One does not simply walk into Prime Video’s new Lord of the Rings adaptation – not without a little refresher course, at least.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to debut on the streaming service in September, and is widely reported to be the most expensive TV series ever made.
You can read The Independent’s review here.
Rings of Power is set during the Second Age, many centuries before the events of JRR Tolkien’s main Lord of the Rings story, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film trilogy by Peter Jackson in the early 2000s.
The series introduces a whole host of new characters into the mix, as well as a few familiar ones, such as Elrond (played in the series by Robert Aramayo) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark).
To mark the arrival of Prime Video’s new series, here is a ranking of the best 20 characters from the Lord of the Rings.
While some of the characters featured did also appear in Jackson’s subsequent adaptation of The Hobbit, this ranking is principally judging them based on their characterisation within the original Lord of the Rings films.
See below for our top 20…
20. Sauron
He’s the Big Bad of Middle Earth; to diehard fans of Lord of the Rings, his black mask is as instantly recognisable as that of Darth Vader. Why is Sauron so far down this list then? Well, his characterisation doesn’t extend beyond a pretty one-note thirst for power – the most nuance he ever shows is probably when he exists as a giant burning eye.
19. Treebeard
He’s a big talking tree. Need I say more?
18. Arwen
Played by Liv Tyler, the half-elf royalty Arwen is hamstrung throughout much of the Lord of the Rings trilogy playing love interest to Aragorn. The sequence in which she delivers Frodo to Rivendell is a real standout, however.
17. Galadriel
Bernard Hill as Theoden in ‘The Two Towers’
It’s a testament to the overall male skew of Tolkien’s world that pretty much all of the biggest characters are men; The Rings of Power takes a rather more egalitarian approach towards gender dynamics. The Galadriel of The Lord of the Rings, played by Cate Blanchett, is old and world-weary. In Rings of Power, played by Morfydd Clark, she’s an entirely different proposition.
16. Elrond
There’s something about The Matrix’s Hugo Weaving that makes him weirdly perfect as an elf. Of all The Lord of the Rings’ myriad statespeople, his noble ruler Elrond is one of the most consistently engrossing.
15. Merry Brandybuck
John Rhys Davies as Gimli in ‘The Two Towers’
Orlando Bloom as Legolas
