The Lord of the Rings: Wētā Workshop’s Sir Richard Taylor reflects on 20 years since The Return of the King film

It was 20 years ago today that Hollywood came to Wellington with a 421m-long red carpet down Courtenay Place to celebrate the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings films.

Wētā Workshop co-founder and owner Sir Richard Taylor told the Herald it’s hard to express just how amazing the premiere of The Return of the King was.

“People were literally standing up on top of buildings. It was five-deep at the sides of the red carpet. The red carpet stretched right through the city.”

To mark the 20-year milestone, Wētā Workshop has organised a sold-out special screening of The Return of the King which will transform Roxy cinema in Miramar into Middle-earth. An exclusive screening will also be held in Auckland.

A giant dragon adorned Wellington's Embassy Theatre where the premiere of The Return of the King was held in 2003. Photo / Marty Melville

Taylor can still recall the euphoria and mixed emotions that came with the three films finally being finished.

“When I returned back home, because all the thrill of the seven years had dissipated, I actually fell into a very odd funk.

“I felt like something was missing. Everyone else seemed to be really excited that it was all over but it’s like you had gone away on holiday to the most amazing beautiful island and you had to come home to your normal life.”

The funk didn’t last long. Six months later Taylor got the call to work on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film.

Dan McKenna has been a fan of The Lord of the Rings films ever since he watched The Fellowship of the Ring at home in Ireland when he was 6 years old.

“I was just kind of swept away in hobbits and dwarves and elves and I remember shortly after getting my mother to buy me plastic swords so I could be like Aragorn. There’s the reason why my hair is so long now — it’s to look like Viggo Mortensen.”

Dan McKenna has grown his hair long to be like Viggo Mortensen — the actor who played Aragorn. Photo / Marty Melville

McKenna went on to read the J.R.R. Tolkien books as a teenager before moving to university where he studied English and based his final paper on the biblical connotations in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit stories.

That went down well at a job interview to work at Hobbiton Movie Set Tours in New Zealand.

At Hobbiton, McKenna met his partner, who he described as “the most beautiful hobbit imaginable”, and they embarked on a road trip of the country to visit as many filming locations for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as they could.

At Hobbiton, Dan McKenna met his partner, who he described as “the most beautiful hobbit imaginable”.

The pair now work at Wētā Workshop, where McKenna gets to talk about the films for a living in the tourism team.

At home, he has a 63-piece collection dedicated to The Lord of the Rings.

“I genuinely don’t think we will see a set of movies again that has had the impact The Lord of the Rings has had globally and on a singular country.”

Wētā Workshop designed and made 48,000 individual pieces for the trilogy of films through its work on armour, weapons, creatures, miniatures, special makeup and prosthetics.

About 26 people who worked on The Lord of the Rings are still at Wētā Workshop. A group of them were just teenagers when they first travelled all the way up from Dunedin to Wellington.

The 2003 premiere of The Return of the King boasted the world’s longest red carpet ever at more than 421m. Photo / Chameleon Event Management

Taylor said The Lord of the Rings changed the trajectory of his career at an immeasurable level.

“Anything that catalyses a change as significantly as seven years on three of the largest movies ever made is going to have a ripple effect through the whole of your life.”

At no time during those seven years, regardless of how challenging it was at times, did Taylor ever have the sense that he wanted to stop or slow down.

“Everyone was so committed knowing that New Zealand had its moment to indelibly stamp our mark on the world stage and I just felt very happy to be part of that and still do.”

Taylor said he was blessed to be invited by Sir Peter Jackson to be a part of the films and he loves to think about the memories of working on them.

“When you have an anniversary like this, it stops you for a moment in time, in this crazy and harried world that we’re living in, to reflect on something that burned a bright spark in your heart.”

Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.