Tolkien Archives - Page 11 Of 22

August 13, 2021

“The Lord Of The Rings” Is Coming Home In 2022

If nothing else, Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings has already done a great deal to expose the power and influence that Peter Jackson still wields, not so much over Tolkien fandom as a whole – although his mark is certainly felt there, and his The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is understandably an entry point for many fans – but over the general public’s view of the franchise. Imagery that originated in his trilogy has become indelibly associated with the story over the past twenty years, and some hardcore fans of his films display the kind of surprisingly strong and aggressive loyalty to Jackson that makes any attempt to supplant that iconic imagery…difficult, to say the least.

Now, Jackson’s films are each cinematic masterpieces in their own right (I am of course deliberately ignoring The Hobbit trilogy), so it’s not totally surprising that they’ve still got legions of diehard supporters. I myself am a massive fan, and if you don’t believe I’ve got a few “10 out of 10” movie reviews for the trilogy on my blog that should dispel any doubt. They are my favorite movies. But that doesn’t make them perfect, and I’ve always been open to the idea of seeing something new and unique from Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings – especially since their show isn’t a remake of Jackson’s trilogy, something that a lot of people still don’t know and which complicates the discourse around it exponentially.

But one of many things that Jackson got right was his use of nature in the trilogy as more than just a setting, but as a main character in the story.

A deep-seated respect and admiration for nature is integral to all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings, and therefore to any adaptation of said writings. And by choosing to shoot almost the entirety of The Lord Of The Rings in his home country of New Zealand, Peter Jackson imbued the films with a love of nature that was not only important to the story on a thematic level, but important to him on a personal level. He utilized stunningly beautiful landscapes around the North and South Island that at that time were mostly brand new to global audiences, thereby ensuring that, for many people, Middle-earth and The Lord Of The Rings are the only exposure they have to New Zealand.

And over the past two decades, New Zealand has slowly taken on the very identity of Middle-earth, to the detriment of its own Māori culture and history, and to a point where there’s legitimate cause for concern over how much the country relies on its tourism industry, which in turn relies on The Lord Of The Rings and other big movie franchises, which in turn leads to things like the infamous “Hobbit Law” – passed in 2010 as a little incentive for Warner Brothers to make its Hobbit trilogy in New Zealand – that prevents workers in New Zealand’s film industry from unionizing. The Hobbit Law has been subtly revised several times, but not repealed, and the dispute it caused even led to a feud between Jackson and The Lord Of The Rings actress Robyn Malcolm.

But while that’s the kind of thing you might think would entice Amazon to stick around (and that’s the very reason for the Law’s conception), neither the reprehensible Hobbit Law nor New Zealand’s location incentive program (which, if I’m reading the reports accurately, would have made Amazon eligible for an “uplift” of roughly $23.1 million dollars, if not more down the line), could ultimately keep the studio in the country. Amazon announced last night that the second season of The Lord Of The Rings will move production to the United Kingdom, marking the first time in the franchise’s history that it will be filmed entirely in the nation of its origin.

The reaction has been divided, nowhere more so than in New Zealand itself, where Amazon’s decision will have far-ranging economic and political effects. It doesn’t help that Amazon gave very little indication of why they made the move, although it’s worth noting that many of their upcoming series’ are being produced in the UK anyway, so it may just be a matter of practicality – especially since The Lord Of The Rings is also hiring quite a lot of British actors who had been stuck in New Zealand for several months during the country’s lockdown. With the nation only just signaling its intentions to reopen its borders beginning early next year, it may be simpler for Amazon to work in a slightly less restrictive nation for the time being…although filming in New Zealand certainly came with the benefit of not having to shut down production because of COVID-19 cases every thirty minutes, which is not a guarantee in the UK.

Another benefit that came with New Zealand were its stunning landscapes and vistas, which have become visually synonymous with the fantastical realms of Middle-earth: from the hilly patch of farmland in Matamata that quite literally is the village of Hobbiton, to the slopes of Mount Ngauruhoe where the Mount Doom sequences were filmed, to the forests around Paradise that served as home to the Elves of Lórien. As has often been noted, the diversity of environments in New Zealand gave Peter Jackson’s films the look and feel of being a globe-trotting adventure, but the fact that so many of his iconic filming locations are accessible in a single vacation made them excellent for tourists trying to escape into their favorite fantasy world.

The UK may not be blessed with nearly as many mountain ranges as New Zealand, but it still boasts a number of beautiful forests, coastlines, and craggy landscapes – particularly in Scotland where, what do you know, Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings was originally going to be filmed. As long as they continue to film on location in the UK, rather than assembling their landscapes in post-production using CGI to replicate the real deal, I don’t necessarily see an issue with this change. Maintaining visual continuity with season one is gonna be a hassle, but at this point Amazon has been filming for so long in New Zealand that they may be able to stitch reused footage into English or Scottish countrysides seamlessly. Maybe that’s what that fake production crew was actually doing this whole time…

I think one reason this decision has been met with such backlash is because it seems to confirm what’s becoming increasingly clear – that Amazon intends to cut ties with Jackson’s continuity, perhaps for good. I mean, we don’t know that for sure. They may end up returning to New Zealand for some reason. But this definitely suggests that Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings is going to establish its own visual style and aesthetic moving forward, and I can understand why that would make some fans upset. I know I’ll be extremely angry if the rich and unique landscapes of New Zealand are swapped out for lifeless greenscreens. We saw what that looked like in The Hobbit, and it was a travesty.

But hey! Maybe we’ll see some of the locations that inspired Tolkien himself in The Lord Of The Rings. That would be pretty darn awesome, and feels like too good an opportunity for Amazon to miss. I’m gonna miss New Zealand, I’ll be honest, but I’m hoping that, in this case, change doesn’t necessarily mean a change for the worse. We’ll have to wait and see.

If you live in New Zealand, I’d be especially interested to learn more about how this move affects the country, and if you live in the UK, I’d love to hear what locations you think would make great settings for The Lord Of The Rings! Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

August 5, 2021

Hot Take: Sauron Is More Than Just A Floating Eyeball, OK?

Peter Jackson did a lot of things right when he adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings to the big screen. That’s not up for debate, at least not to me. The simple way in which he empowers Frodo on Mount Doom? Flawless. The additional scenes that enrich Boromir’s character? Impeccable. The lighting of the beacons? Unsurpassable. Jackson gave us probably the best adaptation we could have asked for: a masterpiece of modern cinema that honored the already legendary source material, while making it accessible to general audiences.

But then he goes and turns Sauron into a giant floating eyeball, and it’s like: seriously, PJ? You were doing so well! I mean, you butchered Faramir…and Merry…and Gimli, and Treebeard, and nearly Théoden too, but other than that you were doing so well!

On paper, this decision probably seemed like a great way to very literally interpret Tolkien’s repeated references to the malevolent, all-seeing Eye of Sauron. But in execution (and perhaps especially in hindsight, now that the sheer spectacle of a fiery CGI eyeball isn’t enough on its own to distract from the inherent silliness of that idea), Jackson’s Sauron comes across as underwhelming and unscary. He’s inspired a great many memes (most of which ask, quite profoundly I might add, what the CGI eyeball planned to actually do with the One Ring when he had obtained it, seeing as Jackson’s version seemed to lack any fingers), but fear and awe: not so much.

Yet unfortunately, it’s that image of Sauron as an eye suspended between the prongs of Barad-dûr that has become embedded in the public consciousness, supplanting both Tolkien’s own written words, and the works of countless Tolkien artists and illustrators who preceded Jackson. And the fact that Jackson’s Sauron is so borderline cartoonish has only made it easier for people to claim that Sauron is a “one-dimensional” villain and that therefore The Lord Of The Rings is a shallow “good vs. evil” fantasy. I can understand why: if I only knew Sauron as a floating eye, I too would have a hard time believing he has one of the most fascinating character arcs in all of Tolkien’s legendarium.

But Amazon Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings finally has an opportunity to change the public perception of Sauron. I’m not saying I want people to think of him as a misunderstood antihero or anything like that, but it would be nice to finally give general audiences a clearer idea of his nuances, and the layers to his motivations beyond just wanting to “cover all the lands in a second darkness”, than they would necessarily get from watching Jackson’s movies or even from reading The Lord Of The Rings itself.

The bare bones of Sauron’s backstory are covered in The Silmarillion, a compendium of tales and legends from Middle-earth’s prehistory. It’s very briefly explained there that Sauron was once a Maia – which in Tolkien’s universe means that he was something like an angel; very powerful, but a lesser spirit compared to the archangels, or Valar, who answered directly to “God”, Eru Ilúvatar. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll discover that before he was known as Sauron, this particular Maia went by the name of Mairon (which translates to The Admirable). He was a craftsman and artisan for the Valar…until he was seduced to the darkness by the fallen angel, Morgoth.

As Morgoth’s most trusted lieutenant, Mairon’s power only increased – and he became known as Sauron (The Abhorred). Throughout The Silmarillion, he and Morgoth are depicted as being largely of the same mind: and even after Morgoth’s downfall (and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word), Sauron rejects the mercy of the Valar and chooses to hide in Middle-earth, seemingly to continue Morgoth’s agenda of chaos. When he conquers the kingdom of Númenor from within, he sets up temples to Morgoth and establishes a death-cult around his former master. It’s easy to see why many fans ship the two: they’re cute in a…toxic, vicious, self-destructive sort of way.

But in my opinion, even The Silmarillion strips away many of Sauron’s fascinating layers – understandably, because in its published form its basically an abridged version of a much larger and more intricate epic. Tolkien’s most concise and insightful exploration into the psyche of Sauron (again, just my opinion; feel free to disagree) comes from Morgoth’s Ring, one of many posthumously published texts on Middle-earth:

“[Sauron] did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction….his capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for ‘order’ had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his ‘subjects'”

I’ve referred back to this idea a number of times, and I’ve used the term “perfectionist” to describe Sauron because that’s basically what he was, before, you know…the business with the Ring. Unlike Morgoth, Sauron didn’t want to destroy Middle-earth, and Tolkien himself points out the differences between the two, writing elsewhere in Morgoth’s Ring that Morgoth represents “sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object”. Morgoth wanted to literally unmake the universe; but Sauron genuinely wanted to improve upon it. And he wanted to rule the universe he fashioned in his own “perfect” image.

We can see some of that still in the Second Age of Middle-earth, following Morgoth’s downfall. He never repented of his heinous deeds, but motivated by his jealousy of the Valar and their paradise he did genuinely want to redesign Middle-earth into something beautiful – more beautiful than anything the Valar could boast of in their Blessed Realm across the sea. As Tolkien writes above, he wanted to be a tyrant, but a “good” one, one worthy of the worship and reverence he would demand and receive from his subjects regardless. One could say there’s a desperate need for self-validation in that motive; a need to prove to himself that he was still good, that Morgoth had not corrupted him entirely.

But by joining Morgoth and turning away from true perfection (i.e. Eru Ilúvatar, who made the universe and all things in it), Sauron’s noble motives were perverted and distorted to suit his master’s nihilistic goal. In Tolkien’s legendarium, only Eru is capable of creation – Morgoth, Sauron, and all those who try to imitate Eru out of spite or jealousy, are at best only capable of copying the things Eru has created, or at worst of corrupting those things. For example, Morgoth’s trolls were his inferior copies of the Ents, while his orcs were Elves and Men whose bodies and souls he had mutilated. Sauron in turn became incapable of creating anything truly beautiful or perfect.

Now imagine how that must torture a perfectionist! Did it pain him to know that everything he touched would ultimately be corrupted, that his grand aspirations were literally unachievable? Or did it only further fuel his violent envy of the Valar and of Eru? Did he become a nihilist like Morgoth before him, convinced that if he could not fix the world because he himself stood in the way of that goal, he could at least tear everything down? Sauron would make a fascinating subject for a character study.

And with Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings, that could finally happen – at least in some form. Amazon’s show is set during the Second Age, right at that crucial midpoint in Sauron’s journey where the best and worst of his qualities are in play, warring for control over him. Morgoth is out of the picture, yet still wields power over his lieutenant’s heart. Sauron is free to be good, even perhaps desires to be good, but cannot bear the humiliation of surrendering to the Valar. Ah, the inner turmoil!

If Amazon pulls this off, it would be extraordinary. Some people will probably complain about how it’s unnecessarily overcomplicating a straightforward villain, and I get all that, but also…I just want people to know that there’s more to Sauron than a giant eyeball! Is that really so wrong?

Anyway, what do you want to see from Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings? Feel free to share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

August 2, 2021August 2, 2021

Amazon Unveils 1st Look At “The Lord Of The Rings”, And It’s Stunning

As chance would have it, I was out today when Amazon decided to drop a first look at The Lord Of The Rings. My timing, as always, was truly impeccable. But at this point, I’ve given up trying to figure out Amazon’s schedule – they seem to have a pattern of completely ignoring all the biggest and most significant dates in Tolkien lore, and instead choosing to release massive news on random days. Take today’s first-look image, for example. August 2nd, today’s date, has no significance as far as I can tell, either in J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe, or in a meta context, as the date of any one of his major publications. Considering how Amazon paired this first-look image with a caption reading “a new journey begins”, this reveal might have been better suited for July 29th, just a few days ago – the date on which The Fellowship Of The Ring was published, sixty-seven years ago.

But then, look at the release date Amazon has finally chosen for The Lord Of The Rings – September 2nd, 2022. Nope, I’m not missing a two. Amazon is passing over September 22nd (arguably the single-most important date in Tolkien fandom, the date of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins’ dual birthdays and Hobbit Day to fans around the world) in favor of a completely random premiere date for their series*. I’ll give you that choosing Hobbit Day would only further blur the lines between Amazon’s prequel series and The Lord Of The Rings proper, but hey, Amazon seems to be blurring the lines between their series and The Silmarillion anyway, so what’s a little more blurriness if it means getting to celebrate Hobbit Day with a massive Lord Of The Rings event next year?

What’s not blurry is the crisp, clean image that Amazon has provided us today, on this most random of days. It’s so exquisitely detailed that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s only a promotional photo or even a piece of concept artwork – but what we’re seeing here is apparently our very first official still from the premiere episode of The Lord Of The Rings…and reader, I’m a bit overwhelmed with emotion at the beautiful sight.

To say I cried is a bit of an understatement. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time, you know. But thankfully, I’ve had a moment to compose myself, I’ve taken a deep breath, I’ve relaxed, and ERU ABOVE ARE THOSE THE TWO TREES OF VALINOR?!?!?

The image in question is deceptive in that at first glance it could be any city in the heyday of the Second Age of Middle-earth, when Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings is set (roughly three-thousand years before The Lord Of The Rings trilogy). My initial impression was that it had to be Ost-in-Edhil, the capital of the Elven kingdom of Eregion where the Rings of Power were forged during the Second Age – I saw a city sprawling across the foothills of some mountains, a figure clad in white who I assumed was Lady Galadriel, and a pretty sunset. And then I zoomed in and realized that the sunset was in fact not a sun – but an explosion of light emanating from the silhouette of a towering tree in the far distance, with another one just behind it.

“Stunned speechless” is probably the best way to sum up my reactions to this image, then. Seeing Ost-in-Edhil and Eregion would no doubt have been cool, and would have tied in very nicely with The Lord Of The Rings, giving general audiences a hook; remember that place in the prologue to Fellowship, where the Rings were made? This is that! But seeing what I now have to believe is the Blessed Land of Aman (better known as Valinor) and the Elven city of Tirion upon the green hill of Túna, illuminated by the light of the Two Trees in the dawn of the First Age before there even was a dawn, or a sun – that’s something beyond cool. Never in our lifetimes have we seen any part of The Silmarillion adapted for the screen because access to the book and its treasure trove of iconic imagery and arcane lore was famously off-limits to filmmakers. Now, as TheOneRing.net recently reported, everything is on the table.

So what does that mean for the show? Well, it’s still going to be set in the Second Age, so it makes sense why this beautiful shot of a First Age landscape is drawn from the first episode. It looks like TheOneRing.net was also ahead of the curve when they revealed that the first two episodes of The Lord Of The Rings, both directed by J.A. Bayona, will form an epic feature-length film – an introduction of sorts to this new version of Tolkien’s universe. I speculated that this film would be set during the beginning of the Second Age, but it seems the story will begin even earlier in Tolkien’s timeline, during the height of Valinorian culture under the watchful eyes of the Valar, Middle-earth’s pantheon of god-like deities. This film will set up the story and our major players, and then we’ll jump into the rest of the series.

But why set the first episode so far back in the First Age? And why is Amazon concealing the identity of the white-clad figure standing near the bottom of the frame – most people think it’s Galadriel, and it very well could be (she was alive during the First Age, and lived in Valinor), but what if it’s not? Again, I think back to TheOneRing.net’s recent leaks: they revealed that neither the dark lord Sauron nor his alter ego of Annatar would be revealed in this first season of The Lord Of The Rings, but they said nothing of his original form as Mairon. My casual readers probably already abandoned this post when I started ranting about glowing trees, but hear me out: Sauron was once an angelic being named Mairon, basically a craftsman of the gods. During the First Age, Mairon lived in Valinor and would likely have traveled to and from the Elven city of Tirion to help build its towers and palaces.

The Lord Of The Rings might give us a glimpse of this pure, uncorrupted version of Sauron before his fall into darkness – precipitated, like most horrible things in Tolkien’s universe, by the tyrannical Morgoth, who seduced Sauron away from the Valar. Of course, this First Age flashback could also be setting up Galadriel’s arc or establishing the curse of the Fëanorians, or it might just be one part of a montage of Middle-earth history: but considering the hoops Amazon would have had to jump through to even get the rights to The Silmarillion that would allow them to film this, I have to assume whatever we’re seeing here is an important moment in the show. And building up the threat of Sauron, starting with the kind of complex and sorrowful backstory that will finally dispel the widespread belief that Sauron is a straightforward evil villain, seems like a worthwhile use of Silmarillion content.

Does this mean I’m going to have to resurrect my series of Second Age history deep-dives, but with the First Age too? Perhaps. We have a long wait ahead of us, but I for one welcome the extra time: I need to be prepared for this, folks! The fact that I cried over a picture of a tree should give you some hint as to the emotional state I’ll be in come September, 2022, when The Lord Of The Rings actually premieres.

Let me turn it over to you, dear readers. Did you get emotional seeing this image, returning to Middle-earth (technically Aman, but whatever) for the first time since The Hobbit trilogy ended? What parts of The Silmarillion do you hope to see in The Lord Of The Rings, and when do you think Amazon will give us a proper title for this show so I can stop calling it The Lord Of The Rings and confusing half of my readers? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

* Okay, so I’m an idiot. September 2nd is the date of J.R.R. Tolkien’s death in 1973, not quite as “random” as all that. It feels like a strangely solemn date on which to premiere Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings, but I did want to point this out.

July 27, 2021

Nazanin Boniadi’s “The Lord Of The Rings” Role Revealed?

Given how vast the ensemble cast of Amazon Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings already is, with thirty-nine actors officially – emphasis on officially – confirmed by Amazon to date, and seeing as the series only continues to pull in new talent, you’d think we’d be able to match some of these actors to characters at this point. But Amazon has made it pretty difficult for us: the shortage of substantial set leaks and behind-the-scenes footage or stills has forced us to rely largely on the most basic kind of guesswork: for instance, trying to find facial similarities between actors in Amazon’s cast and those in Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

And to be fair, that kind of guesswork might be effective. After all, Morfydd Clark bears a striking resemblance to Cate Blanchett, who originated the live-action of Galadriel which Clark will take on in Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings (at least according to major Hollywood trades; Amazon hasn’t technically made that official yet, either). But character breakdowns and audition tapes have also been extremely helpful, probably more helpful to fans than the Hollywood trades in fact, and we’ve gotten a lot of those from places like Redanian Intelligence, The Observer, and Knight Edge Media. From these, we’ve gleaned the names (or code-names) of most of the series’ main players, and had a great time guessing which ones are established figures from the Tolkien legendarium and which are wholly original.

Today, Redanian Intelligence broke an interesting scoop pairing the character of “Kari” (I’m putting the name in quotes because it could very well be a code-name, and I know certain book-purists freak out about the names in the series not being Tolkienesque enough for them) with the actress Nazanin Boniadi, who was among the first wave of cast members to join The Lord Of The Rings in January, 2020. We still don’t know who Kari is, but I know I’ve been fascinated by her character description since I first read it – and finally being able to match a face to the name helps me visualize who she could be.

Let’s go over what we know. We first became acquainted with Kari a few months before The Lord Of The Rings started filming, back in November of 2019. At the time, The Observer had no information about the actress in the role, only that the character was “a self-sufficient single mother and village healer with a secret”. Redanian Intelligence soon afterwards disclosed two audition tapes which fleshed out Kari’s character quite a bit; revealing that she had a lover, a soldier named “Everad”, who was very clearly an outsider in her small village. In the tapes, Kari and Everad argue over politics – Everad is still distrustful of Kari’s people and calls her homeland “a disloyal place” because its people supposedly rose up in rebellion to his own at some point in the not-so-distant past, while Kari defends them with a passion and anger I instantly admired.

This reporting was backed up in January 2020 by an exclusive from Knight Edge Media, where an extensive character breakdown for Kari was revealed, elaborating on her “at times gentle, but also at times fiery” temperament, and the conflict which defines her, being “torn between her son, her own people and the man with whom she is secretly in love”. It was also mentioned that Amazon was looking for a “Diverse” actress for the role, and Boniadi – an Iranian-British actress who is currently forbidden from returning to the country of her birth due to her activism – fits that description, and would have been just within the “30-39” age range for Kari during the casting process.

Kari’s description gave a lot of us the impression that she was probably one of the people of Middle-earth who were ruled over by the Númenóreans throughout much of the Second Age – the three-thousand, four-hundred and forty-one year period when Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings is set. The Númenóreans conquered basically every inch of coastline in Middle-earth that wasn’t already occupied by Elves, and proceeded to desecrate the land and deplete its natural resources as they worked their way inland, building cities, ripping down entire swathes of forest to build their sea-faring ships, and generally making themselves immensely unpopular with the people who were already living in these lands…including, perhaps, our Kari.

This kind of storyline is by no means unique to Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings, and there are ways in which it could go badly wrong if it’s handled without the sensitivity and nuance any story (particularly a romance) that deals with topics of imperialism and colonialism requires. J.R.R. Tolkien’s own writing pretty explicitly links Númenórean imperialism to their eventual downfall from pride, greed, and the lust for world domination. But this new series can go further than he ever did, by centering the perspectives of Middle-earth’s pre-Númenórean people and depicting them as complex, fully-realized characters.

I know some people will be disappointed if Boniadi is playing Kari simply because a lot of people hoped she’d be playing a Númenórean ruling queen in The Lord Of The Rings (to the point where some had drawn connections between Boniadi and another Iranian cast-member, Sophia Nomvete, and extrapolated that Númenor would have Middle Eastern or Persian design influences), so a village healer might seem like a downgrade. It’s not, I assure you. Kari already sounds fascinating from the information we can compile about the character, and I’m sure Boniadi will give a great performance.

(In passing, Redanian Intelligence also revealed that two new actors – New Zealand’s Bridie Sisson and Britain’s Robert Nairne – have also joined The Lord Of The Rings, likely in small roles. I’d like to give both of them a warm welcome to the Tolkien family!)

But what say you? Do you think Boniadi is playing Kari, and are you interested in this character? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!