The “magnificent” fantasy movie Quentin Tarantino called the new ‘Lord of the Rings’
According to one of Hollywood’s most bizarre urban legends, Quentin Tarantino has previous with The Lord of the Rings, even if there was zero chance of those threats to Peter Jackson being acted on.
During one of his many tyrannical outbursts, Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamis, revealed that Harvey Weinstein told the filmmaker to his face that if he couldn’t turn J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy into a single movie that ran for two and a half hours or less, he’d be out on his arse and Tarantino would get the job instead.
Whether the Miramax mogul had informed the Pulp Fiction creator of his intentions remains unknown and entirely up for debate, because a big-budget fantasy based on somebody else’s work doesn’t jump out as something that would interest him. Tarantino loves all kinds of films, but whenever he rattles off his favourites, swords and sorcery are very rarely involved.
Imagining the brains behind Reservoir Dogs overseeing Tolkien’s Middle-earth makes absolutely no sense for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t want to see it. It would be a sight to see, not necessarily a good one, but an epic trilogy of literary adaptations is about as far removed from Tarantino’s filmography as it gets, even if Weinstein tried twisting his arm.
Even though he’s watched almost everything, there’s no record of the two-time Academy Award winner having sat through Jackson’s epic trilogy, whether it’s the theatrical versions or the extended editions. With that in mind, it makes more sense that he would invoke the name when discussing another film that has almost nothing in common with the Oscar-hoovering trio apart from their shared genre.
When reflecting on his favourite flicks of 2004 with DVD Talk, Tarantino shared how he “really loved this magnificent Russian fantasy that’s going to be The Lord of the Rings for Russia, which is called Night Watch,” lumping it in with the other “terrific films” that he’d seen that year.
Well, they’re both fantasy, and they were both supposed to launch three-film arcs, and that’s where the similarities end. Let’s operate under the assumption that everyone knows what The Lord of the Rings is about, in terms of plot specifics. Night Watch is a stylised, action-packed, largely street-level thriller about the battle between the Warriors of Light and Warriors of Darkness, two opposing factions with supernatural abilities who’ve made it their multi-generation mission to fuck each other up.
Sure, there’s a chosen one, but Konstantin Khabensky’s Anton Gorodetsky is no Frodo. The second chapter, Day Watch, continued the story, only for the teased threequel to never materialise. After director Timur Bekmambetov got bitten by the Hollywood bug and prioritised James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie’s Wanted, the planned Twilight Watch was scrapped.
In one of his typically hyperbolic statements, Night Watch was marketed to American audiences by the auteur insisting that “just after we’ve lived through The Lord of the Rings, and we can’t even imagine another movie spellbinding us, Night Watch is an epic vision of extraordinary power.” Aye, they’re pretty entertaining, but they’re not a patch on Jackson’s monumental trilogy.
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