Wellington, 2023: Weta Cave Tour

We have done the Weta Cave thing every visit since 2008, but never the actual tour. Our interest was always limited to LOTR stuff and not all the films Weta has done since or before, nor the roles of props and miniatures in movie-making. We always tarried in the gift shoppe, where all the LOTR stuff is, and remains, still more pricey than one would imagine. But this year we resolved to do the gift shoppe and the tour.

Entrance pretty much unchanged in all these years

Trolls Tom and Dick; Harry is around the corner; I still maintain
that they clothed the trolls after I posted pix of troll genitals in 2014

Assorted costumes from LOTR

They keep moving Lurtz around the shoppe; must be
 disconcerting

Sir Richard Taylor, co-founder of Weta, gives us
an introduction to the wonderful work they do;
in the free intro video

Still in the gift shoppe

Uruk-hai costume for your next Orthanc party

Quantities of miniatures

Not cheap

Actual COVID-19 mask Frodo would have worn had there been
a plague in Middle Earth; 100% New Zealand wool

Assorted hand-painted figurines

Elven bling

Vicki had a somewhat cheaper version bought back
when gold was less dear; I threw it into Mt. Ngaurahoe
in 2014 at her request

Finally, it is our time to go on the tour

Photos are not allowed on most of the tour, since
the various studios own visual rights (whatever that
means) to the assorted items, displays

Until you get to this point

  I was furiously snapping away...

Presided over by one Warren Beaton, possibly Weta's
last remaining employee associated with LOTR who is
not a tour guide nor gift shoppe clerk

He works now mostly in aluminum foil with a spoon

Thus

We were taken then to a different warehouse, a couple
blocks away, containing miniatures for the revival
TV show Thunderbirds Are Go, the original of which,
apparently, was very formative in Sir Richard Taylor's
interest in going into props and miniatures (the original 
Thunderbirds series, we were told, was done entirely
with puppets)(on TV, in the UK); neither Vicki nor I had
ever heard of the Thunderbirds series; we thought it was
a car, like an Edsel

At this point, it might be useful to note that the only creative work

still done by Weta (I have read) is done by Weta FX, the CG spin-off

which has no connection with the old Weta; sic transit, Gloria

Be that as it may, here are some of the miniatures...Hobbiton...
done for an anniversary commemoration, not a movie

Some made entirely of household items

At this point, I am definitely go

But fond memories will remain...