In this scattershot series, we’ll be delving “too greedily and too deep,” prying gems out of the glorious rough that is the extended legendarium of Tolkien’s world. This includes drawing on The Lord of the Rings itself, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, and the History of Middle-earth (or HoMe) books.
Previously, on Tolkien’s Orcs…
I concluded in part 1, which covered the monstrous hoi polloi of Middle-earth as presented in
The Hobbit and in
The Lord of the Rings, that Orcs are driven to mayhem and frankly, the will to do anything substantive
by the power of Sauron. Which is to say, when there’s no Dark Lord in the neighborhood to give them some moxie, they become idle (relatively speaking) and their numbers stay down. But what about before all that? What happened before Sauron even became the head honcho of evil?
The Rise and Fall of Númenor, Explained
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Amazon’s hard at work on their
Lord of the Rings series, which is set to debut in 2021. But despite that fast-approaching debut date, we still know very little about the show. In fact, even calling it a
Lord of the Rings series isn’t really accurate. (Thank you, Elijah Wood, for pointing that out.) We know that J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, a land in the world of Arda, is still the setting. But the show won’t chronicle the same events depicted in Peter Jackson’s original film trilogy. Those movies which followed Frodo and the Fellowship on their quest to destroy the One Ring take place during the Third Age of Middle-earth. The Amazon show, on the other hand, takes place in the Second Age.
In this scattershot series, we’ll be delving “too greedily and too deep,” prying gems out of the glorious rough that is the extended legendarium of Tolkien’s world. This includes drawing on The
Lord of the Rings itself, The Hobbit,
The Silmarillion,
The Children of Húrin, and the History of Middle-earth (or HoME) books.
Orcs, amirite? The shock troops of the Dark Lord’s armies. The rank-and-file of the bad guys in Middle-earth. Called a “hideous race” bred in “envy and mockery of the Elves.” Everyone’s got feelings about them. Feelings… and differing facts, maybe.
It should be understood that in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, the nature of Orcs the spirit and agency of the Orcs is not consistent all throughout. Were they really Elves once? Are they soulless constructs of evil and therefore irredeemable? Or
The map of Middle-earth revealed by Amazon to declare its journey into the Second Age. (Image: Amazon Studios)
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Even though we first learned about it in 2017, we barely know anything about Amazon’s plans for its
Lord of the Rings series. One thing we do know other than that a bucketload of talent is running all around New Zealand to make it is that it’s set in the Second Age of Middle-earth’s long history. But what even
Elijah Wood Questions the Name of Amazon s LORD OF THE RINGS nerdist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nerdist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.