On September 21, 1937, a children’s fantasy novel by English writer J.R.R. Tolkien made its publishing debut. Entitled The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, the narrative took place in an “ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men” that was populated by elves, dwarves, trolls, goblins, and hobbits, including the titular Bilbo Baggins. The Hobbit was a critical and commercial success, and Tolkien’s publisher immediately encouraged him to write a sequel.
J.R.R. Tolkien labored off-and-on for the next twelve years creating that sequel and then waited another five years until its publication. Although Tolkien considered the over 1,000-page story to be a single self-contained narrative, his publishers believed that it made better financial sense to release it as a trilogy.
Thus on July 29, 1954, the first installment of Tolkien’s epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings – entitled The Fellowship of the Ring – made its long-awaited debut. The Sunday Telegram immediately proclaimed it as “among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century,” while the New York Herald declared that it was “destined to outlast our time.” The 150 million copies that have been sold worldwide since attest to the veracity of those statements, while the fandom that has grown around The Lord of the Rings has spanned generations and remains strong well into the twenty-first century.
J.R.R. Tolkien created with words the fictional continent of Middle-earth, where an epic struggle between good and evil was being waged. In an effort to defeat the evil Sauron, a “fellowship” is forged between a group of hobbits, men, a wizard, a dwarf, and an elf. Their journey takes them to the various regions that make up Middle-earth, each of which were originally envisioned by Tolkien during the first half of the twentieth century and then embedded into the imaginations of millions of readers over the decades since.
When filmmaker Peter Jackson initially decided to film a trilogy based on both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 1995, he thus faced a monumental task. Previous attempts at bringing Tolkien’s works to the big screen had failed, and while Miramax was initially open to the idea, the production company bulked at financing a trilogy even after Jackson offered to cut it down to two films. New Line, however, was not only willing but agreed that three films were necessary to do Tolkien justice.
Having secured the backing of New Line, Jackson next faced an even bigger challenge – how to bring not only the words of J.R.R. Tolkien to life but to do so in a way that lived up to the expectations of millions of fans who already had their own images of Middle-earth embedded in their minds?
On October 31, 2001, residents of Toronto, Ontario, got a sneak peek of the result when a special exhibit entitled A Journey to Middle-earth made its one-and-only stop at Casa Loma, a mini-castle that resides in the Canadian city. For eleven days, a collection of props, costumes, paintings, and concept art were displayed within Casa Loma that not only pleased fans of The Lord of the Rings but demonstrated the talents of an untold number of illustrators, sculptors, blacksmiths, fashion designers, and special effects artists who together brought Middle-earth to life.
Such a vast array of craftsmen and women were necessary because Peter Jackson had decreed from the beginning on that every object related to Middle-earth had to be handmade from scratch. This held true for not only the 900 suits of armor and thousands of swords and weapons but the tens-of-thousands of everyday items – including tables, chairs, pots and pans – as well as the prosthetic feet of hobbits and the ears of elves.
Many of those items were on display at the Journey to Middle-earth exhibit and blended perfectly with the décor of Casa Loma. Props were treated more akin to ancient artifacts rather than mere objects from a film, and the exquisite detail that went into crafting dwarf runes, the Horn of Gondor, and Gandalf’s sword Glamdring was evident regardless of one’s sense of eyesight. The display cases, meanwhile, gave each an air of historical importance that together told a cultural narrative that fans could recite by heart.
“Something like fifty million people have read the books,” Lou Seiler, Casa Loma’s director of marketing, told The Globe and Mail at the time. “These things have existed in people’s imaginations so long, it’s fun to see them made real. When they go through the rooms, they point things out to one another, they talk about them knowledgeably.”
Two people who were extremely knowledgeable regarding the written works of J.R.R. Tolkien – Alan Lee and John Howe – played a pivotal role in the development of the Middle-earth within The Lord of the Rings films. Lee illustrated a 1992 edition of The Lord of the Rings that coincided with what would have been J.R.R. Tolkien’s 100th birthday, while Howe re-illustrated many of the maps contained within Tolkien’s works.
When Peter Jackson needed concept artists to initially envision the look and feel of Middle-earth, he immediately turned to Lee and Howe. The pair drew hundreds of sketches that were then used by three-dimensional artisans to bring the world of The Lord of the Rings to life. The walls of a tunnel leading from Casa Loma proper to the castle’s stables were decorated with these paintings and drawings for A Journey to Middle-earth. Just as with the props on display, the details within the images were awe-inspiring.
For Alan Lee, the process from concept art to fully realized Middle-earth was an emotional experience. The hamlet of Hobbiton was an actual open-air village as opposed to closed-in movie set, and its transformation from paper to reality left Lee absolutely amazed. “We had drawn so many sketches and had so many conversations and then there was the whole construction process,” Lee explains within the small program that complimented A Journey to Middle-earth. “But, finally, it became this absolutely real place where grass grew over the roofs and the chimneys were spouting smoke, and it was like a dream to see it come to life.”
While Hobbiton itself was not transported to Toronto for the Journey to Middle-earth exhibit, the inside furniture and kitchenware of Bag End – the home of Frodo Baggins – did make the trip. Middle-earth is populated by numerous cultures, from hobbits to dwarves to elves, and every item created for the film reflected each of those cultures, regardless of if it was the pots and pans of a hobbit, the bow and arrow of an elf, or the helmet of dwarf.
J.R.R. Tolkien did more than write a trilogy of novels during the mid-twentieth century – he created an entire fantasy world that has captured the imagination of millions of followers for decades. Peter Jackson and his caravan of creative artisans, meanwhile, brought that world to life in a way that both complimented and exceeded the expectations of fans everywhere.
A Journey to Middle-earth was ultimately a singular event in Toronto but it served as the blueprint for other Lord of the Rings exhibits that traveled further and longer after each successive film in the trilogy. Just like the original, each of these exhibits was a journey – not only to Middle-earth but one that explored the creative process of the incredible talents that brought Middle-earth to life as well.
Anthony Letizia