The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Trivia (2003)

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Trivia

• The Battle at the Black Gate was actually filmed on a military-testing ground by the New Zealand Army who also provided to be extras as soldiers.
• In the Extended Edition, the Mouth of Sauron is played by Australian actor Bruce Spence. Spence's real mouth was digitally enlarged to underscore his role in Sauron's service, as well as further give the character an inhuman aspect.
• The film was shipped to theatres under the name "Till Death For Glory".
• While filming the trilogy, Viggo Mortensen got so into character that during a conversation, Peter Jackson referred to him as "Aragorn" for over half an hour without Mortensen's realizing it.
• Theoden touching the spears of his soldiers before they charge into battle was Bernard Hill's idea.
• John Rhys-Davies provides the voice of Treebeard (uncredited for this movie, but credited for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)).
• Also on the day of the premiere, New Zealand's 2 major TV networks both suspended regular broadcasts to give over to live coverage of the event.
• Most of the lines Legolas says in the Extended Edition scene of the Paths of the Dead are direct quotes from the book.
• For the lighting of the beacons sequence, one beacon was helicoptered up to the top of a mountain and then lit. The rest were all computer generated.
• The first film in the trilogy had 540 computer-generated effects. "The Two Towers" had 799 and "Return of the King" has 1488.
• A normal major motion picture averages about 200 effects shots. This film had 1488.
• 100,000 people lined the streets of Wellington for the world premiere. That's roughly a quarter of the city's population.
• The movie made a 1408% profit for New Line Studios on their initial outlay.
• In the extended version, Peter Jackson makes another cameo appearance as one of the corsair soldiers when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimili denied the Corsairs of Umbar, access to Gondor. Furthermore, a number of crew members were also as corsair soldiers.
• According to the Guinness Book of Records, the Lord of the Rings holds the record for the greatest number of false feet used in one movie: 60,000.
• The first fantasy film ever to win an Academy Award for best picture, Return of the King also won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for, the largest "sweep" in the Academy's history.
• Minas Tirith was built on Helms Deep's foundation, after being torn down.
• Andy Serkis was not the film-makers' first choice to play the real Smeagol at the beginning of the film. However, once they started considering other actors, they realized that Serkis was the natural choice.