Lord of the Rings vet Orlando Bloom praises “courageous” Rings of Power show
By Ashley Hurst
Perhaps no TV show has ever had more pressure on it than Amazon’s ambitious The Rings of Power, a prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal The Lord of the Rings novels. Whether it lived up to the hype, well…that depends on who you ask. As for Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas in Peter Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, it succeeded.
Unlike The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, both of which had completed books to draw from, Amazon’s The Rings of Power is based on the appendices to the Rings books. The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the story most fans know, and the writers made up a lot of new stuff to fill in the gaps.
Whatever difficulties the show had in bringing this story to the small screen, Orlando Bloom was impressed. “I had missed Tolkien,” he told Radio Times. “I had missed Tolkien’s mind and I’d missed his world and I’d missed his vision – and I think they just stepped back into Tolkien’s world. I thought it was really courageous.”
"It’s not an easy thing to take on another version of something that had such a remarkable run of its own, but I thought it was really admirable; the casting, the story and the way they approached the world."
The Rings of Power season 2 is currently filming. The ending of season 1 hinted that Sauron would begin his rise as a solo villain. Things are just beginning. “I’m looking forward to more of it,” Bloom said.
Orlando Bloom is happy to see different versions of existing Lord of the Rings characters
From Elrond to Galadriel, The Rings of Power takes well-known characters from Tolkien’s mythos and gives us a new take on them. What were those immortal elves like back during the Second Age of Middle-earth?
Bloom was excited when he heard about these returning characters. “Peter [Jackson] did an amazing job, obviously, with The Lord of the Rings and we got to play these great characters,” he said. “But they’ve kind of gone back and gone, ‘Look, these characters still exist in this world and we can show you other aspects of them’. I was like, ‘Cool, I’m down for that!’”
The Rings of Power season 2 will most likely premiere sometime in 2024. There’s all kinds of crazy rumors over who could be involved. Tom Bombadil, anyone?
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