Rings of Power (Season One)

School of Movies

[School of Everything Else 2023]

We all knew this would happen eventually. No Intellectual property that has been known to rake in a billion dollars for a single movie will ever be left alone to stand in glorious completion. Whomsoever holds the rights will use them. Some folks expected a (potentially very misguided) attempt at making the entire Silmarillion for television, or for Amazon to do what it seems likely Warner Bros. eventually will with Harry Potter and just re-tread the books we've already seen adapted exceptionally well to film in the 2000s - this time to a 2020s TV series (ostensibly so that they can use the additional time allowed by the format to be truer to the original text, but you KNOW there would be a ton of new stuff in there that would drive the long-time fanbase crazy!)

Instead, Amazon took the first eight minutes of The Fellowship of the Ring, the prologue describing the end of the Second Age, conveyed so memorably and elegantly at the opening of that 2001 film, and cracked that series of decades (and sometimes centuries) of events open to create an apparently ongoing TV show detailing exactly how Sauron the deceiver was able to deceive all the races of Middle-earth quite so skilfully, and get his jewellery side-business booming.

Maybe the most EXPENSIVE experience ever put to the small screen, let's see if all of those hopes and dreams of cornering the streaming market paid off for Bezos. We've brought back Chris Eason, our running-mate from the original 2012 Lord of the Rings episodes (still some of our very best) and The Hobbit (an exercise in hopes being dashed over a number of years), along with the always-engaging, insightful and smart Brendan Agnew. There's definitely things we like here. But some of us are madder than others.

Guests:

Chris Eason of GameBurst @Legoftime

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse @BLCAgnew