Rings of Power

The prologue that opens Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring explains the rise of the villainous Sauron, his creation of ...

“It was an extensive jigsaw puzzle of facial hair,” hair and makeup head Jane O'Kane says of Arthur's transformation. The team included makeup and hair artist ...

The first taste of Prime Video's long-awaited, big-budget series reveals one of the most captivating fantasy worlds in TV history.

Bezos thanked showrunners Patrick McKay and John D. Payne for ignoring his notes on the series.

The billionaire said he received the directive from his Tolkien-obsessed son after Amazon paid $250 million for the rights to make 'Lord of the Rings' ...

The Rings of Power is a sprawling epic set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings. Here is when and where you can watch it.

The rest of the season will be released on subsequent Fridays at 12 a.m. The first two episodes of The Rings of Power will be available to stream for Prime Video subscribers on Sept. [Prime Video](https://www.denofgeek.com/amazon-prime-video/) series [The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-timeline-key-events-story-theories/) is set during the Second Age of Arda in the fictional world created by J.R.R. in the UK in an effort to premiere the series at the same time across the globe. According to Amazon Studios, this epic series 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, [and] hope hung by the finest of threads.” Most people are only familiar with the lands of Middle-earth that we see in Peter Jackson’s [The Hobbit](https://www.denofgeek.com/the-hobbit/) and [The Lord of the Rings](https://www.denofgeek.com/lord-of-the-rings/) trilogies, but according to [Prime Video’s official synopsis](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09QHCPD34/ref=atv_hm_hom_1_c_ZWyNDQ_liepb9_1_1), this sprawling epic is set to take viewers “from the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests 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.” Payne and Patrick McKay more freedom to expand this world while still staying true to the source material. 2 at 2 a.m. The series is not based on its own novel, but rather on the Appendices found in Tolkien’s work, giving showrunners J.D. Here is when and where you can watch it. The Rings of Power is a sprawling epic set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Release Time and Episode Count

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appeared that the London premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power this week and offered some choice words.

Social media reactions to the first two episodes have arrived, and people are [very excited about it.](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/lotr-rings-of-power-social-media-reactions-are-very-positive/1100-6506832/) McKay and Payne had minimal credits before coming aboard The Rings of Power, and Bezos acknowledged that some people "questioned the choice" of hiring them. "My kid is a huge Tolkien fan and after Amazon got involved he came up to me, looked me in the eye and said, 'Dad, please don't f*ck this up.'" "Every showrunners' dream is to get notes on early scripts and cuts from the Executive Chairman; they just love that," he joked. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power "I want to thank you both for listening whenever it helped but mostly I need to thank you for ignoring me at exactly the right times."

Among the many familiar elements in the Prime Video series coming Sept. 2 is the dwarf stronghold of Khazad-dûm. If you've watched Peter Jackson's classic Lord ...

The Rings of Power takes place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Frodo and friends ever thought about leaving the Shire. This is the challenge The Rings of Power faces. Instead, these elements do a lot of heavy lifting in settling the viewer into this complex story. The first two episodes alone serve up a feast of sweeping shots over snowy mountains, open plains and painfully gorgeous elven architecture. Judging from screeners of the first two episodes provided by Prime Video, The Rings of Power makes a steady return to Middle-earth, offering all the things that endeared the originals to so many of us those many years ago: the breathtaking vistas, the latex prosthetics and even the occasional bouts of ponderous dialogue delivered to some point on the horizon. If you've watched Peter Jackson's classic Lord of the Rings film trilogy, you've visited Khazad-dûm as a terrifying tomb littered with skeletons, festooned with cobwebs and policed by a particularly nasty fire demon.

What's a harfoot? And when is Amazon's TV prequel set in the "Lord of the Rings" timeline? We have answers to all your questions about the show.

"That tension is always there, especially with the rise of Sauron." "It's beautiful to see groups of beings overcoming the things that stand between them as obstacles, and coming together for each others' greater good." After the War of Wrath, the humans who fought with the elves were gifted the island of Númenor. "We get to see it in full swing," executive producer Lindsey Weber says. "The serenity and wisdom that we see in Cate Blanchett's wonderful portrayal (in Jackson's movies) is hard-earned. Although the actor can't yet share the significance of the broken sword, he teases that he prepared for the role by researching original trilogy characters such as Boromir: men whose "minds get corrupted." They're just trying to manage and stay ahead of any danger that might be coming toward them," and are still trying to find a permanent home. "It's this great narrative of the forging of the rings of power, the rise of Sauron, the epic of Númenor – the island kingdom of men – and the last alliance and battle between elves and men and Sauron and his forces. Although the elves believe that evil was eradicated in the war, Galadriel is convinced there are still dark forces in Middle-earth, and she sets out to avenge her brother's death. "But from what we know about Tolkien, evil is always right around the corner." "The question the first season asks is, 'How far into the darkness would you go to protect the things that matter the most?' " During the Second Age, the elves forged 19 magical rings: three for themselves, seven for the dwarves and nine for the leaders of men.

'The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power' exceeded all my expectations and laid most of my doubts to rest. It's a truly magnificent return to Middle-earth ...

It captures the spirit of The Lord of the Rings the same way Peter Jackson captured it in his adaptation of Tolkien’s books—and better, I’d argue, than his Hobbit trilogy. I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks of the show! Over all of this we hear the swelling orchestral melodies of a score so lush and beautiful, one can only listen in awe. I’ll be reviewing this show as well as HBO’s House Of The Dragon every week here [and on my YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/erikkain). The Harfoots are every bit as endearing as their cousins in Lord Of The Rings, and their homes are every bit as cozy as a Hobbit hole. Does it make something of a mess of the timeline Tolkien set out in his notes? And wandering the hills and valleys of Middle-earth are the nomadic Harfoots—Hobbits, though of the wandering variety, long before the Shire was settled in the west. Beyond just the epic grandeur of The Rings Of Power, the show’s creators have crafted characters we care about. In Khazad-dûm, the bustling mountain hall of the dwarves, we meet prince Durin (Owain Arthur) and his wife Disa (Sohpia Nomvete) and see the dwarven kingdom in all its old glory, long before it fell to ruin and fire and ancient evils. He is instantly likeable, a charming and affable contrast to the elder statesman he becomes. A mysterious stranger falls from the sky. Something is making the grass die in a remote village in the south, and turning the cows’ milk black.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has thanked 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' writers for ignoring his notes during the show's production.

Amazon's big bet on the timeless works of J.R.R. Tolkien started with a $250 million bid at an auction in 2017. Five years later, the first episodes of what ...

[according to Entertainment Weekly](https://ew.com/tv/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-character-guide/). [according to USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/07/22/lord-of-the-rings-rings-of-power-comic-con-trailer-amazon/10128600002/). “The show begins with Nori and her closest friend Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) discovering a mysterious man (Daniel Weyman), who seems to have fallen from the sky in a flaming meteor.” - Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards): We know his name, at least. In “The Rings of Power,” Isildur is “still a young man living on the island of Númenor,” (Jackson, whose “Return of the King” won a Best Picture Oscar in 2004, is not involved in “The Rings of Power” project.) The author, as explained by [Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/amazon-the-rings-of-power-series-first-look), “squeezed thousands of years of history into about 150 pages of postscript ... [Vanity Fair’](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/amazon-the-rings-of-power-series-first-look)s Anthony Breznican and Joanna Robinson wrote in February. Similarly diminutive in stature, these harfoots haven’t yet settled in the Shire, preferring instead to wander as nomads and live in close-knit communities.” There will be frightening moments, but viewers shouldn’t expect to see the sex and nudity featured in HBO’s popular fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” [appendices](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Appendices),” which appear in six parts at the end of Tolkien’s third book of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premieres Sept.

The show, a $1 billion bet that will premiere on Sept. 2, leaves its haters in the dust.

The diverse cast and various female leads elicited complaints that smacked of racism and misogyny: “It’s the disrespect to the source material that we just won’t accept,” went a representative critique. Tolkien had written as appendices to The Return of the King, there was further agitation. [Amazon Inc.](/quote/AMZN:US) acquired the [global TV rights to The Lord of the Rings franchise](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-13/amazon-to-produce-lord-of-the-rings-tv-series-with-new-plots) in 2017 for $250 million, LOTR die-hards were on edge, fretting and squabbling in Reddit chatrooms and on Twitter with concerns about plot, veracity, and execution.

A man in the background looks on while a blond woman looks toward the ground seriously. Morfydd Clark as Galadriel, with Charlie Vickers, in “The Rings of Power ...

And as for women in “The Rings of Power” — and Jackson, let’s recall, memorably put a sword in Liv Tyler’s hand in “The Fellowship of the Ring” and invented a female elf warrior, Tauriel, for his “Hobbit” movies — Galadriel is its most engaging character by far. Tolkien sold the right to adapt “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” back in 1969; in 2017, Amazon paid his estate for the rights to the appendices and any references to the Second Age in the trilogy. (I reject out of hand all arguments that employ the word “woke” or use “diversity” in a negative sense.) “The Rings of Power” does, in a few instances, too obviously adopt the language of modern American prejudice to make a point, but that is a matter of poor writing rather than a bad idea. And as in “The Lord of the Rings,” the necessary cooperation of the mutually suspicious virtuous races of Middle-earth — men, elves, dwarves and Harfoots — to battle a rising evil is a theme. (The estate is a producing partner.) It is left to the legions of fans to defend the works on the plains of social media, like Éomer and Aragorn at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. It’s true that Jeff Bezos could pay for the whole thing out of his own pocket without the slightest dent in his lifestyle, but it’s safe to assume Amazon is not in this to lose money, and in order to make back its nut— or simply not be deemed a failure — “The Rings of Power” is going to have to attract not only fans but people who have never read the books or even seen the movies. And in this respect, “The Rings of Power” is an enjoyable ride. Things have been quiet, except in the mind of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), who will grow up to be Cate Blanchett; against the common wisdom, she’s convinced that Sauron, that shadowy personification of evil, is growing in strength, and as commander of the Northern Armies she is obsessively pursuing him to the frostbound ends of Middle-earth — even as the current Elven administration is ready to pull back its defenses, proclaiming peace in their time. Doom, it is largely based on the novel’s appendices — or even whether it is in the “spirit of Tolkien,” whatever that means to any individual reader. The series is entirely conventional, but “LOTR” is itself conventional. It looks good, has a few charismatic performances that sell the characters and is all in all watchable, if something less than compelling — predictable even in the suspenseful parts, occasionally exciting and sometimes sort of boring. To judge by the vlogosphere, “force for evil” is the predominant view.

The new series is part of the expansive world created by J.R.R Tolkien across several books, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit.

Sauron, who appeared in The Lord of the Rings as a flaming red eye, is still the big bad. However, as Amazon has only acquired the rights for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, none of the stories from either Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion will feature in the new series. [Galadriel and Elrond](https://ew.com/tv/lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-character-guide/), here much younger than they appeared in the films. While his estate is known to be protective (and litigious) over the original works, Tolkien stated that he wanted In light of that, he would probably have been delighted to see his creation still so beloved and still expanding. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. Arda starts as a flat disc and evolves into something more recognisably planet-like over the course of cataclysmic events during repeated battles between forces of good and evil. In Tolkien’s world, moral courage is just as important, if not more so, than physical prowess for the enduring heroes of Middle-earth. [This article is part of Quarter Life](https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop), a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. For a newcomer to the wonderful world of Middle-earth, the universe created by the British author and academic J.R.R. Along the way, he finds a ring that gives him the power of invisibility. So if you want to watch the series and keep up with inevitable social media debates, here is a guide to this sprawling world to initiate newcomers to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Executive producer Lindsey Weber talks about where “Rings of Power” fits into J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology, and how it hopes to appeal to newbies as well as ...

Q: What is at stake in “The Rings of Power”? Were viewers like that considered when creating “The Rings of Power?” We know what the last shot of the series will be. It is the rise of the dark lord Sauron. [“The Rings of Power”] is really the length of three feature tent-pole films shot on the schedule of two for the price of one. It’s a very different time for the people of Middle-earth in the Second Age. Q: “The Rings of Power” reportedly had an enormous budget. A: The rings of power takes place in the Second Age, which is thousands of years before the events of the Third Age, which most people know — Frodo and Bilbo and all of that. It is the rise and fall of Tolkien’s Atlantis, the story of Númenor. It’s based on the appendices, which tell the story of the Second Age. New characters will be introduced, as well as younger versions of immortal characters first met in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy (which is currently streaming on HBO Max, if you’d like a refresher on this world). A: Anyone who has the Lord of the Rings books in their home already has it.

Amazon's new Lord Of The Rings TV show, The Rings Of Power, debuts on Amazon Prime Video tonight. Here's five good reasons to tune in.

Amazon has adapted the appendices to The Silmarillion, and the only way to do that and make it a palatable TV show is to make a lot of changes. Some of these mysteries include a mysterious stranger encountered by some of our heroes, who may or may not be connected to The Lord Of The Rings. I’ll be recapping each episode as we go as well, so be sure to [follow me here on this blog](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/#196d790943ab) and on It’s simply outstanding, adding layers of drama and emotion to the show that simply wouldn’t exist without it. Could he already be there right before our noses, hiding in plain sight disguised as one of the characters? The good news is that this show, at least in its first two episodes, stays faithful to Tolkien’s themes, if not the letter of his writing. The Rings Of Power is anything but cheap. Galadriel, Elrond, Durin, Bronwyn and and every other character introduced in the sprawling two-episode premiere already have my attention. Everything from the special effects to the wildly detailed costumes is extraordinary. It’s one of the best-looking TV shows I’ve ever seen. I entered a skeptic, but walked away a believer. Here are five.

Amazon's pricey, gorgeous fantasy spectacle delivers what fans expect, but it could thrive by giving them what they don't.

“Rings of Power” is spectacular on the screen, but This could make “Rings of Power” an outlier in the TV-fantasy environment post-“Game of Thrones,” whose good-guys-get-decapitated ethos was in many ways a reaction to Tolkien. But she is interesting, and that’s what “Rings of Power” will need to be, more than faithful, to sustain itself over multiple seasons. One day, fate serves one up in the form of a meteor. And in an outpost deep in human country, the elf warrior Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) nurses a forbidden crush on a mortal healer, Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), whose downtrodden neighbors picked Sauron’s side in the last war. A multiseason series can’t live in the operatic intensity of a fantasy film; it needs to build a world, evolve character and develop story arcs over time. (Númenor, the Atlantis-like kingdom of humans whose rise and fall dominates the Second Age, doesn’t even figure into the opening hours.) Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the Peter Jackson movie adaptations, to the era when the fateful magic knickknacks of the title were forged. Payne and Patrick McKay, have a Wikipedia-like mishmash of family trees and invented alphabets that describes the series’s time period, the Second Age, this way: “Of events in Middle-earth the records are few and brief, and their dates are often uncertain.” But while I am a middling-level Middle-earth-ophile (have read “The Silmarillion”; do not speak Here she’s a young, headstrong and deadly warrior, with “Crouching Tiger” moves and a conviction that Sauron, the once and future big bad, is still alive and plotting. [current fantasy competition](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/arts/television/house-of-the-dragon-review.html), a sky filled with wheeling and menacing dragons.

In order to secure the rights to make a LOTR TV show, Amazon shelled out an unprecedented US$250 million to the Tolkien Estate. (In comparison, the original ...

“We felt there was so much there that hadn’t been seen onscreen before, and we were determined to realize it in a way that had the scope and the breadth and the depth of what we feel when we read those books.” Afro Latino actor Ismael Cruz Cordova hails from Puerto Rico and is the first elf of colour in the world of the Rings. We put up cities in the middle of the woods at night, in some cases, just to house the crews so that we could get to shoot and relocations,” Weber said. “For the characters of colour on the show … “He hasn’t gone through some of the things that will make him the Elrond that we meet in the books,” Aramayo said. In the show, viewers will meet the harfoots, a race of early hobbits that feel like a slightly wilder, Celtic version of Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin. The heroism and grave mistakes made during this time will leave a legacy that is remembered as history during the LOTR. It also includes a history of the romance between Aragorn, a human, and Arwen, an elf who gives up immortality to be with her love. In a media climate rife with franchising, remakes, prequels and sequels, will Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power be able to stand out? This is a small-screen project with a vitality you’d expect of the silver screen. (In comparison, the original three Lord of the Rings movies had a budget of $281 million.) Tolkien’s books and the original movie trilogy will not be disappointed when it comes to the scope and spectacle of the show — unsurprising, considering how much Amazon Studios spent to develop it.

Amazon's “The Rings of Power” will struggle to recreate the magic of Middle-earth, a world not fit for “cinematic universe” treatment.

No wonder people say that reading “The Lord of the Rings” feels more like an experience than a book — What makes Tolkien’s work unique is the moral heart of his story and the consistency with which he maintains it. It will be because the new adaptation lacks the literary and moral depth that make Middle-earth not just another cinematic universe but a world worth saving. Many of the most popular cinematic universes have been born of visually centered mediums: “Star Wars” in film, “Star Trek” in television, and Marvel in comic books. Rowling in the “Fantastic Beasts” films, for example — is no guarantee that derivative works in a different medium will have the special qualities that made the originals successful. It evokes the flavor of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry and Old Norse sagas, giving readers the sense that they are reading something very old that has been translated by Professor Tolkien, not composed by him. (He sold the film rights in 1969 only in order to help [pay a tax bill](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tolkien-family-in-quest-for-lord-of-the-rings-tv-rights-amazon-netflix-6shrcdbsg); the television rights were [sold](https://www.polygon.com/23311153/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-hobbit-film-game-rights-embracer-group) to Amazon by his heirs.) (As a scholar of Tolkien’s works, I get regular requests to proofread tattoos that use Tolkien’s Elvish languages.) The cultural and linguistic cohesion that lends Middle-earth its magic is not so easily mimicked. So it is hard to believe that he would have approved of a team of writers building almost entirely new stories with little direct basis in his works. Tolkien’s world in the era of the “cinematic universe.” But the investment is also part of a common strategy in Hollywood: Entertainment companies seem to have decided that owning the rights to beloved works, rather than producing original stories, is the key to maximizing profits. The writing that this dynamic is particularly good at producing — witty banter, arch references to contemporary issues, graphic and often sexualized violence, self-righteousness — is poorly suited to Middle-earth, a world with a multilayered history that eschews both tidy morality plays and blockbuster gore.

“The show asks, as Tolkien did, how far you would go to protect the people and the places that you love,” says Lindsey Weber, an executive producer on the ...

“It’s not a revisiting of the Third Age story that people might have seen on film or read in the books,” Weber says, “but rather a fantastic story that stands on its own two feet.” The series is based on Tolkien’s appendices to The Lord of the Rings and follows its characters—played by a cast including Nazanin Boniadi, Benjamin Walker, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and breakout star Morfydd Clark—across six realms as they confront the reemergence of evil in Middle-earth. “He didn’t write a story about people giving up, he wrote a story about people doing the right thing. Some aspects of the series may feel familiar to fans of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films, which combined pulled in nearly $4 billion worldwide. The rumored $1 billion price tag for the project includes the $250 million Amazon laid out in 2017 to secure the rights to a selection of Tolkien’s work and the eye-popping costs of production around the globe, with nearly two dozen stars over a planned five seasons. [The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power](https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a40614268/how-to-watch-stream-lord-of-the-rings-rings-of-power/) premieres on Prime Video on September 2, the series—which tells the story of the Second Age of J.R.R. “How far into the darkness would you step if those things were being taken from you?

The A.V. Club takes a detailed look at the most important realms and lands in the new version of Middle-earth.

To Lord Of The Rings fans, it’s best-known as the realm Frodo and Bilbo sail to after the destruction of the One Ring and the fall of Sauron, and therefore basically serves within that narrative as a version of Heaven. In terms of the land itself, it’s exactly what it sounds like: A wasteland of snow and ice that’s barely habitable and full of threats from both the elements and the creatures who dare to live there. Valinor is the realm of the Valar–the 14 deities who shaped the world at the behest of Tolkien’s supreme deity, Eru Ilúvatar–and as such is almost unimaginably beautiful and peaceful. Though the primary seat of Elvish rule in The Rings Of Power is Lindon, there are other wondrous places to behold in Middle-earth that were built by the Elves. How and why Celebrimbor creates these rings, and who influences their crafting along the way, is all for the series to tell you, but if you’ve read The Lord Of The Rings, you know it’s about much more than making some cool jewelry. In the trailers for The Rings Of Power, you may have noticed Galadriel spending quite a bit of time in a snowy landscape, climbing ice cliffs with her knife and searching for something evil amid the freeze. Of all the locations viewers will get to know throughout The Rings Of Power, Númenor might ultimately prove to be the most consequential. [The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power](https://www.avclub.com/tv/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-2022) will finally take us back to the Second Age, the era before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and bring with it a new live-action version of the Middle-earth landscape. Speaking of realms that aren’t faring well by the time we see them in The Lord Of The Rings, there’s Khazad-dûm, the Dwarven kingdom in the Misty Mountains that’s perhaps better known to fans of Tolkien’s trilogy as Moria. During the War of Wrath, Morgoth (the original Dark Lord) sought to mold Middle-earth in his own dark image, and he had more than a few converts along the way. It’s also, as gateways to paradise should be, a beautiful realm filled with structures made in harmony with the earth, and tributes to Elven achievements and losses in their struggle against the forces of Evil. While they’re still found all over the map in The Rings Of Power, a key feature of the Second Age is the centralized power of Lindon, the realm of High King of the Elves Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker).