Rings of Power

Amazon Prime's new The Lord of the Rings prequel brings viewers back to Middle Earth with a familiar nostalgic soundscape of ethereal voices, yearning horns ...

The Mystics – Bear McCreary The Boat – Bear McCreary Valinor – Bear McCreary McCreary composed the nine hours of music in just eight months, which was then recorded across four days. Sauron – Bear McCreary The Stranger – Bear McCreary Galadriel – Bear McCreary The harmonic language has this middle eastern progression.” “When we’re with the Elves, you’re going to hear choirs ethereal voices. I’m not trying to rock the boat or unpleasantly surprise you.” [A trumpeter played ‘Misty Mountain’ from The Hobbit in a stairwell… R.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power debuted its first two sprawling episodes this Thursday, introducing viewers to a massive cast of characters—some ...

. . Payne and Patrick McKay can make up all sorts of things—so long as they don’t tread to close to material they don’t have the rights to use. Could The Stranger be a totally new character, perhaps even a new Istari or some other immortal being? Yes, it’s too early for Gandalf by a few thousand years, but given how much the timeline is being compressed here, and how far afield we’ve already gotten, why not? The evil sorcerer has been in hiding for thousands of years with only Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) still trying to track him down (in the revised fiction of the show, that is). There’s so little payoff if it’s just Baldar The Black, a Wizard made up whole cloth for the show. The second option here is that The Stranger is a different Wizard than the ones we’re familiar with in The Lord Of The Rings. "When we meet him, it’s pretty clear he’s got a deep sense of his purpose and what he wants to achieve." Admittedly, this was my first instinct—though when he spoke with the fireflies I thought he could also be Radagast the Brown. The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) is just one of several mysteries introduced in the two-part premiere. She decides to help the strange, bearded man—who turns out to be incapable of speaking and apparently suffering amnesia, though he’s able to talk to fireflies and give them instructions. When her friend Poppy (Megan Richards) startles her and she slips and falls into the crater, Nori realizes that the fire doesn’t burn.

A women wearing armor and carrying a sword walks away from a burning building. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) takes center stage in Amazon's new prequel series.

That hasn’t always been a bad thing; action and fantasy films embracing the nuances of morality and subverting the logic of cinema have led to some of the 21st century’s best filmmaking. And just as I often felt nervous while watching Game of Thrones whether it had a coherent endpoint in mind as it weaved and bobbed through Westeros, I worry that The Rings of Power will be stuffed with too many invented subplots and side characters that ultimately don’t have anything to do with the story besides adding more run time. Among the hobbit-like Harfoots, we see the spunky young Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), and in the world of men, there’s the healer and single mother Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), who strikes up a romance with a warrior elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova). In short, it explores Middle Earth’s Second Age, which takes place thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and is not based on any of Tolkien’s novels, but rather the information gleaned in their appendices. To answer the question: The Rings of Power is not like Game of Thrones, at least not in that way. Anonymous sources told the fan blog [The One Ring that](https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2021/07/20/110907-spy-report-incredible-details-from-amazons-lord-of-the-rings-characters-sexless-nudity-halflings/) while there will be nudity in the series, it would be “sparse and not sexualized.” Happily, many of the most important ones are women: Amazon’s series centers on a younger Galadriel, played by Morfydd Clark (Cate Blanchett in the films), a warrior elven princess intent on avenging her brother’s death by Sauron. [published](https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2138&context=mythlore) a scathing critique of the women of J.R.R. (For context about what happens to the women of GoT, in the first two episodes of House of the Dragon, there’s a brutally graphic childbirth scene in which [both mother and infant die](https://www.vox.com/culture/23316570/house-of-the-dragon-heirs-review-recap-childbirth-scene), and in the second, a grown man almost [marries a 12-year-old girl](https://www.vox.com/culture/23327326/house-of-the-dragon-episode-2-rogue-prince-review-recap-rhaenyra-alicent-rhaenicent).) “It is technically an epic fantasy adventure, but I don’t think it hews to the same kind of ideas of masculinity and power that a lot of these stories traditionally do,” the writer Karen Han told the Had Game of Thrones cast such a shadow over the entertainment world that a high fantasy series without sex and gore was considered unprofitable? Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

But as might be the case with "House of the Dragon," a prequel series to a beloved fantasy property might spook off newcomers unfamiliar with the original ...

The showrunners for "Rings of Power" are J.D. Of course, Elves are immortal in Tolkien's world, and their participation in Second Age events was canonized in "The Silmarillion." There are Dwarves, too -- King Durin III and his brood -- who live in prosperity in the city of Moria before an unfortunate encounter with a (It's worth noting that Tolkien's son made these comments around the release of Jackson's first "Hobbit" film, which received far more middling reviews than his first three films in Middle-earth.) Oh, and don't expect immediate resolution to the series' storylines -- Payne told Amazon's cast list is exhaustive (but notably missing a few names, including that of the unknown actor thought to play Sauron). Whether you've pored over "The Silmarillion" repeatedly in advance of the new show or you don't know the difference between an Orc and an Ent (one's a goblinesque monster and the other is a talking, walking tree creature, for the record), here's what you need to know before you watch "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." She's back in the prequel, this time played by Morfydd Clark, and by the looks we've gotten of her in the trailers, she's just returned from battle when we catch up with her. We may or may not get to see the Lord of the Rings himself in his corporeal form -- Amazon is keeping mum on how he'll appear in the series, but he'll undoubtedly loom large over it. It's likely meant to be presented as a fictional historical account written by several authors -- possibly including one Bilbo Baggins -- that covers everything from the origin of Tolkien's world to its later ages. , the action is set in Middle-earth's Second Age, "thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Now is the Tolkienites' time to geek out --

The Silvan Elves are a bit more interesting. Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and his companions are a colonizing force, occupying the Southlands. They express ...

Overall, we’re intrigued and excited about watching the next episode, and that’s exactly what the early episodes of a new show should do. Episode 1 has the stronger climax, though, with Galadriel’s leap off the boat to Valinor and that very Game of Thrones-like comet with a mysterious man inside. And by the way did you notice how he wraps himself in a grey-ish blanket… But the series is already compressing millennia of that history into one human’s lifetime for this adaptation, so who’s to say they won’t introduce one of the Wizards early? The sea serpent attack is a great example of the sort of thing that, while the scene is invented for the series, feels like something that would happen in Tolkien’s stories (and as different as the world of Narnia is, the fact that there’s a well-known sea serpent passage in his friend C.S. If so, the most likely options would seem to be the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando. The ritual during which veiled women strip the warriors of their armor is rather odd, but Galadriel’s choice, a single tear running down her cheek, is a moving and emotional moment. Since Elves don’t age, these are literally the same characters we meet hundreds of years later in The Lord of the Rings, so naturally their clothing, accents, culture and so on more or less match what we know from the later stories. Following two young female Harfoots, rather than four young male ones, also helps to further separate their story from that of the later Hobbits we know so well. The reveal of exactly why Durin (Owain Arthur) is so cross with Elrond is also a nice touch. [in our spoiler-free review](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-review/), the series is stunningly beautiful, the set, costume, and visual effects work is impeccable, the acting is great, and it all has the feel of a tale with an epic scope. We meet five different cultures from four different peoples over the course of these two episodes; Ñoldorian Elves, Silvan Elves, (Wo)Men of the Southlands, Harfoots, and Dwarves.

Amazon Studios' new The Lord of the Rings show is pretty, but also pretty dull, at least at the start.

Hopefully the little bit of momentum in the second episode continues and the series picks up the pace. The Fellowship was perfect because for most of it you just had one elf around to do some sick archery and banter with a grouchy dwarf. (They literally have twigs and leaves in their hair, messily cram berries into their mouths, and are in great need of the invention of bathtubs and napkins.) I'm happy with this, and it does a lot to explain the wanderlust of Bilbo, the durability of Samwise, and the curiosity of Pippin. The rest of the elves, including Elrond, not a ruler yet but a younger assistant to the regional manager, figure that since Sauron hasn't been seen lately, he's probably not worth worrying about. The first two episodes of Amazon Studio's The Rings of Power, the television prequel series to The Lord of the Rings, aired late yesterday. When sitting down to play a new game, sometimes the wait between 'sitting down' and 'playing' is a gulf of unskippable cutscenes.