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NEW YORK (AP) — The return of dragons on the small screen has been a huge hit. Now it’s time for the return of the elves and dwarves.
Amazon
Studios is launching “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” an ambitious,
years-in-the-making and very expensive salvo that will go head-to-head with
another costly streaming fantasy epic: HBO’s “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House
of the Dragon,” which recently became the most-watched series premiere in HBO
history.
The series
is based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings and asides about Middle-earth’s Second
Age, which preceded the Third Age’s “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films and
books. Tolkien’s grandson, Simon Tolkien, was a creative consultant.
“We say Tolkien sort of left a series of stars in the sky. Our job was to connect the dots and form the constellation and then sort of draw in between the constellations to give a little more specificity to it,” said J.D. Payne, a showrunner and executive producer.
Amazon Prime
Video will debut both the first two “The Rings of Power” episodes on Friday.
After that, the remaining six episodes arrive weekly on Friday.
The
hour-long episodes are stuffed with action and humor but buckle up: Payne and
his co-showrunner Patrick McKay plan to use a 50-hour canvas to explore their
nuanced characters and complex histories. These first eight episodes are like
an appetizer.
Early ones
shift across the various regions of Middle-earth, our planet’s imagined
mythological past. Here, some 4,000 years before “The Hobbit,” are elves
involved with royal intrigue, dwarves who mine inside mountains, hobbitlike
harfoots who are pastoral, humans who seem unusually prone to violence, and
evil orcs.
Despite
being set centuries before the books and films that make up the Tolkien’s
canon, fans of “The Lord of the Rings” will notice some familiar characters,
based on the long lifespan of some of the creatures, including Galadriel,
Elrond and Isildur. Sauron, the evil force, is unseen in the first two episodes
but a malevolent presence throughout.
Morfydd
Clark grew up in Wales to parents who adored Tolkien’s epic book series and her
dad read her “The Hobbit” when she was 9. The films came out when she was 11,
accelerating the obsession. Now she finds herself playing a young Galadriel, a
powerful elf played later in the films by Cate Blanchett.
That sense
of hope is something that distinguishes the series from “House of the Dragon,”
which revels in a cynical, bloody view of mankind. McKay notes that Tolkien
emerged from World War I with a complex fairy story, unlike many of his
literary peers who were writing about wastelands and darkness.
“Middle-earth
is a fundamentally optimistic and hopeful place. He was writing about positive
values and friendship and brotherhood and underdogs,” McKay said. “He was
telling you that in the darkest, deep of Mordor — in his wasteland — friendship
could win the day and good could triumph over evil.”
The show’s
tone shifts depending on which place is being visited. Harfoots, who have Irish
accents, are whimsical, communal and clever, while dwarves have Scottish
accents, are fond of a drink and are a little rough. Elves are elegant and
elite, with upper English class accents and a fondness for billowing cloaks and
long, elaborate ceremonies.
The cast — a
massive ensemble of 22 actors — is multiethnic and composed of actors of
different ages and fame, from Tony-nominated Benjamin Walker to up-and-coming
Charlie Vickers, who graduated from drama school in 2017.
“It’s a very
heterogenous world and if it wasn’t, we’d be dealing with dystopia,” said
Trystan Gravelle, who plays a royal advisor in an Atlantis-like kingdom. “I
think it’s very fitting as well in 2022 that we reflect that as well. And I
think it enriches everything. The world’s a richer place for it.”
The cast
filmed in New Zealand during the pandemic and were away from loved ones for
almost two years. The actors rarely visited the sets of rival fictional races,
but all gathered for potluck lunches and holidays, often at Walker’s house
where a mean fried chicken was served. “I got a bunch of babysitters out of
it,” he joked.
“What that
did is it sort of forced us to to lean on each other and that is a bonding
experience like no other,” said Nazanin Boniadi, who plays a human healer and
single mother. “That fellowship that you see on screen was forged very much
behind the scenes.”
The
production — rated TV-14 for violence versus the “Game of Thrones” prequel
which is TV-MA for violence, language, and nudity — is one of the most
expensive in history, with Amazon spending at least $465 million on the first
season in New Zealand, where the series employed 1,200 people directly and
another 700 indirectly. In total, the season has reportedly cost $1 billion.
This image
released by Amazon Studios shows Sophia Nomvete on the set of "The Lord of
the Rings: The Rings of Power." (Amazon Studios via AP)
Sophia
Nomvete on the set of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power."
(Amazon Studios via AP)
Choir music
swells during breathtaking panoramas and the dialogue is thunderous and
portentous. “There can be no friendship between hammer and rock. One will
surely break,” one dwarf leader says. In another scene, an elf counsels another
who is confused: “Sometimes we cannot know unless we touch the darkness.”
The new
series debuts in the long shadow left by Peter Jackson, whose film trilogy
adaptation of Tolkien’s books won critical and commercial praise in the early
2000s and claimed the best picture Oscar for “Return of the King.” For the
series, there was more freedom to create as long as it was true to the author.
“We really
tried to just go back to Tolkien. That was our mantra from the beginning: ‘Just
go back to the books, go back to the books, go back to the books,’” said Payne.
“We always have Tolkien at the base of what we’re doing.”
The new
series has lots of big themes to chew on, including overcoming racial
differences, environmentalism, the power of friendship, women’s strength and
how even the smallest person can change the world.
“A show like
this that has definitely dark themes — darkness within oneself, the fight to do
what’s right, battling great forces greater than you — but it also just has
themes of friendship and loyalty and love and hope,” said Sara Zwangobani, who
plays the new character Marigold Brandyfoot.
This image
released by Amazon Studios shows a scene from "The Lord of the Rings: The
Rings of Power." (Amazon Studios via AP)
A scene from
"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." (Amazon Studios via AP)
The series
will have to thread a careful needle by enchanting hard-core fans of Tolkien
who will be searching for connections to the universe, attracting those who
have hazy memories of the books and don’t want to be burdened with tons of new
material, and young people whose perhaps last epic adventure series was “Harry
Potter.”
“It’s kind
of the gateway for new fans in that it’s kind of the first chapter, the
adolescence of Middle-earth, where the films you could imagine are the
adulthood of Middle-earth,” said Walker. “So we’re seeing all these characters
we know and love — and some that we’re being introduced to — take the first
steps on their journey in becoming their destined selves.”
Mark Kennedy
is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
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