Lord of the Rings Extended Edition TikTok memes are awesome and explode

The Fellowship of the Ring will hit theaters on December 18, 2001. But there could be an even bigger anniversary for fans who love the movie: November 12, 2002. That, of course, is when The Fellowship of the Ring: Special Extended Edition DVD box set hitting stores.

Followed by The two Towers and The return of the King boxes, the bonus content catalog for the Lord of the Rings trilogy mirrored the movies themselves; a massive effort by hundreds of creatives, to finally get the full documentation they deserved. The final tally marked a total of 43 documentaries, nine image galleries, 12 commentary tracks, dozens of interactive maps, feature films, original art, and 30-50 minutes of additional footage added to each Extended Edition cut of the films.

That was 20 years ago, but the story of the making of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is still told. On TikTok, sketches, memes, and viral audio clips reference content that you will only find if you spend long hours going over each cast interview and the armor scheme available on special edition discs. Even “do you wear wigs?” memes upon your FYP. And as prolific TolkienTok creators – that is, the Tolkien-loving TikTok community – tell Polygon, the audience’s relationship with extended-release DVDs is changing the way Tolkien’s fandom communicates.

Ultra-specific content delivery, of course, TikTok works as intended. But ironically, community-based targeting can sometimes be quite isolating. What appears to be an audio trend may actually be just 20 videos that TikTok has personally delivered to you and only you, pushing you further and further into the hole in the social media hillside that is just your size.

But “The Lord of the Rings Watch Party Hotline, “A video of Don marshall (aka “Obscure LotR Facts Guy”) is a true Tiktok hit, on and off TolkienTok. In it, Marshall acts as a friendly representative for a collect call service that gives LOTR super fans a safe place to tell him fun facts about the movies instead of his unsuspecting normal friends.

Marshall remembers originally writing the snippet with a specific scene in mind: the classic “Did you know?” fun fact of The two Towers, which includes real pictures of Viggo Mortensen breaking two toes after kicking a hoof while representing Aragorn’s pain. The urge to announce that “Viggo really did break his toes there” is well documented within the fandom, to the point where Marshall actually rewrote the original idea so that it wasn’t so specifically about Mortensen’s injury. This finally made the video much more shareable – some duets made with it have accumulated views in millions. With dozens and dozens of enthusiasts citing different cinematic facts, the video became a collective release valve for nerds in action.

“I think my family and I collectively spent more time behind-the-scenes of those movies than any other entertainment medium in the 2000s,” recalls Marshall. He notes that the extended edits somehow perfectly suit TikTok’s storytelling / quick-info sensibilities: “A lot of people look at things like costumes and say ‘they’re so intricate,’ but half of the things you don’t do ‘don’t even watch. “You don’t have to be a fanatic to be interested in intimate details.

“The best thing I think of TikTok is how universal something can be, even if it is so specific. “

An infamous video of Dominic Monaghan joking around with Elijah Wood during the press tour for The return of the King It’s kind of a niche joke among movie fans, available only in a hidden button on the extended DVD set. But when “do you wear wigs?” was uploaded to TikTok for modern fans to enjoy, the audio transformed into a meme format, generally used as an abbreviation for “Do you ___?” “No I do not.” (Or just cosplayers showing off their wigs). The results yielded more than 3,000 videos, with millions of views.

On TikTok, communities are built with participation, not just views. User Knewbettadobetta, a mega Tolkien fan, joined TikTok simply as something to do, and was surprised he couldn’t find many Lord of the Rings creators at first. It was necessary to create your own Tolkien content to teach the algorithm that would lead you to TolkienTok: “I was looking for [Tolkien fans], and did not put me in the algorithm; but once I started talking about it, and people started talking to me about it, and they were sharing my stuff with people on TolkienTok, then boom, I locked myself in. “

Knewbettadobetta’s TikTok draws significantly on the lore of the books, and sees its content as a gateway for movie fans to enter the fold of Tolkien’s fandom. He specifically recalls how even the smallest snippets of Extended Edition content can reveal a creator’s devotion to being exact like a book, including minute moments that are only found if it has captions on.

In September, TikTok user @Cavatica discovered something interesting by watching The Fellowship of the Ring with the captions on: “They’re passing Caradhras, and you see Saruman reciting spells to create the storm, and Gandalf is trying to counter the spell. [The subtitles say that] Gandalf is speaking Sindarinand you see that Saruman is speaking Quenya. “Knewbettadobetta wasted no time in duo with their own theories. “That’s huge, they don’t say they only * speak elvish * … Saruman is tall and smug and is trying to speak the language of the most powerful elves, while Gandalf is more of the common man, he speaks the language of the people.” . . Things like that are incredible. “

The way Tolkien fandom consumes content goes hand in hand with the way the fandom itself has changed over the years and some TolkienTok creators becoming popular by helping other fans see themselves. at work. WizardWayKris, who uses pronouns her and them, is a creator of TolkienTok that focuses primarily on elves and elvish language. For them, the content of the Extended Edition reinforces their devotion to Tolkien’s language and tradition, as well as giving them the opportunity to create moments of inclusion.

“Art is created by those who consume it; we as consumers bring our own lens. When we experience fandom and canon, we bring out things that may not have been important to other people, ”WizardWayKris told Polygon, noting in particular one scene from the Fellowship Extended Edition comments. Sir Ian McKellan tells the story of how emphasized to Elijah Wood and Sean Astin that Tolkien’s inclusion of Sam holding Frodo’s hand while bedridden was very important to certain gay readers, and that it was vital to make sure that moment is seen on screen. As a non-binary trans creator, WizardWayKris says that “the fact that I exist as a creator in this space helps open it up to those people who would say ‘this is just a subtext, no one is saying these things.’ For many, subtext is increasingly text in modern Tolkien fandom.

One element of TikTok’s extended edit that cannot be ignored is the sheer number of videos that are just recorded uploads from the documentaries themselves. And while it may not be up to the standards of copyright law, it can’t be ignored that for many young fans who don’t have DVD players, TikTok may be the only place they would see this content.

Image: New Line Cinema

While the extended editions are considered a gospel among fans, the move away from physical media has been a knockout for the extra features industry. The all-access pass that viewers had to the creation of the modern blockbuster seemed doomed to become a fond memory. Unless Weta Workshops or Peter Jackson stream cash-in, Extended Editions could well fall victim to the impending digital archives crisis.

For his part, Don Marshall told Polygon that he intends to launch a Snyderverse-style grassroots push for an even longer version of the Extended Editions. Whether this subsection of TikTok will grow or simply continue as a hyperspecific personal internet problem remains to be seen.

But either way, TolkienTok gives users a sense of validation that only the best kind of nerdy spaces provide: that knowledge that is important to you, no matter the niche, is valuable and identifiable to someone. And thanks to TikTok, it may be easier to find that someone than ever.