Have film-makers finally scraped the J.R.R. Tolkien barrel clean?

Have film-makers finally scraped the J.R.R. Tolkien barrel clean? The Rings of Power is the most expensive (a cool quarter of a billion’s worth) television series ever made, and it’s composed entirely from Tolkien’s footnotes to The Lord of the Rings, the book the devout Catholic said was his most church-influenced work. These form a prequel or origin story to events in Middle Earth, when the 20 rings were forged thousands of years before. As with The Lord of the Rings, we begin in episode one with bucolic scenes in a pre-lapsarian rural paradise where a stirring in the bushes (or ­similar) indicates that evil in the form of an orc is stirring. The sorcerer Sauron is on the move. And at this stage of the story, he is just beginning his ascent into power.

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