The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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July 19 : 2010

Foxtrot features LOTR again

Earlier I complained about having too few good instances of LOTR humor to tag. Now it’s two in one day! Bill Amend, whose “Foxtrot” comic strip has referenced the trilogy many times, now combines the ripped-from-the-headlines-newsworthiness of the upcoming Comic-Con with the timeless topic of Gandalf costumes. (His collection, Orlando Bloom Ruined Everything, is not 100% about LOTR, but it does deal with the topic.)

I have a special fondness for Bill Amend–apart from the fact that he creates one of the best of the widely syndicated comic strips still functioning. For The Frodo Franchise, I wanted to reproduce one of his trilogy-related dailies as an illustration of the idea of early fan concern over whether Peter Jackson would remain true to Tolkien’s books. Not an easy concept to illustrate. I wrote to him asking if I could reproduce the piece. He sent me onward to a rep who could handle the rights question–but in a nice, friendly way. That strip was the only image in the book that I paid any rights fees for, and the amount was surprisingly reasonable. Using that strip wasn’t necessary to what I was talking about in that section, but he really captured a certain aspect of LOTR fandom in a laugh-out-loud funny way.

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

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    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
    421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map; 1 table

    “Once in a lifetime.”
    The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.

    Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

    The Frodo Franchise

    cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”