Monday 29 April 2013

Magic Quivers and Other LOTR Asides.

I just wasted an hour reading up on the cast list of LOTR, and also some of the things that were revealed in the extended version of the trilogy. It made interesting reading. For a start, I was amazed at how many of the actors were American. I never heard a single American accent in the films, which says a lot for the likes of Mortensen, Wood, Astin, Tyler, and Dourif. Other points of note:

  • Mortensen bought the two horses he’d ridden in the films because he’d bonded with them so well.

  • He was also on the same side as me at the last Presidential election.

  • Wood and Astin became close friends during shooting, just as they were in the films.

  • In spite of Peter Jackson’s best efforts to make Legolas look a bit… well… girly, Bloom had the guts and gusto to break several ribs on set. In fact, it appears he has something of a propensity for breaking bones in real life.

  • Bloom is a Buddhist, and once rescued and adopted a dog during the making of another film.

  • They seem like my kind of people.

  • Aragorn revealed his age in one of the extra scenes. 87.

  • 87?

  • What isn’t revealed, apparently, is how Legolas’s quiver usually manages to have more arrows in it than it did in the previous scene, in spite of the fact that he’s just shot fifty or so into various ne’er-do-wells. I’d like to assume elf magic at work, but I suspect we’re just not supposed to notice.

3 comments:

Madeline said...

Have you watched the movies with commentary? Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan are hilarious. At one point there's a shot of Rohan (I think?) with a giant cauldron out in front and one of them says, "That's Peter Jackson's bowl of Chex Mix."

Madeline said...

Also, Brad Dourif goes on about the penguins in New Zealand and confuses the words "cavalry" and "Calvary."

JJ said...

In spite of my swingeing and probably ill-conceived criticism of LOTR, I'm finding that it won't let me go and I'm becoming uncommonly fond of it. And the problem is that when I become this fond of a film - especially a fantasy film - I find myself wanting to see it not as a film, but as a form of alternate reality. At that stage commentary becomes inappropriate, however entertaining and insightful it might be. I just never grew up.

Off to google 'Chex Mix.'