Time for Tolkien fans to get excited: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is back in theaters for a limited run this summer. Thanks to Fathom Events, movie lovers can travel back to Middle-earth, whether to see it all again on the big screen or for the first time. The three-night event will feature one movie each night:
- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Saturday, June 8
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers -Sunday, June 9
- Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Monday, June 10
If you plan on going, make sure to get plenty of snacks and drinks beforehand, because it’s the extended versions of the films hitting theaters, remastered in 4K for the new release.
Get tickets to the Lord of the Rings trilogy – and read on below for a few fun trivia facts about the movies.
When Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy hit theaters, it was an unprecedented phenomenon that changed movies forever. To celebrate its rerelease, here are some fun fact you may or may not know about the trilogy.
1. Saruman actor Christopher Lee was a bona fide Tolkien fantastic. He read the Lord of the Rings every single year from the year it was published in 1954 all the way to his death in 2015, meaning he read Lord of the Rings over 60 times in his life. He also actually met J.R.R. Tolkien, who passed away in 1973.
2. Most LOTR fans know of the scene where Viggo Mortensen really broke his toe while filming Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when he kicked the helmet after losing Merry and Pippin to the Uruk-hai and orcs; his scream of anguish is a scream of real pain. However, fewer notice that Mortensen is only filmed from one side during the Mines of Moria scene where they find the tomb. This is because he had wiped out badly during surfing with his fellow castmates the day before and his face was banged up and bruised. Makeup tried to cover it but it didn’t work, so Peter Jackson decided to simply make sure the unbruised side of Viggo’s face was the one facing the camera.
3. When Sam and Frodo in are Osgiliath in The Two Towers, Sam famously says to Frodo, “By rights, we shouldn’t even be here.” It’s a slightly odd line that has always stuck out and that’s for a reason. It was a sly nod to the fact that they, literally, were not supposed to be there according to the story: in the books, Sam and Frodo were never in Osgiliath. The screen adaptation deviated from Tolkien’s original story.
4. If you notice, Gollum is missing his left earlobe. This wasn’t intentional, but entirely a happy accident. When casting the mold for Gollum for Peter Jackson to approve, an air bubble in the molding caused the final version to be missing part of the ear. Everyone liked the look of it as it helped add to the scrappy, battle-worn air of Gollum from his past, so the imperfection was kept in the final on-screen CG version.
5. Viggo Mortensen composed the music of the song he sang at his coronation scene in The Return of the King. The words, translated from Elvish, read
“Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come.
In this place I will abide, and my heirs,
Unto the ending of the world.”
It’s the same song Elendil sings in the books when he first arrives in Middle-earth from Númenor.
