There are two versions of the lovingly titled Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) Web3 Movie Experience, but which is better value for money? Unsurprisingly, neither. The thirty dollar “Mystery Edition” (the main mystery here being why?) comes with a digital copy of the film, interactive menus, eight hours of special features, an image gallery and “hidden AR collectibles”, a phrase untranslatable outside the cryptocurrency community. The hundred dollar “Epic Edition” has the same interactive menus and the same special features but with some more images in the gallery. Also, the AR collectibles are viewable on your phone! and, well, that’s it.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was written to create a new unified mythology based on collected folklore from around Britain. Peter Jackson’s first adaptation was a huge artistic success, a years long passion project that captured the magic of the books with The Return of the King still holding the record for the most Oscars won by a single film. Regrettably, for the quality of later projects at least, it grossed almost $3 billion.
Recent attempts to recreate this success have had mixed results, with the creatively lacklustre Hobbit trilogy doing a little worse at the box office. Amazon Studios’ new Rings of Power series has had mixed reviews despite its immense budget, and it is unlikely that Amazon will ever reveal solid numbers on its earnings.
The NFT market has been in freefall since its explosion last year, but we’re only just seeing some of projects thought up to capitalise on what was seen as a new frontier for making money on what many NFT creators call art. It’s no coincidence that the Web3 Movie Experience is reselling the most profitable of the Tolkien adaptations, it’s an attempt to suck the last drops of blood from a now very dry stone.