‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,’ Sweeping and Gutsy, Makes the Most of Its Ample Lore (and Amazon Budget): TV Review
variety.comCaroline Framke Chief TV Critic Several years (and several hundreds of millions of dollars) after Amazon bought the TV rights to “The Lord of the Rings” from the J.R.R.
Tolkien estate, the mammoth effort to boost Prime Video’s profile with the same kind of phenomenon HBO found in “Game of Thrones” is upon us — and it’s just as grand, if not as downright surreal, as the occasion calls for.
Sure, “Game of Thrones” might have solidified a television format for fantasy epics. But George R.R. Martin’s novels simply wouldn’t exist without Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” and bringing these stories to episodic life requires not just all the considerable money Amazon can provide, but a certain amount of guts from the TV writers taking it on now, some 85 years after “The Hobbit” changed the game.
From first-time showrunners Patrick McKay and John D. Payne, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” — premiering Sept. 2 with two episodes — slots as neatly into Peter Jackson’s preexisting cinematic universe of “LOTR” and “Hobbit” films as a series could feasibly manage, while also expanding on the lore fans have parsed for decades.
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