I haven’t been following news of the new Amazon Studios’ Lord of the Rings series very closely, though I have heard that at least the first season (of five initially planned – holy hot dogs!) is going to focus on a young Aragorn. Sheesh. I think I agree with John Rhys-Davies here – these guys will do anything to make a little money.
The cynic in me is therefore kinda sort glad that Amazon decided to play it safe and focus on a vague, little-defined part of the Middle Earth canon. They can kind of go nuts and do their own thing…without ruining it the way they did the Hobbit (hopefully).
And yet, I’ll admit, a part of me was hoping they would do the story of Luthien and Beren.
Mentioned in the Lord of the Rings and fully told in the Silmarillion, their story is a precursor to the romance of Aragorn and Arwen – a mortal man who wins the love of an elfin princess. The tale is one of adventure, tragedy, and ultimate triumph (and it even got its own Blind Guardian song!).
But truth be told, I would probably be most psyched about a well-done depiction of Huan, the Hound of Valinor.
If you’re unfamiliar with him, Huan was a gigantic dog, as large as a horse. There were two prophesies regarding him – that he would be allowed to speak three times before his death, and that he could only be killed by the greatest wolf to ever live.
Huan became a companion to Luthien and Beren and helped them in their quest to steal back a Silmaril (exquisite gems coveted by god and mortal alike) from the iron crown of Morgoth (basically Middle Earth’s version of Satan; Sauron’s original master).
The wolfhound ultimately went out like a champ. He dispatched all of Sauron’s werewolves and defeated Sauron himself, but in a final battle with Carcharoth, the greatest werewolf of all time, Huan and Beren were mortally wounded. They did manage to take Carcharoth with them, at least.
Now that’s a battle I wouldn’t mind watching, were it to skew nearer Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring than the Hobbit.
That Huan…so badass…
Edit: I forgot to mention – HP over at Every Day Should Be Tuesday book review site has been doing a Tolkien Summer School series. If you’re a Tolkien fan, definitely worth checking out.
They could have done something really great with the Silmarillion. Maybe Tolkien’s estate didn’t want to sell the rights, on the theory it is better to make money off of the writers destroying a few sentences of canon than let them touch Tolkien’s baby?
They could have, perhaps, but for many of us the grief of what they did to the Hobbit is still too near.
Jackson’s Hobbit movies, I just…aaiiiiiieeeee! (and del Toro bears part of the blame as well)
Yeah. Big drop-off from the LOTR, in my opinion.