Curiosities | “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”, the acclaimed film by Peter Jackson, turns 20!

2021 is a year of celebration, both for the big titles that hit the movies and for the classics that celebrate their birthdays. And one of them is the legendary and revolutionary “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”.

Released twenty years ago, the first iteration of Peter Jackson’s iconic trilogy functions as an adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s novel of the same name and takes audiences to the fantastic and dangerous Middle-earth. The tale centers on Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), a young hobbit whose mission is to take the One Ring, object of the extreme greed of evil Sauron, to Mount Doom and destroy it once and for all.

Starring Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Orlando Bloom and several others, the film was hailed by critics and audiences alike, both seeing it as a turning point. in the fantastic genre on the film scene. “The Fellowship of the Ring” won 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, won four statuettes and grossed nearly $ 900 million worldwide.

To celebrate its impending birthday, CinePOP has put together a list with several behind-the-scenes anecdotes, which you can check out below:

Lee, who played Saruman in the film, revealed that he read Tolkien’s trilogy once a year until his death in 2015 – and has been since the publication of the first book. He’s also the only member of the cast and creative team to know Tolkien. Jackson gifted one of the rings used in the film to Wood and Andy Serkis (Gollum / Smeagol) at the end of filming. They both believed they had the original.

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Gandalf’s painful encounter with the roof of Bilbo Baggins’ house was not in the script. McKellen, who lived through the mighty mage, accidentally hit his forehead. Jackson said McKellen did a great job overcoming the “mistake” and decided to keep the scene in the final cut. Actors usually had to travel to remote locations by helicopter. Bean, who played Boromir, was terrified of flying and only did so when absolutely necessary. While filming scenes for Fellowship crossing the snow-capped mountains, he spent two hours each morning climbing from the base of the mountain to the plateau, already disguised as Boromir.

Although he played a dwarf, John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) was the tallest member of the Society group at six feet tall. The Elvish dialogues in the film were not just quotes from the book, but constructs derived from the very limited dictionary Tolkien had published on the language. Dialect instructor Andrew Jack used recordings of the author reading the original novels to guide the actors and actresses in speaking. “The Fellowship of the Ring” and the 2002 sequel, “The Two Towers,” were filmed simultaneously. The entire shoot took a record 274 days over sixteen months, concurrent with the 1979 filming of “Apocalypse Now”.

Mortensen (Aragorn), who is fluent in English, Spanish and Danish, requested that the script be revised so that his character has more Elvish lines. Bloom landed the role of Legolas two days before graduating from drama school. Mortensen was cast in the production while he was already being filmed, having never met Jackson or read Tolkien’s books. It was his son Henry Mortensen, eleven at the time, who did all the research and convinced the actor to sign the contract to play Aragorn.

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