What Lord of the Rings would look like if it were a horror movie: how the Lord of the Rings reinvented artificial intelligence

A new AI-generated image turns Lord of the Rings into a horror movie, and the result is pure fuel for a full-blown nightmare.

Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved fantasy novels, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is widely regarded as one of the most iconic film trilogies of all time. Beginning with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the film tells the story of Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), a hobbit, as he sets out for Middle Earth to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

Along his journey, Frodo and his companion, Sam (Sean Astin), encounter all manner of dark creatures who seek to put the “screws to them.” In the first film, for example, the main characters encounter a troll, which obviously inflames tempers.

The Lord of the Rings franchise features many monsters that the heroes must face. In addition to Frodo and Sam, the Lord of the Rings film series features a number of other main characters, including Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and Gandalf (Ian McKellan).

Lord of the Rings, turned into an AI nightmare.

In a new image, created using the DALL-E Mini, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is imagined as a horror movie. The image suite, which looks like it’s straight out of a nightmare, turns beloved characters like Frodo and Sam into truly monstrous beings. One particularly frightening image even features a Gandalf worthy of making you daydream.

While we’re not essentially talking about exactly scary movies, the images (which you can see below) suggest that it wouldn’t take much work to turn Jackson’s trilogy into a horror franchise.

Lord of the Rings actually features at least one scene that could be turned into horror material. In other words, if they wanted to, they could. But why spoil such a beautiful franchise?