Summary
- A new fan-made video combines Arnold Schwarzenegger with The Lord of the Rings characters, providing a unique and slightly unsettling take on the iconic movie scene.
- While the original cast is celebrated, Schwarzenegger’s face superimposed on every character brings a comedic element, making it clear that the original casting was for the best.
- As the franchise expands with new projects and retellings, it is unlikely that Schwarzenegger will be involved, making this video a one-time glimpse of his involvement in Middle-earth.
There are some strange and unsettling sights to see when AI meets popular movies. While not quite as unnerving as Tom Holland playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, a new fan-made video of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing all the characters in a scene from The Lord of the Rings is still something that cannot be unseen.
Bringing together Middle-earth and the Hollywood icon, the whimsical yet fascinating result of Big Arnie stepping into the roles of Elrond, Boromir, Gandalf, Frodo and more brings a completely new take on Peter Jackson’s iconic movie to life. This unique concept has been generated by voice actor Sam Hughes and Jarkan VFX, and will make sure you never look at the Council of Elrond scene in the same way ever again.
While the original cast of The Lord of the Rings is celebrated for its almost perfect fit to J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters, there is a certain amount of comedy value to be found in every character in the scene having Schwarzenegger’s face super-imposed onto them. It is unlikely that Schwarzenegger could have brought anything better to any of the role if he had been cast in the production, but this slightly nightmarish vision of an Arnie-centric movie suggests that it was probably for the best that Jackson went with the cast he did.
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The Lord of the Rings: How Different Are the Extended Editions?
The extended editions of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings have a reputation for being better than the theatrical. How different are they, really?
Lord of The Rings Continues to Impress After 20 years
Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings is one of those movies that comes around once in a lifetime. Having gone through several previous iterations, the story of Frodo’s journey to destroy the One Ring was almost made into a two-part movie in its original incarnation. Only when New Line Cinema took on the project and Jackson came on board did the project expand to become one of the most ambitious and financially risky movies every attempted.
Filmed back-to-back, the movies were released across three consecutive Decembers between 2001 and 2003. Although Jackson returned to make his The Hobbit trilogy, and Prime Video are currently in the middle of telling their own Lord of the Rings story in The Rings of Power, it is hard to deny that Jackson’s original movies continue to outshine them all.
As well as Prime Video’s foray into the world of Middle-earth, Warner Bros. recently announced that they are looking to further expand their stories based on the works of Tolkien, and this could include a retelling of the main Lord of the Rings narrative. Although there has been no word on exactly what form these projects could take, the studio has made its intention to continue delving into its biggest IPs very clear, with the likes of the Harry Potter franchise also being revisited.
However, whatever comes next for the franchise, it is unlikely that Arnold Schwarzenegger will be part of it, which means that this video is the one and only time that we are going to see the Terminator star dip his toe into the world of Hobbits, Dwarfs and Elves.
The real Lord of the Rings movies can currently be found streaming on Max.
