- Time
- Post link
This 3-hour 45-minute edit covers the events of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 1 (up through the eruption of Mount Doom, along with the conclusion of the Harfoot and Stranger story).
The edit is available upon request in 1920x800 resolution, mp4 format, 14.23 GB file size.
There are countless edits throughout this film, intended to streamline the story, reduce running time, avoid lore issues, and enhance characterization. That said, the major distinctives of this edit are as follows:
- Single-movie format with brief intermission
- Day/Night cycles synched throughout the film (roughly 9 days with some implied time-lapses)
- Almost daily check-ins with each of the major plotlines so that none get forgotten
- Harfoots get a prominent role as the emotional heart of the film
- Finrod’s advice to “Touch the darkness” is linked to the Elven fall/decision to leave Valinor
- The Orcs take no prisoners; the tunnels are only for invading the villages
- The wolf attack takes place in the Harfoot’s starting location (color matching used)
- Theo is implied to have gone back to the village to get the hilt, as well as food
- Mithril is derived from an Elven soul, not a Silmaril
- Adar is captured in the battle, with no additional horse chase
- Durin decides to mine with Elrond after talking about their friendship, not after seeing a leaf get healed
- The hilt magically erupts the volcano; there is no mechanical contraption involved
- The film/season ends with the eruption, leaving the aftermath and forging for a second film, which I hope to spread out using hypothetical season 2 story elements
- Saddoc is shown alive in the final Harfoot scenes
For anyone who has seen my workprint, all footage has been redone to take advantage of higher quality sources. Because of this, all transitions were also redone and several scenes were recut for greater efficiency.
In addition, new VFX have been created in DaVinci Resolve Studio for the following:
- “The Lord of the Rings” removed from the title card, as it wasn’t part of the title for “The Hobbit”
- Color grading for dawn and dusk in several scenes
- Color grading to re-set the wolf attack in a forest that looks more like the original Harfoot location
- Reduced/recolored shots to reduce the presence of burned plants/ground in the Grove (again to make it look more like the original Harfoot location)
- Basic compositing to replace the Mystic footprint in the mud with a wolf pawprint
- New burned-in titles and subtitles, where appropriate, using a more thematic font
Special thanks and inspiration for the following sequences/aspects of the edit:
- Abbreviated prologue (Crossvader and Anjohan)
- Raft without refugees (Crossvader)
- Less argumentative Galadriel throughout (Anjohan)
- Abbreviated star-chart theft (Stiepan90)
- Mithril reveal montage with resonating (Anjohan)
- Gore toned down in Southlands battle (Crossvader)
- Southlands battle transition (Crossvader)
- Only Nori and Poppy confront the Mystics (Crossvader)
- The Harfoots never migrate until their final scene (Crossvader)
Additional thanks for the following for their series analysis, which informed my editorial choices:
- Nerd of the Rings
- The Broken Sword
- The Prancing Pony Podcast
- Rings and Realms
What about the rest of Season 1 you ask? Well, I’m hoping to integrate it into the first half of Season 2 in order to slow down the pace of those events. Based on this edit, I’m hoping to have a full trilogy of films by the time Season 2 is done, but that will obviously depend upon the content we receive.
Thank you again to everyone in this community who has edited or thrown around ideas for this series. It’s been a joy to work on this project, and I hope that (like me) you can now more easily find a place for the Rings of Power alongside the Jackson films.