Members of the cast of the Lord of the Rings trilogy joined Stephen Colbert, Jon Baptiste, Anna Kendrick, and rappers Method Man and Killer Mike to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s film franchise with a bizarre and wonderful Lord of the Rings rap. Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen joined The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night, closing a circle since Colbert actually hosted a trio of 20th anniversary conversations about the films, included on the recent Middle Earth six-film box set from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
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Despite what you might expect, the rap doesn’t go Weird Al-style and feature them dressed up for Middle Earth, but rather decks out the cast of the “#1 trilly” in stereotypical rapper garb. Basically, this is Lord of the braggadocio.
You can see the video below.
The franchise has remained relevant and active more or less nonstop since Jackson’s first movie came out 20 years ago, inspiring a spinoff trilogy based on The Hobbit and starring many of the same actors. Amazon is set to launch a new Lord of the Rings TV series in 2022, although that is not tied to the Jackson trilogy and doesn’t feature any of the same actors or characters. Time will tell whether the 20th anniversary celebration tour will end up continuing over the next few years, going past celebrating anniversaries for The Fellowship of the Ring.
“They’re calling it ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but I think that’s slightly misleading,” Wood recently told IndieWire, “From what I understand, the material they are working on exists chronologically further back in history in the lore of Lord of the Rings or Middle-Earth than any characters represented in Lord of the Rings.”
Directed by Peter Jackson and based on the 1954 novel The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the film is the first installment in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The Fellowship of the Ring features an ensemble cast including Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, and Andy Serkis. It was followed in 2002 by The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and in 2003 by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
