It had a premiere date before it had an official title, but now it’s got both: Amazon Prime Video’s J.R.R. Tolkien series is now The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
The announcement came in the form of a short video showing the forging of a ring, with a voice reciting some very familiar lines:
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The Starless Crown
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
It ends, notably, before the lines about the One Ring (“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”). We’re back in the Second Age, which Amazon describes as “an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.”
Intriguingly, the molten metal in the video is a practical effect, not CGI. Variety notes, “Expert foundryman and metal artist Landon Ryan worked together with director Klaus Obermeyer and legendary Hollywood SFX pioneer and artist Douglas Trumbull to capture the molten metal moving through carvings in a sustainably sourced slab of redwood using a 4K camera system.”
According to showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay, “The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring—but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on September 2nd. It’s already been renewed for a second season.
