Trivia / The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

• Acting for Two:
  • John Rhys-Davies voices Treebeard in addition to playing Gimli.
  • So does his French dub actor, Vincent Grass.
  • And his German dub actor, Wolfgang Hess.
  • In addition to playing Gollum, Andy Serkis provides the voices for the Orcs and Urk-hai who argue about eating Merry and Pippin.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • The dawn shot of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas pursuing the Uruk-hai came about when Viggo Mortensen persuaded the second unit team to camp out on-location. Mortensen's efforts in organizing the overnight trip were so effective that actors and crew from the other film units, including Miranda Otto, came out to join him.
  • One time, while Bernard Hill was in Glasgow, Scotland, a woman came up to him and told him about how one of her children had died shortly before then, and that parents shouldn't have to bury their child. His interaction with this woman affected him so much that he asked to have a line put in about it.
  • In the scene where Aragorn has washed up on the shore of the river that he fell in when the Warg dragged him off the cliff and Arwen comes to him in a dream to revive him, the dialogue was originally in English. But Liv Tyler was entranced by the Elvish language, and since both characters and cast members knew how to speak it, she talked Peter Jackson into letting them translate the script for that scene. Everyone agreed that it turned out much better her way.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: On the wall of Helm's Deep during the battle, a one-eyed warrior turns to the camera, revealing his scarred empty socket. The performer who played him showed up as an extra, wearing an eye patch. Peter Jackson politely asked to see what was under the patch, and then inquired if the gentleman would be interested in appearing in the film sans eye patch. The gentleman was reluctant at first, and quite self-conscious, but afterward, said the experience had made him more comfortable with his condition.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • An accidental one with Aragorn's Death Wail. When Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli find the pyre of Uruk-hai and believe their friends are dead, Aragorn kicks an Orc helmet like a football and sinks to his knees with a heart-rending scream. This scream was only partially acting, and mostly a cry of pain as Viggo Mortensen had just broken two toes kicking a heavy, steel helmet while wearing soft leather boots. It was such a great take that it made the final cut.
  • When Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are chasing the Uruk-hai, Gimli's exhaustion wasn't just acting; John Rhys-Davies really was out-of-breath. His costume weighed 70 lbs. The costume department carried it to the location in pieces.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Pippin's justification for Treebeard taking them past Isengard, which consists of "The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm." It's been noted that this is Insane Troll Logic, but it's there because Billy Boyd was instructed to make up some impressive-sounding waffle in order to convince Treebeard to go to Isengard and see the destruction that Saruman had caused, and this is what he came up with.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • Early trailers included a brief scene of Eowyn waiting to attack an Uruk-hai from behind a pillar. This scene is not included in either the theatrical version nor the Extended Edition.
  • The teaser trailer that appeared as an Easter Egg on The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVD which featured (for about a second) a clean-shaven Aragorn.
• One-Take Wonder: The scene where Gandalf calls for his horse, and Shadowfax comes galloping across the fields and straight up to his Master, was achieved on the first take.
• On-Set Injury:
  • Viggo Mortensen nearly drowned floating down a river and broke his toe kicking a metal helmet (he incorporated his scream of agony into his acting when Aragorn is grieving over the apparent deaths of Merry and Pippin, with that take being the one in the finished film).
  • Bernard Hill got his ear sliced in two during the Battle of Helm's Deep.
  • Andy Serkis accidentally pulled Sean Astin's wig so hard it gave him a hairline fracture.
• Orphaned Reference: Faramir's lines "A chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor, to prove his quality," and "Tell him I send a mighty gift" were supposed to be Meaningful Echoes of what his father Denethor says to him earlier, in Osgiliath. The scene in Osgiliath was deleted, though it can be found in the Extended Version of the film. Granted, Faramir in the book did say the first line at about the same point in the story and Book!Denethor did refer to the Ring as "a mighty gift" that Boromir would not have let slip by in Return, so the references are merely demoted to "shout-outs to the source".
• The Other Darrin: In the Latin Spanish dub, Ricardo Tejedo voiced Gollum instead of his actor from Fellowship, Rubén Trujillo.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Peter Jackson's children are credited as "cute refugee children".
  • The scene where Gamling and King Theoden get ready for the battle (speech from Gamling), Bruce Hopkins' sons, Tom Hopkins and Joe Hopkins, are sitting at the entrance of the room, their backs to the camera, as refugees.
• Reality Subtext: In the Extended Edition, Pippin tells Merry about a dream he had in which they smoked a large amount of pipeweed, and then Merry got sick. During filming, Dominic Monaghan did indeed get sick when he tried to smoke.
• Refitted for Sequel: The warg attack is taken from The Fellowship of the Ring.
  • The scene where Faramir shoots a Winged Nazgul with his bow when it tries to capture Frodo is similar to a moment earlier on in the novel where Legolas shoots down a Winged Nazgul with his bow as it flies towards the Fellowship on the River Anduin.
  • The Extended Edition adds a scene where Merry and Pippin are nearly eaten by a Huorn only to be saved by Treebeard, which is similar to the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring where Tom Bombadil rescues the two Hobbits from Old Man Willow in the Old Forest and even recycles the same dialogue spoken by Tom.
• Throw It In!:
  • At first, Viggo Mortensen couldn't get the cry of grief and anger right at the scene when the trio think Merry and Pippin were killed. In the final take, he kicked a helmet and broke two of his toes. That's why he screamed and fell to his knees. The scream actually fit the mood perfectly, and was the one used in the final cut.
  • In Helm's Deep, the army of orcs stomping their feet and weapons before battle was entirely unscripted. It all happened because one of the actors playing the orcs got bored and began stomping his feet and weapons. Then other orc-actors began to do the same thing. Before long, they all did it in unison, which led to Peter Jackson throwing it in as the orcs doing it as a show of intimidation to the warriors behind the wall.
  • When Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli first arrive at Edoras, there is a shot of a Rohirrim flag fluttering to the ground. The flag had simply slipped loose due to the strong winds in the area that day, but Jackson left it in because he liked the symbolism.
  • When Grima Wormtongue sees Saruman's army of ten thousand orcs, he is so shocked that a Single Tear falls from one of his eyes. This wasn't in the script. It's something that Brad Dourif can do at will, and he and the filmmakers decided that it would work well for the scene.
  • Gollum's singing while slapping a fish in preparation to eat it in the Forbidden Pool scene was Andy Serkis' idea.
  • The line where Théoden looks at Gandalf and says "No parent should have to bury their child" wasn't in the book. It was added in by Bernard Hill, recalling a woman who had just lost her own child that said the same thing.
• What Could Have Been: Jackson and the other writers were very antsy about whether they could sustain the importance of Aragorn and Arwen's romance with them never once meeting in the whole film, and for a while hit on the idea of Arwen accompanying Haldir's elves to Helm's Deep, which lasted long enough for Liv Tyler to film some battle scenes. They ultimately decided against it, at least in part due to the outrage from fans when the idea leaked.

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