Wēta Workshop Tour

Kiwis excel at more than friendliness, yachting and rugby.  We’ve traveled to the heart of Middle Earth creature-making. The descendants of Professor Tolkien chose the Wēta Workshop to design the inhabitants of Middle Earth for the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies (2001-2003). These are the folks who gave hobbits, dwarves, elves, orcs, balrogs, trolls and ents their visual presentation. I persuaded JG, who had managed thus far to avoid reading or watching anything set in Middle Earth, to accompany me on a tour of Wēta’s fun props, stitched together with back story, photo ops, and computer-generated interactive exhibits.  In Kiwi: some pahts weyah chahming. I especially liked the winking self-referential humor and treating the foam creatures as if they were real and asleep. 

The older grandchildren are in the target demographic for the interactive exhibits. They would have enjoyed manipulating a latex creature with levers, sculpting a fantasy creature, talking to an animatronic up close, watching their own mirrored faces be transformed into monsters by a special effects artist, playing with fake blood, admiring a small-scale detailed fantasy castle, and walking through a haunted house.

But I was also a bit unsettled by the artists’ physiognomic choices, showing who was attractive and who was ugly. Fair essentially means Northern European flat faces with small noses, round cheeks and even teeth. Middle Earth humans can digest lactose but suck at basketball. Ugly means hooked nose, protruding ears and lips, prominent brow, darker skin tone, and darn, they’re musical. Ugly also means extra wrinkles and chins. I was surprised to learn that the shape of the dragons’ faces was based on the New Zealand native tuatara (not a lizard), which also served as a model for creatures in Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal Movie. As Disney princesses have become more diverse, maybe someday someone will also re-imagine Middle Earth inhabitants.  But leave the ents alone; they were glorious. 

There were some fun photo ops.

I liked the awards the team created on the 3D printer. “Is this a workplace or a kennel?” The Woolitzer Prize was awarded for knitting. “Most Confusing Mixed Metaphor.”

And here’s the animatronic: