The Lord Of The Rings: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Trilogy To Rule Them All

These ten Lord of the Rings behind-the-scenes facts might surprise even diehard fans of the series.

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Peter Jackson’s big-screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a huge gamble for the studios, because they had to finance three mega-budget fantasy epics before even releasing the first one. If the first movie wasn’t a hit – which, thankfully, it was; a big one! – the studio still would’ve had two movies in the can that were ready for release.

Fortunately, Jackson’s movies were too big to fail. With groundbreaking visual effects, brilliantly paced scripts, and a carefully selected cast of actors, The Lord of the Rings trilogy was destined to be successful. So, here are 10 behind-the-scenes facts about The Lord Of The Rings trilogy to rule them all.

10 Gollum went through a few different designs

Before the final design for Gollum was created, the character went through a few different looks. One of the earliest concepts had skeletal nostrils in place of Gollum’s nose. However, when the artists at Weta Digital rendered this look, Gollum came off as unsympathetic and inhuman, more like a zombie than a person. Another idea that was scrapped was giving Gollum a little potbelly.

Gollum was initially supposed to be 100% computer-generated, but when Andy Serkis was cast, Peter Jackson decided to use performance-capture technologies so that Serkis could actually play the character. This forced the Weta team to redesign the character yet again, having worked on it for three years.

9 Eight out of the nine Fellowship actors got matching tattoos

Eight out of the nine actors who played members of the Fellowship got a tattoo with the word “nine” written in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish script “Tengwar,” to commemorate their time working on The Lord of the Rings trilogy together. They all headed down to a tattoo parlor in Wellington, where the movie was shooting, to get the tattoos done.

John Rhys-Davies was the one who refused to get a tattoo, and his stunt double stepped in to complete the nine. Sean Astin and Billy Boyd got their tattoos on their ankles in honor of the many hours they spent having the hobbit feet makeup applied.

8 Peter Jackson and the studio disagreed not once, but twice over Cate Blanchett’s opening monologues

When Peter Jackson was making the first Lord of the Rings movie, he wanted to open it with a prologue narrated by Cate Blanchett, but New Line Cinema executives were reluctant to let him do it, and pushed him to cut the prologue.

Ironically, when it came to making the second movie, The Two Towers, New Line executives were pushing Jackson to open the movie with another voiceover monologue by Blanchett, and Jackson was hesitant to include it. It’s common for directors of Hollywood blockbusters to clash with studio executives, but they rarely clash twice over the exact same issue.

7 Viggo Mortensen joined the movie in the middle of shooting

Viggo Mortensen was never supposed to play Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Initially, during pre-production, Stuart Townsend was cast to play the role. However, after four days of shooting, Peter Jackson realized that Townsend was too young and the part required an actor who was older.

So, Mortensen was brought in to replace Townsend. Mortensen wasn’t sure about taking the role, because he’d never read J.R.R. Tolkien’s books or met Jackson before. However, his 11-year-old son was a fan, so he was the main proponent of Mortensen’s eventual decision to take the role and join the production.

6 Mortensen insisted on doing his own stunts

After Viggo Mortensen signed on to play Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he insisted on doing his own stunts, like Tom Cruise does in the Mission: Impossible movies. When Aragorn kicks a helmet and cries out in anguish, that’s because the helmet was really heavy and Mortensen broke two of his toes when he swung his foot into it.

Most of the stunt performers in the battle scenes used aluminum swords, which are lighter than the real ones, or rubber swords, which are safer, but Mortensen insisted on using an actual sword made of steel in all of his scenes. Veteran sword master Bob Anderson said that Mortensen was “the best swordsman I’ve ever trained.”

5 The Shelob scene is filled with practical effects

Peter Jackson is a huge arachnophobe in real life, so he based the design of Shelob on all the types of spiders he grew up hating in New Zealand. The Shelob sequence in The Return of the King is filled with practical effects.

When Frodo is wrapped in Shelob’s web in a comatose state, Elijah Wood is actually staring into space without blinking, because for whatever reason, he’s able to do that. And when Shelob pierces Frodo, the white foam that dribbles out of his mouth came from a couple of Alka-Seltzers hidden in Wood’s mouth. The webbing was created using a flexible, latex-type material.

4 Andy Serkis based his performance as Gollum on heroin addicts and cats

When Andy Serkis got a call from his agent about the role of Gollum, he was only being asked to do voiceover work for three weeks in New Zealand. The character was going to be created entirely using CGI, with the actor providing just his voice. However, when Serkis auditioned, Peter Jackson was so blown away that he decided to use performance-capture technology so that Serkis could play the character on-set.

Serkis based his performance on the actions of heroin addicts, while the voice was inspired by cats coughing up hairballs. Before shooting, Serkis drank “Gollum juice” (a mix of honey, lemon, and ginger) to prepare his throat for the intense voice work.

3 Pippin got his song when co-writer Philippa Boyens saw Billy Boyd perform at a karaoke bar

Pippin’s song arose from co-writer Philippa Boyens stumbling upon Billy Boyd’s hidden talent for singing. In the middle of shooting, some of the cast and crew went for a night out at a karaoke bar. There, Boyens was surprised by how great Boyd’s singing voice was.

Boyens remembered that in the book, Denethor asked Pippin to sing him a song as Faramir was heading off to war, and so she knew there was an opportunity to show off Boyd’s singing talent within the story. She dug up the lyrics from the original text and let Boyd come up with his own tune to sing it to.

2 Gandalf bumping his head wasn’t scripted

In The Fellowship of the Ring, after Gandalf arrives at Bilbo’s home, he bumps his head on a ceiling beam. This moment hilariously sells just how small Bilbo’s hobbit-hole is, and how tall Gandalf is in comparison. But as it turns out, Gandalf bumping his head wasn’t in the original script.

Ian McKellen actually bumped his head on the ceiling beam by accident in the middle of a take and didn’t let it ruin the scene. He kept acting through the blunder and finished the take. Peter Jackson decided to leave in the mistake, because McKellen did such a good job of incorporating it into his performance.

1 All three Lord of the Rings movies were shot back-to-back

All three movies in The Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed back-to-back. Before the trilogy went into production, the record for the world’s longest film shoot belonged to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which was in production for a whopping 274 days across 16 months. And technically, Apocalypse Now still holds that record.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy tied with it with the exact same number of filming days. Shooting sequels back-to-back is a commonplace practice – it’s been used for the second and third Back to the Future movies, the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and the second and third Matrix movies – but rarely before the first movie has hit theaters.

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