The Lord of the Rings has countless fans to this day, who still engage in mysteries and discussions decades later. A rather trivial sentence from The Two Towers is still being discussed 22 years later. Elijah Wood has now also commented on it.
Which sentence is it? Between 2001 and 2003, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released and was a huge success. To this day, J. R. R. Tolkien’s world is entrenched in pop culture. The series received prequels in the form of the Hobbit films and the series The Rings of Power.
Fans still discuss many mysteries and questions of Middle-earth today. An inconspicuous sentence in The Two Towers still serves as the basis for many fan discussions. The leader of the Uruk-hai says in English: Looks like Meats back on the Menu boys
. In German, it translates roughly to: Looks like we have meat back on the menu
. Since then, fans have been debating whether there are actually restaurants in Middle-earth.
For many actors, The Lord of the Rings was the big breakthrough. This was also true for Orlando Bloom: Legolas in The Lord of the Rings was Orlando Bloom’s big breakthrough, although he auditioned for just a supporting role
You can see the trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers here:
22 years later, the bizarre question is still relevant to many
What does Elijah Wood say about this discussion? Since then, fans want to know if there are restaurants in Middle-earth, because if the Uruk-hai know the word Menu
, then there must be restaurants. This topic is more of a meme than a real discussion, yet it still seems to be relevant even 22 years after the release.
As Popverse reports, Elijah Wood, the actor who played Frodo, was asked at this year’s Comic Con in Liverpool what the sentence is really about. Are there restaurants in Middle-earth? Elijah Wood gives a rather unsatisfactory answer. He compares it to a line from the Star Wars sequels, where a phone is mentioned.
That’s a thing that happens in modern writing for old times. It happens quite often. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, there’s a point where he’s talking to General Hux and says, “Waiting for General Hux,” as if it were a damn phone call. Sorry, let me put you through. …. What are you talking about?
He says that logic in this case has to give way to the freedom of writing. He calls it a funny joke
and that it indeed grabs attention. This probably makes sense to most people, but for the die-hard fans, the question of restaurants in Middle-earth is still not resolved.
What do other actors say? Other actors have also been confronted with the question. As GameSpot reported in 2021, Nathaniel Lees, who played the Uruk-hai Ugluk, also responded to the question.
The word Menu
should only refer to the available food options in that context. Jeb Brophy, another Uruk-hai actor, also responded to the question, explaining that one can assume that Hobbits know the word from their banquets. The same would be true for humans, who are one of the origins of the Uruk-hai. The Uruk-hai also wear special armor that was supposedly so hard that Aragorn got injured: Several people were injured on the set of The Lord of the Rings, but one actor even had to go to the hospital
