Historical Significance of Lord of the Rings Movies: The Frodo Experience by Kristin Thompson

Film theorist Kristin Thompson decided to explore her love for Tolkien’s work and her passion for film by writing “The Frodo Experience” Thompson explains her claim in the introduction. (Rings) “can fairly claim to be one of the most historically significant films ever made.” She wrote the book, to trace its influences in filmmaking, marketing, and merchandising; as well as its impact on the New Zealand film industry that existed before the trilogy came there. Bottom line; Thompson did a good job at explaining why the film held such historical significance. She talks in depth about the costumes, props and different technology designed specifically for this film. The Rings changed how movies were made.

During the introduction; Thompson sets up a base to the books franchising and marketing techniques. Thompson creates this book to explain the explicit process of the franchise. Although positioned as a work of film history, Thompson quickly pointed out that the film versions of Tolkien's books already build upon a franchise.
She then compares The Rings to other franchises such as Star Wars, Batman and Superman. Additionally, Thompson notes that although Star Wars can be seen as a franchise, Walt Disney had maintained control over merchandising for many years prior. Franchises make for much more effective branding than studios, stars or directors, which are not nearly as important. The first thing that that attracts audiences are familiar characters, stories and formulas.

The first chapter: Prudent Aggression, Thompson explains the different path’s The Rings takes to gain its success. She explains how New Line eventually rolled the dice with an unknown director who agreed to make three films. Then there were the sales of the rig...

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...95-96), and generally provided visual clutter (all of the 48,000 objects used in the film were handmade by artisans from appropriate raw materials) to create a sense of historical depth underlying the films (96). Additionally, the filmmakers lured a larger target audience by creating a popular genre film with conventions from action films (martial arts, horror, swashbuckler, war films, and even Westerns) that provided mass-market appeal (57-59). Innovations in computer graphics developed for the LOTR films were helpful in creating creatures, monsters, and crowds that were believable because they followed "real-world principles of anatomy and physics" (90).

Works Cited

Gooch, John, and Dorothy Seyler. Argument. 2nd ed. Mcgraw-Hill, 2012.

Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo franchise: The Lord of the rings and modern Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California P, 2007.