The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime

Wow. Somehow that got me hyped despite showing NOTHING.

I'm impressed by the way they've managed to clone the LotR font and the LotR music, but I assume just different enough not to get into copyright issues? Still close enough for goosebumps though.

Cate Blanchet lite sounded a bit too lite to me, and it was a bit weird when she suddenly switched accents just to say Mooordorrrr!
Maybe the goosebumps are just because it's a really great piece of original prose.

I'm well up for a 2nd age LotR/Middle-Earth drama, as I've always wanted to see that stuff from the Silmarillion etc..
I don't remember my Tolkien-lore as well as I used to... is this after the tree and pillars of light? Cos I always wanted to see those.

As long as it doesn't come off as a cheap LotR clone, which Wheel of Time kinda did at times.

So hot for this.

Please don’t fuck it up.

I don't have an Instagram account so can't look at more than a couple of these before the systems tells me to bugger off which is a shame. Looks like they are just hinting at the major players that will be in the series, so that everyone can play Guess Who.
There's Sauron there and I'm actually releived that he's depicted as black armoured and spikey as I was concerned they might go with the forgetting the whole Morgoth's number two bit.

/ Wanders off into the internet

The current guesses are:

The Eotheod (Rohan didn't exist back then - but then this might be the first ancesters of Rohan)
Gil-Galad (holding the scepter of the King's of Numenor))
Elendil (Numenorian "sun" armour - armour has similarities to the armour he wore in the First LOTR film)
Maybe a maiar (guy with the staff)though they shouldn't be there yet
One of the nine before they changed (guy with two rings)
Ar-Pharazon - last king of the Numenor (the Golden one with lots of gold rings)
Isildur (guy with the rope) as the hand scar is the same as the guy who is playing Isildur
Cirdan the ship-wright (guy with the scroll)
A flower from the white tree (maybe held by Tar-Mairiel Queen of Numenor or even Yavanna "giver of fruits" a Valar)
Beorn? (holding Mallorn acorns)
The elf in armour is apparently Gladriel as those are the hands of the person playing Galadriel (Morfydd Clark)
Gurthang (semi sentient sword(broken sword) Turin's sword.
A wood elf (possibly Oropher - Legolas's grandfather - person with the arrow)
Ar-Zimpraphel (Ar-Pharazon's wife) (the lass with golden fingers)
Narvi possibly (the dwarf / guy with the hammer - it says "Awake Sleeping Stone" on the hammer)
Elrond (reading the elf script which apparently says "King's sky - view from the South")
Annatar (fair version of Sauron - either of the non descript tunic wearing people)

Anarion (the less famous son of Elendil) has to be there somewhere and maybe also Celebrimbor I'll keep an eye on what the Internet is thinking.

There's some outrage that not everyone is white which is a bit pathetic nd that everything is so clean and bright. I can get the latter as people are worrying that they have gone "Wheel of Time" on the outfits and they wont look lived in again.

First trailer for this will be played during the Superbowl on Feb 13th. It will also be hosted on TheOneRing.net.

IT DOESN'T LOOK RIGHT

Phew, just read the whole article. It's quite interesting actually. They've watched the first few episodes apparently and the writers have discussed various plot points, with basically everything from the LotR Appendices being condensed down from thousands of years into a much smaller timeframe. Which is obviously going to annoy some of the purists.

I like Galadriel in armor. I don't know if she ever canonically wears battle armor but it looks cool.

Be ok if they moved it up his head a bit.

I hope dwarven princess Disa has a sassy attitude!

now his chin is too big

Squish face syndrome (SFS). Who did the casting?

That is the one thing that's a bit silly to me about the recasting. Elves are meant to be eternally youthful, so they should theoretically look the same as they did in the films. Cate Blanchett still looks beautiful and youthful, and Hugo Weaving never did. They could've been brought back and not looked "wrong."

My major red flag on this is the showrunners have never actually done any...