Fellowship of the Ring
Miscellaneous Nits
*The entire movie was filmed in New Zealand, PJ’s home turf.
*All the wigs in this film were made using real hair from women in Russia, who would cut their own hair to sell to provide for their families. I wonder how much they charged, and how often they could do it.
*All of the great structures you see in this film, Barad-dur, Orthanc, Minas Tirith, etc, are incredibly detailed miniatures. Though they are only miniature in the sense that they are smaller than what they represent, and were often taller than the people who had to work on them, earning them the nicknames "bigatures" and "megatures".
*I've been looking at the Elves, and have noticed that some of them, with their pointed ears and plucked eyebrows, look like Vulcans. Elrond is the most obvious one, and there is also the second Elf from the right at the council meeting (Figwit's friend).
*Sean Astin made the observation that out of 247 days that the Hobbits were required to wear their big feet for filming, on fifty of those days the feet were not seen on camera. This seems cruel considering that they had to get up at the crack of dawn to have them applied, a process that took a couple hours, during which they had to stand.
*With the exception of the incident on the mountain, every time Frodo needs to be caught or carried it's Boromir that does it. Coincidence?
*I was going to note that the outer doorknob on the front door of Bag End does not coincide with the latch on the inside, but Mother tells me that on old doors like that, the outer knob is mainly to pull the door open and not connected with the latch at all. Just FYI.
*We know that the Hobbits have prosthetic feet and (along with the Elves) prosthetic ears, and we'll go into Dwarf and Orc prosthetics below, but did you know that the two wizards have prosthetic noses? It was to make them (the noses) stand out a little more from all the hair and beard and eyebrows, but I was a bit disappointed to learn that Saruman's lovely hawk nose was fake.
*I know I can't be the only woman out there who likes a guy with a prominent nose. If we were to give an award for the best-looking (real) nose on a principal actor, it would have to go to Sean Bean.
*Lawrence Makoare, for those few minutes alone with Saruman, and also just after he is born, is in full body prosthetics, the process of applying which started on the previous night at ten p.m., to be ready for filming at eight a.m. Yuck! I don't even want to think about how he went to the bathroom, if he even could.
*But the real heartbreaker is John Rhys Davies. Though he only had to endure his face being almost entirely covered with hair and latex and gelatin for Gimli, he developed a skin allergy to the adhesive, so for every day that he was on for filming he had to have three or four off to give his face a break. Poor guy!
*The scale doubles for the Hobbits tended to be about 4 feet tall. Kiran Shah stood in for both Bilbo and Frodo, Bhojah Kannada (BK) for Sam, Praphaphorn Chansantor (a young woman also known as Fon) for Pippin, and Martin Gray (a 12 yr old boy) for Merry.
*Gimli's scale double was Brett Beattie, four feet, nine and 1/2 inches tall.
*Paul Randall (Tall Paul) was the scale double for all the normal sized people, Men and Elves, and is over seven feet tall.
*Everyone who has an opportunity to say Mordor in this film tends to trill the Rs...except the Hobbits. Which might be the fault of the actors, but I think it sounds right that way as the Hobbits were supposed to have a somewhat countrified accent.
*We see a lot of apples in this film, especially being eaten by Hobbits. And if you watch the "Making of..." discs, they're munching 'em off screen, too.
*Billy Boyd has a very pleasant Scottish accent, which he toned down only slightly for Pippin. The reasoning was this: In The Hobbit mention is made of Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took, an ancestor of Bilbo's who clubbed off the head of a Goblin king and potted it right down a rabbit hole, "and in this way the battle was won, and the game of Golf invented at the same moment." So if a Took invented golf, then the Tooks must be Scottish.
*The scream of the Nazguls was kindly provided by Fran Walsh, who had a sore throat at the time.
*Have you noticed that the Hobbit males all wear capri pants?
*Of the principal Hobbit actors, Billy Boyd is the oldest and Elijah Wood is the youngest. Which is funny seeing as Frodo is supposed to be the oldest while Pippin is the youngest. Mind you, Frodo is also supposed to look ageless.
*Of the American actors in this flick, I think the most inconsistent accents came from Sean Astin and Viggo Mortensen. My brother comments that Elijah Wood's accent sounds very fake, but at least it never falters.
*This could be my imagination, but it seems like Frodo is starting to get worry lines just under his eyes by the time he gets to Rivendell.
*I have to make mention of Howard Shore and the wonderful score he composed for the movie. I love it and could listen to it all day.
*Craig Parker (Haldir) and Marton Csokas (Celeborn) are both well-known New Zealand soap opera stars.
*My brother will want me to mention that Csokas also had a respectable role in a first season episode of Farscape.
*The material the Elvish cloaks are made from appears to be very thin, otherwise I would say they look like polar fleece. And aren't they a bit short? They only come a little below the knee, and owing to the capri pants that I have mentioned, the Hobbit boys' legs are bare beyond that point.
*When Sean Astin was offered the role of Sam he was told that he would have to put on some weight, coming to something over thirty pounds; in reality he is quite trim and fit. In return for his dedication, the PTB paid for a trainer to get him back in shape.
*Another determined and dedicated actor was Elijah Wood. In auditioning for the role of Frodo he memorized passages from the scripts, got some friends and costumes, and they all went out into a woody area with a camera and filmed a couple of Frodo's scenes then sent the tape to Peter Jackson. Imagine how he would have felt if he hadn't got the part!
*Viggo Mortensen, believe it or not, was not the first choice for Aragorn. Originally Stuart Townsend was cast in the role, but due to "artistic differences" (they thought he was too youthful looking) he was let go and they called on Viggo.
*In that same line of thought, Viggo at first did not want to take the job since it was so sudden and would be such a big project. But his son, Henry is a huge Tolkien fan and pestered him until he took the role.
*A similar scene occurred with the goldsmith that the designers asked to make the prop Rings, according to Dan Hennah, supervising art director. They called on Jens Hansen, a well-known Danish gold and silversmith living in New Zealand, but he was not terribly interested in Lord of the Rings and turned them down. Some time later he called back and said his son had spoken to him, and he wanted to know if they still needed someone for the job.
*Orlando Bloom originally auditioned for the role of Faramir. This would have been a disaster; not only is he better suited to play an Elf, but they would have had a harder time convincing me that he is Boromir's brother than they did with David Wenham (who fit perfectly).
*Ian Holm has come full circle, having previously played Frodo in the BBC radio production of Lord of the Rings (which Tolkien didn't care for).
*Christopher Lee is a huge Tolkien fan (probably on a level with my mum); he was on letter-writing terms with the great professor and at one point actually had Tolkien's blessing to play Gandalf in any film version that came along. That was some years ago (obviously since Tolkien's been dead about 30 years), and Lee (at the time of filming) was nearly eighty himself. Therefore he decided to settle for playing the less active wizard, at which, I'm sure you'll agree, he was bloody brillaint!
*Dominic Monaghan, at five feet, seven inches, is the tallest Hobbit.
*John Rhys Davies originally tried out for Denethor.
*John makes a tall dwarf at six feet, one inch, but he's just the right height proportional to the Hobbits.
*A little Star Wars trivia for you, Christopher Lee played Count Dooku (what a horrible name!) in Attack of the Clones (AKA Send in the Clones), while Marton Csokas played Poggle the Lesser (a CG character).
*Peter Jackson originally proposed to do the trilogy as two movies, but was asked by Miramax (original producer) to condense it into one (I shudder to think!). Fortunately Peter had the sense to try another studio, and New Line was intelligent enough to realize that the story would do better as three separate movies.
*Arwen's role got fleshed out mainly to provide more of Aragorn's backstory, but also, I suspect, so that people wouldn't be wondering who the heck she is when she shows up to marry Aragorn at the end of Return of the King. Otherwise they might be thinking, "Who's this little Elvish tart popping up all of a sudden? Why couldn't Aragorn marry that Eowyn babe? She was hot!"
*The farmland used for Hobbiton was cultivated and allowed to grow for a year before filming began. Talk about preparation!
*All the props in the movie had to be custom made in two different sizes.
*Did Aragorn ever get Narsil reforged to become Anduril? So far no mention has been made of it.
*I read this in one of my "Making of..." books and found it interesting. The hair and makeup guys had decided that Saruman should have an all-white look, but were perplexed when confronted with Christopher Lee, whose own hair is white while his eyebrows (big, bushy things) are still black. They didn't want to do away with the eyebrows since they were an integral part of his facial structure, so they came up with the brilliant plan of putting a bit of black into Lee's beard and mustache as well (which is natural on him). The reason I find this interesting is because any idiot who reads the books would know that this is what Saruman is supposed to look like anyway: "An old man, swathed in a great cloak...His face was long, with a high forehead, he had deep darkling eyes, hard to fathom...His hair and beard were white, but strands of black still showed about his lips and ears." Not a bad match, yeah?
*Here's something else from my "Making of the Film" books that talks about putting blond eyebrows on all the Elves. Why on Middle Earth didn't they give Legolas blond eyebrows? It's bad enough that his complexion is wrong for blond hair, but the black eyebrows just scream, "Dye job!"
*In this same vein, how many of the Elves are supposed to be blond, or "golden-haired" as they are typically described? Galadriel is, of course, and also Glorfindel, though if he's in this flick I have yet to figure out which background Elf he's supposed to be. Thranduil (Legolas' daddy) is described as golden-haired in The Hobbit, but we later learn he is one of the Sindarin Elves who never went across the Sea, and therefore he should probably be dark-haired. (It's possible Tolkien had not yet worked out the distinctions between the two types of Elves when he wrote The Hobbit, and it was supposed to be a children's book at any rate.) Somewhere in the LOTR appendices it indicates that the only other blond Elves (that were still hanging about) were Galadriel's descendants. She only had one daughter, and from her three grandchildren, and not all of them took after their mother. The point of this long-winded little diatribe is that there were far too many blond Elves in the movie.
*It is interesting to note that Galadriel, one of the few Elves who should have been blonde, is played by one of the few women in the cast who is naturally blonde.
*Okay, I have now read that the bit from the appendices I mentioned above referring to Galadriel and her descendents, is referring to only to a certain group of Elves, the Noldorin, and not Elves in general. SOOOO, I suppose the Lothlorien Elves can be blond if they like, but why all of them? They look like androgynous clones.
*I have found an answer to the hotly disputed issue of whether Legolas should be blond or not. (His dad was, but I think the Elves of Mirkwood generally weren’t.) Here is a passage from chapter nine, book two of Fellowship: “Frodo looked up at the Elf [Legolas] standing tall above him, as he gazed into the night, seeking a mark to shoot at. His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.”
*One more thing about Legolas, it is painfully obvious that he wears coloured contact lenses, but not all the time. Orlando's eyes are naturally a warm root beer brown, but in most close-ups they are a somewhat icky shade of blue. Not all close-ups, though, and it seems the farther away you get from him, the darker his eyes appear, though not as dark as they are in real life. If we're going to be nitpicky, and that is the whole point of this list, then Legolas really should have grey eyes.
*While we're on this subject, no, Elijah Wood does not wear coloured contacts, yes, his eyes are really that colour and that huge. Some people are just gifted.
*I'm not picking on Sean Bean, but I mentioned his dislike for riding in a helicopter to mountain location sets. It got to the point where he told PJ that he would get to the locations by his own means rather than ride in the helicopter. This usually involved him hiking (in full costume and makeup) at least partway up the mountain to get to the set. That could explain why his hair always looked so stringy and icky.
*For all the big battle scenes you get to see in the movies a brand spankin' new computer program was created. Not only does it simulate a vast army so the director doesn't have pay thousands of extras, it also gives each individual CG soldier artificial intelligence. So you may see one Orc attacking an Elf, another falling off a cliff, and yet another running away. (Some of them are more intelligent than others. In fact the first time they tried it, all the Orcs ran away.) And here's a tidbit I found most amusing, they were all programmed so that if they were hit three times they had to fall down dead. Three must be the magic number; that's how many arrows it took before Boromir fell down dead. Well, not right away, of course, but you get the idea.
*I like that the battle scenes are filmed in such a chaotic manner. It really gives you an authentic sense of the battle field, plus it’s hard to see clearly who’s hacking what off of whom, something I am quite happy with.
*To close, here's a little factoid the less devoted Tolkien fans may not know. When Tolkien created Middle Earth and all her inhabitants, he was doing so to create a pseudo-mythology for England, who had lost her own native mythology when the Normans invaded. All that survived the conquest were Beowulf and a few scraps of poems. (King Arthur was "borrowed" from the French and given a Celtic flavour.) And when Tolkien set out to do this, he didn't mess about. He created a complete history, right back to the Creation, and languages for all the different races, each with a different alphabet. Read the appendices in Return of the King, and the Silmarillion, and you will begin to understand why I and other devotees get so bent out of shape when Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens try to “improve” on Tolkien. He was a wonderfully talented and dedicated writer. All serious fantasy writers should bow before his magnificence and sing hosannas in his name. ;~)