Less than a month remains until Amazon unveils its new Lord of the Rings prequel series. After years of waiting and reading about how the studio is spending nearly half a billion dollars on the first season of the show, we’ll finally get to see it in all its glory.
I can’t lie, I’ve been a bit nervous about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Tolkien’s world is so beloved by so many people, and it just seems there are a lot of ways the show could go wrong. But with each bit of new information we get, the more my hype increases.
The studio has just released three new images from The Rings of Power. They give us our best look yet at Númenor, the island nation of long-lived humans from which Aragorn is descended. During the Second Age of Middle-earth, when The Rings of Power is set, Númenor is one of the predominant powers in the world. It’s never before been shown onscreen but is a huge part of Tolkien’s mythology.
Building this civilization was a gargantuan task. The show’s production designer Ramsey Avery (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) goes in depth about the process over at About Amazon. “It’s a civilization that was around for thousands of years and has gone through this whole history of developing,” he explained. “My hope in creating Númenor is to evoke a sense of wonder. A sense of mystery. I wanted to create a real sense of ancient history, building up to a current time and place where real people live, work, play, and love.”
Númenor has technology never before seen in The Lord of the Rings
One thing that sets Númenor apart from many of the other civilizations in Tolkien’s mythos is how advanced it is. While the Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and Men from the original trilogy of films were plenty ingenious, Númenor will show us things we’ve never seen before in Middle-earth. This is a “thriving culture,” an empire at its peak just before hubris and greed begin pulling it into decline, and that will be reflected onscreen in ways both large and small.
Looking at the image above, Avery points to the horse being lifted by an intricate system of pulleys in the background. “The horse being hoisted onto a ship at the top left of this image shows two things: One, Númenóreans respect and love their horses; and two, they’re a technologically advanced culture. They figured out these pulley-and-crane systems to be able to maneuver products and goods up and around. That’s an important characteristic of the civilization. They’ve got more advanced technology in some ways than some of the other realms.”
Differentiating Númenor from the civilizations of the Elves was something the production team put a lot of effort into; to conceptualize this ancient human kingdom, Avery and his team drew on many ancient real-world empires in order to give it a distinctly different visual flair. “We departed from the elegance of the Elven world into a much bolder expression for Númenor. We looked to art based in Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East to inspire the bold shapes, rich colors, and geometrical ornament that are central to the Mediterranean sensibility of this kingdom.”
Númenor’s architecture tells the story of how Men grew apart from Elves
But the producers didn’t want Númenor to look different from the elven civilizations just because: there’s a story behind how the architecture of the greatest human empire on Middle-earth came to look the way it is. Perhaps nowhere is that more present than in the picture above, which shows the Court of Númenor, seat of the nation’s rulership. At the outset, it is presided over by Queen-Regent Míriel.
“There is a quote from Tolkien where, on the last high hill, the Númenóreans built their powers,” Avery explained. “The court is featured high on the hills among architecture that grows increasingly ‘Mannish’ the higher up you get—reflecting the evolution of the culture over time.”
"There’s a much more Elvish structure shown on the far left of the image, and that’s the original court built by the Elves 400 years ago. The humans of Númenor got to the point where they were done with the Elves’ influence, and they built a palace that expresses the strength of men. The structure is powerful, strong, and hulking—it has this real sense of strength and beauty to it."
It’s interesting to hear Avery talk about how the Númenóreans gradually developed their own architectural style, especially when you think back to the The Lord of the Rings films directed by Peter Jackson. By the time of those movies, the only real remnant of Númenórean building is Minas Tirith in Gondor, which was initially raised by settlers from the island nation. You can see a little bit of structural similarity in the long rampart extending outward from the Court building; Minas Tirith had one just like it, though it lacked the breathtaking waterfall that appears to be spilling forth from this one.
According to Avery, this image also reinforces how technologically advanced Númenor was. “The towers on the left and the right feature a cooling system. We looked at a whole system in a Mediterranean or a hot climate, and considered how you would cool the air. We discovered that North African and Middle Eastern countries have these wind catchers where wind gets sucked in, heats up, and then flows out of the tower. As it flows out, it’s pooling cool air underneath of it. So throughout the city, you’ll see these towers; that’s how the Númenóreans discovered how to keep the city cool.”
Tolkien once compared Númenor to Venice, and The Rings of Power ran with it
Unlike many of the great cities of Men we saw in The Lord of the Rings, Númenor is a bustling maritime civilization that is highly dependent on its ports and canals. It’s an island located in the middle of the sea between the distant western continent of Aman, where most of the Elves live with the Valar (think demigods), and Middle-earth in the east. As such, the production team behind The Rings of Power drew inspiration from some real-life cities with infrastructure based around water, and one in particular: Venice, Italy.
Avery brought this particular bit of inspiration back around to Tolkien, revealing that at one point the author said, “I just got back from Númenor—I mean, Venice.”
"This revealed a sensibility of what he imagined Númenor looked like in real life. A city like Venice that’s built on water with multiple influences over time."
And like Venice, Númenor has a vast system of canals that allows for goods and people to easily traverse the city by water. “The bridges you see in these images are not just for carts and people,” Avery said. “Each bridge has a canal, creating a transport system all the way through the city by going through these canals and the locks at the port.”
As for the designs of the ships, they had to be distinct “We kept trying to find something that said ‘Númenórean’ as opposed to ‘pirate ship,’” Avery said. “The long, triangular sails represented the Elves’ ships, and we needed something that stood on its own for Númenor. One night, I was looking through some pictures and I saw the Crown of Gondor. I’d always thought of that crown as eagle’s wings, but I looked at it again and I thought ‘My God, that’s a ship’s sail there.’”
Although the boats are extremely stylized, Avery says that his team put in a lot of effort to make sure that they would actually be sailable. No sense having very cool ships if they can’t make it out of port. “It would be really tricky to sail these ships, but it’s doable. We talked to rigging experts and they helped us figure out the rigging to make sure it was realistic. Sailors on our set could actually do the rigging to bring the boats to life.”
The Rings of Power was a labor of love
Like many of the creatives attached to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Avery is a longtime fan of Tolkien’s work. That passion for the fantastical worlds the author created made working on The Rings of Power special.
“I grew up with Tolkien, and this world means so much to me,” he said. “These are environments or ideas that have been an important part of my life since I was 10 years old. To be able to bring them to life, and see the actors and the crew really enjoy it all was a true gift. I’m excited to share this beautiful world and its characters with fans.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Amazon Prime Video on September 2.
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