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Tale

Epic drama set thousands of years before the events of JRR

Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, follows an ensemble of familiar and new characters as they face the long-feared return of evil to Middle-earth. ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ cast and more actors completely transformed for their roles Amazon’s original pitch for the television rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings The proposal of the Tolkien novels was to make the series a re-adaptation of the latter (actually a retelling of Gospodar prstenova: Prstenova družina (2001), Gospodar prstenova: Dvije kule (2002), and Gospodar prstenova: Povratak kralja (2003)), but the Tolkien estate rejected this proposal.

They consulted with the estate and several Tolkien experts (including grandson and novelist Simon Tolkien) about including new characters and plot elements

Amazon eventually got the rights on the condition that the series be different from Peter Jackson’s previous adaptations and that nothing contradict Tolkien’s previous works. Initial ideas included prequel stories featuring characters like Aragorn, Gimli, and Gandalf, but the showrunners wanted to focus on important, untold events from the novels’ lore rather than simple subplots, so they agreed with the studio that the series would be set during the books’ Second Age. Since they did not have the rights to Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth (which cover the First and Second Ages), they scoured The Lord of the Rings novels and appendices for passages and references to the Second Age in which to embed their story.

Tolkien’s The Silmarillion

In the dubbing credits for several languages, King Durin III is incorrectly listed as “Durin II.” The opening credits are a musical sequence of matter taking various forms, based on the “Music of the Ainur” creation myth from J.R.R. Featured in The Critical Drinker: The Rings of Power – War For A Fandom (2022). This is, unfortunately, pretty awful.

It felt like I was watching TV

It just doesn’t feel “right,” be it the nonstop, constantly omnipotent music, the awful dialogue, the over-the-top acting, the uninteresting plot, or the ridiculous setup of some scenes. It’s extremely dramatic, to the point where it’s ridiculous, even in places where it really doesn’t need to be. The biggest problem is that it never “pulled me in” and I didn’t feel like I was watching an unfolding story.

It’s boring and uninteresting, so why should we watch it?

There were maybe two or three moments during the first two episodes where it started to draw me in a little. Then each time the next scene would completely throw me off. See the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in all their most famous roles, from Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud to Benjamin Walker in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and more.