Photo: Fathom Entertainment // YouTube
Surfing actually had a hand in the production of the Lord of the Rings movies. Or at least a surfing injury did.
As Entertainment Weekly reports, director Peter Jackson recently revealed that the way he shot the iconic battle scene at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was affected by a surfing mishap Viggo Mortensen (who plays Aragorn) experienced while filming in New Zealand.
The revelation came from newly released in-depth fan introductions to the Lord of the Rings films. The releases were announced on Tuesday by Fathom Entertainment and Warner Brothers Pictures, to accompany extended editions for each entry in the trilogy.
“So in the mines of Moria scene, we all show up to shoot that scene and Viggo had been out with the Hobbits during the weekend, and he had sustained an injury surfing,” recalled Jackson. “The board had flipped in the air and whacked him in the face. So he comes in and his eye is bulged out, black eye, shut like a boxer, and he says, ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I’m sorry.’ And I said, ‘Oh God.’ So you’ll see that all I could do is to shoot him from the side. When the cave trolls came in to attack them, that little sequence, Viggo is always seen from the side.”
This isn’t the only time Jackson had to work around Mortensen hurting himself on set, either. The actor famously broke two toes kicking an orc helmet in The Two Towers (a piece of film trivia so oft-repeated that it has itself become a meme).
