“Haven’t you wondered what else is out there?”
After what seems like the entire length of the First and Second Age combined, Amazon has finally released the first footage from the forthcoming series THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER.
Following multiple title teasers, 23 posters of torsos, clues left in Elvish and a Vanity Fair article filled with images, Middle-earth returns to our screens for the first time since Peter Jackson’s 2014 film, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
Taking place prior to the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it is due to launch on Prime Video on 2 September 2022.
What we’ve learned
For a site that has an ongoing column called The Read Goes Ever On, a series of articles about the various books by J.R.R. Tolkien, this trailer clearly excites me.
We already knew that the series would take place during the Second Age of Middle-earth which, despite the title of the series, takes place in a period thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings. The period was first chronicled (at least in print) in The Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and fleshed out in the posthumous published The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
During this age, Middle-earth sees the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron and the rise and fall of the ill-fated island kingdom of Númenor. The Second Age came to an end with the last alliance of Men and Elves to defeat Sauron (as dramatically recounted in the opening to Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring).
Showrunner Patrick McKay, working alongside fellow newcomer JD Payne, intriguingly pondered how far they could stray from this source material in that Vanity Fair interview: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?” Which is slightly alarming if you’re a purist, or feel that Tolkien’s text are sacrosanct. Surely this is the realm of fan fiction? Yet that seems to be the point of the series, an enthusiastic enterprise made by and for fans.
So, when we join this trailer we get a sense of just how much they are trying to tackle. Opening with a shot of what we assume is Númenor, it’s a whirlwind tour through the the gorgeous New Zealand locales and CG enhanced visions of hitherto unfilmed portions of Middle-earth.
With 22 stars and multiple story lines, it’s clear that at least several of these folks are brand new to the story. We’re familiar with Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), of course, but here we see the latter as a warrior, or clinging to the side of an ice wall. We know of Durin’s folk from meeting Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit, and the remnants of their empire in Khazad-dûm from The Fellowship of the Ring. Here we see them live as we meet Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV and the new character of the dwarven princess Disa, played by Sophia Nomvete. Speaking of Hobbits, their Second Age forerunners the harfoots (harfeet?) will serve a role in there somewhere, as perhaps evidenced by the tiny hand being held in the final shot of the trailer.
The other intriguing new characters we catch a glimpse of are silvan elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) who is in a forbidden relationship with Bronwyn, a human village healer played by Nazanin Boniadi. It’s an interesting reversal on the lay of Beren and Lúthien (or even Arwen and Aragorn if you prefer a Third Age reference).
As a teaser trailer, we only get glimpses of these things. Yet this trailer puts to bed any doubts we may have had about the scale of this ‘television’ fantasy adaptation. Or as the trailer says, “There’s wonders in this world beyond our wandering. I can feel it.”
