Series start “Rings of Power”: Back to Middle-earth in five seasons

It is the next spectacular mammoth project of a streaming service: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” has been running on Amazon Prime since today. The five seasons are said to cost Amazon $1 billion.

The “Rings of Power” take place thousands of years before the “Lord of the Rings”. Still, there are some characters that we as readers and viewers are familiar with, thanks to the long lifetimes of elves and dwarves.

The elf Galadriel, portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the “Lord of the Rings” film adaptation, for example: “My brother gave his life in pursuit of our enemy. His mission is mine now.” Now she’s being played by Morfydd Clark, who is on a quest to find the villain Sauron – still in a real body and not just a fiery eye.

In the first two episodes, which were available to the press, in addition to the well-known, several new characters were introduced – dwarves, elves, hobbits. The eerie fear hovers over everything that war could break out again in Middle-earth, even if some believe more, others less in Sauron’s strengthening.

Series based on works by Tolkien

The series is based on the works of JRR Tolkien but is not an adaptation of any of his books. Amazon paid $250 million for the post-Tolkien inspiration alone. In addition, there are enormous production costs. According to US media reports, the five seasons are said to cost one billion US dollars, making them the most expensive series of all time. Apparently, the main hope is to get more subscribers to the streaming service Amazon Prime Video, says film expert Eric Deggans in an interview with the radio network NPR:

Other streamers would have hits that get the public talking, like Stranger Things on Netflix or Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ and House Of The Dragon on HBO. “Now Amazon has a series that can also impact the zeitgeist in a similar way,” Deggans said.

Speaking of House of the Dragon, the success of the series, based on HBO’s Game of Thrones, inspired Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to create a show of a similar size and style. The series has been in development since 2017, and since then the wheel has turned on many streaming services, and often not for the better. Netflix and Warner Bros., the company behind HBO, have announced massive austerity measures and other streaming platforms have been shut down again, such as Quibi and CNN+.

Pay more attention to diversity

In terms of zeitgeist, “Rings of Power” follows a similar path to “House of the Dragon”: This time, the cast paid much more attention to diversity. There are Black Elves and Hobbits – but film expert Deggans isn’t quite convinced yet:

“I know these are worlds that are heavily based on Europe’s Middle Ages, so we have kings and knights and sword fights. But it’s weird to see two shows in the modern age that put white characters so heavily in focus, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Everyone has British or Scottish or European accents. The narratives are still pretty white centered, which doesn’t necessarily have to be in a show set in a fantasy world.”

Whether the series can meet the enormous expectations? Since the makers like Tolkien take a lot of time to build up the conflicts, this is not yet foreseeable after two episodes. Despite spectacular effects and enough monsters, the addictive effect has not yet set in, which can still happen, because the most expensive series of all time is actually too big to fail.