47/12
Amazon’s original proposal for the television rights to JRR
Chronology
Set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the epic drama follows a cast of familiar and new characters as they face the feared resurgence of evil in Middle-earth. Cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and more actors who completely transformed for their roles. Tolkien’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was to make the series a re-adaptation of the latter (basically a retelling of Gospodar prstenova: Prstenova družina (2001), Gospodar prstenova : Dvije kule (2002), and Gospodar prstenova: Povratak kralja (2003)), but Tolkien’s estate rejected this proposal.
They consulted with the estate and several Tolkien experts (including grandson and writer Simon Tolkien) about including new characters and plot elements
Amazon ultimately obtained the rights on the condition that the series be different from Peter Jackson’s previous adaptations and that they couldn’t contradict anything Tolkien had previously written. Initial ideas suggested included prequel stories featuring characters like Aragorn, Gimli, and Gandalf, but the showrunners preferred to focus on important, untold events from the novels’ lore rather than simple side stories, so they came to an agreement with the studio to have the series take place in the books’ Second Age. Since they didn’t have the rights to Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth (which cover the First and Second Ages), they looked at The Lord of the Rings novels and appendices for passages and references to the Second Era in which they could set their story. In the voice acting of several languages, King Durin III is incorrectly listed as “Durin II.” The opening titles are a musical sequence of matter forming different shapes, based on the creation myth “Music of the Ainur” by J.R.R.
Plot with huge logical flaws
by Tolkien. Featured in The Critical Drinker: The Rings of Power – War For A Fandom (2022). Unlikable characters. Twists that were so obvious we saw them coming as soon as the twist characters were introduced.
It’s hard to imagine how this series could be changed
The only thing that made the twists surprising was that the writers threw away what was already established in the books to make them possible. To me, this turned out to be another reboot that was not only terrible, but also overshadowed its predecessors. The only plus I would point out is that at least the visuals seemed worthy of the huge budget this series had. If only they would put some of that budget into a strong writing team.
