Fun Lord of the Rings Facts

- The members of the band Led Zeppelin often incorporated Tolkien's themes and creations into their songs. In "Ramble On," Robert Plant sings "T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair. But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her."

- Peter Jackson and Frances Walsh first seriously thought about doing Tolkien movies during the post-production of The Frighteners in November of 1995. Their associate, Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, happened to be making The English Patient at that time with the man who owned all film and merchandising rights to Tolkien's work, Saul Zaentz. Harvey negotiated with Saul for about 18 months and eventually struck a deal.

Because of thorny legal issues regarding "The Hobbit", Miramax decided it would be best to delve right into LOTR. Peter and Frances wanted to do three films, but Miramax had never done a big budget project before, and only agreed to two. They were to be called "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The War of the Ring".

After 18 months of preproduction, it became apparent that the budget was going to exceed anything that Miramax could afford. Their solution was to reduce it down to one movie.

"So they gave us sort of this guide that they had one of their staff members do, about how you compress Lord of the Rings into one film," says Peter. "And they only wanted a two-hour-long film, one two-hour-long film. And they gave us this appalling list of cuts that we had to make, in combining things, losing characters, and losing stuff. The Mines of Moria wasn't going to exist. They said we could just cut to a scene afterwards where the characters talked about going through the Mines of Moria and how bad it was. They said, 'That'll save all that.'"

Peter refused to do so (which made many people at the studio irate, according to some sources), and Miramax gave Peter an ultimatum: find another studio or forget about the project.

"We came to a sort of impasse," Peter says, "and it was agreed that we were allowed another month to find another studio to do the project, and if we didn't succeed in that month then Miramax would take it back and find another filmmaker to do this two-hour version."

After 18 months of hard work, Peter had four weeks to save LOTR. Almost every studio refused to even hear a proposal during that time.

"New Line was the only one, really, that wanted to meet and talk about it. Mark Ordesky at New Line was an old friend of mine, and a Lord of the Rings fan. We went to this meeting at New Line... We were picturing the two-film idea, because that was the script we had. [New Line] said, 'Why would you want to do two films when it's three books? You should be doing three.' We just thought we were in heaven, we couldn't believe it."

- "The Lord of the Rings" was the first trilogy in film production history to be shot as one entity. New Line Cinema approved the idea in part because of past problems. "New Line had a history of not being able to get sequels made of some of our more successful movies," says Mark Ordesky, "and this was an opportunity to know we had sequels in hand. So although it was a great risk, there was a presold, pre-aware audience, and the feeling that if it worked, and we already had the other two sequels in the can, then it would become retroactively a very visionary decision."

- Shooting took place at over 100 locations and on more than 350 sets all in New Zealand.

- Stuart Townsend, originally cast as Aragorn, was fired one day into shooting. (The Weathertop scenes were being shot). Not only was Stuart too young for the part, he wasn't a very good physical actor - an important part of Aragorn's character.

- After Stu was fired, the casting department decided to pursue Viggo Mortensen (who was originally considered for the role). At first, nobody could get a hold of Viggo because he was out in the woods camping. But after a couple of days he was contacted and immediately flown to New Zealand. He immersed himself in the role of Aragorn, refusing to carry the lighter aluminum sword used by everyone else, choosing to carry the 5-times-heavier steel blade instead. He also had Weta designers create sharpening stones he could carry in his belt pouches. He once got so into his character that Peter Jackson addressed him as Aragorn for over half an hour, and Viggo didn't even realize it.

- Viggo intentionally touched Liv Tyler's elvish ears in all his scenes with her. "I know the make-up people's eyebrows would raise as they were worried I might damage her ears," says Viggo. "But I think I was pretty careful with them. I just thought it was nice craftmanship. I thought those ears were essential and showed the good work that people did in creating that look and the actors did in making them look real. I felt that was as essential as, say, my sowrd. You have to believe those ears are real. They shouldn't be untouchable. I don't know, maybe I have an ear fetish that I was exploring!"

- George Lucas has cited LOTR as a major influence for Star Wars.

- The Beatles were also big LOTR fans and wanted to make a Lord of the Rings movie. John Lennon would have played Gollum, with George Harrison as Gandalf, Paul McCartney as Frodo, and Ringo Starr as Sam. However, Tolkien disliked the idea and the project died. Unfortunately, John and George did not live to see "Fellowship of the Ring". (John was murdered and George died of lung cancer three weeks before its release.) However, Paul loves the Lord of the Rings movies and has said that along with Wizard of Oz, they are his favorite films. He and Peter Jackson were both nominated for Oscars in 2002. They shared a conversation at the ceremony about all of the above.

- Edoras and Hobbiton were completely built and required no matte paintings or miniatures. Because there was no artificial lighting for the two locations, all the scenes for Edoras and Hobbiton had shot in the daytime, though postproduction could make it appear to be night.

- Hobbiton was constructed a year before filming so that the vegetation could mature and the set would look like hobbits had lived there for hundreds of years.

- The Long Expected Party, Fangorn Forest, and the Paths of the Dead were all shot in studios indoors.

- Barrie Osbourne worked on both "Apocalypse Now" and "The Lord of the Rings". "When I walked on the set of Kurtz's compound," he says, "I was absolutely blown away by the size and scale. I thought I would never see another set of that scale in my career, but 20 years later when I walked onto the set of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith, I learned yet again to never say never."

- "Apocalypse Now" and "The Lord of the Rings" both had 274 days of principal photography.

- The filmmakers had their worst problems envisioning how Elves should look, redesigning them hundreds of times.

- About 18,000 costumes were created from scratch for LOTR.

- Ngila Dickson, costume supervisor, said the most difficult costumes to create were the Elven cloaks because it was difficult to find a material which was realistic but unrealistic at the same time. "We found this special fabric," Ngila says, "and we knew it was the right one. It's just got this extraordinary, almost kaleidoscopic pattern in it."

- Ngila is from Dunedin, New Zealand. The city has a soccer team named the "Dunedin Rangers". The cast and crew would joke that Viggo plays forward for them.

- LOTR employed a professional insect wrangler who was in charge of giant centipedes, spiders, wetas, crickets, butterflies, moths, etc.

- Peter Jackson suffers from entomophobia. (This is not the fear of Ents, but the fear of insects.)

- Sala Baker was originally hired as just a stunt coordinator and a sword master. He ended up playing LOTR's title character (as well as various Orcs, a Gondorian, and a Rohirrim). His birthday is September 22- which happens to be the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo. It's also, of course, the date of the long expected party.

- Because of an accident, a needed shot of Orlando mounting his horse wasn't done. "The original concept was to have Orlando turn around as the horse [comes] up behind him with Gimli, then reach out and, some way, hop up into the saddle," Peter says. "The way I was going to shoot that was to "cheat" it... It was all going to be done with two or three quick cuts and a total cheat: Suddenly you would find him in the saddle. You wouldn't quite know how he got there, because it was going to be done tightly. On the day we started shooting that scene, we did the wide shot you see in the film with Orlando turning and reaching for the saddle. We then got him on his horse because, instead of shooting the rest of the close-ups, we were going to move on and shoot some more wide shots and come back to the close-ups. When we started shooting the side shots of him on the horse, he fell off and cracked a rib. We always thought that we would come back to do a couple quick shots of Orlando as he lands on the saddle. We went through the rest of the shoot but never got those shots, because we had everything else to shoot. The whole thing was forgotten. I was in the cutting room thinking, 'Oh my God, what the hell am I going to do?!' And I thought, 'You know what? At this moment that he turns and reaches, if we then changed him into a CG guy... doing this incredibly impossible acrobatic stunt... that would be pretty cool and certainly [solve] my problem of getting him on his horse.'"

- Many fans have been surprised and delighted by the creative ways Legolas uses his bow and his arrows. Actually, the film-makers weren't trying to have the Elf show off. They were forced to be creative because there's only one conventional way to use a bow and arrow - and that gets rather boring quickly.

- The skull and facial structure for Gimli was built on a totally new design since the special effects people wanted him to look like a different race.

- Gimli's dress and props are Teutonic and Norse inspired, with sharp edges and more of an architectural feel; Legolas is more Celtic and whimsical - as are all the elves - with their building stressing their relationship with nature. This shows the cultural division between elves and dwarves.

- After six months, John Rhys-Davies developed an allergy to the Gimli make-up, causing him to take many days off filming as his skin broke out in a rash and peeled off.

- John is actually the tallest of the Fellowship actors. He also voices the tallest character in the movie, Treebeard.

- When Gandalf visits Bilbo in Bag End, there's a framed map on the table, which he picks up and examines. In fact this is Thrór's Map from The Hobbit, that Gandalf had himself recovered from Sauron's dungeons 151 years earlier, making Bilbo's first adventure possible.

- Gandalf's wizard hat was so hated by all the film crew, including actor Ian McKellen, that a plot was hatched to change the movie's storyline so the hat would be destroyed.

- After the completion of principal photography, Gandalf's hat was loaned to a Los Angeles costume exhibition for a few weeks. Unfortunately, when it was shipped back to New Zealand it was lost in the mail. In 2003 it was discovered at an Air New Zealand "lost property" auction in Wellington. Lord of the Rings personel retrieved the hat and used it for Return of the King pickup shots. "I wonder what it would have sold for?" Peter says.

- Ian McKellen (Gandalf) based Gandalf off of Tolkien.

- Christopher Lee (Saruman) once met Professor Tolkien in an English pub.

- The birthdays of Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee (the two wizards) are two days apart; as are the birthdays of Ralph Bakshi and Peter Jackson (the two LOTR directors). The birthdays of John Howe and Alan Lee (the concept artists) are one day apart.

- Hobbits were designed to look like they could've lived in 14th, 15th, or 16th century England.

- Ian Holm (Bilbo) did not arrive in New Zealand until after the Hobbiton set had been destroyed. PJ filmed the needed scenes without him and added the hobbit later via bluescreen. Ian also arrived after Cate Blanchett had left. Nonetheless, because of a scale double, Bilbo and Galadriel appear on screen together at the Grey Havens.

- On the quest to Mount Doom, Frodo and Sam always travel left to right on screen.

- Frodo is the oldest of the four main Hobbits, and Pippin is the youngest. In real life, Billy Boyd (Pippin) is the oldest of the Hobbit actors, and Elijah Wood (Frodo) is the youngest.

- Billy Boyd was the first of the Hobbit actors to be cast and the last of the Hobbit actors to leave New Zealand.

- Sean Astin gained 30 pounds for his role as Samwise.

- At Rivendell, Sean was hit on the head by an Elven loom. (Viggo said it was because he was having impure thoughts.) He had to get a CAT scan. "When he got back all he could say was about how large his brain was!" says Elijah. "We didn’t hear if he was healthy, just how large his brain was!"

- Tolkien grew up in a society where social class was very important, and this is reflected in his books. Because Sam is from a lower class than Merry, Pippin, and Frodo (who are rich), he always refers to them with the title of "Mister" or "Master". For the movies, Peter wanted to leave out the issue of class. Originally, he decided Sam would refer to the others simply by their names. Then, not long before filming began, he realized that readers would not be satisfied by this, and he decided to have Sam say "Mr. Frodo".

- The Shire and the world of the hobbits were constructed to make it look like they live in a world of their own apart from the rest of Middle-earth. Every prop, set, and costume in a scene with both a hobbit and a big person had to have a double 1.38 times bigger so normal items would look the right size with the hobbits. Judy Alley, who helped dress the sets, says, "Even the pickled onions and gherkins in jars on the kitchen shelves were scaled in size."

- Lesley Earl-Templeton, who had never been involved with a film before, was LOTR's textile designer. "The very first thing I did was two pieces of fabric," she says. "One was a small scale fabric, and the other was a scaled up fabric. I knew nothing about the film industry. They didn't tell me why they needed these different scales, so my first reaction was sitting up all night asking myself, 'Why would you need different scales to make a film?' I didn't realize it was specific to this film."

- 48,000 props were used in the films.

- All props were made from scratch.

- It was discovered that 50 elven lamps were needed for the Rivendell Elves two days before their TTT scene was to be filmed. "It took half a day just to find the material," says props maker Chris Streeter, "then it took the rest of the day to get the hired labor come in and work on the patterns we'd made." Nonetheless, the cardboard lamps were conceived, constructed, and delivered in less than 48 hours. "When filming was complete," Chris says, "they looked great and we couldn't have been happier!"

- All of the actors (except for some of the extras) were wigged.

- Haldir is obviously very conscious of proper hair care. Craig Parker, who played him, was forced to have similar concerns. "The wigs were made from real human hair and so expensive," he says. "In the battle scene we all got them sweaty and dirty and covered in oil. My wig cost about $15,000 and the great worry was that I was going to ruin it."

- Craig Parker actually joined LOTR project very early. "Many years ago," he comments, "when Peter, Fran, and Philippa were putting together the script, they got a group of us in to make a radio play." You can hear Craig narrate the prologue (as Frodo) if you have the FOTR Extended DVD: on the first disc of the appendices, navigate to 'Visualizing the Story' on the main menu. Then go to 'Early Storyboards' and finally select 'the Prologue'.

- In order to make forced perspective shots (placing the hobbit actors farther from the camera to make them look smaller) a bit more interesting, the filmmakers devised a totally new system consisting of a pulley and a platform. When the camera moved (which is normally impossible as the forced perspective would become obvious) the actor also moved, and the illusion was preserved.

- Rohan was designed to look like a Kingdom from around 900 A.D.

- The sword Arwen uses to defy the Ringwraiths at the Ford of Rivendell is in fact the very same sword Elrond used thousands of years earlier in the prologue.

Snaga, (the orc killed after trying to eat Merry and Pippin,) and Sharku, (the orc who gets a hold of Aragorn's Evenstar,) are both played by Peter Jackson's buddy Jed Brophy.

- During the long nightshoot at Helm's Deep, the Orcs had to find ways to entertain themselves. Sala Baker comments, "We had about 60 guys singing in the middle of the night-- singing and waiting for the next shot. It was really cool. The crew would join in... it was a way to keep ourselves amused. The guitar would come out, and all those Uruk-hai and beserkers sat around jamming!

- Billy Boyd also says, "To keep up morale, they would bring a band in-- a string quartet or something-- during lunch. It was nice. One day, they brought this jazz band in, and someone in full Uruk-hai costume started dancing. I remember thinking that was quite bizarre. You never really sat with the Uruk-hai, even at lunch! You knew the people, but the Hobbits didn't sit with the Uruk-hai! We're sitting there watching this guy dancing, and I thought, "That's something you don't see every day."

- The Orc battle cries for the Helm's Deep battle sequence were provided by 25,000 cricket fans at Westpac Stadium. The fans screamed war chants spelled out on the Diamond Vision screen, with Peter Jackson himself leading the crowd. Sound technicians returned to the stadium a year later to record sounds for battle scenes in The Return of the King.

- There were so many extras used in the sequences at Helms Deep, and the filming went for so many months that almost all the extras and principle actors got t-shirts reading "I survived Helms Deep". There were so many of these shirts that extras would often meet other extras in New Zealand's main cities because they would recognize the shirts.

- When Andy Serkis was offered the part of Gollum he had only read The Hobbit and thought it was a minor part.

- One time, while Howard Shore was attempting to record music for FOTR, a studio laptop computer exploded static over the studio speakers and the player's headphones. This event caused some uproar, and also led to the quote from Dermot Crehan who, having been conversing with Shore in his lilting Irish brogue all afternoon, said "Howard, its Dermot... there are brains on the floor in here".

- Richard Taylor said Treebeard would be "a very different creature from anything we've seen in cinema before." Treebeard talks and acts just like the Rockbiter in "The NeverEnding Story".

- When Aragorn's coronation was first filmed, the crown slipped right over Viggo's brow, over his face, and fell down to his shoulders. "And there was just this horrible silence," says Jasmine Watson, LOTR's jeweller. "My initial head measurement that I had taken from Viggo was drastically wrong."

- The One Ring was made by Jens Hansen, a renowned jewellery designer. (Actually many "one" rings were made.) Sadly, Hansen passed away prior to the start of principal photography. Elijah was given the main Ring at the end of the shoot.

- Elijah Wood borrowed the talents of LOTR calligrapher Daniel Reeve to create Christmas cards for the eight other members of the Fellowship. He wrote them as Frodo to each of their characters.

- Sean Astin (Sam) and Sarah McLeod (Rosie) appear with their real children in the final scene in ROTK.

- Wilhelm, a famous scream, makes an appearance in TTT as a soldier falls during the Helm's Deep battle. The scream also can be heard in ROTK.

- Writer Frances Walsh voiced the screams for the Nazgul. "We dragged Fran onto the Foley Stage," recalls Ethan Van der Ryn, supervising sound editor, "and got the most spine chilling screams I've ever heard in my life. They just about knocked me on my ass."