"We were looking for a massive Tolkienian super epic!"
At the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, showrunner Patrick McKay debuted a new teaser and previously seen footage for The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime's eagerly awaited Lord of the Rings TV spin-off.
He has a large cast of attractive elves, a rare female dwarf, the forefathers of the Hobbits, an outstanding CGI city, a mysterious threat, an entwife, and a surprise Balrog in his arsenal.
This is the finest preview for fans of The Rings of Power, the most costly program ever filmed, costing $1 billion (£832 million) for five seasons.
The real question, though, is whether it can rival Peter Jackson's acclaimed Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which won 17 Oscars, set the standard for composers, and made second breakfast fashionable.
The action is instead set 4,000 years before the Hobbits Sam and Frodo traveled across Middle Earth, which is a wise decision.
In this Second Age, the 20 Rings of Power are created, and Sauron, the dark Lord of Mordor, emerges to threaten the hard-won tranquility of the lands.
The Lord of the Rings novels' appendices by Tolkien serves as the primary source. The central query: "How far into the shadows would you travel to defend the things you cherish most?" explains JD Payne, a co-showrunner with McKay.
In one exclusive clip seen at Comic-Con, the eternal elves Galadriel and Elrond (Morfydd Clark and Robert Aramayo), who are shown enjoying a sentimental moment, are seen with new characters, some of whom are unique to the program.
Elrond and the dwarf King Durin IV (Owain Arthur) engaged in a risky test of strength by vying to fracture rocks in another tense sequence. And when the elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) struggles to free himself from slavery, orcs, the cursed species that made up Sauron's army in Tolkien's writings, are portrayed in the fight with him.
More than 20 cast members took turns appearing on stage to discuss their roles. Clark made a point to mention the serene authority of Cate Blanchett's Galadriel in Jackson's flicks. three
She explains that she intended to "highlight how the peace of Galadriel in the movie comes at a cost."
Since his family had worked in a Welsh slate quarry, Arthur claimed to have a special connection with the underground dwarves. However, Arthur admitted that the physical change into Durin had been difficult:
"Three hours every day and 45 minutes to take it all off!"
To the satisfaction of actress Sophia Nomvete, who portrays the dwarven Princess Disa of Khazad-Dum, the dearth of female dwarves on screen in Tolkien has also been pleasantly addressed.
I have the pleasure of hosting that historic event, she exclaimed, before revealing that she had attended the audition "when I was two days away from giving birth... and then I received the call to say you would be carrying the torch for this amazing character when my daughter was five days old."
She could nurse her infant between takes because of the way her Princess Disa costume was made.
The Rings of Power enjoys venturing into uncharted terrain, yet it also pays homage to the canonical Tolkien narrative.
At a media roundtable, some performers portraying elves revealed that they had worked with a professional to perfect the pronunciation of Elvish languages.
"When you see any Elvish, you sort of comprehend it in a deeper manner, what the professor [Tolkien]… the language was so crucial to him," Elrond actor Robert Aramayo stated.
Charles Edwards, who portrays Celebrimbor, the elf blacksmith responsible for creating the Rings of Power, exclaims, "My most thrilling part was learning to write it!"
Ismael Cruz Cordova, a Puerto Rican, smiles, "I must say, I took to it like a fish to water. "It has several vowel sounds in common with Spanish!"
The human healer Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), who is also the mother of "a slightly rebellious teenaged boy," as she puts it, enjoys a forbidden relationship with Cruz Cordoba's elf character Arondir.
But Boniadi recognizes that Bronwyn is a whole person in her own right.
Every female character has been granted such agency, she claims. We do not work for the males.
We may anticipate more of the booming drumming and choir chanting that characterized Jackson's films in terms of music. Bear McCreary, the series composer, stated he wanted to honor the original score, and in fact, the series' theme music was composed by Howard Shore, who also directed a full orchestra and choir at the panel event.
The panel's host, comedian, and die-hard Tolkien aficionado Stephen Colbert revealed to the audience that he had read the Lord of the Rings trilogy over 50 times. While other people would only be curious how he found the time, this illustrates the powerful emotions that devotees of this mythology experience.
Can The Rings of Power balance appeasing them with satisfying viewers who are just discovering the story?
The show premieres in September 2022, so you may make your own judgment then, but for now, things are looking up.
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