The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, is an Academy Award record holder - that means that the specific movie had won the most amount of awards in the categories where it was featured. Given how epically large the movie was (it is the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy), it is natural to find a lot of weird and unexpected facts about the movie. This article is going to chronicle 15 different aspects that you have probably never heard about the movie.
Although every Lord of the Rings movie made a hefty profit for its producer, the last movie might have beaten all expectations. According to official statistics, the Return of the Kind made a whopping 1408% for New Life Studios at the box office.
The oliphaunt (the type of elephant hybrid you see in the above photo), was a movie prop that was specifically made for the last movie of the trilogy. According to people in the business, the oliphaunt is the largest movie prop ever created.
Anyone who has watched the Lord of the Rings probably remembers the Battle at the Black Gate. That battle is one of the largest fights ever filmed, and the production studio wasn't able to find enough extras, so they had to enlist the New Zealand army to send its member in order to help out.
Once filming and production for the movie ended, the film's main protagonist Elijah Wood was the "one ring" prop that was used throughout the movie. Unfortunately, he thought that was the only ring, while there was also a second ring that was given to Andy Serkis.
Arachnophobia is a type of condition where the person who suffers from it feels a very severe type of fear when they see or are being close to spiders. Peter Jackson, the movie's director, had based the Shelob spider design on the types of spiders he was the most afraid of.
As it is custom in many film productions, on the last day of shooting, cast members receive gifts from the studio. For the Lord of the Rings, most cast members received movie props that were most significant to the characters they played.
Miranda Otto (who played the Elven woman Eowyn), was gifted with one of Eowyn's long Elfish dresses, and of course, her character's main weapon, a sword. The actress was probably very happy and moved to receive gifts like that.
Actress Liv Tyler, who played the character of Arwen in the last movie in the trilogy, was gifted with her character's so-called "dying dress." While that might sound morbid to some, the dress probably meant a lot for the rising star of the movie.
Orlando Bloom was still building a name for himself out in Hollywood when he got to lead the epic role of Legolas in the movie. According to many people, Legolas is one of the most popular characters after Frodo. In any case, Orlando Bloom's gift from the movie was Legolas' bow.
The actor who played Gimli (a strong and witty dwarf warrior), Joh Rhys-Davies, suffered from severe rashes from having to wear hours of makeup so that he can fit into his role. So, his gift was the ability to throw away all the makeup and mask into a fire.
Since movies have to also use a lot of live props in order to be more realistic, is it understandable why some props had to be auctioned. However, Viggo Mortensen got so attached to the horses, that he actually bought two on the auction after the movie's production.
The Lord of the Rings movies don't only lead by the number of awards received, but they have also almost broken all records in terms of Oscar nominations. According to official data, the entire trilogy had been nominated for 30 different awards in the Academy Awards. The only other franchise to do so was Star Wars.
Some of the scenes for the legendary battle at the Black Gate, had to be shot in a desert that had also been used by the New Zealand army to train - so that's why the field was littered with land mines. The army had to sweep the area to make sure it was safe for filming.
According to actor Viggo Mortensen (who played the character of Aragon), he speculated that he had to kill every movie extra at least fifty times during the making of the trilogy. That would make him one of the largest "serial killers" of movie extras.
At the time of release, the average Hollywood movie had about 200 shots that contained special effects (like the movie Matrix). Return of the King broke that amount by about seven times - this movie had a total of 1,488 different scenes with special effects.
