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Amazon buys up Middle-earth, it searches the One Ring! (Rings of Power news thread)


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5 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Why?

 

Any number of reasons: ascertaining the identification, disguising my sources, and not spoiling Fellowship of the Fans' scoop too soon.

 

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I was thinking Bo Hansson

 

You've seen Hanson's TV adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring? Its easily the shoddiest of the eastern European adaptations. Its a hoot!

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1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

Any number of reasons: ascertaining the identification, disguising my sources, and not spoiling Fellowship of the Fans' scoop too soon.

 

You have an obligation to break the news here first and put this place on the map!

 

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I will, but just fractionately before he breaks it out, which will I believe be rather imminent.

 

I will say for now that it seems Shore is involved in some capacity.

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New images from Amazon's Lord of the Rings!

 

OK, I lied. Most of these are from the trailer for Amazon's Wheel of Time series. They look...vaguely Tolkienesque? And leave an impression not entirely dissimilar to the promo artwork Amazon already put out for their Lord of the Rings.

 

It will be interesting to see if their Lord of the Rings has sort of that digital, generic fantasy look & feel that you see a lot of on Netflix/Apple/Amazon shows, or the more grounded, historical look you see in the LOTR films & Game of Thrones.

 

So only one of these pics is from Lord of the Rings. But could you blame anyone for thinking they all came from the same show?

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Amazon will want to delineate their two shows, naturally.

 

One would think.

 

35 minutes ago, KK said:

Let's hope the actual LOTR show aims higher.

 

One would hope!

 

39 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

I thought the trailer looks allright.

 

Actually, so do I. It just looks very familiar, and I'm curious as to how much LOTR will look like this.

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One way in which the two are clearly different is that with Wheel of Time they went with a fairly familiar face in Rosamund Pike.

 

The Lord of the Rings went entirely with character actors.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/sir-lenny-henry-on-being-a-black-hobbit-in-the-lord-of-the-rings/

 

I hasten to add we have a lot of information about this show, but this doesn't seem to jive with any of it. I think he's pranking us, referencing TORn's (idiotic) rumour-mongering.

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He also wrote his dissertation on black representation in Media so he has all the more reason to yank our chain on this matter.

 

Thing is, I know for a fact that Amazon themselves are extremely concerned with the secrecy of the characters and who’s playing who. So that Henry should be allowed to spout this nonesense would seem unlikely, lending greater credence to the idea that this is a scam.

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

He also wrote his dissertation on black representation in Media so he has all the more reason to yank our chain on this matter.

 

Thing is, I know for a fact that Amazon themselves are extremely concerned with the secrecy of the characters and who’s playing who. So that Henry should be allowed to spout this nonesense would seem unlikely, lending greater credence to the idea that this is a scam.

 

If this is a scam I'd well and truly eat my hat (or indeed anyone's hat for that matter).

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How good this show is going to be remains to be seen, but I find the notion that he's "yanking our chain" to be...unlikely. He seems perfectly sincere to me in his comments, and if you're going to yank someone's chain, this is clearly not the way to do it.

 

That said, he might be confused, or have a limited understanding of the show he's starring in (he wouldn't be the first actor, or even the first LOTR actor to be confused by the material), but if this is his idea of taking the piss, he's doing a very poor job of it. 

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For what its worth, we know a fair amount about this show, and this doesn't jive with it at all.

 

I expect to be able to find the truth in this within the coming weeks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Character updates:
 

Morfydd Clark is Galadriel

Amelie Child-Villiers is Young Galadriel

Robert Aramayo is probably Elrond

Maxim Baldry is Isildur
Lloyd Owen is Elendil

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  • 2 months later...
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There's definitely some dodgy things about this: the whole stuff about having Hobbits in it is eyeroll inducing.

 

But what's seriously the issue of Isildur having a sister? (which is something we've known for a while now, by the way)

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

But what's seriously the issue of Isildur having a sister? (which is something we've known for a while now, by the way)

Considering how well documented Elendil's children were (their achievements, the creation of the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, the line of Kings and the line of Stewards, the two statues of Argonath) it would kind of throw off their duality to know there was always a neglected third child.

 

All moot if she dies before all that though.

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8 hours ago, Monoverantus said:

All moot if she dies before all that though.

 

which I think is not unlikely.

 

There are a couple of names on the leaked character list that I don't think will have a great longevity in the show: Pharazon's son Kemen comes to mind.

 

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It's going to be a Wheel of Time/Witcher level show in terms of writing and production values. Typical, generic Amazon/Netflix streaming fantasy. Anyone who is expecting anything genuinely "Tolkien" in this show is going to be sorely disappointed. I still wonder what the reaction will be when people begin to realize that 90+% of the show (including most of the plot, a good number of the characters and virtually every line of dialogue) is purely fan fic created by committee in a TV writer's room and has very little to do with what Tolkien wrote. 

 

Jackson's films and Game of Thrones caught lightning in a bottle, and it's something of a miracle they happened at all, let alone how good they ended up. You just can't conjure that kind of magic up by following an algorithm.  I can't see how the show can be anything other than a let-down at this point (assuming you're someone who raised their expectations in the first place).

 

On 5/1/2022 at 10:28 PM, Chen G. said:

There's definitely some dodgy things about this

 

Han Solo said something similar.

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I'm not going to argue the point, not because I necessarily agree but because I don't want the enjoyment I derive from spying on the production to interfere with my ability to judge the resulting series fairly. As I've said to Fellowship of the Fans "we're not Amazon's PR team."

 

At the same time, I like liking movies and show, and so I do try and hope for the best. There's stuff coming out about the show that has me rolling my eyes. But there's other stuff (including, but not limited to, the production design) that's rather encouraging, too. I'll wait to know more before I make judgement.

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  • 2 weeks later...
2 minutes ago, His Royal Noelness said:

because it’s familiar words in an unfamiliar voice

 

Its Morfydd Clark's vocals - their Galadriel. Doesn't have the contralto heft of Cate Blanchett.

 

Music seems to have strains of the History of the One Ring.

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There's also a making-of of the teaser: its done with macro-photography.

 

 

Quote

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. "The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth's Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. 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."

 

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Always wise to pump the brakes when drawing any conclusions based on trailer music about anything beyond the trailer itself. 

 

I also found the voice off-putting at first, but yeah probably just because it's not Blanchett!

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6 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Always wise to pump the brakes when drawing any conclusions based on trailer music about anything beyond the trailer itself. 

 

 

For sure. I'm talking about the trailer music as trailer music, not as anything more than that.

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1 minute ago, Disco Stu said:

Always wise to pump the brakes when drawing any conclusions based on trailer music about anything beyond the trailer itself.

True. Though the rising Ring motif (D-Eb-F-G) returns a couple of times in the teaser, I'm not gonna assume it's a new theme just from appearing here.

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5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

I also found the voice off-putting at first, but yeah probably just because it's not Blanchett!


Yeah, this is my feeling. You know it’s supposed to be the same character but you can’t reconcile the difference in your head. 
 

At least she correctly rolled the Rs in Mordor 

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Remember the Two Towers trailer scored with Requiem for a Dream?  I always that was a weird decision considering Fellowship was already out so there was Shore music that could easily be drawn from.

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I haven't really seen a good reason to be optimistic about this series yet.  Not sure there's a good reason to be pessimistic yet either beyond, "well most things turn out bad, so this probably will."  I'll of course give it a chance when it releases!

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