Rings of Power S3/Hunt for Gollum Anticipation and JRR Tolkien Discussion thread

[Turtletrekker]

Ian McKellen Reveals Gandalf & Frodo Will Feature In Andy Serkis’ New ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ Films

Ian McKellen has revealed that Gandalf and Frodo Baggins will appear in Andy Serkis' new movie 'The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.'

deadline.com

 

[Set Harth]

Gandalf being in it is not exactly surprising.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

We already knew Gandalf was going to be in it. The news here is Frodo's return, which is probably going to be a framing device.

 

[Turtletrekker]

We already knew Gandalf was going to be in it. The news here is Frodo's return, which is probably going to be a framing device.

In fact, I was even thinking that they could just use the "Keep it secret, keep it safe" and the "Is it secret? Is it safe?" footage from Fellowship as it is and use that as the frame.

 

[JD]

I had kind of been inspecting something like that, so I'm not totally surprised. I wonder if they're going to do any digital or makeup deaging, or if we're just going to pretend they're not 22 years older than when we last saw them?

 

[FredH]

News on two different Tolkien projects in the same number of days.

Rings of Power season three has begun production...

‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Trio Dissect Dark Lord Showdowns, Welcome A Wizard And Tease Season 3

The Rings of Power stars Charlie Vickers, Charles Edwards and Daniel Weyman discuss their series at the Deadline Studio at Prime Experience.

deadline.com

...and The Hunt for Gollum has a release date!

‘Lord of the Rings: Hunt for Gollum’ Set for December 2027, Next ‘Evil Dead’ Movie Nabs Summer 2026 Release

New Line announced that the next 'Evil Dead' installment is officially a go, with Souheila Yacoub set to star. M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie has also landed a release date from Warner Bros.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

I figured that we didn't need two different anticipation threads and could use a general Tolkien discussion thread anyway, so here we are. I am one of the few who have been enjoying the hell out of Rings of Power, despite its canonical digressions. I'm actually more skeptical about The Hunt for Gollum. Both the Hobbit movies and the War of the Rohirrum movie felt awfully padded out, and I can see the same thing playing out here. Especially since the story in question was sufficiently told in a 45-minute fan-film, I can only imagine how padded a 2 1/2 hour movie might feel. And then there's the (re?)casting issues involved.

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I’m with you (if three months late). The Rings of Power has pretty much swept me away every episode from the get go, so I simply don’t care if it diverges from the source material. Whereas The Hunt for Gollum — presumably I’ll see it at some point, but I can’t say I see much reason for it. It’s as if someone made a new Star Wars movie about, say, the Imperial scout ships searching for the hidden Rebel base, finally finding the deserted remains of one on Dantooine, cue end credits.

 

[Tosk]

It’s as if someone made a new Star Wars movie about, say, the Imperial scout ships searching for the hidden Rebel base, finally finding the deserted remains of one on Dantooine, cue end credits.

Or if someone, say, made a movie about the doomed Rebels who originally stole the Death Star plans.

 

[FredH]

Or if someone, say, made a movie about the doomed Rebels who originally stole the Death Star plans.

Nah, because the hunt for Gollum only ends in the actual LOTR films themselves, whereas The Stealing of the Plans Rogue One covers a separate arc that ends before ANH begins, and its climactic ending isn’t part of ANH’s events yet is very, very meaningful (as not finding the current Rebel base, or not finding Gollum once and for all, would not be).

 

[Tosk]

One would assume that they'll come up with a story that is meaningful and has a beginning, middle, and ending for the Gollum movie, regardless of where it falls in the chronology.

 

[Set Harth]

Or if someone, say, made a movie about the doomed Rebels who originally stole the Death Star plans.

I remember thinking what a terrible idea.

 

[JD]

I’m with you (if three months late). The Rings of Power has pretty much swept me away every episode from the get go, so I simply don’t care if it diverges from the source material. Whereas The Hunt for Gollum — presumably I’ll see it at some point, but I can’t say I see much reason for it. It’s as if someone made a new Star Wars movie about, say, the Imperial scout ships searching for the hidden Rebel base, finally finding the deserted remains of one on Dantooine, cue end credits.

I don't know, I think there's potential in the idea behind The Hunt for Gollum, we only know the basics of what happened, at least in the movies, and we already know it involves familiar characters like Gandalf and Aragorn, with the possibility of more showing up.
Personally my choice for a The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings interquel would have been a young Aragorn story, I'm not going to totally blow off The Hunt for Gollum.

 

[Set Harth]

Personally my choice for a The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings interquel would have been a young Aragorn story, I'm not going to totally blow off The Hunt for Gollum.

Well, because of the Fellowship movie more or less deleting a certain 17 year stretch from the book timeline, Aragorn is somewhere around 27 years old during the Hobbit films, for whatever that's worth.

 

[JoeZhang]

I had kind of been inspecting something like that, so I'm not totally surprised. I wonder if they're going to do any digital or makeup deaging, or if we're just going to pretend they're not 22 years older than when we last saw them?

Deaging technology has moved on significantly - you can do amazing things even on a TV budget:

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[Turtletrekker]

Deaging technology has moved on significantly - you can do amazing things even on a TV budget

This was done with what is essentially a sophisticated snapchat filter without any post production work whatsoever.

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[JD]

Wow, I didn't realize it was getting that good now.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Wow, I didn't realize it was getting that good now.

If you haven't already, you should check out this production from OTOY, the company behind the amazing Roddenberry archive and the above clip of Saavik. It was made with the cooperation of Paramount and has William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy's widow listed as executive producers.

The story is... vague and open to interpretation by the viewer and ties in with the other shorts that they have produced. As noted in the Saavik clip, the lack of dialogue was a deliberate choice and the whole idea came from a feeling from the people at OTOY that Kirk and Spock deserved to have a final farewell between them.

All three versions of Kirk are portrayed by Sam Witwer and Spock by Lawrence Sellek, but with the digital mask technology used as seen above, they are near indistinguishable from Shatner and Nimoy, and it was shot in real time without post production.

According to Sam Witwer, the whole point of the endeavor is to give actors and their families a way to own and copyright their own image and likeness in perpetuity, so it can't be used without their permission.

And to top it all off, the end result, as seen in Unification, actually comes off looking much better than Luke Skywalker did in The Mandalorian or John Delancey did in those first few moments that we saw him as Q in Picard season two.

And yes, that is Gary Lockwood reprising his role as Gary Mitchell from the second Star Trek pilot, Where No Man Has gone before. And yes, that is indeed Robin Curtis, portraying Saavik using traditional prosthetic makeup to age her up.

The relevance to this conversation is that a much easier way now exists to make actors appear as they were 20 years ago. And that same technique could also be used to simply bring a new actor in altogether wearing the digital mask, with the original actors permission of course.

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Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread into a discussion about Unification, I just wanted to note how easy it would be to bring Gandalf and Frodo into The Hunt for Gollum.

Unification discussion...

765874 - Unification

Not sure this counts as fan production, given that Shatner and Curtis came back and there is a certain level of official involvement, what I’m sure is that once I understood what I was actually witnessing I got very emotional.

www.trekbbs.com

Roddenberry archive.

Roddenberry Archive

The Roddenberry Archive: Legacy of the Starships Enterprise

roddenberry.x.io

Be warned --one can spend hours here getting lost in their faithful recreation of starship bridges and the DS9 Promenade and among other locations.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I swear I must the one Trekkie who didn't care for that video and stopped it partway through.

But you're right, that's not the point of discussion.

As for the film itself, I still don't imagine Frodo playing much of a role, only another reason to include Elijah, just like The Hobbit.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Yeah, I only brought it up to highlight the tech involved, not the story itself.

As for the film itself, I still don't imagine Frodo playing much of a role, only another reason to include Elijah, just like The Hobbit.

But Aragorn is an entirely different matter. Aragorn is a vital and central part of the story. Viggo Mortensen has said he would consider returning if "they took his age into account", which can be interpreted a couple of different ways, but he is surely aware of the timeline of the story. He has also said that it depends on the script.

 

[Tosk]

and it was shot in real time without post production.

I don't believe that's accurate. The 'digital make-up' does work in real time to a certain degree, but they still did post on it. The Saavik clip shown above is a good example of why, if you watch it in HQ you can see the mask 'slips' with movement somewhat. The kind of thing that is avoided/fixed by rendering out properly in post.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I don't believe that's accurate. The 'digital make-up' does work in real time to a certain degree, but they still did post on it. The Saavik clip shown above is a good example of why, if you watch it in HQ you can see the mask 'slips' with movement somewhat. The kind of thing that is avoided/fixed by rendering out properly in post.

Fair enough. Thank you for the correction.