Orlando Bloom (Legolas) fell off a horse and cracked three ribs. Among other injuries: Christopher Lee (Saruman) broke his hand. Fortunately, he reacted in character as Gandalf, and Jackson kept the scene in the finished film.Ĩ. Similarly, while filming his scenes in Bilbo's low-ceilinged hobbit home in ' The Fellowship of the Ring,' Ian McKellen banged his head on a beam. He acted through the pain, and Jackson used the take in the completed 'Two Towers.' Mortensen also chipped a tooth during a night shoot and bruised his face while surfing on one of his days off.ħ. Mortensen fractured two toes while shooting a scene where he kicks an orc helmet, believing the kidnapped Merry and Pippin have been killed.

Injuries among the principal cast were plentiful. Jackson gave himself a cameo as a spear-hurling soldier atop the fortress gate.Ħ. The Battle of Helms Deep, which takes up much of 'The Two Towers,' was edited down from some 20 hours of footage. Viggo Mortensen, then 40, rushed in to replace Townsend and thereby made his career.ĥ. Jackson eventually cast Stuart Townsend, but fired him shortly after the shoot began because he felt the 28-year-old's performance lacked the maturity the role required. Vin Diesel turned down the heroic role, for which Daniel Day-Lewis, Russell Crowe, and Nicolas Cage had all been considered.Ĥ. Casting proved difficult, especially the role of Aragorn.

In this, he emulated Tolkien, who hated cars and preferred to travel on two wheels.ģ.

The director oversaw the simultaneous shooting of all three films at the same time by traveling between the sets on his bicycle. He had to hire three different editors to whittle it down, one for each of the three-hours-plus installments.Ģ. Jackson's 15-month shoot for all three films generated 1,100 miles of film. We learned a lot when the trilogy celebrated its 10th anniversary, but it seems there are more mysteries left in Middle-earth.ġ. The innovations of 'Two Towers,' and of the entire trilogy, seem taken for granted now, but it's worth looking back at the making of the films to discover there's still more to learn about them. It's no wonder that today, after performances in the Tolkien films, as well as Jackson's ' King Kong' and the ' Planet of the Apes' prequels, Serkis is universally regarded as the best motion-capture actor ever. Tolkien trilogy dazzled with its talking trees, massive battle sequences, and most of all, Serkis' heartfelt, psychologically complex performance. Released on December 18, 2002, the middle installment of Peter Jackson's first J.R.R. Today, when motion-capture performances are commonplace, it's hard to remember what a sensation Andy Serkis's Gollum was when we first met him 15 years ago this week, in ' The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.'

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