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Tag: The Lord of the Rings

  • ‘SNL’ Takes Aim At ‘House Of The Dragon’ With Cut For Time ‘Blonde Dragon People’ Sketch

    ‘SNL’ Takes Aim At ‘House Of The Dragon’ With Cut For Time ‘Blonde Dragon People’ Sketch

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    Winter may never come — if HBO‘s release schedule continues to gestate at a glacial pace.

    That’s among the running gags in the Saturday Night Live Cut for Time sketch titled “Blonde Dragon People,” which pokes fun at the network-streamer and its star prestige series House of the Dragon. In the six-minute-long video, a group of friends become increasingly confused with the show’s short runtime and long shooting schedule, extraordinarily similar-sounding names and continuity errors.

    Dorgos, Dormos, Dargomos, Dorgon and Dorman are just a handful of the names that confuse the group, which comprises SNL stars Andrew Dismukes, Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker and newcomer Jane Wickline.

    As they watch the show’s recap — as played by Chloe Fineman, Kenan Thompson, Bowen Yang and a heavily accented and nonsensical James Austin Johnson (clearly parodying Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen in HOTD) — the friends start to lose track of plot points, wondering why there’s a dog with “blonde dreads,” a stock video of a bat in place of a dragon and why “every person and city” has the “same weird name.”

    “I mean even in Game of Thrones they gave us one guy named John,” Dismukes’ character remarks.

    However, the host of Season 50’s premiere, Jean Smart, is given the most ridiculous lines yet, stating regally: “Yes, it is I, Dorgos, daughter of Doremos and sister of Daragmos, ruler of the seven five lands and keeper of the 11 three keys. Only I can reclaim the kingdom stolen from Doregmon, by the usurper Dormegon.”

    She adds at another point, “You will never silence the people of East New Westersouth, from the isles of Rizzoli to the ranches of Hidden Valley,” referencing the drama show Rizzoli & Isles and popular ranch brand.

    To further confuse matters, in comes surprise guest Andy Samberg (who appeared earlier in the night as the Douglas Emhoff to Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris during the Cold Open) and musical guest Jelly Roll, who appear as Orlando Bloom’s Legolas and Sean Astin’s Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings, respectively.

    As such, the sketch turns to poking fun at the streaming wars, with Smart remarking that their show is on Amazon Prime instead. Thompson then goes on a short historical tangent as he outlines the transition of HBO from HBO Now, then HBO Go, then HBO Max and now just Max, which Samberg’s character says “sounds bad.”

    With the recap concluded, the television announces — in signature Westerosi font — that the new season has concluded. “I just looked it up. The next season doesn’t air until 2028. It’s like the Olympics,” Gardner bemoans.

    But that’s OK, since fans can watch something called “Dragging Dragons” in the meantime, about drag queens dragging the costumes from the show “only on, weirdly, HBO Latino.”

    About the fractured House Targaryen and taking place nearly 200 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon — which just completed airing its second season Aug. 4 after eight episodes — has been renewed for two more seasons for a total of four overall. A following installment is set for release in 2026, with production commencing early next year.

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    Natalie Oganesyan

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  • Amazon Prime Is Offering Three Iconic Lord Of The Rings Games For Free

    Amazon Prime Is Offering Three Iconic Lord Of The Rings Games For Free

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    Graphic: Kotaku / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

    Who doesn’t love free video games? It’s the best way to expand your backlog of titles you’ll never touch – at least not until you retire, which is what you keep telling yourself to assuage the guilt. To help feed this cycle, Amazon Prime is giving subscribers three fan-favorite The Lord of the Rings games as part of its latest promotion for The Rings of Power, which airs on August 29.

    Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach Actor On Playing The Beloved Barbarian

    The television series is fantastic and all, but how about those games? They include:

    • Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
    • Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (Amazon Luna)
    • Lego The Lord of the Rings (GOG)

    If you’re a Prime subscriber, you can claim all three games from now until September 30. If you wait too long, the promotion will disappear and other titles will take their place as part of Amazon’s rotating free game offerings.

    All three The Lord of the Rings titles provide enough gameplay to keep even the most voracious players satisfied, with the Middle-Earth games both requiring between 30-60 hours for completionists who want to see and do everything each has to offer. As for Lego The Lord of the Rings, it’s a bit more niche, with a kid-like aesthetic that’s sure to turn some people away. But that’d be a mistake! It’s easily one of the better renditions of Lego gaming, retelling the story of the Fellowship from start to finish, including the Balrog, the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and the ever-fearsome Cirith Ungol!

    Suppose you’re not into The Lord of the Rings. In that case, Amazon Prime has a diverse range of other free games to offer, including Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Grime: Definitive Edition, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Loop Hero, Hard West 2, Beholder 3, Midnight Fight Express, Forager, SteamWorld Heist, Trek to Yomi, Maneater, and countless others. Honestly, the list goes on, with something for everyone!

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    Brandon Morgan

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  • I ship Haladriel but it’s time to bring in Celeborn in ‘The Rings of Power’ season 2

    I ship Haladriel but it’s time to bring in Celeborn in ‘The Rings of Power’ season 2

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    Ever since The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power arrived on Prime Video and gave us a reason to ship Halbrand and Galadriel, fans have been wondering what happened to the lady of Noldor’s fair elven husband, Celeborn.

    Who is Celeborn, again?

    (New Line Cinema)

    For those who need a reminder lest they forget she’s married, Galadriel and Celeborn had quite the meet-cute during the First Age. There’s plenty of lore about how their names have tree roots in the Elven languages. And they’re also both kind of related to each other. Galadriel was the daughter of Finarfin (brother of Fëanor who wrought the Silmarils) and Eärwen, and her maternal grandfather was the Telerian elf Olwë. Olwë’s brother was Elwë or King Elu Thingol of Doriath, in whose court, Galadriel came to stay after exile from Valinor. And that’s where Celeborn, who was the grandson of Elwë’s brother, Elmo, saw Galadriel for the first time, fell in love with her, and married her. 

    According to lore, Celeborn survived the War of Wrath—the Great Battle between Elves, Men, and the Valar against the Great Foe Morgoth (Sauron’s boss) at the end of the First Age. And he and Galadriel then lived in Lindon in the Second Age (during which TROP is set), where their daughter Celebrian was born. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales, however, there are different versions of the history of Galadriel and Celeborn. However, none mention the disappearance of Celeborn as shown in the TROP.

    Is Celeborn dead in The Rings of Power season 1?

    Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

    For the first six episodes, Celeborn was nowhere to be found, which made it easy for fans to lean into the dark romance brewing between Haladriel (Halbrand + Galadriel). 

    It wasn’t until the penultimate episode of season 1, “The Eye,” when the Southlands are destroyed by the eruption of Orodruin (Mount Doom) and turned into the land of ever darkness, Mordor, and Galadriel is traversing it with Theo, that she mentions her husband. Theo asks her if she has ever lost anyone to Morgoth and Sauron, and Galadriel talks about losing her brother Finrod, who was killed by Sauron. But then, in a jaw-dropping reveal, she mentions that even her husband Celeborn was lost to the same cause. 

    Now, the way Galadriel has been acting and the way she talks in this scene, you’d believe that Celeborn is dead. But in the lore and in The Lord of The Rings, not only is Celeborn alive and well, but he and Galadriel go on to have a daughter, Celebrian, who Elrond marries, and who then gives birth to Arwen Undomiel, future wife of Aragorn. So, erm, clearly something’s not right about this ‘Celeborn is dead’ theory, no? We’re all for interpretation, but I don’t think showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay would discard canon like that. 

    So, umm, where is Teleporno (The High-Elven name for Celeborn)?

    Well, it’s all in the semantics. With the mystery box structure of The Rings of Power season 1, there’s a lot that’s just deceptive and hiding in plain sight, and some that’s intentionally misleading. And there’s a strong feeling here that Celeborn might not be “dead” dead; he might just be lost or imprisoned and believed to be dead by his wife and kin.

    So, will we see Celeborn in The Rings of Power season 2?

    Spoilers ahead for TROP season 2!

    Guess what? There’s a chance that we could see Celeborn in The Rings of Power season 2. And the reason we can make that educated guess is because, okay fine, showrunner Patrick McKay hinted at it during the panel at Hall H in SDCC this year!

    No, but on a serious note, the reason we can claim this is because season 2 is going to give us a highly important and anticipated event in the history of the Rings of Power: The siege of Eregion. And according to Tolkien lore, Celeborn was very much present and played a part in the defenses of the city of the elven smiths against Sauron’s armies.

    In one of the versions of Tolkien’s history of Galadriel and Celeborn, it was mentioned that these two had established the realm of Eregion; in another, Lord Celebrimbor, the elven smith who goes on to forge the rings of power, was the lord of Eregion. But either way, it is mentioned in the Unfinished Tales that when Sauron found out about what Celebrimbor had done with the rings, he decided to attack Eriador with a great force. When the High King Gil-galad heard of this, he sent an army under the command of Elrond to war, but it would take him a while to intercept Sauron, who was already making his way to Eregion.

    And that’s when Celeborn led a sortie against Sauron and his forces, and was later joined with Elrond and his army. They were eventually unsuccessful because Sauron’s host was much bigger. But it did set a lot of events in motion that ended with Elrond establishing the refuge city of Imladris (Rivendell), where Celeborn stayed until Galadriel came there with their daughter Celebrian. And that’s how Elrond met his future wife!

    The destruction of Eregion is possibly going to be THE big battle that ends The Rings of Power season 2. So it would be prudent to bring in Celeborn as a surprise character introduction, bringing him back in Galadriel’s life when she is reeling from all the damage that her quest for vengeance has caused. In fact, fans speculate we might just get a Celedrial reunion kiss after this interview moment at SDCC with Galadriel actor Morfydd Clark!

    How the show plans to do it is going to be interesting, but having Celeborn present at the Siege of Eregion seems crucial. Until then, we can happily ship the angsty romance between the Dark Lord and the Lady of the Light!

    The Mary Sue is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy

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    Jinal Bhatt

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  • ‘Lord of the Rings’ Anime Feature, DC’s ‘Creature Commandos’ Set for Warner Bros. Presentation at Annecy

    ‘Lord of the Rings’ Anime Feature, DC’s ‘Creature Commandos’ Set for Warner Bros. Presentation at Annecy

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    The new Lord of the Rings anime movie and the first DC Universe title from James Gunn are among the Warner Bros. projects that will be highlighted during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival that takes place next month.

    Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe shared their plans Monday for the annual animation fest held June 9-15 in Annecy, France.

    Among the planned events include Andy Serkis hosting a filmmaker conversation and extended look at The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, the anime feature that hails from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation. Director Kenji Kamiyama and producers Philippa Boyens, Joseph Chou and Jason DeMarco will take part in the discussion and present the first footage from the movie that Warner Bros. is set to release theatrically on Dec. 13.

    The animation process is currently underway for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which centers on the fortress of Helm’s Deep and its founder, Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan. (Images from the project can be seen above and below.) Last week, Warner Bros. announced that a live-action Lord of the Rings film from director Serkis is in early development and eyeing a 2026 release.

    The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

    Courtesy of Warner Bros.

    Other programming highlights at Annecy from the studio include a making-of session for Creature Commandos, which marks the first DC Studios project from bosses Gunn and Peter Safran. Gunn serves as executive producer and writer for the Max animated series that hails from DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation and does not yet have a premiere date.

    At the Annecy presentation, Creature Commandos supervising producer Rick Morales and supervising director Balak Yves will share an in-depth look at the artistic process behind the series that focuses on Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) forming a military group comprised of monstrous villains.

    Also set for Annecy is a panel sharing an inside look at the return of the Cartoon Network series The Amazing World of Gumball, in addition to a world-premiere screening of the forthcoming animated feature The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.

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    Ryan Gajewski

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  • The Flash Movie Trainwreck Reaches A New Low With NFTs

    The Flash Movie Trainwreck Reaches A New Low With NFTs

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    Image: Warner Bros.

    The Flash has been a disaster for DC and Warner Bros. The Ezra Miller-led superhero film is securing a record as one of the biggest box office flops in the business. There are a lot of factors that led us to that point, but Warner Bros. attempts to get any money out of the film before the DC cinematic universe reboots once more have reached a new low: the blockchain.

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    Warner Bros. Digital Collectibles, the company’s official NFT/Web3 branch, posted today that it’s rolling out The Flash Web3 Movie Experience, which is the first “new” movie to be released on WB’s blockchain nonsense service after it released similar “experiences’’ for older films like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and the 1978 Superman film. The limited edition Flash experience includes weird interactive environments you can swipe around on your phone based on locations from the movie, as well as digital collectibles like cards and models. Packaged into the whole deal is a digital copy of the film, access to bonus features, and all the normal shit you’d expect from buying a movie through a digital service.

    None of these things are inherently objectionable, but when it’s all tied into a manufactured scarcity based on a market that has already come and gone, it reeks of desperation to get any return on a movie that has bombed in the usual markets.

    There are a lot of reasons for The Flash taking a nosedive. On top of Miller’s frequent controversies and actual crimes, DC has already announced it’s rebooting its film universe again under The Suicide Squad developer James Gunn, and is still releasing a movie in a defunct continuity. It also sounds like the movie is just not that spectacular, and fans have had a pretty good live-action Flash series for almost a decade. I think we’re just good on the scarlet speedster these days, and given everything else, people just didn’t show up. And I’d be very, very surprised if a Web3 experience changes that.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Lord of the Rings Fanfic Writer Sues Amazon, Tolkien Estate For $250M

    Lord of the Rings Fanfic Writer Sues Amazon, Tolkien Estate For $250M

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    Some guy is currently suing Tolkien and Amazon to the tune of $250 million. That alone takes serious bravery. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is the reason he’s suing: Copyright infringement over his Lord of the Rings fanfic. Specifically, he’s arguing that Amazon lifted elements of his fan-fiction for its own Tolkien adaptation TV series, The Rings of Power.

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    Demetrious Polychron wrote a book, a work of fan-fiction set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, called The Fellowship of the King, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which later were published and made available for sale, including on Amazon. According to PC Gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a manuscript review. That’s right: This man asked J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson Simon to sign off on his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he did not get a response.

    In September of 2022, the month that Polychron published The Fellowship of the King, Amazon also began airing its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power.  hundreds of millions of dollars on developing an adaptation called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Now, Polychron is arguing that the Amazon TV show lifts elements from his novel.

    According to RadarOnline, which has seen documents pertaining to the suit, Polychron alleges that characters and storylines he created for his book “compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series,” and that in some cases the show “copied exact language” from his book. However, the claims seem spurious. For instance, the lawsuit purportedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, with the Elanor in his book being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee, while the Elanor featured in The Rings of Power is a Harfoot. Images purporting to be the lawsuit circulating online include a host of other circumstantial connections or similarities to back up Polychron’s argument that the writers of Rings of Power lifted ideas from his fanfic for their own story.

    Polychron’s lawsuit for copyright infringement, filed on April 14, names Amazon and the Tolkien Estate as defendants in the U.S. District Court For The Central District of California. Polychron claims that his novel was “inspired” by LOTR, but is an “original” work. Nobody is convinced, not even the reviewers who had kind things to say about it. “While unabashedly derivative, The Fellowship of the King offers LOTR fans a fun, appropriately epic return to Middle-earth,” wrote Edward Sung for IndieReader. Ouch. It doesn’t sound like the book scores any points for originality, even if it’s a fun enough read.

    At the time of writing, it appears that Polychron’s book has been delisted from Amazon. Kotaku reached out to Amazon to ask when it was removed, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

    While no one believes that Polychron will win against the Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit might negatively impact the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully, fanfic writers will be fine as long as they’re not trying to extort Tolkien’s grandson.

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    Sisi Jiang

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  • Man Dressed as Gandalf Bumps Into the Real Ian McKellan

    Man Dressed as Gandalf Bumps Into the Real Ian McKellan

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    A wizard is never late. He arrives precisely when he means to.

    Or it might just have just been an extremely lucky coincidence. Either way, a young man dressed as Gandalf was in the right place at the right time during a Bristol pub crawl. The 22-year-old man was celebrating his birthday with some of his friends when one of them spotted none other than Sir Ian McKellen — The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies’ Gandalf — himself.

    He spoke with The Bristol Post to explain exactly how things went down.

    “So, it was really bizarre, it was my 22nd birthday, and we were on a pub crawl. Me and all my mates were walking down the street and I heard behind me ‘do you want to meet the real Gandalf?’. I didn’t recognise him immediately then I was like ‘OH MY GOD IT’S SIR IAN MCKELLEN!

     

    READ MORE: Warner Bros. Plans New Series of Lord of the Rings Movies

    McKellen was out touring for a production of Mother Goose and just so happened to be out and about on Bristol’s Corn Street that evening.

    Everybody said ‘what on earth is going on?!’ He asked me how old I was and said ‘happy birthday’ and shook my hand. I was flabbergasted, I had no idea what to do or say. We had zero idea that he was walking down that street. If I was 10 to 20 metres ahead of him it wouldn’t have happened, the planets aligned. He’s a really lovely sound bloke, an excellent guy, nice, down to earth and humble and I’d like to buy him a drink.

    Luckily for everyone, one of the gentleman’s friends was able to capture the whole exchange on video.

    You can watch the entire chance meeting in the Twitter post below:

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    Cody Mcintosh

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  • The Art Of The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power

    The Art Of The Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power

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    The Lord of the Rings: Rings Of Power

    Image: Amazon

    While Amazon’s big Lord of the Rings show probably wasn’t the success anyone involved in bankrolling or promoting it might have been hoping for, there was still some good stuff there, and one of the big things that I wanted to focus on for this post was the work that went into designing its world.

    While we’ve seen Middle Earth a bunch of times on the screen, from 70s cartoons to Peter Jackson’s six films, there were a bunch of places in this prequel series that we’d only ever heard of. From the island kingdom of Numenor to the Southlands to the Harfoot’s travelling village, the team of artists—headed by Rick Heinrichs and Ramsey Avery—working on Rings of Power were tasked with taking a world we thought we knew and showing us, well, you haven’t seen all of it, or at least not when it was this old.

    In this slideshow you’ll find a selection of works from some of the artists responsible for this, primarily the ones working in 2D on stuff like concepts and environment design. There are links to each artist’s portfolios in their names, displayed at the top of each slide.

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    Luke Plunkett

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