The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

Hm!

https://deadline.com/2021/09/the-lord-of-the-rings-composer-howard-shore-score-amazon-tv-series-middle-earth-jrr-tolkien-1234839274/

I hope it happens! I wonder if he’d need to do it ‘shop’ style? It’s bound to be a pretty furious pace. I mean obviously he is renowned for composing on a vast scale but he’s always had the luxury of time.

News to delight dmac's heart! Or not.

https://tvline.com/2022/01/19/lord-of-the-rings-series-title-the-rings-of-power-amazon-teaser-video/

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

The key info as such, which is in line with everything else we've heard:

“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics,” showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay said in a statement. “Up until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”

Per Payne and McKay, the series “unites all major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age,” including the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor (the island of men from which Aragorn is descended) and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men (chronicled in the prologue of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring)....

Rings of Power, which premieres Friday, Sept. 2 with new episodes released weekly, takes place in the Second Age — thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings — and follows an ensemble of familiar and new characters as they “confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth,” aka Sauron.

And we're into character poster time -- sort of. Just closeups like these but no actors' faces shown nor identity given. But read through the thread.

pic.twitter.com/K4CWKXospb

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 3, 2022

Or rather the feed, looks like it's a bunch of mini-threads.

What’s the latest on a composer? Anything to the Shore rumors?

No further word on that yet.

Cue the Annie L. photo spreads. Maybe.

We hear Middle-earth is quite nice this time of year. Big news tomorrow, 8 AM ET. ⚔️

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 10, 2022

Also related (and provides some further clarity on how this deal hashed out in the first place)

An array of movie, merchandising, gaming and live event rights to #LordOfTheRings, #TheHobbit and other titles from author J.R.R. Tolkien are coming up for auction now that the Saul Zaentz Co. has decided to sell its Tolkien holdings. https://t.co/1HYaAQ2a4U

— Variety (@Variety) February 9, 2022

Said VF piece up and running!

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/amazon-the-rings-of-power-series-first-look

(Among other things the fact that Ismael Cruz Córdova and Nazanin Boniadi will be playing a hot-as-fuck couple onscreen is a good idea, really.)

*cautious excitement intensifies*

ppl on reddit are complaining about Blond Elrond and the elf ears being too pointy, because of course they are. I think everything looks fantastic, especially those nomad guys carrying antlers? dragon spines? on their backs. My main fear is that this is going to be overstuffed with incidental plots and characters a la GoT. I mean, I know that's typical of the genre, but I can see it easily going awry.

Ultimately they had to expand it out a bit with such characters because otherwise it's a fairly dry and detailless series of events, cataclysmic as they are. (The more so because, in a further instance of the Tolkien rights being as confusing as hell, it seems that they could draw from the appendices but not the published Akallabeth, though we'll see, I guess. Overstuffed, though...a definite possibility.

they should get the rights to akallabeth

Hope I live long enough for Turin Turambar live action.

Agreed, I wanna see some First Age action...maybe there'll be some flashbacks in this? There was that shot of the two trees a while back.

Well this is all tied up with the murky sense of the rights, again. I suggest reading both the Variety piece I linked a few posts up as well as crosschecking the relevant passages in the VF piece; it's almost impossible to easily summarize. (It's been over fifty years of sheer unclarity, really; the fact that the Rankin-Bass Hobbit exists alone is retrospectively very damned weird.) If, as is entirely possible, Amazon buys the Zaentz-held rights, then the possibilities for First Age adaptations seem to get stronger. Seem, though. Right now, that Two Trees shot strikes me as either concept art or a Galadriel flashback, as she's the only major character in Middle-earth left at that point who was there and remembers them.

Ned, you are harshing my Fingolfin death scene jones.

didn't read the VF piece but the photos give me a better vibe than the WOT ones did

i think i'm interested in this series bc i'm a bit "keep your mitts off!" vis-a-vis screen adaptations of my beloved Hobbit/LOTR (i'd rather have the world of my imagination), but i'm tickled by people playing in the sandbox of the appendices and deep lore that i'm not so personally attached to. hope it's good!

Ned, you are harshing my Fingolfin death scene jones.

Sorry, just being blunt here. Could it happen one day? Perhaps. Will it? We'll have to see. (My cohost Oriana's deepest creative dream is to write a Silmarillion adaptation of some sort.)

Sean's point is equivalent to something I was saying to my podcast cohosts as well -- while I would prefer the long arc of history here, say irregular seasons set across thousands of years (could happen, wish they tried it!), them openly saying they're compacting everything into a short period of time is both understandable and clear enough going in that I don't have to feel like it's a 'true' adaptation, instead a collation that might work in its own right.

as she's the only major character in Middle-earth left at that point who was there and remembers them.

maybe there'll be a subplot about maglor wandering the shores and singing his sorrow

A vision.

Nazanin Boniadi god I love her

say irregular seasons set across thousands of years (could happen, wish they tried it!),

yeah would be so interesting. you would definitely understand more of how elves view the world.

My cohost Jared said as much -- how fascinating would be the perspective of the 'long defeat' from those who are experiencing it that way.

After watching Foundation I think anyone would be scared off thousands of years of time spans. It's just so hard for it not to feel disjointed, to lose emotional investment in characters and struggle with any real arcs.

Yeah Foundation was the easy comparison point for me in terms of what’s happening here. As such, going more linear and not having to rely on genetic clones and suspended animation is a plus.

The three of us on the podcast are currently in 'hmmm' mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7v1hIkYH24

Any idea what the creature is at 0:40?

No idea. We're guessing troll. Better not be balrog (and probably isn't, seems too small).

Baby Balrog?

There’s a vision.

ned, is that a good “hmm” or bad “hmm”? i’m a bit nervous about how sheen and plastic everything looked when compared to the lived-in sets and costume designs of the jackson trilogy. i guess the world was younger.

also kinda odd that they didn’t stack the deck with a couple respected character actors. there are no mckellens, lees, or weavings among the cast here…

I partly blame the TV settings, since for once "sports mode" or whatever made sense, but I got serious It's All Too Much (Yet Not Enough) "Hobbit" vibes from the commercial. I'm also tired of giant CGI monsters lunging and roaring. That's the CGI monster equivalent of the heavy cracking his neck before the big fight.

yeah not an impressive trailer
with tolkien i always hope for "vibe" over action

I hate the fast cuts where you have to pause just to make out what's happening.

Feels like it's designed for frame-by-frame Twitter analysis more than anything.

eh. my enthusiasm for everything is at an all time low. I imagine I'll watch the first episode of this and see if I care enough to stick with it.

Feels like it's designed for frame-by-frame Twitter analysis more than anything.

Why, funny you should say that!

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-lord-of-the-rings-teaser-trailer-amazon

with tolkien i always hope for "vibe" over action

This is kinda what our collective 'hmm' was, answering voodoo chili in turn. I have to keep reminding myself that 1) this is the first time that the vast majority of people even learned this was happening, so deep lore wonkery wasn't going to be first and foremost and 2) given most of whatever narrative has been created has been done out of whole cloth there's a lot that we just have no idea was. But yeah, we're exactly thrilled at the idea of Galadriel being a warrior/general just so they can have their own Eowyn or whatever, especially per the one shot. To sean's point: our favorite moment was, honestly, that long shot of (presumably) a human and a harfoot/hobbit clasping hands at the end. If that really is a key vibe, we'll take it at least.

also kinda odd that they didn’t stack the deck with a couple respected character actors.

It's got a fair clutch of interesting names but you're correct the cast skews young. Here's the core cast as is known, though only a few of the roles have been stated yet:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7631058/fullcredits/cast

A couple of craggier figures here and there but not entirely.

But yeah, we're exactly thrilled

Missing a key word there! NOT exactly thrilled. Distinctly unthrilled.

Based on that VF breakdown, there's a lot more questions we have, honestly. If it's a compressed timeline, it's unclear whether they've essentially moved everything 'backward' to the middle of the Second Age or 'forward' to the end of it, and the descriptions make it seem more like the former? Which...okay, I can kinda buy it but I need to get a clearer idea of things.

This bit, honestly, I do like; I was wondering what her singing shot was about and this is an interesting riff:

Elrond receives a much warmer welcome from Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete,) Durin IV's wife—and a perhaps even more beloved figure amid the plentiful song, light, and food of their underground realm. She is virtually the embodiment of that goodwill and prosperity.

A shot of her singing is about much more than music, however. This is how the dwarves commune with the mountain they live beneath. Reverberations tell them where to dig, but also—importantly—where not to dig.

If there's one thing the "Hobbit" movies demonstrated it's that we definitely need more singing.

The dwarves accidentally stopped singing for a minute and stumbled upon Durin's Bane. Never again.

Problems problems.

About half those character posters are still not formally identified yet. Couple of guesses on them:

pic.twitter.com/Wl6RqIyTEs

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 3, 2022

Numenorean due to the sun motif, as confirmed in the trailer breakdown, and I'm willing to bet this is Ar-Pharazon, probably when he was still just a rebellious warlord nephew to the previous king.

pic.twitter.com/OXQMDIBGLW

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 3, 2022

Given the first VF piece describing Isildur as a 'young sailor,' guessing this is him. Even though he's a little more than that and all.

pic.twitter.com/33y1uFkvLU

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 3, 2022

Yeah, I think this is clear enough. (That said this whole 'stranger' plot of the guy arriving in the meteor and meeting the harfoots and whatever is making us at the podcast wonder if this is supposed to be Sauron in early Annatar mode trying to figure out what he's dealing with, and said 'stranger' has been ID'd separately:

pic.twitter.com/B2qigIMaLL

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) February 3, 2022

Anyway, keep in mind this is all happening as well, will likely need to do a separate thread at some point...

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-release-date-1235181646/

Anyway, more from the showrunners

https://httwww.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power

Trying an actual working link here!

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power

This whole thing keeps making LESS sense the more I learn about it

It’s worth remembering, if only for legal reasons, that this is not the exact same world. The production design, though similar, is not trying to match the Jackson films. For example, King Elendil’s legendary broken sword, Narsil, which debuted on one of Prime Video’s promotional posters, does not look identical to the one eventually reforged and used by Viggo Mortenson’s Aragorn in The Return of the King.

This is the closest thing to rights clarity I've read and even then:

So what did Amazon buy? “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” That takes a huge chunk of lore off the table and has left Tolkien fans wondering how this duo plans to tell a Second Age story without access to those materials. “There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay says. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that (Tolkien) ever came up with."