A mysterious user has uploaded a Soviet language version of The Lord of the Rings to the internet, delighting Russian fans of JRR Tolkien’s classic.
“There should be a statue to the person who found and digitised this,” one YouTube commenter declared on the video.
It transpires the made-for-TV edition was filmed some 30 years ago, and as one commenter explained, filmed as a live theatre production – a popular (and obviously cost-effective) model at the time.
Called Khraniteli in Russian, its storyline features Tom Bombadil, who was controversially left out of Peter Jackson’s adaptation.
(Bombadil features only for a short few chapters in the Fellowship of the Ring, but he’s far from inconsequential.)
Other highlights include the creature Gollum, a green-material adorned actor with a painted face – a far cry from the Andy Serkis motion-capture rendition – and the way they’ve tried to represent Frodo’s notorious Hobbit feet.
(They’ve done a good job of recreating Aragorn, however.)
It’s all especially remarkable when you consider Jackson’s adaptation came just 10 years later.
It’s believed to be the only Lord of the Rings adaptation to be made in Russian language.
