Middle-earth Artists Alan Lee and John Howe Appear as Kings of Men

What's There

In the prologue, as the rings of power are distributed, two of the nine kings of Men are played by Alan Lee and John Howe — the illustrators whose Tolkien artwork defined the look of the films, and who worked as the production's conceptual designers.

Why It Matters

Most cameos put a familiar face where the audience can enjoy recognising it. This one is almost the reverse: the two people most responsible for how Middle-earth looks are placed inside the image, unrecognisable, wearing armour from a world they had spent decades drawing.

It is worth being clear about how unusual their position was. Lee and Howe were not decorating someone else's vision; for a great many readers their illustrations were Middle-earth long before the films existed, and Jackson's production hired the pre-existing visual authority rather than inventing one. Putting them in the prologue is therefore not a thank-you note tacked onto the credits. It is a statement about lineage, made in the first five minutes, in the sequence that establishes the entire visual grammar of nine hours of film.

There is a pleasing logic to which scene they appear in, too. The prologue is the film's account of where power came from and how it was handed down. Casting the designers as the recipients of the rings folds the production's own history of transmission — Tolkien to illustrator to screen — into a scene that is literally about inheritance.

And it is invisible. Nothing in the film flags it, the men are masked by helm and beard, and the reference is only available to a viewer who already knows what those two look like. That is the mark of a cameo aimed at the crew rather than the audience.

Related entry: Lee's second appearance, in the following film.

Source: Bookreporter's Alan Lee interview, cross-referenced against Tolkien Gateway's Alan Lee film notes.