Set thousands of years before Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mordor, The Rings of Power is based on Tolkien’s history of Middle-Earth’s Second Age: the alliance between Elves and Men, the rise of Sauron and the forging of the rings of power. With the season one budget rumoured to be around a billion dollars, the show is set to be the most expensive ever made and the pet project of Tolkien aficionado, Jeff Bezos.
Our last visit to Middle-Earth was Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy and although the three movies had their fans, many thought it was overblown and the director’s decision to present them in HFR (High Frame Rate) made them look like staged theatre productions. But as The Mandalorian cleansed the palette after the last Star Wars trilogy, the Rings of Power could do the same for Tolkien’s fantasy world. Whether audiences have the energy for another swords and sorcery epic after Game of Thrones (whose prequel House of the Dragon is also due this year) remains to be seen.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is due to premiere on Amazon Prime on 2nd September 2022.
