LORD OF THE RINGS - WHERE DID THE BUDGET GO?
The Fellowship of the Ring - part one of Peter Jackson's long-awaited $270m Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, has just received its world premiere in London's Leicester Square, but fans, critics and casual cinema-goers alike are stunned at the cheap tacky nature of the effects and the perfunctory storyline which collapses Tolkein's 300 page book into a mere 24 minutes of screen time. What studio bosses and Tolkein aficionados want to know now is "Where did the money go?"
Less than 30 minutes after the lights went down, a desultory audience trooped back outside the famous Empire cinema, bewildered and disappointed. Life-long Tolkein fan Markus Boser wiped away a manly tear and told us what he'd seen. "I had heard all about the director's amazing vision for the film, so when I saw the titles, looking for all the world like they'd been written on the backs of cereal packets in black marker-pen, I assumed that Jackson was just making a stylistic choice, but when the Hobbits appeared for the first time, I knew something was terribly wrong."
It seems that reports of tricky forced-perspective shots and complex CGI being used to create the illusion of four foot hobbits is not correct, as in the finished film, the director's "vision" relies almost exclusively on sock puppets to portray Tolkein's stumpy heroes.
Worse was to come as the Dark Riders were shown as cardboard cut-outs, waved in front of the screen by very obvious rods, and the vicious Orcs looked more like alsation dogs than the brutish humanoid footsoldiers of the evil Sauron. Ian McKellen's performance was praised by many, although most fans were deeply upset to see him wearing a wizard's hat which seemed to be made of a rolled-up newspaper and carrying a wand made of a bent coat-hanger with a tinfoil star at the end of it.
For many fans, the final straw was seeing a "plasticine Balrog that looked alarmingly like the character 'Morph' in Take Hart, and the fiery battle of Helm's Deep seemed to instead involve a number of small indoor fireworks going phut."
Studio bosses New Line were putting a brave face on the finished movie today, explaining that they believe that "Every penny of the $90m is up there on the screen," and promising "The next two instalments will be even bigger and better. We have a director with vision." But an undercover Brains Trust reporter has learned that no-one at New Line knows where director Jackson is, nor have proper accounts from the movie been returned to the studio.
After some careful bribery, we learned that, contrary to accepted practice, the entire $270m budget for all three films had been transferred to Peter Jackson's private bank account, instead of the director purchasing the resources he needed through the studio. When we asked for an explanation, a trembling studio accountant explained that Jackson's "vision" had been "overwhelming" and the cheque had been written on the spot. "He's half Swiss, on his mother's side," we were told, "so he wanted it in a Swiss bank account for sentimental reasons."
Jackson was last heard of heading for his "personal edit suite" in the Seychelles some months ago.