Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[Nerwen]

Any word on the title? I think it should be called A Game of Rings. With any luck, fans of obscure sports will starting watching it under the impression that it's a documentary on quoits, and thus be drawn into the exciting world of "previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings". Or not.

[Zigûr]

In all seriousness, I daresay it will be called "The Lord of the Rings: <Insert Subtitle Here>" to get as many people as possible to watch it.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

In all seriousness, I daresay it will be called "The Lord of the Rings: <Insert Subtitle Here>" to get as many people as possible to watch it.

If Truth In Advertising was a law, it'd be called Lord of the Rings: Quest for the Silver Pennies.

[Michael Murry]

Not "Lord" of the "Rings" (as in "onion"), but "Lard" of the "Fries" (as in "French"). Anything to convey the image of congealed grease at the bottom of the pan after deep frying left-over vegetables.

[Michael Murry]

If I may, I'd like to take off on Item #3 of Morthoron's "No-Wish" list for the forthcoming LOTR television series and possible spin-offs:

Boromir is the love child of Finduilas and Aragorn (in his guise as Thorongil while he fought for Gondor under the steward Echtelion II). Because the new show needs a Jon Snow moment.

Confessing my own age, ignorance, and indifference to what passes for "culture" in the "English speaking world" today, I had no idea what a "Jon Snow" moment might mean, so I did a little Internet research and discovered [source: Wikipedia] that "Jon is introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones as the illegitimate son of Ned Stark, the honorable lord of Winterfell, an ancient fortress in the North of the fictional continent of Westeros." Since I haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, nor have I seen a single episode of its television adaptation Game of Thrones, I immediately thought of Mordred, the illegitimate son of King Arthur and Morgan Le Fay in T. H. White's novel The Once and Future King (based on Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur), and subsequently adapted into the musical production and motion picture Camelot, among many other interpretations of the Arthurian legend.

Apropos of the typical "prequel" conundrum, where the audience already knows that the hero will survive every dire predicament and eventually (1) become King, (2) get the girl, and (3) live happily until he decides to depart Middle Earth when he gets damn good and ready, the proposed "LOTR" television series and spin-offs may have to take a page (or several pages) from Star Trek, The Once and Future King, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about which Wikipedia says:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American romantic fantasy drama film directed by David Fincher. The storyline by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages in reverse and Cate Blanchett as the love interest throughout his life.

As most sentient carbon-based life forms on Planet Earth know by now, in the most recent reboot of the half-century-old Star Trek television-and-movie franchise, Mr Spock comes back from the future through a black hole and thus disrupts the time continuum, altering the fates of the U. S. S. Enterprise crew who then get to live different lives than those they already lived in previous films and television programs. In The Once and Future King, the "wizard" Merlyn lives through time backwards, as does Benjamin Button. The Actress Cate Blanchette, of course, played the Ultimate Elf-female, Galadriel, in the Peter Jackon LOTR and Hobbit films. Not to put too fine a point on the possibilities here: with the whole gang of "wizards" -- i.e., "Istari" -- coming back from the future (or somewhere "in the West") through a black hole in the universe, every character and situation conceived by J. R. R. Tolkien can now undergo an "evolution" towards an unknown and ever-expanding "future." Prequel problem solved. Thank you T. H. White, David Fincher, and J. J. Abrams.

In the new, alternate timeline, not only will Aragorn get it on with Finduilas (producing the illegitimate Boromir) while her much-older husband Denethor sits drooling up in his tower in front of his Palantir, but Gimli the Dwarf and Galadriel will manage to cuckold both Celeborn and Legolas at the same time. I think I begin to see how this will work ...

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The key thing about the "Jon Snow moment" is that it's sort of a Turin/Oedipus/Kullervo moment. You see, Jon's alleged father and everyone else has been lying, or duped, about his parentage since his birth*, and only a handful of people know who his parents really were (not including his girlfriend...)


*Jon's mother died in childbirth and her brother claimed the baby boy as his own bastard got on some wench, to spare her memory the taint of immorality. **

**And to protect the kid's life, since given who the real father was there were lots of people who would consider infanticide an option.

[Michael Murry]

**And to protect the kid's life, since given who the real father was there were lots of people who would consider infanticide an option."

Do you mean, like Elrond taking in Aragorn and adopting him as a foster son after the two-year-old baby's father, Arathorn II, met a violent death; naming the kid "Estel" to conceal his identity because of all the people who would want to kill him if they knew his true lineage? That G. R. R. Martin sure does know how to write "original" fantasy. But thanks for explaining the "Jon Snow moment." Now I know whatever it means to know something like that.

Still, I prefer Mordred as the quintessential bastard son of an English king cuckolded by his favorite knight. I loved that line of his from Camelot: "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt." Can't beat that for pithy dialog.