Ian Mackellen (Gandalf): I’m sure the audience watching will be full of fear and anticipation. It’s the 1)ultimate adventure story.
The Lord of the Rings takes place in a world called Middle Earth, a vision of our own planet 2)predating recorded history. It is an age when peace and freedom are under attack from dark forces bent on destruction.
Unaware of the 3)approaching danger are the Hobbits, a small peace loving people, closely related to humans. One Hobbit, Frodo Baggins, has led a simple life, until he 4)inherits a ring. He learns from the wizard Gandalf that it is in fact the one ring, an instrument of absolute evil 5)forged by the dark lord Sauron.
Ian Mackellen (Gandalf): This simple band of gold which contains in its very essence the blood of evil. Ultimately that ring will corrupt whoever has it in its 6)possession. And Gandalf isn’t sure that he - even a superhuman 7)immortal as he is -he’s not sure that he can resist the force of the ring, but he has faith that a Hobbit can. Very touching.
Frodo (Off-screen voice): What should I do?
Elijah Wood (Frodo): Frodo has an amazing amount of trust in Gandalf and anything that Gandalf would ask Frodo to do, Frodo would know that it would be for the best.
8)Accompanied by his friends, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, Frodo 9)sets out on a quest to destroy the ring. But that can only be 10)accomplished by throwing it into the fires of Mount Doom, in the heart of the dark lord’s 11)territory.
This 12)heroic quest 13)sprang from the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien, professor of ancient languages and 14)mythology at England’s Oxford University. Tolkien spent 14 years writing the three-volume 15)epic, read by more than 100 million people around the globe. For five decades since it was published, most assumed the enormous 16)scope of The Lord of the Rings would 17)prevent it from ever being made into a live action movie. Then New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson took up his own quest to bring Tolkien’s 18)masterpiece to the screen.
Peter Jackson (Director): It’s taken 50 years for The Lord of the Rings to be 19)adapted into a live action movie. And I think there’s two key reasons for that. The first one is the New Line Cinema supported the idea of not just making one film but three films. You don”t attempt to adapt the most beloved book of all time in a way that you have to cut half of the good 20)stuff out. The other key reason that The Lord of the Rings can be made today is because of the advances in technology that really have only come about in the last seven or eight years. We are now able to really just push through that the 21)barrier of what is possible to show.
