The first season of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ has not pleased everyone. It is true that some negative comments seemed to be written before watching the Amazon Prime Video series, but others did highlight questionable aspects of it. Now I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that Peter Jackson already made fun of one of his most criticized scenes 20 years ago.
Beware of ‘The Rings of Power’ spoilers from here on out.
Why didn’t Jackson do the same?
I am referring to the moment in the seventh episode of ‘The Rings of Power’ in which those responsible for the series believed that it was necessary to introduce in text that what we were seeing was Mordor. I highly doubt that anyone familiar with the universe of Tolkien I didn’t know it at that point, while for the rest it was a warning without any real repercussion.
Jackson himself was in a similar situation when he was making ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and he explained this in the audio commentary of the extended version of said film andThe reason why they decided to do just the opposite:
We thought a lot about whether we should put subtitles on the screen to identify the places, little subtitles that appear, but in the end we thought it was a bit crappy.
In the end it all comes down to the trust you have in your audience. Jackson and his team were clear that it was unnecessary and that it was better to do it through the evolution of the story itself, the dialogues and showing each of the new locations, while the Prime Video series seemed to be selling it as a great revelation when it was not. It had already become clear with the eruption of Mount Doom at the end of the previous episode.
In Espinof: