www.arabnews.com: There has never been a television series more ambitious than “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” The first season, which premiered on Amazon Prime on Sept. 2, cost a staggering $465 million to make — roughly 10 times the price of the first season of “Game of Thrones” 11 years ago — with a planned $1 billion for the intended five-season series on a whole. If any franchise can justify that kind of investment, though, it’s the world of Middle Earth.
7 comments:
I am SO EXCITED about this series. Lord of the Rings has been one of my favorite book series since I was a kid and quickly became a favorite movie series as well. The Tolkien fantasy world is so incredibly well developed through his notes and stories and I am so glad that they are exploring further into the world and creating new material from it. I am thrilled about the casting for the show. I cannot wait to see new fresh faces in middle earth and see their takes on the wonderful world Tolkien has created. Not using well know faces for a star studded cast is a really good idea in this series. Because it gives the team more wiggle room to the characters and the whole mood of the show. Rather than having to create a character's personality around what any particular star is known for. I am super excited to get to know the cast. And although the budget is astronomically large and may be a bit much in comparison to any other show (including game of thrones) I would be happy with any price tag that would bring Middle Earth to life in the most. magical way possible.
The Lord of the Rings series is extremely well-known and influential in a global scale. When I was a kid, I would watch this show with my parents as one of the weekend activities. The moment that I knew there would be a new season coming out, it brought back a lot of the memories that I had when I was watching it as a kid. I’m truly excited about this new series coming out and the storyline that it is going to present to its audience. At the same time, I’m also a little hesitant in having no specific idea in what story that is going to be displayed. From pictures about this show that I have seen online and interviews with staff and performers, it seems to me that the show does different from the old one in a great extent causing me to worry that the characters can be potentially different in the ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’.
Where's that Irish article absolutely dunkin' on the new Lord of the Rings series? Gimme a sec I am gonna go find it. Okay, I'm back. Guy named Ed Power wrote for the Irish Times, "Rings of Power: The new hobbits are filthy, hungry simpletons with stage-Irish accents. That’s $1bn well spent." Which isn't news to us, I think. The Irish article also mentions dwarves as Scottish caricatures and the elves as a posher English type, "smuggling Victorian-era caste into the 21st century." Which again, is not news. It's been this way since the get-go. There isn't a point I'm trying to make, I just thought it was a funny title. On a more positive note, I've seen a lot of costume makers and cosplayers get really excited about this series though, and they're all eagerly awaiting more close-ups of the costumes so they can start their own builds.
I grew up reading The Lord of the Rings. In fact, The Hobbit was the first big book that a read and it continues to guide my taste in literature. After all, half of my bookshelf is works that stemmed from it. I’m truly excited to see how this series goes, though I have heard mixed reviews on it. I hope it is able to do a deep dive into the world that Tolkien created, maybe even digging deeper into the appendices than any of the movies have been able to. With the massive budget that this has, it should be possible. Though them compressing the timeline of the events that are occurring in the show will have an interesting effect in that it will change some of the storytelling. Something that I like is that they are using mostly unknown actors, and hopefully this show will give them the boost they need to have a successful career.
I am looking forward to watching this series. The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and other Middle-Earth series hold a special place in my heart and I am looking forward to going back there. Growing up, my father used to read to me every night before bed. Of course, early in my life it was small children’s such as Dr. Seuss and such, but it quickly grew into readings of higher level novels, including all of Tolkein’s books, and several other classic novel series. I am definitely overdue to reread through Tolkein’s various series, and I think the release of this new prequel-typy show is the perfoect opportunity for me to do so. That being said, the budget for this production simply does not even begin to compute in my mind. The approved budgets for some movies and TV shows these days are simply unfathomable. $465 is not a small amount of money – I cannot even begin to process just how much that is nor how you could use that much money in the production of a show when we routinely put on shows for far less that $30,000. Obviously we work with relatively small budgets but we are still able to accomplish so much – my expectations for this series are very high.
It’s fascinating to me that these writers were able to take stories that have long been shelved and never written out in entirety and piece them together to reflect Tolkien’s master plan and bring it into the franchise. The fact that the lore of Lord of the Rings ran so deep that there is a history and mythology crafted from long before the first series or The Hobbit is intensely exciting. The central tenet of this enterprise seems to be to take the building blocks of something and then fill in the gaps with interpretation and new ideas, both in the foundation of the show adding a unique spin to Tolkien’s ideas, and in allowing the actors to have freedom with the characters and establish their personalities. It’s incredibly collaborative on both fronts, and represents some of the most amazing things about putting a story together. I’m excited to see how it turns out.
I’m sure there are arguments to be made about classifying Harry Potter as Low fantasy and The Lord of the Rings as High fantasy. But we won’t go there for now. I am really excited to watch this show. We talk about them spending a ton of money on the show but to be honest, I think that if we take inflation into consideration, the creators were just trying to match or gracefully update their stories to match the previous greatness of the original trilogy. I take comfort in the art and care that was taken to expand upon Tolkien’s world. It is nice to know that they tried to match the bits of his stories as best they could to fit this new age format. I also appreciate when performers care just as much about the story as the viewers. When it’s not just a job for them, it usually makes the storytelling even greater. I am excited to see what these performers bring to this new and old world that so many people have loved for so long.
Post a Comment