You may thank James for the ‘Moneyball’-‘Lord of the Rings’ crossover memes that flooded your timeline on Wednesday, if you were wondering why. Tuesday night, a 33-year-old New Yorker shared a joke on social media (first on Twitter), which sparked a flurry of memes that combined the epic fantasy trilogy and the baseball classic, in which Brad Pitt played A’s manager Billy Beane.
First, Tom Le, co-founder of The Defector, made a lighthearted joke by posting a screenshot of generic remarks from fans, with one person being ridiculed online (“Who let this man cook?”). He placed a text overlay that made reference to “Lord of the Rings”: “Saruman saw Elrond spending 4 Fellowship roster spots on Hobbits.”
With a “Moneyball” twist, James—who did not reveal his last name—quoted Le’s post with an image and text that said, “Elrond is keeping the Fellowship roster together.”
Then, that one post went viral on the internet.
Elrond putting together the Fellowship roster https://t.co/Ov5cQT7Iiz pic.twitter.com/bVe4aYsNS8
— QQ (@HeylKatme) December 26, 2023
In a parody of the well-known Pitt quote, a fan wrote, “We may not have Bilbo Baggins, but we can rebuild him completely.” Someone else wrote, “Bread is what I want, too. My folks should not have to pay for bread. Replacing the ‘Moneyball’ scenario with the original, “I want you to stock enough lembas bread to get my people to Mordor,” was done quite well.
Frodo: So you want us to walk even more? A third joked, a line that matched both movies perfectly: Elrond: Well-posed query. Indeed.
If you’ve seen both movies, you probably found some of these amusing:
Elrond letting Glorfindal walk only to sign a random ranger from the north to a vet min and then find out that he is the rightful king of Gondor https://t.co/zudvHBRkF6 pic.twitter.com/oMl6ZTkipM
— Ryan Lynch (@rlynch2013) December 26, 2023
James sent SF Gate a direct message stating, “There was some context beyond merely a viral joke as usual, as it was the second to last tweet in a thread. Though it’s all praise (or four?) for two excellent films, it’s his own beast. He went on, “I just watched a video edit made by Jonah Hill, who explained all the scenes of the Fellowship, and I think it’s great that a late-night mistake can inspire it.”
The post states that it has been viewed 23 million times as of this writing. For the astute or fact-checking reader, this seems like an unlikely or confirmable statistic, but it was “a thing,” none the less. Enough so that someone actually recreated an entire sequence from the movie in a style that I can duplicate, and it turned out really well. This clip features undervalued ‘Moneyball’ players enlarging and magnifying computer screen images of the giving league of bread, as well as Fellowship players Frodo Baggins, Aragorn, and Samwise Gamgee doing the same.
“First-time tweet viralizer here, but usually for small overviews or opinions,” he stated to SF Gate. “It holds its own as a meme because it’s nothing but celebration for two (or four?) great movies.” He said, “I just saw a video edit made by Jonah Hill, showing all the scenes of the Fellowship, and I think a late-night mistake could inspire it.”
James, who is presently rewatching the whole “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, said that he prefers to watch “Moneyball” than baseball. For me, “Moneyball” is the answer. It’s a traditional underdog tale, but it conveys something subtly emotional rather than emphasizing speeches or other sports-related cliches,” he remarked. “And presenting something like that in both a theatrical and humorous way excites me.”