Entertainment Weekly
18 May 2001
Hobbit Forming
''Lord of The Rings'' footage previews in New York. EW.com attends
a 20 minute screening of the top secret Tolkien trilogy by Gillian
Flynn
Ever since director Peter Jackson started shooting the $270 million ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy in his native New Zealand a millennium ago (October 1999, to be exact), New Line Cinema has kept the project swathed in secrecy. That's not to say the films lack buzz. In January, the studios' first Internet preview in January was downloaded by 1.7 million people in 24 hours, and fansites have rabidly recorded both major developments (such as the casting of Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett) and minutiae (like the news flash when Tyler spoke Elvish, the language of the elves, on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'').
Yet the look and tone of the film remained anyone's guess. Until
now. On May 16, the studio screened some 20 plus minutes of footage
for several hundred journalists at New York City's Sony Lincoln
Square Theatre. (On May 10, reporters at the Cannes Film Festival
saw the same scenes, and the resulting coverage nearly overshadowed
the movies in competition.)
Herewith, the details -- SO STOP READING if you want a clean slate
when the first film, ''Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring,'' hits theaters Dec. 19.
The footage started with a greeting from director Jackson, who
was sitting in a horse drawn cart guided by actor Ian McKellen
in full wizard regalia, the first scene showed McKellen's Gandalf
arriving at the home in the hillside of Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Ian
Holm). The height difference (the Shire dwelling Hobbits are supposed
to grow no taller than three and a half feet) is achieved unobtrusively:
Through clever camerawork, Holm looks to be the size of a child,
while McKellen stretches gauntly to the ceiling. The scene establishes
McKellen's Gandalf as a calm, world weary foil to Holm's frenetic
Baggins, clipping about his cozy Hobbit hole, fetching tea for
his old friend.
Cut to: Bilbo's eleventy first birthday party, where we glimpse
Elijah Wood as Frodo, dancing amidst swirling fireworks. Bilbo
performs his vanishing act, astonishing the crowd as he disappears
before them using his invisibility producing magical Ring. What
follows are quick flashes introducing the Fellowship: Wood's fellow
Hobbits (Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd), humans
Aragorn and Boromir (Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean), Legolas the
elf (Orlando Bloom), and dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies).
The ''Rings''' plot, for those who haven't dusted off their J.R.R.
Tolkien, is a classic quest: To save Middle Earth, Frodo and the
Fellowship must take the all powerful Ring back into the enemy
teritory where it was forged and destroy it in the blazing fires
there. But that's no easy task, because evil forces are in pursuit.
The centerpiece of the footage was 14 minutes of the Fellowship's
dangerous trek through the Mines of Moria. The group discovers
a vast underground chamber strewn with the skeletal remains of
dead warriors, who have been killed off by the evil Orcs. One
Hobbit accidentally knocks a piece of armor into a deep well.
The group waits, hushed, as the armor clangs violently to the
bottom. Silence. Relief. But then: Rumbling. The Moria Orcs are
coming! A pack of the troll like monsters breaks through the barricaded
door, followed by a cave troll, a massive, stony CGI creation.
Arrows fly, swords flash, and Orcs spew black blood.
BLOOD SHOT During the New York preview, journalists got a closer
look at the evil Orcs -- and their black blood
The Hobbits escape through the great halls of Moria, Orcs swarming
down the columns like rats, and bumping up through the floors.
As the creatures surround the Fellowship, Jackson pans around
the circle, offering closeups of the Orcs' pinched, witchlike
faces, each one as unique as the human faces beneath the makeup.
More potent devilry appears in the form of a CGI created Balrog,
a giant, fiery demon. The Fellowship is struggling on the crumbling
stairs of their escape. Gandalf places himself between the group
and the Balrog. A showdown is at hand. Fade to black. Loud audience
applause.
At least one major question has been answered: This is, without
doubt, A Film by Peter Jackson. The tone recalls both the otherworldly
eeriness of ''Heavenly Creatures'' and the loopy action of ''The
Frighteners,'' with enough slaughtering to satisfy admirers of
Jackson's early gorefests like ''Bad Taste.''
What's more, Jackson's effects company, WETA Digital, has done
some groundbreaking work. The film's detail is dramatic, down
to the drooping skin of the cave troll. And with conceptual artists
Alan Lee and John Howe, famed for their illustrations of Tolkien's
work, on Jackson's side, the look of the film should resonate
with core fans. Call it the creation of a Shire thing.
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