How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ meets William Wallace, dinosaurs, travels to Narnia and meets up with SpongeBob SquarePants

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Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings, The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie, Braveheart, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film stills (c) respective owners
Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings, The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie, Braveheart, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film stills (c) respective owners

I do have a love for blog post titles that really are just a bunch of silly connections, often strenuously so, and this title fits right into this category. It has been inspired by TheOneRing.net (TORn) celebrations for the 20th Anniversary of the teaser trailer for the Peter Jackson film trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’ which evidently was shown for the first time on April 7, 2000.

What those connections are you will get to know in a moment!

Braveheart

This is the official 1995 trailer to the Oscar winning epic Braveheart.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

This is the official 2005 trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

This is the official 2004 trailer to the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.

Jurassic Park

The first official Jurassic Park trailer of 1993.

TheOneRing.net Teaser Trailer 20th Anniversary Celebrations

And this is the Periscope/ Twitter notification where I watched the amazing chat between a number of people involved in the production.

Nick Tate is the Culprit!

Yes, you may have noticed it by now: it is the voice of the narrator in all of these trailers that is the connection. His name is Nick Tate, and he is one of the most successful voiceover artists out there (besides being a successful actor in his own right.) The Australian has been a mainstay in film trailer making for decades now and was one of the five (or rather, 6) voices in the 1997 Skit 5 Men and a Limo which brought together the six most well known voiceover artists at the time: Don LaFontaine, John Leader, Nick Tate, Mark Elliot, Al Chalk and Hal Douglas. As one commenter noted: “If YouTube had been around in 1997 when this was made, this film would have over 3,000,000,000 views by now.” Quite possibly true!

 

Lord of the Rings First Promotional Trailer of April 7, 2000

When Nick Tate pronounced the following words the world changed for many and a new fandom was born.

It has been named the greatest and most popular book of the 20th century. It introduced us to the world of fantasy. But it wasn’t until now, that the legend could finally come to life.
One ring to rule them all. One ring to find them. One ring to bring them all. And in the darkness, bind them.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

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Marcel R. Bülles

Marcel R. Bülles is the author of thetolkienist.com, a specialist blog centering on worldwide Tolkien fandom, geekdom and research. He works as a freelance translator, journalist and writer and is the founder of the German Tolkien Society as well as a co-founder to RingCon, Europe's formerly biggest fantasy film convention. You can find him in cafés all over the world sipping an espresso blogging, writing, reading. At one point he was married to an extremely lovely French lady by the nickname of Sauron. Yes, that Sauron. He is also active with the International Tolkien Fellowship on Facebook and the Tolkien Folk on Instagram.