The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a welcome return to Middle-earth

Amazon’s billion-dollar  Lord of the Rings project The Rings of Power  is a return to classic fantasy roots of nobility and moral duality, a world away from the grim-dark brutality of HBO’s Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon . Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Courage as always is found in the most unlikely places. Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots (browner, shorter, cuter proto-hobbits) must face a rising evil. The first two episodes (made available to press) spark the feeling we are watching something familiar yet fresh, boundless yet timeless, bulky yet light on its feet.

Middle-earth is a gift that keeps on giving. JRR Tolkien had dreamed up a world with such obsession to detail, the different beings and races had their own cultures, histories, languages and dietary preferences. The cumulative effect made the world appear as real, three-dimensional and concrete as our own. Despite the sprawling brilliance of Tolkien’s epic act of myth-making, and all that we know about the realm from reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Silmarillion and every appendix available, the feeling seldom relents that there were parts as yet unexplored and stories as yet untold. The Hobbit and LOTR covered the events that took place during the Third Age of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion devoted over 300 pages to describe everything from the creation of Eä (“the World that Is”) to the First Age, and a sparse 50-odd pages that condensed the Second and Third Ages. That’s nearly 3500 years of the Second Age alone condensed into fewer than 50 pages. This is where the Second Age-set The Rings of Power comes in. As Amazon only has TV rights to The Hobbit and LOTR but not The Silmarillion, creators JD Payne and Patrick McKay have little else but Tolkien’s outline to work with. The task of filling in some rather large blanks may have undoubtedly been exciting. The task of filling Tolkien’s shoes though is no easy one. Payne and McKay do seem up to the challenge of opening a window into a time and place less charted. The duo expands the source material, bringing their own sense of clarity to its fuzzy edges, taking liberties where necessary, and building the mechanics of a remixed saga, all the while ensuring they stay true to Tolkien’s worldview.

The show begins thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit. Director JA Bayona does a lot of scene-setting in the first two episodes, taking us from the Harfoot hideout to the Elven realm of Lindon to the subterranean Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm, still flourishing long before it became plagued with Orcs. If the season premiere sags a bit, it’s because of the need to get the necessary exposition out of the way. The constant shift between characters and locations impedes total surrender. The whiplash is mitigated by the visuals, digitally rendered or otherwise — a clear attempt to get mileage out of landscape photography and production design that demands, not invites, us to gush over the sheer scale and spectacle of this Amazon-produced endeavour. There is a nice balance between practical effects and CGI. The prosthetics, for instance, makes the Orcs look particularly ghastly. When you have a world so rich in characters, history and incident, you need a way to give the viewer at least the bare minimum info so they don’t feel lost. Serving as our point-of-entry character is Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), a much younger version than the ethereal being and excellent gift-giver we meet in The Lord of the Rings. Her voice-over takes us on an abbreviated sprint through essential history. The War of Wrath may have ended with the defeat of the Dark Lord Morgoth and the casting of his lieutenant Sauron into the Outer Void. But Galadriel remains convinced Sauron will return and try to take over Middle-earth with his Orc minions. Believing evil has already been thwarted, everyone else is eager to move on. This includes Galadriel’s half-Elven politician friend Elrond (Robert Aramayo), again a younger version of the character who plays a key role in The Lord of the Rings as well. Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), the High King of the Elves, charges Elrond with assisting the Elven smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) on his new enterprise. For which, Elrond must forge an alliance with the Dwarves. But first, he must beat his old friend Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur) in a rock-smashing contest of strength and endurance. The audience surrogate is a venturesome Harfoot named Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), who comes across a mysterious bearded man. What the mystery is we will have to wait and see. This Middle-earth, as opposed to Tolkien’s, is a little less white and a little less male. Among the newly invented characters, besides Nora, are the Harfoot elder Sadoc Burrows (Lenny Henry), the Dwarven princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete), the human healer Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) and the Woodland Elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova). Bronwyn and Arondir are caught in a human-elf forbidden romance much like Beren and Lúthien in the First Age and Arwen and Aragorn in the Third. We also meet young Isildur (played by Maxim Baldry), the Númenórean who will one day reign over the Twin Kingdoms of Men and cut the One Ring from Sauron’s finger, before he too yields to its corrupting influence. A roll call of mostly emerging and partly seasoned talent make up the ensemble. The challenge will be to make us fall in love with these characters the same way Tolkien did with Frodo, Sam, Gandalf and gang. By the end of the first two episodes, the viewers will have an idea of where some characters are headed, if not all. As to the threat they face, the title says it all. The show will chart the events leading up to and including the forging of the Rings of Power by Sauron (the Lord of the Rings), and his attempt to gain control of their bearers with the One Ring. This means we may get to see Sauron in a physical form beyond the Great Eye. No matter how the characters or the season shape up, it is best to go into the show with cautious optimism. Not every Tolkienite is going to love the show. Reactions are going to range from ecstatic praise to calls of sacrilege. Such is the challenge of adapting a beloved fantasy for the screen. With the LOTR movies, Peter Jackson set the path for geekdom to enter the mainstream. In the two decades since, viewers have grown so much more comfortable with fantasy TV that it has become a pop cultural firmament. Given the amount of money Amazon has spent on one season alone, if The Rings of Power doesn’t attain anything less than cultural landmark status by the end of its run, however long it may be, there is no denying it will be dubbed a failure. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on 2 September on Amazon Prime Video, with a new episode to follow every Friday. Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram