The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Main Teaser. Video / Amazon Prime Video
OPINION:
There's no doubt Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy and JRR Tolkien's original books wrapped the whole story up pretty neatly.
But with Prime Video about to launch its blockbuster prequel series, The Rings of Power – and with mystery surrounding a lot of what's set tobe included – plenty of new questions have come up.
Here's what fans are asking ahead of the September 2 premiere.
Jackson's trilogy – filmed across 1999 and 2000 – is an example of one of the most technologically advanced projects in film history, credited with innovating CGI (computer-generated imagery) in cinema for a generation.
Tasked with depicting epic battles between armies of mythical creatures, demons made of fire, cities within mountains, and talking trees, the renowned director took the tools of his predecessors one step further using CGI.
It helped propel The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers to the top of the box office charts, but by the third film, The Return of the King, it's been suggested Jackson was relying too heavily on the resource – particularly the final visual effects-heavy battle of Minas Tirith and the subsequent Hobbit trilogy.
The battle for Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. Photo / Supplied
(It should be noted here, for what it's worth: The Return of the King was the most commercially successful of the three films, bringing in US$1.14 billion ($1.84b) globally at the box office, and winning 11 Oscars including Best Picture in 2004).
Viggo Mortensen, who starred as Aragorn in the films, even criticised Jackson for sacrificing "subtlety" for CGI as the films progressed.
"Peter [Jackson] was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back," the actor told The Guardian in 2014.
"In the first movie, yes, there's Rivendell, and Mordor, but there's sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes. It's grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third."
A scene from The Rings of Power. Photo / Supplied
More than 20 years on, and with filmmaking having advanced significantly since the filming of the original LOTR trilogy, just how much will the creators of TRoP be relying on CGI?
In an interview with Vanity Fair, showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne indicated that they were keen to employ practical effects and real-world locations as much as possible, with Payne explaining they used "every single trick in the book — old school, new school, everything — in a way that we are told no one has attempted".
And fans will soon see the result.
How much does it rely on the aesthetic of the original LOTR trilogy?
The creators have been given a challenging task in that they will certainly want to keep fans of the original trilogy happy by staying true to the overall feel – it's also not an exact continuation of Jackson's work (nor is it legally supposed to be).
It's clear from the trailers already that while the production design is similar, it is carving out its own unique style.
The great benefit to TRoP's creators was that the prime locations featured in the Second Age – including Númenor, Lindor and the dwarven city of Khazad-dûm – weren't featured in Jackson's films, offering them a completely clean slate.
One significant feature that has already shown to be different to its original depiction is King Elendil's broken sword, Narsil, with which Elendil's son Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron's finger during the War of the Last Alliance.
The broken blade appears in The Fellowship of the Ring. Photo / Supplied
The legendary blade shards were on display in The Fellowship of the Ring and then shown after being reforged as one sword in The Return of the King.
However, in a promotional poster revealed ahead of TRoP, Narsil has clearly undergone a bit of a makeover.
The new Narsil. Photo / Prime Video
How much will the character origins deviate from Tolkien's work?
We know that The Rings of Power has been written by Tolkien mega-fans McKay and Payne, who are also the showrunners – which should serve as some reassurance to even the most ardent devotees of the author's work.
But given that the five-season series has been described by McKay and Payne as essentially "the novel Tolkien never wrote" and only has the appendices to the Lord of the Rings to go off, they'll need to take plenty of creative licence.
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Rings of Power. Photo / Prime Video
Even Jackson added in characters and showed some flexibility with Tolkien's facts – just look at the pivotal river scene where Arwen challenges the Nazgul while defending a wounded Frodo, or the very existence of the elf Tauriel.
Payne and McKay have largely created new characters, but they also have to work with the younger versions of established figures, including Elrond, Galadriel and Sauron.
What fans don't yet know is how much of the origin story arcs will be from Tolkien, and how much will have been crafted by the TRoP writers to lend itself to a more fleshed-out series for television?
The early years of Galadriel, played by Morfydd Clark in the series, will be particularly interesting, as the "darkness" inside the warrior elf was mentioned by both Tolkien and in the film trilogy and fans have never been shown exactly how she overcame it – or how close she came to indulging that evil within.
Galadriel lost the plot for a minute there in The Fellowship of the Ring. Photo / Supplied
The author describes the One Ring as "all that Galadriel" had desired in her youth in The History of Middle-earth, and we also saw her have an extremely unhinged moment in The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo tried to get her to take it.
Another origin story that fans will surely be interested in exploring is that of orcs.
Who hurt you, hun? Photo / Supplied
Tolkien touched upon the circumstances that brought them to the state they appear in the trilogy, but didn't delve into the specifics of how it happened.
Hopefully, that's something that can be addressed in TRoP.
