As you probably know the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is due release soon, but I am sure that ‘unexpected journey’ doesn’t feature flying in a New Zealand plane, but Air New Zealand isn’t above capitalising on the upcoming movie release, and as such has put out a video featuring elves and middle-earth wannabees. And of course we have that video for our readers viewing consideration below.

The An Unexpected Briefing #airnzhobbit video comes our way courtesy of Ubergizmo, and by way of the Airnewzealand YouTube page of course, and lasts almost four and a half minutes of people dressed up as characters from Lord of the Rings, or no doubt The Hobbit, and goes through the safety spiel when waiting for a plane to take off.

Apparently everything in the footage has a fair bit of authenticity due to the people at Weta Workshop having produced the information video, and we even get to see LOTR and The Hobbit director Sir Peter Jackson make a brief cameo appearance, along with a quick crawling shot of Gollum.

However what did capture our attention is that it appears middle-earth folk seem to like Apple gear including an iPhone and an Apple iPad, when the elf stewardess asks everyone to power off all electronic devices during take off and landing, and you can see that at the 3:07 mark in the footage.

Have to say this Hobbit take on the safety information when seated on a plane is unusual, but far more entertaining that the way it is usual done, so with that said, I’ll leave it right there so you can head on down and mash that play button if you haven’t already see the video…enjoy.