Lord of the Rings Exhibit
Now Playing: Tubular Bells

PrincessFaz and I recently visited the Lord of the Rings Exhibit at Boston's Museum of Science (where, believe it or not, we met in person for the first time). Several other TORC posters were there: shieldmatron, Raksha, athelas63 (princessFaz's sister), and IthilienRangerette.

The exhibit was really fantastic, despite the lack of Faramir/Gondor stuff. Gondor was represented by a couple of beat-up banners, two sets of armor (one from the Prologue, one from TTT/ROTK), a royal saddle (very uncomfortable looking), some scrolls from the Minas Tirith archives, and Dead Boromir In A Boat. The rest of the exhibit was very heavy on the "exotic" races: orcs, elves, evil invisible wraiths, hobbits. No coronation outfits, no Ranger outfit, no shiny sword, absolutely nothing to indicate Faramir's contribution to the story. The OUTRAGE. "Fellowship" this, "Ring" that. Blah blah blah. Sheesh.

In spite of the dissing of the Stewards, it was really cool to see the props and costumes from the movies close up. Everybody raves about the amount of care and detail that went into creating Middle Earth, and rightly so. Things that were in the background for maybe two seconds were every bit as lovingly carved and crafted as things that got a lot of closeups and screen time. I was really taken with a long elf-sword that looked ideally suited for slicing watermelon. There were some handpainted Orc contact lenses (yellow and red) and a big case of discarded prosthetics. The major Fellowship costumes were there, from Legolas' velour '80s stirrup pants to Gimli's bristling-with-axes getup. There were some interactive exhibits too. We had our photos taken inside a scale cart designed to make people on the left-hand side look enormous, and people on the right-hand side look tiny.

Dead Boromir was eerily realistic, right down to the chin stubble, the mud and grass clumps on the soles of his boots, and the cut across one knuckle. Certain members of the party had to be bodily restrained from clambering over the barrier *koff*

The exhibit is well worth seeing, if you get a chance. It's heading to Sydney next, then coming to the State Museum in Indiana in fall 2005.