Amazon's Lord of the Rings gets a first look at the orcs

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is only a few months away from its official release and Prime Video continues to offer details about its world and characters. At the end of the First Age, the orcs were nearly wiped out, but they never completely disappeared. During the Second Age, still decimated, they are not the threat of the future when Middle-earth nearly succumbed to the wrath of Sauron. To whet your appetite, IGN has published the first images of the orcs, which you can see below.

"It was really important to them to treat them as their own culture and explore their world on its own two legs in its own right.," explained Jamie Wilson, head of the show’s prosthetic department, in an interview with IGN. According to his words, they spent a lot of time chatting about what it meant to be an orc in the Second Age. "It felt appropriate that their look would be different, part of a wilder, more raw, Second Age, Middle-earth, closer to where the First Age ends." In this age they are still " not yet organized into armies" and are scattered around the world.

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Orcs lived in tunnels

Everyone thought the orcs had been eradicated, but in truth they lived in darkness, organized in small groups and hidden in tunnels. "they were hunted for so long. So this is really them coming back ou," now already under a new leader. Weber previews that there is a female orc "who's very, very tall and strong" and who faces off against one of the elves. I suspect will be, or hope will be a favorite among fans."

In Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, the orcs appeared with scars on their bodies. This version, however, opts for softer textures: "There's still wrinkles, and lines", but not "so battle scarred". What happens to them is that because they have been underground for so long, exposure to the sun affects them. "They're coming back out for the first time again. So it's all a bit new. That's why they're not as dark skinned, necessarily not as muscle-y and not as battle worn as you'd seen in previous productions."

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Less special effects, more prosthetics

Twenty years ago, they were using foam latex as the main material. "It was actually just at the end of doing Lord of the Rings that we did the very first encapsulated silicon for Gimli." Nowadays, they work with silicone for prosthetics. "We work really hard to make our prosthetics really thin and more comfortable for our performers and all of that. But there are times when they're wearing things, teeth for example, and all sorts of other stuff that do make that hard. And over time, as you're shooting, those things can just take on a little wear and tear as the day goes along."

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Those responsible for the series decided from the beginning that they wanted to be a “very real show". Thus, they use prosthetics and minimize visual effects. "the human eye is getting better and better and knows what is real and knows what isn't," he said.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere on September 2 on Prime Video.

Source | IGN