The Rings of Power (Prime)

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.

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.

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New reveals in today's Vanity Fair article:

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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).

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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.

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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.

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.

"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.