While this coming weekend’s Super Bowl Sunday brings the first trailer for the show, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power first photos were revealed in a preview.
The first on-set and in-costume photos from the show reveal (via Vanity Fair) the main characters and their new actors, with 22 reported main characters in the series, to start.
As seen in the new imagery from the production, the main characters and their actors include a younger Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, above left) – who is hunting down former allies of the original dark lord Morgoth, newly invented elven character Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova, center left), Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur, above center right) ruling class from dwarven city Khazad-dûm, and another entirely new character – dwarven princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete, above right).
The other photos show other returning characters like a young Elrond (Robert Aramayo, pictured above), who they describe as “politically ambitious” in the story, which is focused on the Second Age of Middle-earth and takes place before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both of which occur in the Third Age.
Here’s the other The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power first photos:
Two main concerns with Amazon’s new series is the rumors of making like “their Game of Thrones adaptation,” i.e. that it will bring gratuitous amounts of sex and violence like HBO’s series. Amazon’s new series is based on books and writings from original author J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a devout Catholic.
Showrunner Patrick McKay (running the show alongside J.D. Payne) says their goal with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is “to make a show for everyone, for kids who are 11, 12, and 13” even though sometimes they “might have to pull the blanket up over their eyes if it’s a little too scary.”
McKay added, “We talked about the tone in Tolkien’s books. This is material that is sometimes scary—and sometimes very intense, sometimes quite political, sometimes quite sophisticated—but it’s also heartwarming and life-affirming and optimistic. It’s about friendship and it’s about brotherhood and underdogs overcoming great darkness.”
A second concern is if they’re going to shoehorn hobbits into the series, despite their focus in Tolkien’s actual published work they were largely unheard of prior to the Third Age. This is probably because hobbits are quite small, and also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected. Despite this, the show is creating a “pastoral” harfoot society, the ancestors of the hobbits, which they say “thrives on secrecy and evading detection.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to premiere exclusively via Amazon Prime Video on September 2nd, 2022.
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