Old Special Reports | Lord of the Rings & Tolkien News - TheOneRing.net Fan Community, since 1999

Many thanks to Ringer Emma for this:

Hello!

My local newspaper here in Sweden had an article about LOTR last Thursday. It also had a beautiful picture I haven’t seen before, of Elrond and Arwen in Rivendell.

It said (poorly translated by me):

“The Fellowship of the Ring” is not a rush job – The preparations have taken seven years

Sometimes it feels like Hollywood is trying to manipulate the world’s moviegoers with commercial campaigns for millions. Then you have to be steadfast. Still I’m already longing after “The Fellowship of the Ring”, which has its premier in Sweden and Skellefteå [my town] december 19th.

Am I hereby a victim of smart marketing?

Most people have heard about J R R Tolkien’s trilogy about the Ring. I read the whole trilogy a few dark winter nights in the garrison in Luleå. My friend Gunnar from Stockholm said the books were just so good and lent them to me. I was doubtful the first 30 pages, after that I had no time with attentions and marches. Instead I took every opportunity to shirk away to read. I was done in a week and sat there with tired eyes longing for more.

I still don’t know exactly where the facsination was. Can it be so simple that the good fight against evil has such an attraction/force? Or maybe it was the little hobbits fight against such terrible opponents. It may be whatever it wants. Good it was, anyway, and since then, Frodo and his friends has always been my favourites.

Another film about The Lord of the Rings has been made. In 1978 came a cartooned variant by Ralph Bakshi. It was a great disappointment which felt way too blurry and lacked the special Tolkien-feeling wich is necessary to make it work. This time it is Peter Jackson from New Zealand who will bring life to the mythology. He has also used the magic nature of his homeland to recreate Middle-earth.

The preparations have taken seven years. No one can say that it is a rush job. Jackson has also made a row of famous actors appear in the films. Frodo, for example, is played by Elijah Wood, whom we’ve seen in movies like “Forever Young” with Mel Gibson and “Deep Impact” with Robert Duvall. I’m sure many recognize Liv Tyler from “Armageddon”, where she played the daughter of Bruce Willis. Here she plays Arwen, an elf forced to choose between immortality and love. Christopher Lee, forever connected with Dracula, is Sauron [it actually says Sauron, it is not my mistake][NOTE: We know this is an error; Saurman is the character played by Lee] the premier of all warlocks (yeah, Carl-Einar Häckner [a famous Swedish magician, warlock and magician is the same word in Swedish] can go hide himself) who wants to conquer the Ring for himself.

Doesn’t this look exciting? The only thing I am worried about is how the abstinence (substance?) for the next movie will express itself. Because the whole trilogy is already recorded. But we’re gonna have to wait until Christmas 2002 for “The Two Towers”. And Christmas 2003 “The Return of the King will be released.

It seems far away. Almost as far as wandering all the way to Mount Doom…

This article was written by Roger Lindström, for the newspaper Norra Västerbotten.

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Oh my gosh:

Today went as I wanted to to an UGC Cine Cite in Paris… And the trailers were there. The room was huge, and so was the screen (YEAH!), and as we were at the most 45 (it was the earliest trailer show in the morning, at 9.10 AM, the others were in other cinemas around 10.30 AM, so I bet there were many more people there) it appeared quite void. But they showed the three trailers, including the last one, four times over: FOUR TIMES! And in subtitled English. Oh my Gosh!!!!

I could see details I hadn’t seen before: When you see Sauron’s piked helm, in the respectful (fearful?) army, I did see one or two bearded + mustached humans… And in the pictures in the mirror of Galadriel which shows the Shire aflame, a few men-sized people are carrying whips and making the Hobbits flee. And when Legalos says, “Something draws near, I can feel it,” you could see his breath on the air. Must be quite cold where he was… Of course u already noticed that, but I hadn’t on my poor-quality QuickTime trailer…

And more important: There was a camera team which made interviews, before and after the trailers, to make a short movie on the fan reactions… I was actually interviewed, and I think I made quite a good impression… and there was a guy at the head of Tolkienfrance: www.tolkienfrance.com who told me HE is doing the French translation of the Decipher card game! Coooooooool.

In a nutshell: IT WAS ABSOLUTELY GREAT!

Thanks for the report Cuivienor!

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From Henneth Annun

Kinowelt losing its rights on LotR movie and giving it to Warners in Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia dealt a blow to the Russian fans – the release date is moved from December 21 by Kinowelt to February 7 by Warners.

But what is especially sad about this event is that the other “Kinowelt” countries – Germany etc. would still get their release in December!

But Russia was singled out and placed with other Asian countries (who will also get LotR movie released in February), and this is an incredibly damb move from Warners: they’ll lose loads of money to videopirates, who would steal from movie theaters countless repeat viewings of Tolkien fans. (Most of the people who eagerly awaits this movie would buy a pirated video in December instead of waiting for February release, you may trust me on this! Just try to estimate the percent of people who can avoid spoliers on TORN and you get the idea!)

And let me tell you that in no country in the world the Tolkien fandom is as strong as in Russia. LotR was first published in Russia in full in the early 90-s, and since then, in 10 years, about 2.5 mln copies of LotR were published in Russia and it still goes on in full steam.

Reading Tolkien in the early 90-s was like a religious experience for lots of Russian people, who found in his work the new light and hope after the crush of the Communism system. Tolkien affected a lot of people in our country on a very, very deep level, and the LotR movie should create an enourmous interest and would sure break all box office records for Russia (they are modest, but still it can easily climb from current 5mln$ to, say, 15mln$ just because of repeat viewings by the millions of fans, let alone other people. Even with the average ticket price of 1$ in province and 4$ in Moscow).

And now Warners wants to throw the huge chunk of it to video pirates, which would surely happen if the movie gets released in February. I just don’t get it!

And another thing: technically it’s possible to make Russian premiere in December as planned, because dubbing usually takes 2 months, and Kinowelt’s Russian subsidiary Gemini-Kinomir had dubbing works well under way. Warners might take the works from Gemini-Kinomir and continue and they’d easy make the December deadline, but no – they plan to throw everything away and start anew. But even in this case they still have enough time to do the dubbing.

It’s all politics, and it’s very sad. I hope that somebody in New Line would listen to us and would change this situation before it’s too late.

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