The trailer for Amazon Prime Video’s new Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power finally landed over the weekend, debuting during the third quarter of the Superbowl LVI on Sunday. “Why are they playing sports at the lord of the rings: rings of power trailer event” asked one fan on Twitter, summing up the anticipation felt by countless LOTR-lovers across the world. Fortunately it did not disappoint.
Over the course of exactly one minute (keep it tight, those advertising slots cost a bomb), the purportedly most-expensive series in television history (predicted to pass a bonkers $1 billion, with the first series alone racking up costs of a reported $462 million), which is set thousands of years before the events detailed in the Lord of the Rings books and movies, set out its stall in breathtaking style.
“Haven’t you ever wondered... what else is out there?” comes a breathy squeak in the wobbly, all-purpose oo-ar accent that tends to denote the less elegantly dressed peoples of the Lord of the Rings universe, as a vertiginous harbour city with a prominent male figure carved into the rock hoves into view (LOTR nerds - and I use the word with reverence rather than disdain - have suggested this is Númenor, the civilisation from which the founders of Gondor emerge).
“There’s wonders in this world beyond our wandering [though it could have been ‘wondering’, the oo-ar made it difficult to ascertain] - I can feel it,” the voice continues as the camera pans over an epic landscape in which two figures who appear to be wearing elk horns as wings are toiling across a mountaintop, verifying our narrator’s suspicions.
She, incidentally, appears to be a harfoot - an evolutionary precursor to the hobbit (you can tell this by her straggly hair, here apparently adorned with conkers) - and is played by the actress Markella Kavenagh, who appeared in True History of the Kelly Gang (fun fact).
Cue a montage of massive waterfalls, a chainmail-sporting Galadriel (the fabulous Welsh actress Morfydd Clark), a heroically cool elf (played by the Puerto Rican actor Ismael Cruz Córdova) catching and firing arrows in a forest, Galadriel again, charging about on a horse, some kind of absolutely horrible troll-thing with shocking dentistry, a bunch more elves standing about elvishly in a lovely autumnal forest, a beardy dwarvish prince (Durin IV of Khazad-dûm, in case you were wondering, played by an unrecognisable Owain Arthur) looming from the darkness, a brooding young Elrond (Robert Aramayo), sporting a dashing wavy do which is a huge improvement on the ageing hippy hairstyle Hugo Weaving wears in the films, Sophie Nomvete’s dwarvish princess Disa singing and, oh, God, a bunch of other stuff ending with two hands reaching for each other. The whole fellowship thing is evidently baked in to this series, which probably would have pleased Tolkein.
Anyway, mostly people liked it (though inevitably not everyone, with one fan on Twitter dismissing it as looking like “cosplay s***”, which surely opens up a chicken/egg argument). The CGI looks incredible, and it has a frankly fantastic, appropriately diverse cast of properly good actors, so unless they really mess up the script, it shouldn’t be terrible. Though (aside from the usual racist nonsense, which we won’t give oxygen to) there has been one strongly voiced objection regarding the character of Disa. We remain on tenterhooks until the September launch to find out - will they, as Tolkien intended for female dwarves, allow her to grow a beard?
