Just found an interesting site, adcritic.com which is a site that has compiled all the coolest commercials and movie trailers. If you click on the Top 100 link, you’ll find a list of the 100 most popular video clips. Not surprisingly, this list is comprised of the funniest commercials that I can remember seeing, like the Budweiser Wassup? commercials (along with hilarious spoofs), and the trailers for every hot movie of the last six months. The Lord of the Rings trailer holds a very respectable position at number 32. Not bad for a brief look at a movie that won’t even make it to the theaters for almost a year and a half! This is a great indicator that the LOTR is becoming a part of our cultural literacy.
Thanks to Sparrowhawk (what a cool name!) for that.
Month: August 2000
Disturbing news from PRMeister. Remember that story that you could subscribe to Total Movies magazine and you would receive a free DVD including the LOTR preview?
“Hey Tehanu –
Just a heads up. I am one of the PR folk at New Line and I can say without a doubt that there will be no trailer for LOTR on any DVD released by Total Movie. This is nothing more than a bogus scam to get subscriptions.”
OK, what say we offer something (like, a OneRingNet T-shirt…..Calisuri? Corvar?) to the first person who can prove or disprove this rumour, which originally was reported as being published on an insert in Total Dreamcast. Yes we will certainly be following this story up, bigtime.
People kept sending in more good ideas about the meaning of that impaled wizard picture, so I’ve collated them here
More thoughts have come in about the wizard-on-a-spike picture
SB was at the set on consecutive days and sheds some light:
“I just want to offer my opinion on the wizard on a spike. Shoulda done this earlier, I know. The same actor who was the wizard on the spike (or a good look-alike) was filming a scene the very next day. How do I know? Because I saw them filming at the Wingate set the next day. What were they filming? In the two hours I was there, it was a crane shot taken from 30 feet or so in the air, looking down on that same wizard on a white horse leading eight or so individuals. I noticed a Gimli dummy on the back of someone, and someone who looked like Aragorn (could be a double). This was all beside the big wheel. This leads me to believe that it *was* Gandalf, especially as he spoke some inaudible lines that day.
Why he was on the spike? Who knows. The security guards said that the Evening Post (stuff.co.nz) were very wrong, however. One more thing… on the day after the spike day, the security guard told me that they were using all doubles that day, and the real action was up the road at the river set, where all the stars where. I don’t know if he was trying to get me to bugger off, but it certainly seems that most of the main characters have doubles.”
A few people thought it was Saruman, such as AW:
“I think that it is pretty clear what the impaled wizard was. It was Saruman’s demise(presumably by the actions of Wormtongue). I think that the destruction in the Shire will be completly omitted in the movies. It would be anti-climactic in a film(after the spectacular fall of Sauron) and really is of little relevence to the central story. As for the issue of no blood, remember how Saruman died in the books, it was fairly bloodless…”
Another good idea from MT:
“Just read your article… wanted to comment on the bit regarding the blood. The Wheel is rotating in water, thus its likely it would not be bloody… especially if the wizard (or whomever) died and was sloshing around there a bit before someone found him. Perhaps Saruman was let go, and stumbled on one of his own machines. After he was under water awhile, someone discovered it and the machine was rotated…bringing the unbloody body up out of the water.”
I kind of like this idea – it’s nifty and gets round the R13 classification (no scenes with oodles of gore). I still think he’d be pretty pinkish-looking though – blood doesn’t rinse off as easy as you could wish. Not if you’re wearing white.
Olorin said:
“… Nor can it be Sauron showing Denethor his doom (although that would be a cool way to make him even more suicidal), as he has no Minas Tirith uniform on, & I doubt that if they stripped him of it they would have given him some white robes in return. My guess, therefore, is that it might be a part of a flash through Mordor/Lugburz or Isengard/Orthanc, showing Sauron/Saruman torturing an old man. Unless Gandalfs been having nightmares after the fight with the Balrog…”
I’m really impressed with the imagination people have brought to bear on this, which is remaining such an intriguing problem. Bending the rules, playing with ideas….it makes us storytellers in our own right.
We compiled a roundup of the many guesses and ideas we received about the recent wizard kebab picture (more)
That mysterious picture of what appears to be a wizard impaled on a wheel has generated a lot of speculation in the Tolkien world. I thought it’d be a good use of Net resources to compile some of the thoughts and guesses we’ve received so people can mull them over.
Firstly, Sir Ian McKellen said that it wasn’t him on the spike, though he was on the set at the time; Neither was it Christoper Lee, who’s currently filming in Australia. Right, that’s all clear enough, but it doesn’t rule out that it could be either of their stunt doubles, or even a dummy, as Ken McGuire’s suggested. Even though the camera’s very close to the impaled figure, perhaps they can manipulate the image so it looks like a real (dead) face.
After all, Lee and McKellen are close to seventy, and PJ is going to find a better use for their talents than hanging them upside-down on a spike. Anyone can do that. (me! me! me! – did I just hear volunteers?)
If it isn’t one of the wizards at all, somebody suggested Grima….so, say he gets ideas above his station, puts on the white robe, and Saruman pushes him out of Orthanc? I just made that up 5 seconds ago without a shred of evidence to back it up, but it’s worth mentioning that if the Scouring of the Shire story is reduced, there’s no requirement for Grima to die the same way as in the books.
‘Gollum’ suggested Denethor’s death, with the same reasoning: it’s not crucial to the plot HOW he dies. I dunno, though, would a director miss the chance to film a big fiery immolation scene? All those cool light and smoke effects? Though ‘Gollum’ reckons that could be added in afterwards…..but CGI is expensive and kerosene’s cheap….Plus there’s no mention of machinery in Minas Tirith; there certainly is around Orthanc, so that cogged wheel seems to belong there naturally.
Still, quite a few people opt for Saruman, having fallen out of Orthanc (in this version, Grima pushes him…..leaving Grima free to go on and mess things up in the Shire….and Saruman ends up impaled there.
Where’s the blood? There’d be blood and last night’s dinner all over that spike if it was really supposed to look like the wizard was impaled on it. Maybe that stuff can be added afterwards with CGI, but Xoanon couldn’t see the point of that. I believe Watties Foods have been purveyors of tomato sauce to film directors for a long time in NZ, and nobody’s seen any reason to replace their product with digital effects up til now. CGI is still labour- and time-intensive enough that directors avoid using it if there’s an easier way.
So, if there’s no blood, is it a vision? A dream? Something that Frodo sees in the Mirror of Galadriel? That’s a nice guess from Ed Meier, because we’re told that he sees ‘many scenes flashing quickly before his vision’ or words to that effect, but Tolkien doesn’t tell us exactly what.
C Bracebgirdle offers the theory that it’s a vision that the Ents have while chanting ‘Down with Saruman,’ or a image that appears as they intone, “Wizards ought to know better: they do know better. There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men bad enough for such treachery. Down with Saruman!”
Equally, is it a vision sent via the Palantir to make Denethor or Saruman or Aragorn despair? That’s stretching the Palantir a bit beyond the powers that Tolkien allows it, but still, it’s possible.
Saint suggested perhaps they’re filming some torture that Gandalf undergoes while imprisoned by Saruman. We know that Saruman uses violence against him in the scenes that have been filmed already, and it would make Gandalf’s ordeal more believable, or drive home the fact that at that time, Saruman was more powerful than Gandalf, and was able to render him helpless. My objection to that is that having a spike like that through him wouldn’t just torture him, it’d kill him stone-dead.
So, these are the ideas that are floating around at the moment. When all’s said and done, it remains a mystery.