Most of the people who worked on the film were already fans of the book.
Viggo took the job at short notice, because his son loved Tolkien’s work.
Certainly the WETA workshop were a driven bunch - in one commentary they say how they engraved bits of the sets the camera would never see!
Alan Lee and John Howe deserve enormous credit for their vision.
They were signed up originally for a few months work doing some drawings the crew would then work from. Both stayed for around 6 years!
I find the 4 different commentary viewpoints (actors / writers / technical / production) quite fascinating.
For example, the camera will pan across Minas Tirith towards Gandalf, who then has a scene with Pippin.
The actors reminisce about how many takes it took and how the script changed slightly on the morning of the take.
The writers will say why they kept that scene and how it affected the pacing of the movie.
The technical guys will say which bit of the scene is a minature and what the props are made of.
The production suits will cringe aobut how much the helicopter cost!
Slight Hijack -
Hey Jayjay - Is that F&S Fellowship special available anywhere? (And you should take a look see at the extended films. They thoughtfully point out on the menu in the box which scenes are new or extended if you just want to check those out, or are short on time).
-The crane dropping the 2-ton block of concrete over and over again (to get the sound of the big trebuchet stones landing)
-The rather unflinching discussion of the last few weeks of production, including footage of people honestly getting stressed out and pissed at each other. How often do moviemakers let us see that side of things?
-The sheer amount of love and pride and joy that everyone has for each other, the material, and the movies.
One of the men commenting on Tolkien’s life says that Tolkien wanted to create a mythology that others could build upon and work with. Do you guys see that happening? Or has it happened and I don’t recognize it? Or did he (the commentator) mean something else?
I’d like to see other stories set in Middle Earth, whether in book-form or film. There’s certainly plenty to work with. If someone other than Peter Jackson wanted to do something, could they?
I haven’t watched all of the commentaries yet, but so far my favorite is the Book to Script section, the writers explaining and expanding on what they did and why. It appears that they had a good reason for everything they did. What an incredible achievement.
There has been a lot of scholarly and semi-scholarly work done on Tolkien’s mythos. There are Tolkien societies and students doing their doctoral dissertations on Middle-Earth. There are role-playing games and computer games. There are people who have tried to reconstruct the languages from what Tolkien left behind. This all builds on his brainchild.
There was a book recently published of short stories by various authors of what happened after ROTK ends, but damned if I can remember the title right now.
Interestingly enough, it’s Tolkien’s descendants who have been the biggest roadblocks to anyone altering, adapting or adding to the good professor’s work. The holdup with The Hobbit film is their fault, to my understanding.
Or you could widen your question to include “inspired by Tolkien” and you’d be able to add about 90% of the fantasy genre fiction that’s been published in the last 50 years or so, and a good 98% of amateur fantasy.
Were you thinking of Meditations on Middle-Earth, jayjay? I’m not sure that counts as it appears to be more essays than stories. Could be wrong though…
I do think that was what I was thinking of, and it’s my mistake. I thought they were further stories after the beginning of the Fourth Age. (Haven’t read it, obviously)
Pardon my ignorance, I heard there’s a part where the final scenes are shot, the actors saying goodbye, PJ and Elijah hugging, etc? Which chapter on the 3rd or 4th DVD has that?
I thought it would be “The End of All Things”, but that seems to be post-production stuff or “The Passing of the Age” which seems to be premieres and Oscars. Did I miss it somewhere?
PS everybody - The stories in the book After the King were NOT set in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I’ve read it. They were inspired by and in tribute to him, as a “festschrift” collection. [I may have misspelled that word. It’s used in academia for a collection of essays published in honor of a scholar, usually loosely focused on that scholar’s field of inquiry.] The Tolkien estate will not let anyone publish stories set in Tolkien’s world - & for that I, for one, am grateful. for various reasons. …
Question regarding the wonderful commentaries & documentaries: Why do we never hear or see Andrew Lesnie, the talented chief Cinematographer? I guess he was busy, but then again, wasn’t everybody.
Lastly, it was so good to see and hear Christopher Lee on these. Perhaps he has made up with Peter Jackson. His drawing, along with Brad Dourif’s, is also on the end credits now.
It’s on disc 4, under the heading ‘Filming the Return of the King’; ‘Cameras in Middle Earth’. Track 14 (the last one) shows the pickup shots filmed years after Principal Photography finished.
Peter Jackson is starting to weep as he embraces Elijah Wood (aaah!).
Well worth also for seeing the affection that Viggo Mortenson was held in. The stunt team gave him a haka (only performed on certain occasions as a mark of respect).
Oops - 2 things I wanted to include previously, but forgot:
1 - Thanks, Jayjay for the info regarding French and Saunders
Interesting bit in one of the special effects doc.s - Seems while they were designing the army of the dead effects someone came in & said "Take a look at this preview for “Pirates of the Caribbean” ". They saw that their concept for the ghost army was very similar to that of the ghost pirates, but they felt it was too late in the design process to redo. They really were quite rushed for time there at the end, it seems. Any of you guys have a thought on how they could have redesigned the army of the dead? Should they have?
Just finished watching everything (in Dolby 5.1 for the first time my life [at home] no less).
Wow! Just Wow!!
This is easily my favorite of the three EE’s. All of the new & extended scenes are fantastic!
There is one thing that is really bothering me, however. Why, o why, did PJ not include the brief scenes showing what Legolas & Gimli (and presumably Faramir, Eowyn, Merry, & Pippin) did after the events of the War of the Ring were over?
The EE documentaries show, briefly, what they filmed for Legolas & Gimli. Legolas is walking through the forest of Ithilien, and Gimli is inspecting a gem in the Glittering Caves. This is great stuff and would have fit perfectly in the denouement.
I’m not sure if they filmed any additional scenes with Faramir, Eowyn, Merry, or Pippin.
I just bought the RotK:EE set, and was surprised with some of the packaging differences. I had bought the FotR and TT sets while living in Japan, so have the Japanese editions. I’m curious as to whether the same changes exist in the American editions, or whether perhaps the Collector’s Edition box is more similar to the Japanese one?
There are three major differences I’ve noticed:
The Japanese set’s box is made of slightly heavier stock and has a pseudo-leather texture to it. Much more noticable than the flat texture of the American box.
Where the American edition has “Return of the King” written in large letters on the spine and front, the Japanese edition has “The Lord of the Rings” with the individual title written smaller underneath.
On the Japanese edition, the illustration on the back of the box (the symbols of Gondor in the case of RotK) is done in the same gold as the movie’s title.
Overall, the American box seemed cheaper. I guess I’m kind of annoyed because I’m anal and want the boxes to match each other while they sit on my shelf
