Hundreds of fans were lined up outside Wellington’s Embassy Theatre at dawn on Monday, more than 12 hours before the world premiere of the long-awaited third and final film in director Peter Jackson’s series The Lord of the Rings.
Many had camped out overnight to reserve the best viewing spots to see the stars arrive for the premiere of The Return of the King in the New Zealand capital, Jackson’s home town and the main location and base for all three films.
Foreign film critics had seen a preview of the film after agreeing not to review it until December 8 following American and European premieres.
They dubbed it better than the first two in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and a certainty for best picture and best director nominations at next year’s Oscars.
Actor John Rhys-Davies, who plays the dwarf Gimli, told Television New Zealand, ”I think we’ve got one of the great pictures of all time.
”You’ve got a director of real genius here,” he said.
And American Orlando Bloom, who plays the elf Legolas in JRR Tolkien’s cult fantasy saga, said of Jackson, ”No one can touch him, you know, when it comes to making this sort of epic.”
Other stars of the series, including Sir Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen and Sean Astin, will be feted at a reception in Parliament on Monday afternoon before joining a parade through 2,5km of central city streets to the Embassy Theatre.
Downtown Wellington will be virtually shutdown with up to 100 000 people expected to line the streets to watch the parade which will end on a 470-metre long red carpet leading to the theatre.
The 79-year-old Embassy, where Jackson saw his first film as a child firing a lifelong passion for the movies, has been refurbished to Hollywood standards for the premiere. It seats only 75 so another 1 250 invited guests will see the movie on 10 simultaneous screenings at a nearby modern cinema complex.
Jackson said he would be among those seeing the final print of The Return of the King for the first time, having worked on the film until the last possible moment, delivering it reel by reel to American producers New Line Cinema.
British actor Sir Ian McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf, said, ”I finally added the last Gandalf grunt to the battle scenes for the third film about two weeks ago.”
Producer Barrie Osborne told Wellington’s Dominion Post newspaper, ”It certainly raised my anxiety level. Peter was actually very calm about it.”
Jackson told the New Zealand Herald on Sunday, My nerves at the moment are more based on just the sheer pandemonium of tomorrow.
”I’m really not the sort of guy that revels in being a centre of attention to quite this degree.”
Although very proud of what he has achieved in the cinematic first of making three films simultaneously, he confessed, ”I’m glad there’s not a fourth one to be quite honest.
”But we’ve done what we set out to do, like Frodo really.” Jackson’s next movie will be a remake of the 1933 cult monster movie King Kong, which he will make, not in New York where it is set, but in Wellington.
The local Weta Workshop and Weta Digital special effects companies, who have already won an Oscar for their work on the earlier Rings films, have already been working on King Kong for six months. – Sapa-DPA