10 Things you NEVER knew about The
Lord of the Rings
Welcome to the first installment of
Behind the Screens, the series where I’ll be talking about some of the most
popular movies, TV shows, games and more and teaching you 10 facts about each
that you likely have never heard!
And what better film trilogy to start
us off with than one of the greatest of all time: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. This massive trilogy
is so full of secrets it’s impossible to cover them all in just 10, but here
I’ll go over some of my favourites.
#1. It was one of the most dangerous
sets ever
Lord
of the Rings is perhaps infamous for how often the actors got hurt while
performing the scenes, as well as how often the takes where they got hurt wound
up in the finished movie. Gandalf hitting his head on Bilbo’s ceiling in the
beginning of Fellowship wasn’t
scripted; Ian McKellen wasn’t looking where he was going and bumped into it, and his reaction is genuine. And while this take isn’t the one used in the final product, in one
take of the ending to Fellowship
where Sam runs into the lake to follow Frodo, Sean Astin stepped on a shard of
broken glass and cut open his foot.
But perhaps the most famous injury
sustained in the movies was poor Viggo Mortensen in the beginning of The Two Towers. In the scene where
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli discover the orc camp burned by the Riders of Rohan,
thinking that Merry and Pippin were killed in the chaos Aragorn kicks an orc
helmet, lets out a scream of anguish and falls to his knees. The thing is,
while the helmet kick was scripted, the scream was not. That’s because it was
actually poor Viggo crying out in pain after he broke two toes kicking the very
real helmet!
Despite all these injuries by the
human cast members, not a single horse was hurt throughout the entire
production.
#2. The original casting choices
were…unusual
Nowadays Viggo Mortensen and Ian
McKellen are synonymous with their characters of Aragorn and Gandalf
respectively. But did you know that neither of them were the original choices
for the roles?
The first choice to play Gandalf was
none other than Sean Connery, best known as the original James Bond actor and Indiana Jones's father in The Last
Crusade. However, upon reading the script Connery admitted he had no idea
what was going on, and while he admitted he’d be interested in a role he didn’t
fully understand, he was further turned off by the lengthy shoot as all three
movies were shot simultaneously.
Aragorn’s case was even weirder.
Filmmakers initially looked at professional internet meme Nicolas Cage for the
role, who turned it down because, similar to Connery, the shoot was a little
too long for his tastes and he didn’t want to be away from his family for that
long. He was then replaced by then-unknown actor Stuart Townsend (…okay,
still-unknown actor), who actually made it to the set and started training for
the part. Just before filming began to start Jackson decided he wanted someone older for the part, and the
at-the-time 28 year old wasn’t cutting it. The filmmakers reached out to Viggo
to see if he was interested, and after insistence by his son that
he take the role, the rest became history.
#3. Christopher Lee has a major part
in Tolkien history
If you’ve never checked out
Christopher Lee’s Wikipedia page, you’re missing out. The guy was the true
example of living life to the fullest, as he starred in over 200+ movies, was
an accomplished soldier in World War II, wrote an entire heavy metal album when
he was 92, and had the best voice that anyone ever had. No offense to Morgan
Freeman, but seriously, it’s not even a contest.
He was also notable for being the only
person that worked on the entire trilogy to have met J.R.R. Tolkien in person.
Lee was a mega-fan of the books, reading them at least once a year. Tolkien
enjoyed Lee’s work in the past, and decided that, should a movie based on the
books ever be made, he had his blessing to play Gandalf.
Unfortunately, by the time The Lord of the Rings finally made it to
proper production Lee was too old to play Gandalf, as the role required much
more swordplay and horse riding than he was capable of. However, Jackson didn’t
hesitate in casting him as the evil wizard Saruman, stating that he was perfect
for the role.
#4. Sean Bean walked to set every day
in full Boromir costume
Fellowship
of the Ring featured lots of scenes of the Fellowship walking on
mountaintops and other areas of high-elevation, and it stood to reason that the
cast and crew would take helicopters up the mountains to shoot them. But Sean
Bean was so scared of heights that he instead chose to take the two hour walk
up the mountain to set almost every day in full costume.
The cast and crew would often look out
the window on their way up to the set and see him still a long way off, hiking
up the steep hills dressed as Boromir. If anything, at least he stayed fit.
#5. Jar Jar Binks was an integral
part of creating Gollum
The motion capture used to create
Gollum is undoubtedly one of the most tremendous effects in the entire trilogy,
still looking great even as we approach the 20th (!!!) anniversary of the
films. But what you might not know is that the technology used to bring him to
life might’ve not been possible if not for one of the most hated characters in
cinema history.
Knowing that he wanted to make Gollum a
motion-capture character, Jackson wanted some advice on how to best bring him
to life. At the time the best example was George Lucas’ team at Industrial
Light and Magic, who had used the technology for Jar Jar in The Phantom Menace in 1999. Lucas and
his team even trekked out to New Zealand to help with Gollum, and Jackson made
a few trips to Skywalker Ranch to get the ILM people’s opinion on what he’d
done.
So next time you’re making fun of Jar
Jar, remember that without Lucas using him as a testing grounds for motion
capture characters Gollum might’ve not looked nearly as good.
#6. The Uruk-hai at Helm’s Deep have
the voices of cricket fans
To properly capture the sound of a massive
army of Uruks chanting and jeering at the people trapped behind the walls of
Helm’s Deep, Jackson visited a local cricket match. During halftime he ran out
onto the field with a microphone during a break in the game and conducted the
20,000 people in the stadium to chant in the Black Speech of Mordor.
So next time you’re watching Two Towers and make it to the Battle of
Helm’s Deep, prepare to be terrified with the knowledge that Theoden and crew
are being faced down by an army of people who just wanted to go watch a
friendly game of cricket.
#7. Peter Jackson cameos all over the
place
Directors and other notable people
cameoing in their movies are always fun to find, and Peter Jackson has three
well known appearances across the trilogy. But did you know he’s in the movies
more than you’d think?
First of all, you can see his three
intentional cameos once in each movies. Firstly he plays a man chomping on a
carrot when the hobbits first arrive in Bree in Fellowship. In Two Towers he
throws a spear in Helm’s Deep. And while this one is much easier to spot in the
Extended Edition, you can see him as a pirate that gets accidentally shot by
Legolas after Gimli hits hit foot before firing a warning arrow.
But these are just the more famous
examples. Jackson also has a few other hidden appearances. Over Bilbo’s
fireplace you can see portraits of Jackson and his wife and co-writer Fran
Walsh reimagined as hobbits. You get a better look at them in the last Hobbit movie, so if you really want to
see them up-close that’s where to go. His last cameo is the hardest to spot, as without
knowledge of it it’s impossible to find. In the scene where Shelob is about to
snack on Frodo, the camera pulls back to reveal Sam’s arm holding Sting as he
confronts the spider. Only…that’s not Sean Astin’s arm. It’s Peter Jackson’s. I
guess they just couldn’t get a good shot of both Sean’s arm and the spider at
the same time.
#8. The Council of Elrond is hiding a
funny secret
We all know the iconic scene where the
Fellowship is formed by Elrond in Rivendell, but there’s something particularly
silly happening in the scene that most don’t notice.
Despite the scene itself taking place
in an outdoor balcony, it was shot indoors. In the area outside the balcony,
you can see leaves dropping to create the illusion they’re outside. They
created this effect by having crew members stand on the roof of the set and
manually dropping leaves down!
#9. Aragorn was originally planned to
duke it out with Sauron
There’s a lot going on at the end of Return of the King during the Battle of
the Black Gates, but initially it was going to be even crazier.
While Frodo and Gollum are struggling
with the ring in Mount Doom, the scene cuts back to the rest of the team
fighting at the Black Gates. There’s a shot where Aragorn stops, turns around,
and is confronted with a massive cave troll that he proceeds to fight one on
one. This wasn’t what happened in the original cut of the scene. What was shot
was Aragorn facing off against a physical manifestation of Sauron, as a sort of
parallel to the fight between Isildur and Sauron that kicks off the trilogy.
By the time the movie made it to
post-production, Jackson wasn’t a fan of having Sauron show up in person
anymore. The VFX team cropped in a giant cave troll instead, and that was that.
You can actually still find a few rough cuts of Aragorn vs. Sauron online
though!
#10. Throughout the entire trilogy,
one thing remains constant:
Legolas never misses.
Seriously, rewatch the movies and pay
close attention to Legolas’s arrows. He always hits something, and it’s almost
always his intended target. The only times his arrows go slightly astray is in Two Towers where he hits the orc suicide
bomber in his shoulder instead of his head, and in Return of the King when Gimli bumps his leg before he fires his
warning shot and he hits Pirate Peter Jackson by accident. Other than that he’s
flawless.
Are there any I missed? Let me know,
and I’ll see you next time for more Behind the Screens! Next episode will be
releasing February 21!
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