TheQuartering [8/4/2022]

According to TheFilmCompanion:

Despite being weeks away from release, Amazon Prime Video‘s upcoming sprawling big bet series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power remains a bit of a mystery. A couple of visually stunning, bloody intriguing trailers aside, we still don’t know all that much about what the show has in store. Aside from the fact that it’s expensive – reportedly one of the most expensive shows ever made.

Thankfully, at the recent San Diego Comic Con Hall H panel, host and famed Tolkien-nerd Stephen Colbert managed to extract a few more details from showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne. Here’s everything we know about the highly anticipated show so far.

et thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings books (and director Peter Jackson’s celebrated trilogy), The Rings Of Power follows the initial rise of Sauron along with the story of the forging of the rings of power.  Three for the elven kings, seven for the dwarf lords, nine for mortal men, and one for the Dark Lord Sauron which he used to deceive them all and generally do mean, destructive, not nice things. You know how Dark Lords are.

The prequel series takes place in the Second Age of Middle Earth, whereas the original trilogy covered the Third Age. To put it in context, during the Comic Con panel, co-showrunner Patrick McKay described the events of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy as a “post apocalyptic” Middle Earth. The kingdoms of men have fallen and the elves are leaving the land, whereas the Second Age sees Middle Earth thriving and at its most vibrant, before it all went to hell.

A key part of that downfall was the destruction of the kingdom of Neumenor. Often described as “Tolkien’s Atlantis”, Neumenor was considered the greatest kingdom of men before it was destroyed as a result of the rings of power and all the havoc they wreaked.