Rings of Power and the Coming Storm
A tsunami of LOTR promotion has begun, taking Tolkien into a new era
In the last month, the Lord of the Rings on Amazon Prime hype engine has hummed and then roared into full throttle. Three weeks ago on January 19th, the title for perhaps the most expensive TV series in history was revealed in dramatic and clever fashion: “The Rings of Power” was literally poured in molten metal form straight into a redwood slab, where a mold of its flowing letters crackled and burst with sparks and flame. To many, the name was pitch-perfect. It is a simple yet expansive articulation of the show’s ambitious intent to capture and tell the Second Age story of how the One Ring and its sibling bands of magic and temptations of power came to be, and how they shaped Middle-earth.
That last mission by the showrunners, Patrick McKay and JD Payne, is visualized by showing the lava-like title close up, its rivers of fire flowing through canyons and valleys, the redwood flaring and smoking as if on the sides of cliffs and mountains. And then by a flood of water that splashes across…
The great island civilization of Númenor will be a critical linchpin of the grand narrative to come. A hub of metal-age technological marvels and seafaring daring, it is the ancient Atlantean home of Aragorn’s ancestors. As if in a sleight-of-hand Hollywood wave to both cinematic and Tolkienian magic, the special and visual effects for the sequence were advised by Douglas Trumbull, the legendary designer and tech wizard of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner, who passed away days ago.
You can read about the making of the title reveal trailer here (via TheOneRing.net / TORN) and watch a short video showing some of the behind-the-scenes shoot here (via IGN), which took place at a foundry in Los Angeles. As a special effects innovator who has also pushed the frontier of frame rates in HD digital camera capture, Trumbull tells TORN, “We all had in mind this idea of molten metal brilliantly glowing — so that there’s no question that what you’re looking at is a hot metal. What we settled on was to mix some of these metals to get a certain color and a certain brightness. It was a combination of bronze and aluminum.”
That unique combination and mixing of materials seems to be at the heart of Amazon’s risky yet gutsy foray into Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Last week, intricate and mysterious archetypes began rushing into the popular consciousness. Only snapshots of the torsos of 23 characters, the exquisite images released revealed that the designers and artists working on Rings of Power are working at a high level of Hollywood alchemy. Fans, agog at the wealth of imagery, picked over every detail, hypothesizing on identities and hidden meanings.
Costumed fabrics and belts, weaponry and finery, the skin color of hands, the grain of dirt on knuckles and fingernails, the embroidered runes on robes or engraved in hammers, and yes, rings, were poured over in detail across the internet of fandom. On Twitter, and on Discord, this was the first real sign Amazon was not toying around, fans realized.
What did it all mean? “Gold dusted hands?” “A broken sword that’s clearly not Narsil?” “A hand holding what looks like ropes from a naval boat with its melted ends?” “A wooden breast plate with the carving of an Ent-like Green Man?” “A sickle in a hand?” “A horse-shaped hilt of a sword reminiscent of Rohan, or is that a seahorse evoking a Númenórean?” And on and on it went…
The images are all stunning, revealing not only a high-fidelity mega budget, the artisanal care Amazon’s backing can buy, but also the idiosyncratic passion of artists, and how such commitment can bolster a more personal wonder. And that was and is still the main question at the heart of this Rings of Power proposition: who are the creatives behind this new chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world-changing mythology — unwritten by him but still we hope deeply inspired and faithfully living inside his beguiling dream?
The answer to that question was answered, or at least has begun to be answered, by the stunning Vanity Fair “First Look” article by Joanna Robinson and Anthony Breznican, which came out one week after the 23 posters. Titled “Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Series Rises: Inside The Rings of Power,” the reporters worked on it for a year or more, talking to the showrunners, producers, scholars and fans. They poured through Tolkien’s letters and steeped themselves in the mysteries and byways of Middle-earth.
The depth and fervor around the article even sparked a Twitter panel with the journalists and some of their sources via Vanity Fair. It’s a fascinating listen in itself, and can be heard here for the next month or so, apparently. It’s a well-written article packed with information that hits several beats, from the first interview with Patrick McKay and JD Payne about their aspirations and apprehensions to the production’s search for authenticity, and its gutsy multiracial casting — a visionary direction that is as essential to truly understanding the power of Tolkien’s mythic appeal as anything.
But I do not want to spoil the article. Anyone interested not only in Tolkien, but in the full potential of storytelling, should read it. It not only elides a critical moment in the Tolkien-verse, but a key opportunity in elevating our conversation about our deepest sense of belonging, whether that is heartsickness, or a giddy excitement over a possible new kind of homecoming. Which brings us to a few more thoughts before the oncoming wave of Rings of Power mania enters the mainstream.
On the same day as Vanity Fair’s article, Variety reported that Saul Zaentz Co., the longtime film and TV rights holder of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, has put its claim up for sale. As we also speculated last year, this appears to be of a piece, and could mean not only could Amazon decide to get the fuller rights to two of Tolkien’s masterpieces, but that they could also seek and win the keys to The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, and all of Tolkien’s other Middle-earth works, such as The Children of Húrin.
This brings the feeling that we’re on the brink of a perhaps precarious moment in Tolkien’s fiction. Not only may The Rings of Power rocket-boost the stakes of post-humous fantasy storytelling, but it may do so with two other moves. One is that we’re about to re-open the door to one of the deepest mythologies ever imagined. The first image revealed from the series back in August of last year was immense in its intellectual scale. It was a beautiful image of the Two Trees of Valinor, reaching right back to the flashpoint and genesis of Tolkien’s original vision.
Lastly, while it’s sad that it’s controversial, Amazon, and yes, the Tolkien Estate — the family and descendants that Tolkien himself entrusted with his legacy — have blessed not only a multiracial dramatization of his story-world in the Rings of Power. But in the mixed race characters and cast they have hired and blessed, his most sacred and beloved message about love and reconciliation, is about to take fans and newcomers on a whole new perilous, thrilling and brave adventure.
For Tolkien scholars and fans, this signals something very big in the making. If Tolkien’s stories translate into this wider new era, it will help validate what many have long averred: that Middle-earth is indeed for everyone, and that Tolkien was timeless in his thinking, engaging the deepest wells of the human experience.