stories that they'd react the same way to if something similar happened. It's kind of like how someone can love Star Trek and think people who love Harry Potter are dorks. Everybody's a dork about something, everybody's protective of something, and any time you see someone Mad Online about something you don't care about it looks nuts. There but for the Grace of God go you...

That said, obviously when something like this becomes a proxy for all sorts of other cultural of political issues, reviews and reactions online completely cease to be useful. Nobody's going in "clean" and very few people are able (willing?) to step outside of that and try to judge the thing itself. This includes people who feel an inclination to defend it just to counterbalance the people who are excessively annoyed by it. Tribalism all the way down.

I'd never give up on a show with this kind of potential after a couple of episodes, though, regardless, unless it was just horrendously bad. But it does seem like it's going to be impossible for a show like this to be great if it doesn't really "get" the core of Tolkien's work and his beliefs, which are woven into the show in a way that cannot be removed by any TV surgeon without killing the patient. Just making something that looks like the movies isn't going to cut it, no pun intended.

But I will give this a shot, because of that potential, because I fancy myself the kind of person who can mostly step outside of the culture war jib-jab stuff and try to see it for whatever it is. It will get a chance to surprise me. We'll see if it does.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

Hmmmm. Maybe I need to give it another chance.

I watched about 45 minutes of the first episode last night and was fairly underwhelmed. The FX are good, costumes, imagery also good, but the whole thing seemed flat emotionally, actors just reciting lines with nice costumes. I have to admit that I think I'm used up on the whole Middle Earth thing. When they started inserting contemporary cultural attitudes about casting into it, it went down another notch and became like a TV ad campaign for coffee or fast food. At this point, there's just not enough appeal to make me invest the time in another LOTR iteration.

At least, if it were a conventional movie, I'd be in and out in an evening, like it or not. With this thing, we will get multiple episodes, spaced out in time, occupying a lot of my time, hoping that episode 7, or whatever, will finally grab me. I just don't see anything in episode one that makes me want to devote the time, only to be disappointed, especially if they never finish the intended series.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

"Lastly, on the so-called "Woke agenda" complaints I have seen leveled at the show: I am just not seeing it here, at least so far. Much ado about nothing, perhaps? At this point, people saying everything is woke is starting to annoy me just as much as stuff that is actually woke"

Having lived through several iterations of "woke agenda", political correctness, color blind or whatever is the current euphemism, it's interesting to speculate what would happen if there were a Gone With the Wind remake in which Mammy was a white man, due to color and gender blindness. Isn't the whole point of Mammy that she's an African American female slave in the ante-bellum South?

Something similar comes into all of these LOTR spinoffs. Tolkien wrote his books as a fictional mythology of northern Euro culture. All of the cultural artifacts and costumes in the movies look like that too, especially the look of the elves. I recognize much of the look as being like artifacts from my own nordic paternal ancestors, none of it like my mediterranean maternal semitic ancestors. That's fine. It is what it is. It's not a coffee commercial where you want to appeal to all of the slots in the swath of culture. I honestly don't know where you go with this, how to appeal to the marketers that want broader cultural links, but I do know that since it doesn't look all that engaging anyway, I doubt that this series is the one that will fix the world's ethnic issues with casting decisions

Agreed. Perhaps it is just my particular YouTube filter bubble, but on this particular show, I had seen multiple thumbnails float by decrying the total decimation of the LotR mythos in regards to this show. Rhetoric such as "Rings of Power is Abysmal! Goes woke and goes Broke!" or things of that nature. I don't click on this stuff, but it at least had me wondering if the show was a train wreck, which so far, it isn't. I presume the stuff appears on my feed in general because I do tend to watch some fairly right-leaning programming on the platform, and perhaps that is their target audience with all this stuff.

I try to avoid hit pieces on stuff I haven't seen yet, if only to avoid potential spoilers. Considering this show, and a week or two ago the Predator prequel Prey, I am thinking most of this stuff is clickbait, perhaps posted by people who haven't even seen the material in question.

The unfortunate thing about these comments is that often they ARE from people who have attitudes, are ignorant and often are quite unintelligent. They are not comments you'll see here, but you will see on the huge torrent of bile, Facebook, but I've seen some from people that I actually "know" and they approach these movies as though they are additional books in the New Testament. It's important to them that their characters not violate the rules that they believe in, that it all fulfill their version of the story. I don't get it, but I do see it.

For the record, for me, it's just a movie, not the fulfillment of my view of the universe. I've seen thousands of them, this is yet another.

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

I'm enjoying it so far, cultural additions or changes notwithstanding.

If I hadn't been exposed to those same "Woke! Oh no!" headlines before watching--if I could have actually gone in without any outside bits coming into my brain--I would likely have thought to myself early on, "Oh, look, some of the early hobbits are different colors." Or, "That's interesting--a Black elf."

Then I would have completely forgotten it and continued watching, since that really doesn't seem to factor into my viewing decisions much if it's done by casting directors but doesn't otherwise need to be part of the story. (In other words, there aren't racial/color tensions in this show. The "races" aren't all humans of different colors. They're different races of *creatures* and colors within their ranks are varied. I'm okay with that.)

I do love the source material, and I'm sure Tolkien would say a lot about the European influences that don't seem to be there as much in this new series... but I'm enjoying it, and I'm happy to be back in the LOTR world in general. So sue me. :D

Re: The Rings of Power (Amazon Series)
 

This far:

As a Tolkien adaptation: 0/5
As generic run-of-the-mill fantasy mumbo-jumbo: 2.5/5

The first episode is still the high point. I really hope they manage to stop the slide.

I started the first episode of this series when it first came out, and got quickly bored, so I stopped watching. Heard much good and bad about it. When seeing its nominated for various Emmys I decided to give it another go.

And Im glad I did! I must have been in a bad mindspace when first viewing it years ago. Yes it starts slow but the best stories mostly do. It's beautiful. As impressive visually in its own way as Foundation is on Apple TV+. Just starting season 1 episode 2

Both of these shows trash the source material so much, I just couldn't get myself to enjoy either one. I agree they both look amazing, but all that glitters is not gold. They both feel like big money production fan fiction written by people who have a deep disdain for the original material.

Ugh! I got the exact opposite impression. They seemed to put more thought and care into this spinoff than most all of the endless spinoffs churned out the past 10 years from other genres.

I thought the The Rings of Power weren't based off any direct source material but picked up a bit here and there and clumped it together. I haven't read any of the books but my son did loan me The Silmarrillion.

I read the first paragraph and it sounded so much like The Bible.

Finished the first season and I enjoyed it. I think the detractors are just taking the original source material way too seriously.

What about all the iterations of Star Trek, and the multiple preludes done? Even Zac Snyders Watchmen took some minor liberties. My favorite book is Shogun, but I thoroughly enjoyed the 10 part series which did some tweaks too. The Interview with the Vampire novels got tweaked with the masterfully done AMC series. What about Game of Thrones?

Black elves, black dwarves, Geladriel a widow....really?! Thats what everyone's so bent about?! I've seen horrible bastardizations done to some classic MARVEL stories in the films lately, at least Rings Of Power puts some thought into their tweaking, and I get no impression they treat JRR Tolkeins work as a rag.

Re: The Rings of Power (Prime)
 

Wait, Galadriel a widow? The young elf who dies early in the show is her brother, not her husband. :)

But mostly I agree with you. I love the Tolkien universe so I am glad to still be able to be "in" it. Since you haven't watched season 2 episodes yet, I'll refrain from saying what I think.... Let's just say they introduce a character who, to me, was VERY welcome to see and the actor is putting a real face on the character for me. <3

Yes that character was her brother, but she mentioned later on in season 1 that she was married and her husband killed too. Then I saw a Meme from LOTR making fun of ROP with Galadriel saying she's a widow with her husband standing next to her, "Uh, I'm right here." lol

Somehow I missed that! So seriously, she's a widow? Why is she more obsessed with her brother's death than her husband's? (Rhetorical question.) :D