This Air New Zealand safety video is literally of epic quality.
Air New Zealand safety video
It stars Peter Jackson and Elijah Woods and a couple of special cameos.
Air New Zealand is the “official airline to Middle-earth” and has been doing Lord of the Ring/Hobbit themed campaigns from the beginning.
In the early 2000s, they wrapped a few of their aircrafts with giant LOTR murals.
From the press release:
Air New Zealand today rolled out its biggest tourism promotion yet – a Boeing 747-400 emblazoned with “The Lord of the Rings” motion picture trilogy imagery that will take the Middle-earth message to the world.
Spearheading the airline’s new promotional identity as “Airline to Middle-earth”, Air New Zealand Regional General Manager for Europe, Gerard Gilmore described the promotion as “a visionary demonstration of Air New Zealand’s commitment to drive the New Zealand tourism message around the world”
And more recently, here’s a cool installation of Smaug on an aircraft from December of 2013:
And this may be why your pilot is late (but at least the lounge offerings are epic!)
This was not the first time they did a themed flight safety video, but the first time they did one quite that epic.
Golum is a little creepy in this Air New Zealand Safety Video (from 2012):
Air New Zealand safety video
Not all those who wander are lost, but in this case, I’d start to worry if your plane does.