Entertainment
The Rings of Power opening credits actually have a special meaning linked to JRR Tolkien-Meghna Amin-Entertainment – Metro
It’s not just about pretty patterns.
The Rings of Power opening credits may just look like some pretty patterns forming from earthly materials, but it turns out, the meaning behind the title sequence is actually more special.
The Lord of the Rings spin-off series has brought Middle Earth back to our screens with the latest adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy drama.
Reported to come with a hefty price tag of $1billion (£869million) across five seasons, the Amazon Prime series features jaw-dropping landscapes and epic battles.
It takes place before the events of The Hobbit and the original series of the Lord of the Rings stories, during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, before the Fellowship and even before the rings of power were ever created.
But the fantastical element has begun even before the story really begins.
The opening credits show sequences of symbols and images forming and re-forming from grains of sand, as they vibrate around and create new shapes.
One fan spotted an interesting meaning on Twitter though, which The Rings of Power designers later confirmed.
The opening sequence links to the world JRR Tolkien created (Picture: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
‘I was watching that new Rings of Power show, and the opening credits have these abstract shapes forming and reforming in sand. They seemed strangely familiar, and I suddenly remembered I’d seen them before, they’re Chladni figures!’ the Rings of Power viewer penned.
For those who may not have heard about Chladni figures before, the term comes from an 18th-century scholar who discovered that sound vibrations (also known as music) can cause grains of sand to form in patterns.
But how does that link to Tolkien, you ask?
Well, Tolkien actually once wrote that his world was created from the music of angelic beings, or, as the fan on Twitter put it: ‘In Tolkien’s legendarium, the creator god Ilúvatar sort of creates the world out of music. The beauty of these figures is just a physical manifestation of the harmony of the ‘Music of the Ainur’?’
Producers later confirmed the theory in a blog post, as the film company behind The Rings of Power, Plains of Yonder, wrote: ‘Taking inspiration from JRR Tolkien’s Ainur, immortal angelic beings that sing such beautiful music that the world is created from their very sound, we conceived of a main title sequence “built from the world of sound.”’
The grains of sand are more than just pretty patterns (Picture: Amazon Prime)
The sand forms symbols or shapes like trees in the opening sequence (Picture: Amazon Prime)
They go on to explain the notion of ‘cymatics’ which is: ‘Vibrations of fine particles on a flat surface display striking symmetrical patterns that reflect audio frequencies.’
To ‘mere mortals,’ or rather not scientists and mathematicians, ‘they are nothing short of magic’.
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Other social media users added their own thoughts, with one asking on Reddit: ‘I think it is meant to be a visual rendition of the Ainulindalë, the song of the Ainur, which created Arda. Everything is a concordant melody until Morgoth’s darkness taints Creation.’
Someone else questioned: ‘wonder if the various patterns will change over the course of the episodes/seasons.’
The patterns are set to the music of composer Howard Shore, who was behind the music for the trilogies of the original Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films (Picture: Amazon Prime)
It’s all down to the notion of cymatics (Picture: Amazon Prime)
The patterns are set to the music of composer Howard Shore, who was behind the music for the trilogies of the original Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films.
While the patterns created by the cymatics are stunning themselves, they actually create images from Tolkien’s worlds.
There are mountains, trees, islands, and rings, of course.
Rings are involved, of course (Picture: Amazon Prime)
And some fans have taken the darker sand seeping in to represent Morgoth ‘tainting’ creation (Picture: Amazon Prime)
Speaking to Variety, producers confirmed the use of the ring shapes in the opening sequences: ‘We have the nine for men, the seven for the dwarves, the three rings for the elves, and a single ring. All those combinations are through there, and they’re at the beginning and end. We start with those, and they are building other things, and then we end with them.’
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The Rings of Power is based on the appendices of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels, as well as The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-Earth.
The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King and The Hobbit, all hold the stories of The Rings of Power in their margins.
The Rings of Power is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
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