The lost Soviet TV adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was recently posted on YouTube and is free to watch. See for yourself how different the two versions are.
Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings were a huge success shortly after their release in the early 2000s. The three-part series was critically acclaimed and won fans around the world. Twenty years of production still impresses with special effects, costumes and music. Attempts have been made to introduce JRR Tolkein’s work into the world of film before, but it was Peter Jackson’s series that turned out to be a global hit.
A two-part television adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring produced by Leningrad Television Studio in 1991 appeared on the Internet. The first installment has garnered over a million views since its debut almost two weeks ago. The mini-series called Khraniteli, which consists of two parts, is now freely available on YouTube after the Russian TV channel 5TV put both parts of the adaptation online. The second one has definitely fewer views (237,000), which may be due to the language barrier, which is regretted by one of the commentators on the website
Russian fellas you gotta ad english subs somehow immediately. Planet earth need this. (Russian dudes, you gotta add English subtitles somehow. Planet Earth needs it.)
It’s worth noting that while this two-part adaptation is much shorter than Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring , and you can see a huge gulf in the fantasy world, Khraniteli somehow features the mysterious Tom Bombadil character that was cut from a Jackson movie to the disappointment of fans.
The Lord of the Rings series continues to enjoy great recognition. Currently in the works is a new video game project The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (a stealth action game where players take on the role of Gollum, you can watch the trailer here) and Amazon Prime Video is creating a TV series set thousands of years before the main trilogy . After another success, which was the series about the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, fans have high expectations for the next productions.