Despite a none-too-subtle marketing campaign already stirring up maelstroms within the online community, Tolkien fans still don’t know what to expect from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. But if the show’s dialect coach is to be believed, this is will be exactly like the Middle-earth you fell in love with thanks to Peter Jackson’s two cinematic trilogies, for the simple reason that it, too, will invite audiences on an epic journey.
In a recent chat with Inverse, Leith McPherson discussed the delicacies of approaching Tolkien’s made-up languages, and how she had to use her own creativity every now and again to fill the gaps. At one point during the conversation, McPherson teased that moving from one culture to another while watching The Rings of Power will feel like entering a different world, also highlighting how the auditory team, for lack of a better word, helped achieve that feat.
“You want the sense we are taking the audience on a journey,” she said. “We have extraordinary artists placing you in a different world each time we move between cultures. We want that individuality acoustically, too. Hundreds are focused on the visual [elements], but here is this little team focused on making the auditory experience rich and varied, a kind of signpost as we move from place to place.”
Taking place in the Second Age of Middle-earth and centering around the story of Sauron the Deceiver, The Rings of Power is an ambitious re-imagining of Tolkien’s world that has cost Amazon a fortune to make. Close to half a billion just for the first season, if we’re splitting hairs.
Suffice it to say, the company literally has a lot of money riding on this venture, set to make its Prime Video debut on Sep. 2.