Ringers: Lord of the Fans (DVD)
Directed by: Carlene Cordova
Written by: Cliff Broadway, Carlene Cordova
Narrated by: Dominic Monaghan

In this day and age, just about everyone is a fan of something, whether it be an NBA team, musical group, TV show, or even just their favourite food. Whatever the case, fandom is a pretty natural and accepted part of our culture-driven lives, and an important aspect of how we define ourselves. There are always those people who feel the need to take things a little bit further than the norm… maybe they buy Yankees season tickets, collect Pearl Jam bootlegs, or take part in vigorous online discussions analyzing every episode of Desperate Housewives. And then there are science-fiction and fantasy fanatics, who quite often belong in a whole other category of their own.

“Ringers: Lord of the Fans” is an attempt to document a group of people that may very well have started the entire concept of cult fandom; a community of followers who both immerse themselves in a work of fiction and express themselves through it. Way before “Star Wars” came along and made imaginary worlds cool, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” was captivating the minds of readers and inspiring an underground movement. Sci-fi and fantasy weren’t very mainstream in those days, and it was difficult for enthusiasts to come across other like-minded individuals.

Fortunately, the ideas were so compelling that they persisted, and the genre has blossomed into the huge market that it is today. The thing is, Ringers doesn’t delve into the idea of this original subculture as much as it claims to, and for a movie that is supposed to be all about the fans, we don’t really get to know any of them very well.

Narrated by Dominic Monaghan (”Merry” in the LOTR films), perhaps part of the problem with Ringers is the fact that it has a hard time separating itself from Peter Jackson’s blockbuster movies in order to explore the roots of the phenomenon, which is of course the books. While the temptation to tie things in with the enormously successful movies is hard to resist, the end result is that this feels like something that should have been an extra on one of the Lord of the Rings DVD box sets, rather than a standalone feature.

The movie starts off with a fairly condensed history of the publishing of Tolkien’s books. There is a Terry Gilliam-esque cut-and-paste animated sequence that whisks us through much of this time period, glossing over many of the details of the cultural climate. All we learn is that some critics called Tolkien’s work “juvenile”. Then we head to the 60’s and 70’s where the film touches on hippie culture, and Tolkien’s influence on music including such bands as Led Zeppelin and Rush. Geddy Lee himself is interviewed for the film, as is Lemmy from Motorhead, who is so unintelligible at points that he needs subtitles.

One of the centerpieces of the film is Leonard Nimoy’s bizarre “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” video, which is amusing but only mentioned in passing with a very short clip (an interview with Nimoy himself would have been great, unfortunately he declined to do one). The movie often intercuts weird modern day re-enactments of young adults from the 60’s and 70’s dancing and hanging out, which I guess were supposed to give the movie a kitschy feel but just seemed like filler. From here it moves on to cover the animated Lord of the Rings films from the late 70’s and 80’s, and finally Peter Jackson’s monumental movie trilogy.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for me was the fact that Ringers isn’t all that funny. Many people thought the Star Trek fan documentary “Trekkies” was mean-spirited and degrading, but personally I found it both intriguing and endearing. When compared with a movie like Trekkies, Ringers seems rather dull, spending the vast majority of its time recapping dry historical facts and interviewing experts rather than trying to understand the wacky fans. By contrast, Trekkies spends a lot more time with only a handful of specific fans and focuses on their personal stories rather than Star Trek itself.

In Ringers, the fan’s stories all kind of run together since they are mainly relegated to short clips of testimonials recorded from a booth at Comic Con. We do briefly meet the people who run the low budget home-made theme park “Hobbiton U.S.A.” and get a few interviews with people lined up outside of The Two Towers premiere (reminiscent of the Star Wars fan doc “Starwoids”), but that’s about it. It doesn’t help that interviewer Cliff Broadway doesn’t seem to know what he wants to get out of the fans to begin with, and asks obvious questions like “If Middle Earth were a real place, would you want to visit?”

Extra features on the DVD include deleted scenes, commentary from the production team, and a couple featurettes. “Rock & Ringers” is just a slightly extended version of the music segment already seen in the film, while “The Ring Comes Full Circle” is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the documentary itself, which feels a little self-important.

Maybe the film is trying to accomplish too much at once, but for whatever reason, “Ringers: Lord of the Fans” is neither as fascinating nor as quirky as I was hoping it would be. Fervent Tolkien and Lord of the Rings followers will probably not learn anything new, and anyone hoping for a comedic look at fandom in the vein of “Trekkies” will likely be disappointed. Ringers is not a complete waste of time, but certainly not something you’ll need to see more than once. — Sean

SCORE:

Recommended If You Like: Lord of the Rings (obviously), Starwoids, The Matrix Revisited