SPOILERS AHEAD

Who doesn’t like The Lord of the Rings? Someone with no brain, that’s who. I love them, and after marathoning them again (including the four hour Return of the King extended edition because I have no life) I decided that I’d dig up the old factoids on Frodo and co. from the Internet, further clarifying that I’m a hopeless LOTR nerd. Prepare to be amazed, or possibly not… but let’s get going anyway (also P.S. there will be no Hobbit trilogy meh trivia on this list I haven’t decided the length of yet).

ONE: SIR CHRISTOPHER LEE HAD TOLKIEN’S BLESSING TO PLAY… GANDALF

You might not know this, but the late Sir Christopher Lee was the only cast member to meet Tolkien, writer of the LOTR books in person. Lee was a superfan, reading the book series yearly, and regularly communed with the writer. However, when it came to casting for the trilogy, Peter Jackson ended up settling with Sir Ian McKellen for the role of Gandalf, rather than Lee who had lobbied for it, and notoriously had Tolkien’s blessing to play the character. Fortunately, it all worked out in the end, McKellen being an awesome Grey (and White!) Wizard, and Lee doing a definitively better version of his Count Dooku as Saruman (thus also proving that Saruman had a high Midichlorian count).

TWO: NICHOLAS CAGE WAS ALMOST ARAGORN

Another casting fact, and wouldn’t this have been a weird old thing. Shout-and-whisper King Nic Cage was OFFERED the role of Aragorn prior to Viggo Mortensen being cast in the part. Cage turned it down however because of ‘family obligations’. Just think of what could have been though, all the possibilities… (you’re imagining it).

THREE: SEAN BEAN – NO FLYER – BUT A CLIMBER

Everyone’s favourite clingy son of Denethor, Boromir, as portrayed by the constantly-killed Sean Bean, is known for a few things. Trying to strangle Hobbits. Obsession. Whimpering. Taking arrows like a boss. But he does have one weakness: he’s afraid of flying. Or at least Bean is. Due to this, whenever the cast flew up via helicopter to film Mountain scenes, Sean Bean would get up early and hike up those Mountains in full Boromir gear. You can’t argue with that commitment, nor can you argue with the fact that one cannot simply walk into Mordor.

FOUR: GANDALF’S HOBBIT HOLE HEAD BUMP WASN’T SCRIPTED

You know of what I speak. Gandalf bumps his head on the ceiling of Bilbo’s Hobbit Hole in The Fellowship of the Ring. The best part of it is, the whole thing wasn’t scripted, and good ol’ Peter Jackson, then not hurtling down a well of CGI and self seriousness, kept the moment in the final cut of the film. He felt Ian McKellen did a great job ‘acting through the mistake’.

FIVE: VIGGO MORTENSEN WAS PRETTY LETHAL, YOU KNOW?

First thing’s first, you need to understand Viggo Mortensen went a little method when shooting LOTR. Secondly, you have to also realise that he insisted on using a real steel blade during all his fight scenes as Aragorn, rather than something lighter and less intense. Finally, know that veteran Swordmaster Bob Anderson called Mortensen ‘the Best swordsman he had ever trained’. High praise indeed.

SIX: THOSE ORC BLACKSMITH’S MAKING WEAPONS… WERE ACTUALLY CREW MEMBERS MAKING… WEAPONS

The Orc Blacksmiths working beneath Isengard in The Fellowship of the Ring are indeed WETA workshop staff, which is a fun little meta Easter Egg and gag. They made the weapons used in the films, and in the context of the films, the Uruk-Hai and their weapons, who quite frankly give Stormtroopers a run for their money in deadliness. Helms Deep is still incredible though.

SEVEN: MORE EVIDENCE THAT CHRISTOPHER LEE HAD A CRAZY LIFE

If, like myself, you’ve sat through the extended edition of Return of the King, you’ll know that (spoiler) Saruman dies after being unceremoniously stabbed by Grima Wormtongue and plummeting to his death from Isengard Tower… and then being impaled on a wheel… and slowly lowered into the water. Yeah, it’s a bit much you could say. When he directed the scene, Peter Jackson tried to give tips on how to react to being stabbed to Sir Christopher Lee. However, the Saruman actor, a former British Special Forces WWII veteran, said he knew what a man sounded like when stabbed in the back. Dark.

EIGHT: ALL CHARACTERS WORE WIGS – EXCEPT ONE

Well, you didn’t truly believe Ian McKellen grew his hair out did you? Yes, everyone wore wigs, bar one little Hobbit – Peter Jackson’s son – who had ‘naturally perfect Hobbit hair’. Both he and Jackson’s daughter cameo in all of the three films.

NINE: VIGGO’S MEMENTOS

Another fact concerning the mighty Mortensen, and this one concerns the time after production on the films finished. Impressed to no end by the horse his character rides in The Two Towers and Return of the King, Mortensen bought Aragorn’s horse from the owners. It was however shipped back to New Zealand for additional shots in 2002, but nevertheless, it belonged to Viggo (which is for some reason weird to say). Not only did he buy that horse, but also Arwen’s, who he gave not to Liv Tyler but to her stunt double. Let’s be frank, it ended up in the right place, because Liv Tyler mainly laid around moping over sacrificing her immortality rather than riding that horse.

TEN: FORCED PERSPECTIVE WAS USED IN NEW AND GROUNDBREAKING WAYS

The problem with Hobbits is that they’re difficult to film. That doesn’t make much sense to me, but then again, they are very small (one for all the Treebeard fans out there). As such, CGI was used on many occasions to shorten Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and co. However, forced perspective was another useful tool in doing this.

This would be done by placing Gandalf closer to the camera, and the Hobbits much further away. An example would be that scene early on with Frodo and Gandalf in the cart. It would turn out that Elijah Wood was positioned 3ft behind Ian McKellen, and with good set design and camera use, the eye is fooled into thinking they’re sat side by side, Wood just much smaller than his Shakespearean co-star.

A way this was all achieved was through a new system, consisting of a pulley and a platform. As the camera moved, as would the cast, making sure that the perspective would always be consistent. Different sized props were also used to interact with different sized characters. So that’s all impressive.

ELEVEN: A TALE OF RINGS

So here’s some fun Ring trivia. The goldsmith in New Zealand originally made 15 rings, each slightly different in size and weight for samples. From these, one design was selected for the One Ring. Two were made for the scenes with the hobbits, a slightly larger one for scenes with Sauron, and a huge one for marketing photography for the movie. When the filming of the final movie was over, Andy Serkis and Elijah Wood were given prop rings used in the movie by director Peter Jackson. They each thought they had gotten the only one, and upon the realisation that they both had one probably would have been pretty disappointed you would think. One of the other rings is on display at the goldsmith’s family’s shop (he died before the last movie was released), and the others went to production staff.

Although, let’s be honest, Peter Jackson’s probably got one. I have a vivid mental picture in my mind of him sitting in the corner of his house and gently caressing the Ring in his hand. Maybe its influence is why we got such underwhelming (in my humble opinion) Hobbit films.

TWELVE: HELMS DEEP – A VERY PRACTICAL SET, SHOULD IT HAVE BEEN BESIEGED

Ah, Helms Deep. Such an awesome sequence. But did you know that it would have been really difficult to break down should an actual siege have been mounted against the set? On the day of filming, the battering ram that had been made to break down the gates failed to do so. The door was built too well! Peter Jackson is even on record in the video commentary as saying that if he was to defend a castle, he’d want the WETA workshop guys to build his door.

SOME UNIVERSE-CENTERED TRIVIA

ONE: LOSING THE RING DOESN’T MEAN YOU AGE NECESSARILY

Alright, alright, I know you see Bilbo age up considerably from the sharp, middle-aged guy we saw at Bag End when Frodo finds him in Rivendell. However, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t losing the Ring that had caused Bilbo to look his age. After all, Gollum seems a little sprightly for a 500 year old. Other than the fact he looks like a Hellish version of Dobby the House Elf.

The only thing that seems to cause the aging process to assert itself more visibly is the destruction of the Ring itself it seems. As such, Bilbo feels all of his years when he sets off with Frodo, Gandalf, Lord Elrond and Lady Galadriel at the end of Return of the King. Or you can just take it at face value that losing the ring was what made him ancient and did this to him.

TWO: ORCS ARE CORRUPTED ELVES

Here’s something fun to think about over your cheerios or whatever it is you eat: Orcs are corrupted Elves. The perceived idea is that evil, such as in mythology, cannot simply create but can only corrupt. I think this is a pretty great concept. Pretty neat. Ok. Let’s move on.

THREE: OPEN ENDED ALLEGORY

Tolkien always stood by the fact that Lord of the Rings is an open ended allegory. He never, despite the wider context of the time, thought of Sauron as Hitler or Saruman as Mussolini. It’s up to the readers to make up their mind on any metaphor or symbolism in the books, as it is in the films. In fact, Tolkien was completely against that idea. Good for him.

FOUR: ARWEN IS ARAGORN’S COUSIN

Now we understand the true reason why Elrond was so hesitant to let her go…

No, thankfully they’re cousins sixty-three times removed. Aragorn was a descendant of Elros, Elrond’s brother. Both were part of a race of Halfelves, which gave them the power to choose between Elven and Human life. Elrond of course, being the smart alec he was, chose an immortal Elven existence, whereas Elros set up post as a stodgy mortal. This is why Aragorn lived so much longer than normal men.

FIVE: SAURON’S NOT THAT HORRENDOUS

Well, he is. But not as horrible as Morgoth. Once one of the Ainur*, Morgoth was a powerful and terrible being, with Sauron being one of his Vassals.

The bottom line is, Morgoth was much worse than Sauron. The Valar actually sent the Wizards such as Gandalf and, indeed, Saruman (plus the guy covered in poop with a CGI bunny sleigh from the Hobbit) to protect Middle Earth from Sauron, who was carrying out Morgoth’s evil agenda.

SIX: SOMETHING ABOUT SHELOB

You remember Shelob. The terrifying Spider who lost to Samwise Gamgee and a torch. But what you might not know is some… other things… about her. She is the daughter of Morgoth supporter Ungoliant, a spirit who predates time (like Tom Bombadill!), who for some reason chose the physical form of a Spider. Nobody knows why.

SEVEN: TOLKIEN CONSIDERED SAMWISE GAMGEE THE TRUE HERO OF THE TRILOGY

Walk all the way to Mordor and what do you get? ‘Go home Sam’. Then fend off a giant Spider, have the willpower to hand over the Ring back to Frodo, fight a ton of orcs and even carry his fellow Hobbit to almost the top of Mount Doom. He deserves some recognition, and not just among the meme crowd (PO-TAT-OES – mash ’em, boil ’em, stick ’em in a stew). Fortunately, Tolkien considered Sam to be a true hero.

SOME MORE QUICK FACTS

After the latter’s death in Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn can be seen wearing Boromir’s gauntlets in the concluding two parts to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

When Aragorn screams in anguish at the supposed loss of Merry and Pippin after kicking over an Uruk-Hai helmet, it was actually in pain, as Viggo Mortnesen had broken his toes on the helmet.

Orlando Bloom and Sean Astin also notoriously sustained injuries on set.

The series was nominated for 800 awards for the entire series (including The Hobbit), and won 475 of them.

Sean Connery was offered the role of Gandalf, as well as up to 15% of the box office receipts for the LOTR trilogy ($400 million). He didn’t understand the script however, so turned it down.

This is my favourite trilogy of films (Star Wars and Avengers come close though), and I haven’t done a trivia article in a while, hence the reason I chose to do this. Star Wars and Avengers come close though.

Informative? Love it? Of course you did, you love Lord of the Rings. But if you also love pretty decent film content, a like/follow for this blog would be appreciated. Thanks for reading. 🙂