The secret Maori message hidden in the credits of ‘The Lord of the Rings’
Beyond serving as the backdrop for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand enjoyed immense and long-lasting benefits by acting as the principal location for Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary fantasy.
The films themselves are individual classics and a collective masterpiece that earned billions of dollars at the box office and notched plenty of awards season recognition, propelling Jackson into the industry’s upper echelon of big-name filmmakers as a direct result.
Beyond that, being the place audiences the world over instantly associate with Middle-Earth saw tourism skyrocket. Thanks to The Lord of the Rings, film fans from everywhere wanted to make their own pilgrimages to the places captured on-camera, leading to a major upswing in the country’s status as a hotspot.
In 2019 – nearly two decades after the release of The Return of the King – it was estimated that ‘Tolkien tourism’ was worth over half a billion dollars annually to the New Zealand economy, and that’s to say nothing of the country becoming a hotbed for major film productions including The Last Samurai, Alien: Covenant, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and James Cameron’s Avatar sequels.
“Peter Jackson brought into New Zealand the largest films in the world, through the Hollywood system and the commercial side of filmmaking, which are entirely different kinds of films,” was the opinion of Peter Strong, head of the New Zealand Film Commission, shared with Variety. “Thanks to Peter’s vision and courage, New Zealanders realized they could make films on a grand scale.”
That was never something lost on the director when he was in production, with The Return of the King inserting a message in its end credits that paid tribute to the indigenous people of his homeland. Within, a message appears that reads “Me mahara tonu taatou nga Uri- aapakura noo tuaanuku nei, noo te waaotuu te tu kekehua ana o ngaa Eldarin kua hohouu mai i te Uru-moana.”
Translated from Māori, it equates to “Let us dedicate our memories to the spirits of the Eldar who came to us from the Ocean that lies to the West,” combining the local dialect with The Lord of the Rings, with the Eldar being the elves of Middle-Earth who undertook the Great Journey to reach Valinor.
New Zealand and The Lord of the Rings will be forever intertwined, something that Jackson was keenly aware of from the very first day of shooting to the last. Streaming series The Rings of Power would also shoot in the nation, but there was an understandable uproar when it was announced the second season of the Prime Video show would be relocating to the United Kingdom, such is the strength of the bond between the property and the population.
