Middle Earth sent its Hobbit ambassadors to San Diego’s 2002 Comic Con on a sacred mission: to stir fans of The Lord of the Rings into a frenzy of anticipation for the hotly awaited second installment in the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, The Two Towesr.
Elijah Wood, now an international superstar after playing Frodo Baggins in the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, surprised over 4,000 fans in the Ballroom of the San Diego Convention Center when he made an unexpected appearance during New Line Cinema’s presentation to sci-fi, fantasy and superhero aficionados. Wood was joined on stage by two of his fellow film Hobbits, Billy Boyd (Pippin Took) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry Brandybuck).
The actors revealed little about the filming of The Two Towers, leaving much of the detail work to costume designer Richard Taylor and a team from director Peter Jackson‘s New Zealand-based special effects company WETA.
But they did unveil details about the previously top-secret real-life tattoos all the actors in the Fellowship’s “Nine” obtained. Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davies and Sean Astin all agreed to join the actors and get body ink in the form of the Elvish symbol for the number nine to seal their offscreen bond and commemorate the end of filming. Boyd’s is on his ankle, Monaghan’s is on his upper right arm and Wood’s is on what he cryptically referred to as his “torso.”
(According to VanishingTattoo.com, Bloom’s is on his right wrist, Astin’s is on his right ankle; the other actors’ inky locales remain a mystery)
The event began with a videotaped message from Jackson in New Zealand, followed by a screening of the Two Towers trailer and a brief behind-the-scenes documentary focusing on actor Christopher Lee (Saruman the White), who personally knew Tolkien and has made a point to read the Rings trilogy once a year for decades. On-screen Lee revealed that turning his favorite reading material into a live-action film has “always been a dream of mine.”
Costume designer Taylor delivered a highlight reel of the spectacular F/X accomplishments of the WETA Workshop and its sister wing, WETA Digital. During the course of making the three films, he said, WETA crafted over 2,000 pairs of Hobbit feet and over 12 ½ million links of armor chain mail.
There was also an enticing promo for the forthcoming PlayStation2 game, showing Wood and McKellen providing voice work while programmers used motion-capture technology to capture Mortensen’s and Bloom’s styles of swordplay and archery.
At one point Wood, who told attendees that just a year earlier he could have strolled the exhibition floor at the convention unrecognized by fans, leapt upon a chair and whipped out a digital camera, instructing the assembled audience to smile and say ‘cheese.’ After a brief Q&A period, the three actors spent lengthy sessions signing autographs for legions of their fans.
The only disappointing news was that while Jackson has considered creating a fourth installment with an adaptation of the Ring trilogy’s prequel, The Hobbit, he’s a bit too overwhelmed by the Tolkien verse to tackle the project any time in the near future.
