We live in the Age of the Franchise, but it’s been a while since the domination of The Lord of the Rings, based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Still, like little Frodo and Sam plodding up Mt. Doom to destroy the One Ring, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. are determined to restore Middle-earth to its box office throne with projects including the newly announced The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, which will be co-written by Late Show host and famed Tolkien nerd Stephen Colbert.
Shadow of the Past has some (Bilbo) baggage to overcome: Despite the success of Peter Jackson’s original trilogy, the follow-up Hobbit films were lucrative but little loved, mutating a lithe children’s adventure into a bloated behemoth. Similarly, Amazon Studios’ The Rings of Power has garnered little loyalty from the fan base, despite being the most expensive TV show ever made, and 2024’s War of the Rohirrim animated movie grossed less than $10 million at the domestic box office.
However, Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Jackson’s films, is directing a Hunt for Gollum prequel movie about, well, you can probably guess. And bringing in super-fan Colbert as a writer for Shadow of the Past has a lot of potential — not just by drumming up interest in the project with a famous but unexpected scribe, but also bringing in someone who deeply understands Tolkien’s lore and philosophy.
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Like Frodo when he found out that the jewelry his weird uncle left him actually belonged to a fallen angel, you probably have a lot of questions. And like Gandalf, I have some answers. So read the following FAQ in Elijah Wood’s and Ian McKellan’s voices, as it will make both of us sound way more epic and important than we both actually are.
Okay, so what is Shadow of the Past about?
The subtitle Shadow of the Past comes from the name of the second chapter of Fellowship of the Ring. That’s the chapter where Gandalf tells Frodo that the ring his uncle Bilbo left him is actually the One Ring that the Dark Lord Sauron made, lost, and is trying desperately to recover.
So it’s going to be two hours of Ian McKellan exposition dumping to Elijah Wood? I mean, I’d watch Ian McKellan read the phone book, but not for $20.00 a ticket, plus however much a commemorative popcorn bucket shaped like Sean Astin’s head is gonna set me back.
No. Despite the subtitle, it’s actually going to be about the book chapters that come after “Shadow of the Past.” This is the film’s official synopsis: “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo – Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.” Colbert hinted that it will cover the early chapters of Fellowship of the Ring that Jackson skipped in his original trilogy – namely, “The Old Forest” and “Fog on the Barrow-downs.”
What happens in those chapters?
The hobbits get lost in a forest and are almost murdered by an evil tree, but are rescued by an immortal hobo named Tom Bombadil. Then they get lost in an ancient burial ground and are almost murdered by an evil ghost, but are rescued once again by said immortal hobo. Presumably, this is what Colbert’s movie will be about: attempted murder and a magical hobo.
I love both of those things! Why didn’t Jackson include that in his movies?
The chapters are important for world-building, character development, and theme, but are also very much a detour from the main plot and would throw off the pacing of any cinematic adaptation. Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated adaptation also skips them.
Won’t this create a big continuity error with the original film trilogy?
Probably not. Jackson’s first movie cuts from the hobbits escaping the Ringwraiths on Bucklebury Ferry to them arriving at Bree, a human and hobbit-inhabited village outside the Shire. So, you could say the entire flashback storyline takes place between those two scenes. In fact, given the apparent detective story Elanor Gamgee’s going to undertake, I guess that we’ll have some sort of meta-narrative about Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin intentionally leaving out that part of the story and Elanor discovering what really happened.
