{"id":112217,"date":"2022-02-14T21:00:30","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T02:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=112217"},"modified":"2022-02-14T22:09:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T03:09:34","slug":"vanity-fair-raises-10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2022\/02\/14\/112217-vanity-fair-raises-10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanity Fair raises 10 burning questions about Amazon\u2019s The Rings of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve read a lot of responses to, and hot takes on, The Rings of Power in the last 24 hours (you can check some of them out here<\/a> if you’ve missed our roundup). But, without a doubt, this is the most insightful and useful one so far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In it, Vanity Fair writer Joanna Robinson puts 10 key questions about Amazon’s Rings of Power production to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, and adds her own lore-based thoughts on their answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s just a terrific read, chock-full of amazing details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In studying the language from the first three episodes Amazon let Vanity Fair<\/em> screen, we found a mix of cleverly repurposed lines of Tolkien\u2019s dialogue as well as a few snatches of Biblical text. \u201cBoth Patrick and I have religious backgrounds,\u201d Payne says. \u201cI spent a lot of time just reading those sacred texts. I was an English major at Yale and loved Shakespeare at the time and still go back and reread the various plays. I\u2019ve also spent a lot of time studying Hebrew poetry and parallelism and inverted parallelism and chiasmus and all these cool rhetorical strategies that poets and prophets from thousands of years ago would use to communicate sacred material. And Tolkien, sometimes, will play in that kind of a sandbox.\u201d<\/p>

McKay explains that they tailored the dialogue to fit each kind of character. The harfoots speak with an Irish lilt whereas the elves speak in elevated British phrases. \u201cWe even came up with hero meters for each different race in Tolkien,\u201d Payne says. \u201cSome of them will speak in iambs. Some of them will speak in dactyls. Some of them will speak in trochees.\u201d That in-depth approach might please Professor Tolkien, whose specialty was philology, a.k.a. the history of language.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One of the best revelations is clear, direct confirmation on the rights situation simply because it immediately clears away so much fan debate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what did Amazon buy? \u201cWe have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em>, The Two Towers<\/em>, The Return of the King<\/em>, the appendices, and The Hobbit<\/em>,\u201d Payne says. \u201cAnd that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion<\/em>, Unfinished Tales<\/em>, The History of Middle-earth<\/em>, or any of those other books.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So if you’ve been wondering (as I have), everything in the trees image must<\/em> be explained by LOTR and The Hobbit alone. And if you can’t<\/em> find it in those books, don’t expect to see it in The Rings of Power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Vanity Fair’s “10 Burning Questions”<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BOOTNOTE<\/strong>: Writer Joanna Robinson will be joining TORn Tuesday tomorrow<\/a> from 5pm PT, 8pm ET to discuss her Rings of Power experience with Staffers Quickbeam and Justin. Join us then, and be sure to bring your own burning questions!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Galadriel,
Galadriel, commander of the Northern Armies. Matt Grace\/Amazon Studios.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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