That Rings of Power Trailer

(apologies to Marvel fans, but Tolkien was my first fandom and there’s a lot of discourse going on. I might create a secondary blog related to that…)

I’ve been thinking about the Rings of Power trailer and why it caused the reactions it did. It ran the gamut of ‘What the hell was that?’ to fans admitting through gritted teeth they will give it chance but not holding out a lot of hope.

It wasn’t just about short haired elves, Galadriel in armor, and hobbits in the Second Age. It was missing familiar themes and elements. It missed teasing things that get fans excited, the things they WANT to see.

Go back and look at the first trailer for Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo standing on the road, the world compressing around him, the leaves flying in all directions, the ominous music…. the fans squealed 'The Black Riders!’

I admit I have issues with the Hobbit movie, but the sight of Bilbo running out of his front door to find the dwarves was exciting because it was a moment from the book we knew and loved. It was familiar. It struck a chord.

I know there isn’t a lot written about the Second age, but there are some things we know. Imagine if we had seen a beautiful Numenorian city, a young man walking toward a white tree and someone calling out 'Isiludur!’ he turns and we get a glimpse of the man when he was young. Or someone crafting a beautiful ring and the camera pans out and we see the elf that HAS to be Celebrimbor…. or a too beautiful to be a real elf speaking to Galdriel introducing himself as 'Anatar, the Lord of Gifts’. Those are the things fans are looking for. The familiar. The things we are looking for and what we want to see. That 'might’ have hyped it up more for me. I don’t know.

Original characters aren’t a problem, as long as they don’t distract from the main story. The little Rohan children in the Two Towers running away from conflict didn’t detract. They fleshed out the main story. Hell, if Tauriel had just been a random elf hanging around Mirkwood, maybe I wouldn’t have minder her so much. The point is, save the original characters for the story where we can make up our minds about them later, and let us see the familiar in the trailers and press photos. Yes, I know we saw Galadriel and Elrond, but I want to see the 'new’ people. So far the only person who has garnered my interest is the short clip of whom I assume to Gil-Galad.

I suspect that maybe they’re saving the canon characters to be revealed within the story itself, but they’re doing it backwards. Maybe at some point I’ll care about 'Bronwyn’ and 'Theo’ or the random proto-hobbit, (that is if I last that long with it) but at the moment, I dont’ care.