Soon, dwarves and elves and hobbits will grace our television sets as Amazon Prime Video gears up to take us back to Middle-earth in its Lord of the Rings prequel show, The Rings of Power. Except this won’t be the Middle-earth we know. The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the adventures of Frodo and his pals, back when Galadriel was a wandering warrior and Sauron was just exploring the exciting field of jewelry making.
As such, we won’t see any of the actors from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films return in the Amazon series. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have opinions about it!
Viggo Mortensen has played numerous roles throughout his career, but the most famous of them is Aragorn, the king of Gondor living in self-imposed exile. Mortensen had one of the most memorable performances in a film chock full of them, and to many fans his name will always be synonymous with Aragorn, son of Arathorn.
Viggo Mortensen thinks The Rings of Power will be “fun to see”
So will Mortensen be watching The Rings of Power? The question came up during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, and the actor’s reaction is kind of hilarious.
“What is that? The TV thing? It is with Apple, or something?” Mortensen replied. This is pretty funny, although you can rest assured that Mortensen does know The Rings of Power is happening; talked about it in more detail back in 2020.
After the interviewer shared more details about Amazon’s bombastically expensive prequel series, Mortensen seemed to remember that it was a thing. “Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll watch that. But do you know what source material they’re using? What were they allowed to use?”
It’s a fair question. The Rings of Power is based on the appendices from The Lord of the Rings novels. Much of that material is also covered in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Silmarillion, but Amazon only has the rights for the appendices, not that book. It’s not clear how this might affect things.
Anyway, The Rings of Power will feature some characters important to the mythos, including Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and even Aragorn’s ancient ancestor Isildur (Maxim Baldry). “Oh, that’s cool!” Mortensen said when he was told that Isildur would feature in the show. “Yeah, It’ll be fun to see.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on September 2nd. And you can bet that if Viggo Mortensen is going to watch it, we are too.
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