Oh, come on. Like they weren’t going to try and get a little bit of Tolkien’s beloved fantasy epic into this movie, somehow.
Fox Searchlight, via TheOneRing.net, has revealed the first trailer for its long-in-the-works biopic about the legendary author J.R.R. Tolkien. Starring Nicholas Hoult as the titular Tolkien and directed by Dome Karukoski, the movie depicts the young writer’s life as he falls in love, goes through the nightmarish horrors of World War I, and eventually channels his experiences fighting in the War to End All Wars into a fantastical adventure story about good and evil, destiny and prophecy, and yes, as they clunkily namedrop in the trailer, about Fellowship.
All of that doesn’t really get you, however, the chance to depict some of Tolkien’s iconic Middle-Earth denizens on the big screen, so aside from the actual biopic elements, it seems like Tolkien will also endeavour to give us some moments of fantasy where the young man imagines creations like the Ringwraiths or Sauron amidst the muddy, trench-strewn battlefields of France before he actually gets round to writing his saga of rings and Hobbits. Which is great for enticing Lord of the Rings fans at least—while they sit around hoping for a snifter of any update on Amazon’s own adaptation of the series—if not a little bit of a cop-out.
Tolkien is set to hit theatres on May 10 in the U.S. but we’re still waiting on a local release date.