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[ManaByte]

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Rises: Inside ‘The Rings of Power’

One show to rule them all—the first look at a billion-dollar saga set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy.

www.vanityfair.com

Lots of images in the article. Big focus on Galadriel and Elrond:

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Rises: Inside ‘The Rings of Power’

One show to rule them all—the first look at a billion-dollar saga set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary trilogy.

www.vanityfair.com

Lots of images in the article. Big focus on Galadriel and Elrond:

Whose that guy in the middle supposed to be?

 

[Kilau]

Of moose and men.

Looks stupid already.

 

[IDKFA]

I thought the dwarf women were supposed to rock epic facial hair?

 

[Lord Panda]

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

So the woman is a brave warrior and the man takes nice pictures for his OK Cupid profile.

That's such a unique spin on gender archetypes. Both brave and brilliant!

 

[TaylorSwiftFan]

Was Galadriel ever shown to be a warrior in the mythos? I don’t recall her fighting with a sword in the Silmarillion. And what are those moose people?

 

[eddie4]

.....looks....ok.

 

[Cockles & Whelks]

Looks shit. Just like Foundation. Amazon, use your fucking money better. POC Dwarf looks like an extra from a Beyonce video.

Uh...ahahooooooo. Should have put a Ring of Power on it.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Lots of images in the article. Big focus on Galadriel and Elrond:

Jesus, please tell me this is not Galardiel. Also, Elves and plate armor - WUT???

 

[ManaByte]

Also, Elves and plate armor - WUT???

 

[AfricanKing]

Looks Good - their just still shots so cant say more than that

 

[VulcanRaven]

Looks great. I hope Howard Shore does the music like has been rumored.

 

[IDKFA]

Was Galadriel ever shown to be a warrior in the mythos? I don’t recall her fighting with a sword in the Silmarillion. And what are those moose people?

She's mentioned in the Silmarillion as being a leader and one of the only women who took a leadership role, and there is some written information of her actions during the second age, but nothing of her wearing full plate armour and mixing it up with swords IIRC.

 

[SirKicksalot]

Sophia Nomvete has a scene-stealing role as a dwarven princess named Disa—the latter being the first Black woman to play a dwarf in a Lord of the Rings movie, as well as the first female dwarf.

There were bearded dwarf women in the AUJ prologue. She's not even bearded. The female dwarven beard was mentioned in three Jackson movies lol

In the novels, the aforementioned things take place over thousands of years, but Payne and McKay have compressed events into a single point in time. It is their biggest deviation from the text, and they know it’s a big swing. “We talked with the Tolkien estate,” says Payne. “If you are true to the exact letter of the law, you are going to be telling a story in which your human characters are dying off every season because you’re jumping 200 years in time, and then you’re not meeting really big, important canon characters until season four. Look, there might be some fans who want us to do a documentary of Middle-earth, but we’re going to tell one story that unites all these things.”

Yeah I'm not watching this.

 

[haxan7]

I thought the dwarf women were supposed to rock epic facial hair?

I know which character I'll be fapping to.

 

[jason10mm]

I thought the dwarf women were supposed to rock epic facial hair?

Ahh, so THIS is the rest of that "they/them" picture. Was it soo difficult to say she? Does she have a nose prosthesis? IMHO that went a long way in making John Rys Davies Gimli superior to the hobbit glam dwarves (other than Thorin maybe).

 

[Tokio Blues]

It looks good.

 

[Raven117]

Will give it a shot. Never know how it comes together until you can see how it comes together.

 

[zeorhymer]

The Message

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It's funny. I watched 2 episodes of The Gilded Age (Downton Abbey clone) which I'm sure has a 99 percent female audience.

None of the women in the show act like men. None of them are prone to violence. No guns. No fisticuffs. Nothing.

Do they only want to subvert gender norms when the audience is expected to be mixed?

 

[Stop Motion Pornography]

Looks okay, I guess.

Some of you are ridiculous with your anti-woke screaming though, lol. "A minority!? In MY children's fantasy entertainment!?"

 

[haxan7]

Looks okay, I guess.

Some of you are ridiculous with your anti-woke screaming though, lol. "A minority!? In MY children's fantasy entertainment!?"

They aren't concerned with minorities being in the show. That is a fallacious argument. They are concerned with the quality of the show taking a sideline to "diversity" concerns. What we usually get from entertainment that pushes diversity as a selling feature is a pile of crap.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Do they only want to subvert gender norms when the audience is expected to be mixed?

Just go watch Reacher, Jesus.

 

[DeepBreath87]

Particularly when it comes to something revered by many people, which Lord of the Rings definitely is, if a producer thinks they can “improve” the story or world by injecting their own sensibilities, it tends go poorly.

 

[IDKFA]

Looks okay, I guess.

Some of you are ridiculous with your anti-woke screaming though, lol. "A minority!? In MY children's fantasy entertainment!?"

It's a little more than children's fantasy entertainment. You can make that call for the Hobbit, but not any other of Tolkien's works based in Middle-earth.

 

[sw0mp_d0nk3y]

I know everyone is a pessimist these days, but this looks fricken awesome to me. Characters look cool, sets look cool, filmed in New Zealand, talented people involved, Howard Shore score. Can't wait to see the trailer.

 

[Kimahri]

I'm wondering if they're gonna explain high levels of melanin in someonr living underground most of the timr, but I'm pretty confident they're not.

 

[AJUMP23]

I'm wondering if they're gonna explain high levels of melanin in someonr living underground most of the timr, but I'm pretty confident they're not.

They stand close to the Fires.

 

[FunkMiller]

The problem with the casting of a black woman as a dwarf is less about the casting itself, and more about the fact they need it to be one of the first things they announce about the show.

There’s nothing organic or creative about it, it’s been done purely to score social and political points. Also, they’ve felt the need to create a new character, and make a major alteration to the text, to accommodate this agenda.

No one would have an issue with simply casting poc as parts in this show. It’s the fact they need to make such a big fucking deal out of it that’s the problem. If nothing else, I’d imagine it’s pretty insulting to black people.

 

[captainnapalm]

A story based on the history of Western civilization and its religious myths and archetypes, made by people almost certainly opposed to all of that and swimming in a sea of postmodern progressive ideology and shallow race and gender politics. Should be great.

 

[Fuz]

what is this shit

 

[IDKFA]

A story based on the history of Western civilization and its religious myths and archetypes, made by people almost certainly opposed to all of that and swimming in a sea of postmodern progressive ideology and shallow race and gender politics. Should be great.

Not just western civilization, but Tolkien was creating a world based on Germanic mythology and history, especially that of the Anglo-Saxons

 

[lifa-cobex]

I'm wondering if they're gonna explain high levels of melanin in someonr living underground most of the timr, but I'm pretty confident they're not.

I could make a joke about coal and something around black face.
But i'm not going to.
I'm better than that.

 

[thefool]

The first images look exactly what I expected to see first.

 

[Kimahri]

I could make a joke about coal and something around black face.
But i'm not going to.
I'm better than that.

No you're not

 

[Banjo64]

Looks wank

 

[Fbh]

I don't think it looks that bad.
All these promo shots tend to look a bit awkward.

I'm more concerned about the actual content of the plot and characters than about the production values.

Looks shit. Just like Foundation. Amazon, use your fucking money better. POC Dwarf looks like an extra from a Beyonce video.

Uh...ahahooooooo. Should have put a Ring of Power on it.

Whatever happened to Foundation?
I remember the trailers looking fairly high budget and people talking about it for a bit after the premiere.......and then it just went away and I've seen almost no online talk about it or even mentioning it.
Was it that bad?

 

[captainnapalm]

Not just western civilization, but Tolkien was creating a world based on Germanic mythology and history, especially that of the Anglo-Saxons

Sure, but the Anglo-Saxons are part of the larger history of Christianity and western civilization.

 

[Atrus]

The plot sounds exactly like what they did with Foundation, where an epic time spanning series is condensed to a singular plot line.

Ironic that the best part of Foundation ended up being the Empire portion (rather than the titular Foundation side) carried on Lee Pace’s (Thranduil/Ronan the Accuser) shoulders.

 

[frontovik]

Looks goofy as fuck.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Looks like they went the Pathfinder route.

 

[Lady Bird]

Yeah I'm not watching this.

The decision to have events compressed in a single point of time makes a lot of sense. I would have done the same.

 

[SJRB]

This is gonna blow, like basically all massive budget shows these days.

 

[EviLore]

The showrunners have zero previous credits:

John D. Payne | Writer, Producer, Script and Continuity Department

Known for: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Escape, Flash Gordon

www.imdb.com

Patrick McKay | Writer, Producer, Script and Continuity Department

Known for: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Escape, Flash Gordon

www.imdb.com

This is a big corpo project run by committee. It has an enormous budget, and there is no one at the helm to ensure it takes risks or respects the source material above other concerns. There's zero chance it will be good.

 

[intbal]

 

[SirKicksalot]

The decision to have events compressed in a single point of time makes a lot of sense. I would have done the same.

The most important themes of this section of Tolkien are mortality, aging, decay and the quest to preserve that which you love against the withering brought on by the passage of time. The irony of this is that Numenor withers and decays specifically because of their pursuit of this quest. Compressing the downfall of Numenor into a couple of years or decades before FOTR's prologue is missing the point.
The VF article reads like they're pushing Third Age themes onto the second age, which may leave the basic events intact but without the framework that gives them impact.
Seeing huge gaps and huge stretches of time as a problem instead of an opportunity is the exact opposite of how this should work.

Makes me wonder if that 2020 production halt addressed something related to how The Witcher was received. The plan was always to pause production after the first two episodes, get a rough cut and see what needs to be changed. This turned into a very long pause with rumours of rewriting. That's when the scholar who worked with Jackson left the production. Maybe that's when they decided to compress it - apparently plebs did not understand The Witcher's parallel plots.

I hope this is not Elrond, by the way:

He's not supposed to be there but that white cloak in today's images... I don't know man.

 

[BigBooper]

Probably best to just skip it.

 

[Azurro]

The woke of the rings. Galadriel as an elf warrior? What? This is so fucking stupid, it's going to bomb, I'm not watching this shit.

 

[Lady Bird]

The most important themes of this section of Tolkien are mortality, aging, decay and the quest to preserve that which you love against the withering brought on by the passage of time. The irony of this is that Numenor withers and decays specifically because of their pursuit of this quest. Compressing the downfall of Numenor into a couple of years or decades before FOTR's prologue is missing the point.
The VF article reads like they're pushing Third Age themes onto the second age, which may leave the basic events intact but without the framework that gives them impact.
Seeing huge gaps and huge stretches of time as a problem instead of an opportunity is the exact opposite of how this should work.

Makes me wonder if that 2020 production halt addressed something related to how The Witcher was received. The plan was always to pause production after the first two episodes, get a rough cut and see what needs to be changed. This turned into a very long pause with rumours of rewriting. That's when the scholar who worked with Jackson left the production. Maybe that's when they decided to compress it - apparently plebs did not understand The Witcher's parallel plots.

I hope this is not Elrond, by the way:

He's not supposed to be there but that white cloak in today's images... I don't know man.

I understand your concern, but purely from the point of view of writing a script, compressing time makes sense. This is one aspect where the writing medium is just inherently better at than the visual medium. Expecially when The Silmarillion is not exactly meant to be a highly commercial/ broadly-appealing work. It has niche appeal in the way it is structured, even if it offers plenty of material for future stories to be based on. A TV show shooting for mass appeal would always require some structural changes.

What will ultimately determine if it is good or not is the quality of the writers.