Framing Tolkien : Trailers, High Concept, and the Ring

This essay deals with the film trailers advertising the films in the Lord of the Rings cycle after J. R. R. Tolkien's famous novel: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of King. This cycle of films proved to be one of the most profitable media ventures so far in the twenty-first century. This financial success was secured by the films adhering to the modern aesthetic of High Concept, a strategy employed by Hollywood for integrating product and marketing in the most commercially effective way. Here, this strategy is analyzed in terms of 'the book', 'the look', and 'the hook', qualities which were signalled particularly by the paratextual framings, the trailers, specifically designed to attract millions to the cinemas and also to promote sales of various merchandise – tourism, DVDs, computer games – connected to the films. The trailers, in fact, generated so much interest that they were advertised in themselves as attractions at the cinema.