Return of the KING Extras

Ring in the year, Ring out the year. It was 365 days bewitched by hobbits and elves, wizards and...swords with pretty names. Last December's The Two Towers ushered in 2003 as the No. 1 movie. Now the swooping, epic finale to the Lord of the Rings trilogy; The Return of the King, is poised to take the box office crown through December and right into the new year again.
For three years, this scramble through Middle-earth has kept us dazzled with heroes who bear pointy ears, fuzzy feet, and tight, fated smiles. We worried. We rejoiced. Most important, we believed, and for that, the artists who created The Lord of the Rings are out Entertainers of the Year.
What an audacious, swaggering wager it was. Rather than tiptoe through the trilogy, New Line Cinema decided to film all three movies at once, over 15 months, at about $100 million each. The cast? Respected, but hardly marquee. Add to this J.R.R. Tolkien's prickly fan base, which was sure to shred any adaptation, and the fact that just a few years ago, fantasy was a joke.
Heading the enterprise: producer-writer-director Peter Jackson. At the time, the New Zealander (who insisted on filming in his homeland) boasted a resume that included one chilly jewel of an art-house film, Heavenly Creatures, and a bonanza of blood-splatting horror flicks. Not one of his movies had grossed more than $17 million.
No matter.The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers have become two of the most beloved movies ever-together grossing $1.8 billion worldwide (even Tolkienists hurrahed). King now looks primed to join the pantheon. Not that anyone who has worked with Jackson doubted it. "It's just something that's in his blood," says Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo. "He absolutely was overwhelmed with passion to make these movies. And he set up this incredible team to support him." Jackson's design and computer graphics folks created the toy town of Hobbiton in film 1 and the freaky arachnid in film 3, and tended

The film was originally going to end with a voice-over epilogue by
Cate Blanchett's character, Galadriel, detailing the fate of the
fellowship of the ring after the events of the movie.

CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT Drink deep of ''The Return of the King,'' the triumphant close to Jackson's ''Rings'' cycle
All hail The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King! I can't think of another film trilogy that ends in such glory, or another monumental work of sustained storytelling that surges ahead with so much inventiveness and ardor. The conclusion of Peter Jackson's masterwork is passionate and literate, detailed and expansive, and it's conceived with a risk-taking flair for old-fashioned movie magic at its most precious, a rarity now that CGI prowess has fallen into the hands of run-of-the-mill studio ring-chasers.
And now that I have your attention, here's why, specifically, the concluding episode of this fantasy epic is so good.
• The narrative soars, sweeping us up exactly where we were deposited at the end of ''The Two Towers,'' with confidence that if we've come this far, we're willing to follow without need of a remedial recap. As its title suggests, the times are climactic as the J.R.R. Tolkien saga resumes: The Ring-toting Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his devoted hobbit friend Sam (Sean Astin) are picking their way toward Mount Doom with the help/hindrance of the tormented Gollum (Andy Serkis + digital sorcery). The various constituencies of Middle-earth -- including the men of Rohan and their king Théoden (Bernard Hill), the Ranger-with-potential Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the archer-elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and the hearty dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) -- are plucking up courage, at the urging of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), to take a desperate stand against the monstrous orcs who fight on behalf of the evil Sauron. And very human emotions of fear, despair, madness, sorrow, rage, distrust, defiance, and hope are playing out against an onslaught of fantastical monsters of discord. ''The Return of the King'' begins in midair, and never loses loft.
• The characters deepen. Perhaps because the actors themselves have spent so much time in the skins (real or, in the case of the amazing creation Gollum, computer-generated) of their Middle-earth counterparts, shadings and subtleties of personality emerge that refresh our love of these fairy-tale players.
Dashing leaders Aragorn and Théoden become more soulful. The squabbly partnership between Legolas and Gimli softens. Théoden's niece, Éowyn (Miranda Otto), discovers reserves of battlefield bravery. Backbench hobbits Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan) have some nice moments as stand-ins for the kind of unspectacular folks most of us in the audience are. And most profoundly of all, the balance of heroism shifts between Frodo and Sam -- the hobbit with greatness thrust on him, and the theoretically less remarkable, decent hobbit by his side -- so that in an accretion of revelatory acts, we realize that it's Sam whose saga this really is. Wood is a marvelously human-style study in second thoughts; Astin is, quite simply, the average Joe star of the show.
• The discipline of the production never falters. The battle scenes are stupendous, as one would expect or hope: Flapping dragonlike beasts, stomping elephantine-via-''Star Wars'' behemoths, and a nightmare giant of a spider do their worst, and 200,000 orcs assemble for an attack. But Jackson puts each creature and each stirring speech there for a reason. (He doesn't linger, either, when a smoldering look will do, whether between Mortensen and Liv Tyler as Aragorn's beloved Arwen, or between Gandalf and the heavens.) And as he has done throughout, the director paces scenes of action, intimacy, and even panoramic, geographical grandeur (as when the fires blaze in sequence on mountain peaks, alerting the populace that the time of battle has arrived) with the control of a superb choreographer.
• The stakes matter. I'm certain that henceforth in its long life ahead as a great movie classic, the entire ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy will pick up the vibrations of whatever unease, instability, and longing are in the air -- of enemy threatening enemy, neighbor fearing neighbor, alliances forming and dissolving as alliances do in this real world. Perhaps the meaning of it will change as future audiences translate the parable to suit future times. The point is, it's impossible to watch ''The Return of the King,'' or to listen to the delicate passages and ringing declarations shaped by screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson from Tolkien's text, without also feeling that real world pressing in. And that's a triumph, first of Tolkien's relevance, and second of this production's valor in holding so inventively true to the author's vision.
(Posted:12/10/03)

Viggo Mortensen estimates that, during the course of
filming the entire trilogy and including all takes,
he killed every stuntman on the production at least fifty times.

For the scene where Merry and Pippin are smoking their pipes at Isengard,
Dominic Monaghan (Merry) had to drink a glass of milk beforehand
to keep himself from throwing up while smoking the pipe.

Near the beginning of the film as the camera flies towards Edoras,
and Eowyn who is standing on the steps in fornt of the Golden Hall,
you can see the smoke pouring back into the chimneys rather than out of them
(but you have to look really really hard).

The sound of the fell beasts that the ringwraiths ride is actually the noise of a donkey.

Dominic Monaghan was allergic to the elven cloaks the Fellowship wore.
Before scenes were shot, Peter Jackson used to joke around and say
"Are we ready to go? Does Dom have his cape on?"

In the scene where the Hobbits return to Hobbiton, three of the hobbits had slight problems during the shoot. Elijah Wood had a hard time controlling his pony, Sean Astin was allergic to the ponies, and Dominic Monaghan was in a really bad mood because of technical aspects revolving around the scene. Billy Boyd was "in stitches" during the shoot.

BAD HOBBIT JOKE ~
Merry and Pippin were walking home from the Inn one evening. Both had had more of their fair share of ale and it was dark. All of a sudden. Merry falls down a large Pot Hole and breaks one of his legs.
Merry: "Pippin, don't just stand there. Call me a doctor..Quick!"
Pippin: "If you say so Merry. MERRY IS A DOCTOR!! MERRY IS A DOCTOR!!!

And the minstrel exclaimed:
-Listen, peoples of Arda! Listen to the ballad about Frodo of the Nine Fingers,Sauron the Red-Eyed, Samwise the Brainless, and other invalids of the Third Epoch...

Entertainment Weekly Return of the King Preview:
December 17

In Peter Jackson's final LOTR installment, Sam fights a giant spider, Frodo is left for dead, Gandalf goes mano a mano with Saruman, and Aragorn descends into the Paths of the Dead. Wait, the Paths of the waaah...? "It's a classic faity-tale thing," explains Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn. "Don't go into that cave, you'll never return, no one has." Oh, cool. We'll be there.