Time for this to get its own thread because the first official image has dropped and I am ready to geek out about it.




That's Valinor bitches. All of my yes to putting First Age lore/backstory on screen. I'm guessing the city is Tirion (seat of the Noldor)? A lot of people are saying Valmar, but that doesn't make sense to me. The Trees look pretty far off, and the uber-steep cliffs on either side tell me that this is supposed to be the pass through the Pelori mountains. This further makes sense because Galadriel and Celebrimbor are confirmed major characters and both are Noldor.

I'm betting the show is going to kickoff with Feanor and the other Noldor peacing out to Middle Earth. The Trees will be destroyed, and then the show will fast-forward to a time period that will combine the crafting of the Rings and the fall of Numenor, with hot-elf!Sauron lurking under the guise of a benevolent character (my bet is whoever Benjamin Walker is playing).


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For those who haven't been following along, Amazon is producing a Lord of the Rings TV adaptation set during Tolkien's Second Age (3400ish year period that saw the rise of Sauron, the fall of Numenor, the crafting of the rings, etc). It is set to be the most expensive television show ever produced.

Announced premier date is September, 2022. We've got a long time to wait, but my hype train has left the station.

Official Synopsis:

More info.

 

I thought this was meant to be set in the Second Age, with the Fall of Numenor. If that's the case then this is likely just a backstory set up explaining the Silmarils and Eärendil so that the events can play out with the right context.

 

I will take any cinematic First Age lore I can get.

 

Please be good, please be good, please be good.

Also please include Howard Shore if at all possible.

 

Silmarillion has so much epic shit in it, if they mess up, it's entirely on them.

Plz don't be GoT 2.0

 

The promo image is actually fairly puzzling. As @KHAAAAAAAN!! says, it is Valinor, with the Trees in the background. The city is almost certainly Tirion which resides in a steep-sided valley near the sea, with towers which match the image here. The character in the foreground would appear to have shorter light coloured hair which is interesting as most Noldor are dark of hair. The chances are it's some random Vanyar.

What's puzzling to me, is that my understanding to this point was that it was suspected that Amazon had been unable to secure the full rights to the Silmarilion and only had permission to adapt events in the Second Age. Clearly, with the Two Trees still shining, we're still prior to the Darkening of Valinor.

So we have two obviously distinct time periods and locations, and I'm interested to see how they decide to connect them. The blurb only talks about the Second Age, and the map clearly shows the Middle-earth of the Second Age. I guess the intention is to have either a prologue, or a set of interwoven flashbacks to previous events as we progress through the 'present' story occurring in the Second Age. I suspect they're going to have to play a little fast and loose with the timeline here, to be honest.

The image of Valinor suggests a certain focus on Elves, which presents issues. The Elves' Second Age story starts to get interesting around S.A. 1200 when Sauron turns up at Ost-in-Edhil (after being turned away from Lindon) and starts teaching the Gwaith-i-Mírdain his craft. At this time the ruler of Numenor is Tar-Ancalimë, the first ruling Queen. I can see her being an attractive proposition for Amazon as I imagine achieving gender balance is likely to be tricky. Sauron doesn't actually make his move until S.A. 1693, by which time Numenor has gone through two kings to arrive at Tar-Telperiën, another ruling queen.

The war between Sauron and the Elves is won when Tar-Minastir, successor to the childless Queen, comes to their aid. Then we enter a long period of Numenorean political ascendency, even while the rot begins. Sauron expands his influence south and eastwards, while Numenoreans start to colonise or conquer much of the rest of the world.

It wasn't until S.A. 3262 that tensions between the two rising powers reached a head once more, resulting in Sauron being captured by Ar-Pharazôn.

The way I see it, there's too big of a gulf of time there for Amazon to really cover it all, but there's also too many bits that I expect them to want to cover for them to simply elect to focus on a single timeframe.

They can stick to the later part of Ar-Pharazôn's rule (which itself lasted 64 years), but despite being the bad guy, he's also the most powerful mortal ruler in Tolkien's works. Numenor at the time was ludicrously powerful, and without all that much in the way of internal strife. It also involves very little involvement of Elves (unless they elect to cut across to Elfy things as a B plot). Also also, it misses out on some of the more Game of Thronesy aspects of Ar-Pharazôn's rise; a friend to Amandil in his youth, he sees Tar Palantir's weakness resulting in his kinsmen being slain, and Numenor humbled, and usurps the throne from Tar Míriel, marrying her for her claim.

Alternatively, they might focus on Celebrimbor et al and the events which led to the forging of the One Ring. This connects closer to anything they might do concerning the Trees as shown in the image.

I still don't know to be honest. If they want to hit more than one big event, they're going to have to either hot-swap main characters (the human ones at least) more than is usually acceptable, or they'll have to play fast and loose with the timeline (I can see them combining Tar-Ancalimë and Tar-Telperiën for example). On the other hand, they can tightly focus in on just one big event (but even those tend to have setup which takes on the order of 50 years, at least Numenoreans are fairly unaging), with the possibility of hitting different events in future seasons, but restraint when it comes to things like this is something tv and movies are increasingly failing to demonstrate.

 

Man, I hope this is good. The Second Age has a fair amount of stuff happening but Tolkien wrote so little detail about it that we have to rely on the Amazon writers. I'm not sure how much I trust them, really.

 

You can say that again. I read back through the end of the First Age the other day and in the space of 3 pages he goes from Eärendil landing in Valinor to the War of Wrath, the sinking of Belleriand, and the Sons of Fëanor reclaiming the Silmarils.

 

This is a good thing imo. Let's face it, Tolkien was a master worldbuilder, poet, linguist, and mythologist, but a master dramatist he was not. A strictly "faithful" adaptation of the secondary Tolkien works would be an absolute snoozefest.

As per the agreement between Amazon and the Tolkien estate, the screenwriters have free reign to add characters, fill in gaps for established characters, and build an original plot around the skeleton of Tolkien's writings, so long as they A) don't contradict a single word penned by Tolkien, and B) don't change the events of the Second Age in any way.

While I'm hesitant to put trust in anyone adapting Tolkien's works, there were 9 writers collaborating and 3 resident Tolkien experts (includes the guy most people consider the world's top Tolkien scholar). With that many people in the writers room, I think it's unlikely that outrageously bad ideas would go unchecked.

Unrelated: I went hunting for an explanation for why the above image is depicting First Age content. In mid-July it was confirmed that Amazon had obtained rights from the Tolkien estate to depict select Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales passages that are involved with the story they are telling in the Second Age. And this is due to the Tolkien Estate being extremely happy with the writing and development of the show.

 

The Tolkien professor Podcast who I know several here listen to, does a interesting weekly read through of LOTR, and did a great read of the Silmarilion.

On his other channel he has had a very long running season of him and some students doing a creative project on how to make the Silmarilion a movie. I haven't listened as I can't stand the voice of his students, but I imagine it has some interesting content.

 

"LOTR: The Rings of Power"

Not a bad title, but not exactly titillating.



I think the most interesting bit to come out of this latest news drop is that apparently they are going to, in some way, unite most of the major events of the Second Age. Flashbacks aplenty I guess?

 

I hate the fact that the cast seems to be wood, and the letters aren’t linked. And the narration is over acted.

The fog effect also looked a decade out of date.

 

I was going to say the same and that the letters could be done a little better. Then I discovered this.

EDIT: Fixed link to the correct video.

 

Howard Shore has apparently been confirmed as well.

 

I am still interested to see what their plan is with this series. The biggest issue I see with it is that the events surrounding the rings span large gulfs of time. ~300 years between the appearance of Annatar and the forging of the lesser rings. Then another hundred or so years until the Three Rings are forged. Then another hundred years before the war gets started.

Now, for an Elvish cast this doesn't present too much of a problem, but I'd assume they want to keep a reasonable amount of human involvement and that runs into a real problem in terms of keeping them alive for long enough to matter.

I'm starting to think the story may well commence some time around 1500, with multiple timelines then coming into play simultaneously:

1. A 'current day' plot featuring the Men who were gifted the Nine, which will be made up of almost entirely new events.
2. A seemingly simultaneous plotline which follows Elves, other Humans, and Sauron and his agents in a war of subterfuge which is revealed to be long after the events of 1. at some point later.
3. Minor dips into the past, showing things like Sauron's beginnings (with some Valinor and First Age content), and Annatar's arrival, the establishment of Numenor etc, depending on what is needed to prop up the events of the main plotlines.
4. Perhaps another plot, closely interwoven with 1. which is the Numenoreans warring with kingdoms of Men in Middle-earth (specifically, those Kingdoms led by wielders of the Nine).

It would allow them to address a longer span of time, while keeping individual plotlines consistent in terms of cast, but would potentially be pretty confusing for a lay-watcher.

Perhaps it's more likely that they will just use 1, 2 and 4, and weave bits of Elvishness into the human-centric narrative as much as possible.

 

My prediction is that they will simply ignore the dates and mix events for dramatic purposes. Will the fans hate it? Yes. But as with other recent adaptations like Witcher or WoT, nobody cares about the fans, only casual viewers.

 

If memory serves, they're contractually obligated to not contradict established canon for LOTR; it was part of the deal that allowed them the rights to make the show. So that much, I think, is not a real concern.

 

Forgive me if I'm wrong - I haven't been following the development of this one closely at all - but didn't they already do that by race-swapping some characters and changing some things about how Numenorean society works? Or am I confusing this project with something else?

 

Far as I'm aware, they haven't released any details about anything in the show yet. I haven't been following super closely though, so I mighta just missed it.

 

One of the stipulations for Amazon getting the rights to Second Age content was that they cannot contradict ANYTHING penned by Tolkien, nor can they change the events of the Second Age.

You're probably thinking of all the hullabaloo kicked up by that piece-of-shit Mordor-y corner of the LOTR fandom when they announced that that the cast, specifically the cast who will be portraying Second-Age small folk, would be multicultural.