About

They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard is a video remix series inspired by a scene from the 2002 fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Origin

On August 18th, 2005, artist Erwin Beekveld submitted a video titled "They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard" to the flash website Albino Blacksheep^[1] (shown below). The video featured scenes from the second Lord of the Rings film accompanied by a music track made from the line "They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!" uttered by the character Legolas (played by Orlando Bloom).

Spread

On August 12th, 2005, YTMND user rustynail submitted a page titled They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard!, featuring an animated GIF and looped audio track of Legolas repeating the line. Over the next several years, nine additional YTMND pages using Beekveld's song were created. On May 11th, 2006, YouTuber Aaron Hardbarger^[2] reuploaded the Albino Blacksheep video to YouTube, where it gained over 12.5 million views and 38,900 comments in the first seven years. On March 12th, 2007, YouTuber littledib uploaded a remix video using scenes from the Nintendo DS game series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney accompanied by Beekveld's song (shown below). Within six years, the video garnered more than 180,000 views and 570 comments.

On January 3rd, 2008, YouTuber Paperyoshiii uploaded a video featuring the Isengard song over footage from the children's online game Club Penguin (shown below, left). On August 29th, 2012, YouTuber Jon Wiedyk uploaded a recording of the pirate-themed band The Dread Crew of Oddwood performing a cover of "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" (shown below), accumulating upwards of 175,000 views and 275 comments in the following year.

On June 29th, 2013, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson uploaded a video in which Bloom (dressed as Legolas) sings along with the "Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" video (shown below). In the next five days, the video received more than 6.9 million views and 7,200 comments.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References