I could have put “The Lord of the Rings” as the title of the blog but that would do some injustice to The Hobbit films as they do fall under the banner of “Middle-Earth” a bit more easier than just the name of the book series. In 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien created a sprawling and everlasting world. A medieval world full of war, fantasy and adventures, and also a world that would inspire countless other stories in the years to come. It was a surprise than that it took roughly half a century for the books to be adapted into an epic trilogy that honoured Tolkien’s legacy.
The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King were all filmed back-to-back by Peter Jackson, who at the time wasn’t as well regarded as he is now. He was a young filmmaker with an epic vision. He managed to scrape money together from several production companies and he kept his vision of a huge, grand-scale trilogy from start to finish to the point that he filmed all three films back-to-back! In an age where the fantasy genre was struggling, both The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter managed to bring magic back into the real world and dominate the box office for years to come.
Starring a cast of well-renowned actors and actresses from Ian McKellen, Sean Bean and Cate Blanchett to a group of newcomers from Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, each actor managed to bring each of their characters to life. The music, the cinematography and the script-writing were all top tier and the franchise started to branch out into video-games, graphic novels and merchandising to the point where it was nearly as popular as the Star Wars series. Unfortunately this was one film trilogy with a clear beginning, middle and end. This meant that once the films were complete and graced the big screen, there was nowhere else left for the franchise to grow.
A decade later acclaimed horror-filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro assisted Peter Jackson in developing a prequel trilogy based on The Hobbit book with Jackson returning to direct all three entries. Although these three films did big numbers at the box office they were still in the shadow of the far superior The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Saying that the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and his fight against Smaug still managed to capture the scale and heart of the original trilogy and thus the Middle-Earth saga was complete.
Similar to the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy also had a clear beginning, middle and end, so the door was firmly closed yet again on this franchise. However, money talks and this franchise made a lot of it at the global box office. So plans were put into place to revisit Middle-Earth and the result is the recent success of The Rings of Power television series on Amazon Prime, which proved you can keep the large epic storytelling on a smaller screen, and Netflix has also commissioned an animated film set within Middle-Earth due in 2024 as well. So there is still a future for the franchise and I think it is safe to say that Middle-Earth is going nowhere and will continue to be explored across all mediums.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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