The Rings of Power: Critique of the Launch of Amazon's Tolkien Series

Created: 2022-09-02 14:41

Robert Aramayo as Elrond and Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Power Rings © Amazon Studios

Amazon is launching its record-breaking second-age fantasy series from JRR Tolkien's writings, set thousands of years before the events of Bilbo, Frodo and co.

We watched the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and report back from Middle-earth.

After a fantasy boom in the 1980s with films like Willow and Legend, the 90s were quite a dry spell except for Dragonheart, which also started with the devastating 2000 Dungeons & Dragons film didn't want to end.

"I was there.

I was there 3,000 years ago..." It wasn't until Peter Jackson released his extremely ambitious film adaptation of JRR Tolkien's seminal work "The Lord of the Rings" that another fantasy era began, which a decade later was more eclipsed by the cynical HBO Series Game of Thrones being kept alive by Jackson's incongruously epic 'The Hobbit' trilogy.

With The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power aka "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" there is now another journey to Middle-earth, which has caused many fan concerns in advance - some justified, others less so.

It's worth mentioning and remembering that most hardcore Tolkien fans didn't expect much from the Jackson films 20 years ago either and were pleasantly surprised at least by the first trilogy.

Can showrunner duo JD Payne and Patrick McKay's Amazon Prime Video series repeat this magic feat?

So far, two of the eight episodes of the first season have been released, which alone is said to have cost 465 million US dollars.

With five planned seasons, which should eventually be 50 hours long when they are completed, it won't be long before the budget hits the billion mark.

The project is already the most expensive series of all time.

But will it live up to the (admittedly sparse) material on the Second Age of Middle-earth from Tolkien's writings and its exorbitant price tag?

Read more at Serial Junkies.de