The Ottawa Citizen
(quoted in the National Post)
12 May 2001
Marketing Middle Earth
The enormous scope of New Line's $270-million film adaptation
of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy is perhaps matched
only by the project's promotional campaign
Jay Stone
Ottawa Citizen
CANNES, France - The road from the Croisette to Middle Earth is about half an hour north on the A8. You cut through a lovely country lane, past a stone gateway, and up on the hill you see it: Château de Castelleras, the place where the fellowship of the ring meets the fellowship of the journalists.
The château was transformed yesterday with film sets shipped from New Zealand -- colourful tents, mock gargoyles and Viking-like boats -- creating a replica of the land of the Lord of the Rings. Cast members of the forthcoming Lord of the Rings film trilogy met with two busloads of journalists for the worldwide media launch.
Those lucky few with special press passes to the junket -- passes that drew curiosity even from battle- hardened workers at the Cannes festival -- felt as if they had been called to carry a magical ring into the fires of Mordor. Frodo Baggins himself never went through the security system it took to get to the château.
Another funny thing was that all 11 cast
members who were on hand to talk to the press
during a marathon five-hour bus ride / press conference / luncheon
/ love-in, all seemed to be
like their characters. Liv Tyler, who plays the elf queen, Arwen,
was pretty elfin. (Although she
did say: "It's difficult to be elfin all the time. You're
constantly poised and weird.") And Ian
McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf, was wizardly (although:
"I'm 62 and Gandalf is 7,000
years old. I'm a bit young for the part.")
Middle Earth, it appears, has taken up full-time
residence on the French Riviera, on a hill
overlooking the burnt-umber and red-roofed country homes. It is
an ideal place for it.
The package of Lord of the Rings events
included a screening of 26 minutes of the first episode
of the first film, viewed for the first time anywhere by anyone,
according to New Line, the
studio that made the $270-million trilogy. Even the actors saw
the sequences for the first time
this week. They said they were amazed at what they saw; as for
the journalists, well, they all
broke into applause at the end of the selected tidbits.
The crowd was made up of unabashed Lord
of the Rings junkies, the kind of people who see
13 Days three times so they can see the Tolkien trailers.
But the film was, in truth, spectacular.
The compilation of scenes included a six-minute
introductory sequence in which a very tall Gandalf visits Bilbo
Baggins (Ian Holm) at his home
on the occasion of Bilbo's 111th birthday. Through the magic of
director Peter Jackson and
WETA special effects, Gandalf bumps his wizard's hat against the
cave-side home where Bilbo
-- a tiny creature -- lives. It is all wood and beams, a dream
of an ancient England created by
author J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1954 books upon which all this excitement
is based.
The second excerpt was a 14-minute action
sequence set in the Mines of Moria, a vaulted
underground battleground where the members of the fellowship of
the ring -- those hearty
souls who must accompany young Frodo Baggins on his mission to
destroy the powerful ring
that is the focus of all evil, good and myth in the books -- must
battle many forces of evil.
The fellowship includes Frodo (Elijah Wood),
his loyal assistant Sam (Sean Astin), the
mysterious half-elf warrior Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas
the elf (Orlando Bloom), Gimli
the dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) and others.
Their enemies are the orcs, frightening
creatures with round heads and snarling teeth, as well
as a giant cave troll and the Balrog, a 40-foot-tall winged demon.
All are rendered with frightening, computer-generated
or prosthetic accuracy, and a hollow,
thumping soundtrack had the Olympic theatre shaking.
After a magnificent battle sequence complete
with swordplay, bowmanship and lots of running
away, the companions must cross a collapsing bridge just ahead
of the Balrog. The leaps
across the widening chasm are heart-stopping.
The third part of the excerpt was an epilogue
with bits of Episodes 2 and 3 of Lord of the
Rings. They appear to be made up of the trailers that will hit
theatres starting at the end of the
month. The first episode of the movie will open on Dec. 19.
Mr. Jackson made all three films during
a marathon 15-month shoot in New Zealand. He said
even at that, it was difficult to get all of the Tolkien books
on screen.
"The one reason it has not been made
for 40 years (aside from a 1970s cartoon version), the
key to it, is that we made three movies," Mr. Jackson told
reporters yesterday. "The natural
instinct Hollywood would have would be to compress it into one
movie."
Mr. Jackson -- whose previous films include
The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures -- said the
one rule the filmmakers followed was to make a trilogy that will
appeal to people who read the
books 10 or 15 years ago and have a version of it in their mind's
eye.
The scope of the project -- Episodes 2 and
3 will be released a year apart, and each of the
movies has a cliffhanger ending, so you pretty well sign on for
all three movies when you walk
in to the first one -- is in no way dwarfed by the scope of the
marketing and selling of the films.
The promotion is taken for granted, of course:
The toys and the partnerships are coming,
although Mr. Jackson noted the actors have approval over the depictions
of their characters,
and they are pretty pleased with their toys.
As one New Line staff member put it, "The
film will not be far from people's consciousness,
starting now."
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