It feels like forever, but it finally happened -- my Calendar notification popped up this morning as I was filling up an invoice; the note: The Lord of The Rings on Prime.
The title was inaccurate but the date was correct, September the 2nd is indeed the day that the Lord of the Rings prequel will be launching on Amazon Prime.
I can’t wait. I’m a huge Tolkien fan, second only to Stephen Colbert, and Peter Jackson’s original trilogy and my childhood are intertwined. I’m not the only one who is excited, apparently, the entire project is a personal obsession of Amazon’s founder.
Jeff Bezos attended the premiere earlier this month in California, surrounded by rather (yet)unknown actors. But they will surely become A-listers, as the talk of every town and digital space centres around the show and its actors. And it might be a good thing. We need a show that we can collectively get entrenched with. I’m counting on it becoming a cultural phenomenon.
Artistically, there’s a lot to be looking forward to. The Rings of Power is set 4,000 years before the film trilogy and original books, in a fictional Second Age, a historical period in the lore sketched out in less detail by Tolkien himself, which has given the writers the freedom to create within the framework set out by Tolkien -- I am counting the days to see what the show-runners, Patrick McKay and J. D. Payne, will deliver.
But there’s another reason for my excitement and it has to do with why Tolkien’s world is so captivating, beyond the elves, the forests and the fortresses. His work is critical of mankind. Every evil, every ill creation, comes from man’s greed and his desire for power. I hope that this new iteration of the mythical world of Middle Earth, breeds a new generation of fans who come closer to the work of Tolkien, to question mankind and our destructive patterns.
It may sound like a far-fetched and over-simplified wish, but in a world that seems more divided than ever, in a world that keeps looking for strongmen for leadership, maybe we all need to be swept away by the same show, in a parallel world, in order to recognise our own faults.
I hope the allegories and themes unearthed in Rings of Power and in the world of Tolkien spark conversations. I’m betting on the show turning into real and digital water coolers, memes and TikTok’s and conversations. This could be our Seinfeld, or our Modern Olympics, but globally, digitally, and with more elves.
Where language, politics and censors have failed us, maybe a massive, worldwide following of such an epic will allow us to have a global conversation. This is what great art can do, and whether this $1 billion epic ends up being enjoyable, amazing or not, there’s enough to be unearthed by a new generation of fans, and questions and debates to be had.
Maybe I’ve placed too much trust on the Internet and the power of digital culture, or maybe I’m just way too excited to watch it, and wanted an excuse to write this and invite you to get excited too!
Probably a bit of all of the above.
Hi, I’m Christos Floros and I cover News and Politics for RTL Today.
I’m interested to hear your from you, what do you want to read more of, and what would you like to understand more about Luxembourg’s politics?
You can get in touch with me by email at christos.floros@rtl.lu
