Vanity Fair exclusively debuted first look images of the upcoming series, featuring 22 lead cast members and multiple storylines ranging from “deep within the dwarf mines of the Misty Mountains to the high politics of the elven kingdom of Lindon and the humans’ powerful, Atlantis-like island, Númenor.” Showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne were well aware of the pressures of creating a spinoff from the iconic series.
“It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,” said Lindsey Weber, executive producer of the series. “Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together.” “Obviously there was going to be push and backlash,” Tolkien scholar Mariana Rios Maldonado told Vanity Fair, “but the question is, from whom? Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?” Director J.A. Bayona likened the plot of “Rings of Power” to that of his own cultural background growing up in Spain. “We had a dictatorship for 40 years, so you notice the repercussions of war and the shadow of the past,” said Bayona, who directs the first two episodes. “I think this is all about the repercussions of war. There is an idea that feels very faithful to Tolkien, which is intuition. Galadriel has an intuition that things are not fixed, and there is still something lurking.” Bayona added, “Can you imagine going back to such a beloved world and [facing] the high bar of the Peter Jackson movies? We were, all the time, very aware of the massive expectations.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
