The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Film Type:

Feature

Language:

English

Spoken Languages:

Sindarin

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound

Frame Rate:

24 fps

Aspect Ratio:

2.35:1

Taglines:

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that we are given
Power can be held in the smallest of things...
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.
Middle Earth comes alive...
Fate Has Chosen Him. A Fellowship Will Protect Him. Evil Will Hunt Them.
You will find adventure, or adventure will find you.
One Ring To Rule Them All.
The Legend Comes to Life

Movie Connection(s):

Dubbed into: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Hindi)
Followed by: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (English)
Followed by: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (English)
Followed by: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (English)
Followed by: The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (English)
Followed by: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (English)

Goofs:

Audio/Video Mismatch
When Arwen and Aragorn are alone together on a bridge in Rivendell, her lips are moving while he is speaking.

Audio/Video Mismatch
When the troll grabs Frodo by the leg, Frodo calls for Aragon but his lips don't match what he's saying.

Audio/Video Mismatch
As Gandalf and Bilbo smoke "the finest weed of the Southfarthing" Bilbo blows out a ring of smoke that Gandalf watches, after that we see Bilbo's mouth saying something, but there's no audio.

Audio/Video Mismatch
When Frodo meets Bilbo in Rivendell and hugs him, you can hear Bilbo say "Ohh!" in delight of seeing Frodo again; however his mouth doesn't move.

Audio/Video Mismatch
As Saruman reveals the Palantir to Gandalf, he lifts the cloth while speaking the line "Why should we fear to use it?" As he finishes the line, his mouth is still moving.

Character Error
Gandalf asks Frodo if he can see anything on The Ring after he removes it from the fire. Frodo says "Nothing. There's nothing". The camera switches over to Gandalf then Frodo says "Wait!" The camera goes back to The Ring in Frodo's hands. It is plain in appearance and then letters start to appear on it. Why did Frodo say "wait" if nothing had happened yet?

Continuity
Gandalf's belt repeatedly switches between being tied and untied as he speaks to Bilbo.

Continuity
The length of the hilt section of the Shards Of Narsil seen in Rivendell is shorter than the section used by Isildur to slice the Ring from Sauron's hand.

Continuity
Boromir's shield continually disappears and reappears during the battle at the tombs in Moria.

Continuity
In the duel between Aragorn and Lurtz, Aragorn is thrown against a tree and we see his sword fall from his hand. The next shot shows Lurtz throwing his shield pinning Aragorn to the tree and again we see his sword fall from his hand.

Continuity
When Sam reveals to Gandalf what he overheard of Gandalf's and Frodo's conversation, a map disappears and reappears under his right shoulder. The fallen books on the floor also change position between shots.

Continuity
When Aragorn's pack bumps the camera, it's on his right shoulder, but in the next shot you see it's on the left.

Continuity
When the four Hobbits enter the Prancing Pony, there's a book on the counter with nothing on it. In the following shot, there is a feather lying on the book and a little bottle of ink next to it.

Continuity
In the scene where Gandalf is visiting Frodo's home, he leaves without his hat, as it is still on Frodo's coat hanger. In the next scene, Gandalf has his hat.

Continuity
Sam's clothes are completely dry, moments after Frodo saved him from drowning.

Continuity
When Gandalf first appears riding on his cart, there is a long grey-green cloth hanging from the lantern on the right-hand side of the cart, with Gandalf's staff on the left. In the next shot, the lantern and cloth have switched sides with the staff (which itself moves back and forth between shots as Gandalf and Frodo travel into the village). It would seem that the first shot has been flipped so that the "road" bends round to the left to match the curve of the road as Gandalf approaches Frodo in the next shot.

Crew/Equipment Visible
When the fellowship is departing from Lothlorien, Galadriel is seen riding in the swan boat across the river. If you look into the background to the left of the screen, a crew member can be seen crouching down and looking about.

Crew/Equipment Visible
As Elrond is explaining the quest, the close-ups of the Ring reflect the top of the set on which it was filmed.

Crew/Equipment Visible
In the scene in which Merry asks where Aragorn is taking them after leaving Bree, and he replies "Into the wild," Viggo Mortensen accidentally bumps the tip of his bow into the camera.

Crew/Equipment Visible
When first in the mines of Moria, Gandalf is walking along a ledge right before he explains what the dwarves' mine for, you can see him kick the wire that lights up his staff.

Crew/Equipment Visible
At the council of Lord Elrond, once the fellowship has been formed, in the close-ups of the hobbits you can see that they measure up above Gandalf's beard and Legolas's hair, almost up to their necks, but in the wide shots of the whole fellowship they are clearly smaller - only about waist height.

Errors in Geography
During the introduction, King Elendil is smashed against a rocky hill, the same place where the one ring is cut from Sauron's hand. The overhead shot that follows, shows no such hill.

Errors in Geography
When Aragorn and Legolas are talking, after the Fellowship has stopped before the Falls of Rauros on the River Anduin, the river can be seen flowing from right to left in the back ground. They are on the West bank of a river flowing from North to South and dropping over a large waterfall: the water should flow from left to right.

Errors in Geography
When the company are traveling South in the boats on the River Anduin, Legolas becomes aware of the approaching Uruk Hai. He turns his head to the left. The chief Uruk, Lurtz, turns his own head to the right. This implies that the Uruks are on the East bank of the river but in fact they are on the West bank, having come on foot from Isengard. And in crossing the river to get to the Emyn Muil Frodo goes beyond the Uruk's reach.

Revealing Mistakes
As Frodo runs from the orcs, his cape is clearly supported by a string to make it look flowing.

Revealing Mistakes
When Legolas spots the "crebain" birds from Dunland and warns the fellowship to take cover, his eyes are brown. Yet as an elf and the rest of the movie his eyes are blue. This is because Orlando Bloom had to wear contacts to change the color of his eyes, but could not wear them consistently because they scratched his corneas. Most of the time, his eye color was digitally changed, but they missed it in this shot.

Revealing Mistakes
After the Ring Wraiths break down the entrance to the village (the scene after Aragorn talks to Frodo and the others at the prancing pony), one ring-wraith turns toward a light and you can see the mask which hides their face but allows them to see out (like the Halloween masks). A ring-wraith is supposed to have no physical form other than when they are being looked at with the ring.

Revealing Mistakes
When Arwen is riding her horse with Frodo trying to escape the Ringwraiths, in one close shot of Liv Tyler you can clearly see the dummy that was replacing Frodo.

Revealing Mistakes
Near the end of the film, as Aragorn approaches Boromir, he steps around some orcs. One of the supposedly dead orcs sits up partly to look.

Revealing Mistakes
The forced perspective trick becomes visible while Gandalf and Bilbo are having tea. As Bilbo is pottering about, Gandalf sits on a Hobbit-sized chair at a table that is too small for him. As he shuffles slightly to get comfortable, his knees move the table, but only his, smaller, half moves - the other half, where Bilbo is seated, is further away from the camera, and stays put. It can be seen that this gap between the two table "halves" is concealed behind cleverly placed, bottles, plates, etc. Then, when Bilbo is about to pour hot water in the teapot, Gandalf lifts the teapot lid for him. The lid is not on the teapot, but placed on a spike nearer to the camera to create the forced perspective. It is also clearly visible when Gandalf puts the lid back.

Revealing Mistakes
In the theatrical version, Saruman's lower legs disappear for a frame or two as the camera swoops toward him when he is standing on the summit of Orthanc, bringing the lightning down on the mountain. This has been corrected in the extended edition of the film.

Revealing Mistakes
It is clear, that in some long shots of the scene in which the fellowship is formed in Rivendell, smaller stand ins (resembling children) are used to contrast height and are clearly not Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan or Billy Boyd.

Revealing Mistakes
When Saruman is telling Gandalf to join Sauron you can see that part of Christopher Lee's beard, right side of his face just under his mustache, has become unstuck.

Revealing Mistakes
After the huge orc battle, one of the "dead" orcs sits up and has a good look round before lying back down. This has been explained away in all manner of different ways, but it strikes a sufficient number of viewers as incongruous that it seems more likely to be a genuine error than not.

Revealing Mistakes
When Boromir cuts his finger on the broken sword, the blood is visible on his finger behind the sword before he gets cut, and as the sword is pulled away, his undamaged fingertip is visible through the blood.

Revealing Mistakes
During filming Christopher Lee broke his finger. As Saruman is summoning the lightning when the fellowship are climbing Mount Caradhras, as the camera swoops past Saruman you can see Lee's heavily bandaged finger.

Revealing Mistakes
When Aragorn is leading the hobbits through the Midge-water Marshes and Pippin falls flat on his face you can see the prosthetics on his foot falling off.

Trivia:

Gandalf's painful encounter with a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole was not in the script - Ian McKellen banged his forehead against the beam accidentally, not on purpose. But Peter Jackson thought McKellen did a great job "acting through" the mistake, and so kept it in.

Christopher Lee reads "The Lord of the Rings" once a year and has done so since the year it was published, and is the only member of the cast and crew ever to have met J.R.R. Tolkien.

Peter Jackson gave one of the rings used in the movies to both Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis as gift when the shoot was finished. They both thought they had the only one.

For high-tech tasks, a computer program called MASSIVE made armies of CG orcs, elves, and humans. These digital creations could 'think' and battle independently - identifying friend or foe - thanks to individual fields of vision. Peter Jackson's team could click on one creature in a crowd scene of 20,000 and see through his "eyes". Different species even boast unique fighting styles.

Veteran sword master Bob Anderson called Viggo Mortensen "the best swordsman I've ever trained".

When Christopher Lee and J.R.R. Tolkien were in correspondence, Tolkien gave Lee his blessing to play Gandalf if there ever was a film version of Lord of the Rings. Years later, Lee campaigned for the part of Gandalf in this production, but was offered the part of Saruman instead. Lee, who wanted to participate in the project any way he could, accepted the role of Saruman.

When Gandalf has his big stand-off scene with the Balrog, Ian McKellen is actually acting to a ping pong ball.

According to Sean Astin in the extended DVD commentary, when Bilbo drops the ring before leaving Hobbiton the floor was magnetic to prevent the ring from bouncing. This was done to demonstrate the importance and weight of the ring.

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 him realizing it.

Eight of the nine members of the Fellowship got a small tattoo of the word "nine" spelled out in Tengwar, which is the Elvish script created by Tolkien. They got it at a tattoo parlor in Wellington, New Zealand, to commemorate the experience of the movie. The ninth member, John Rhys-Davies, declined and sent his stunt double in his place. Elijah Wood's tattoo is on his lower stomach. Sean Astin and Billy Boyd have the tattoo on their ankles (to commemorate all those hours in the hobbit feet). Orlando Bloom, who plays the archer elf Legolas, has his on his forearm. His tattoo is visible during a fight scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Ian McKellen's is on his shoulder. Dominic Monaghan's is on his shoulder. And the eighth member, Sean Bean, has his tattoo on his right shoulder. Viggo Mortensen has his tattoo on his left shoulder. It is visible on some pictures from the movie Eastern Promises (2007)

John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli the dwarf, is the tallest of the actors who play members of the Fellowship. He is 6' 1".

When Pippin is being hit with the apples after asking about second breakfast, it is Viggo Mortensen himself chucking the apple at his head. They had to shoot the scene 16 times to get it just right, and Billy Boyd says he believes Mortensen enjoyed himself immensely.

Hobbiton was made a year before production began to make it look like it was a natural, lived-in place, complete with real vegetable patches. The greens department regulated the length of the grass by having sheep eat it.

Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), who is trilingual in English, Spanish, and Danish, requested the script be revised to let Aragorn speak more of his lines in Elvish.

Orlando Bloom (Legolas) did most of his own stunts and broke a rib in the process.

The cast often had to fly to remote shoot locations by helicopter. Sean Bean (Boromir) was afraid of flying and would only do it when absolutely necessary. When they were shooting the scenes of the Fellowship crossing the snowy mountains, he'd spend two hours every morning climbing from the base of the mountain to the set near the top, already dressed as Boromir. The crew being flown up could see him from their helicopters.

During the fight between the orc, Lurtz, and Aragorn, the moment where Lurtz takes out the dagger Aragorn had stuck it in his leg, and then Lurtz threw it at him. That was an actual dagger. It was supposed to hit the tree behind Viggo Mortensen, but because of the bad capabilities with the orcs armor, he accidentally threw it towards Viggo. Luckily, Viggo was fast enough to deflect it. The scene was therefore improvised by that.

In one take of the Bucklebury Ferry scene, Elijah Wood overshot his jump and ended up in the river instead of on the Ferry.

Viggo Mortensen chipped a tooth while filming a fight sequence. He wanted Peter Jackson to superglue it back on so he could finish his scene, but the director took him to the dentist on his lunch break, had it patched up, and returned to the set that afternoon.

Orlando Bloom landed the role of Legolas two days before he finished drama school.

Originally the narration at the prologue was to be spoken by Elijah Wood, but it was felt that the information imparted had little bearing on the character of Frodo. Ian McKellen also recorded a narration but once again it was felt that Gandalf wasn't the right character to speak it. They eventually settled on Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, as it emphasizes the timelessness of the elves.

Over 12.5 million plastic rings were made in order to fabricate simulated chain mail for the movie. Two crew members spent the length of the shoot linking the rings by hand into suits of armor. By the end of production, they had worn the fingerprints off their thumbs and index fingers.

When Bilbo finds the Ring at the start of the movie Gollum shouts "My Precious" however Andy Serkis wasn't on set that day so Dominic Monaghan stood in for him.

The original cut ran four hours and thirty minutes.

The Orc blacksmiths shown beneath Isengard are actually the WETA Workshop staff who made the weapons used in the film.

Viggo Mortensen did his own stunts. He also insisted on using only the real steel sword, instead of significantly lighter aluminum sword or safer rubber sword which were manufactured for battle scenes and stunts.

The two most renowned Tolkien artists are Alan Lee and John Howe, and so it was important to Peter Jackson to have those two on board. Lee was tracked down to a tiny little village in Dartmoor, England and was FedExed a package of Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and a letter outlining his intentions. They monitored the progress of the FedEx package every step of the way, but were somewhat surprised when Lee rang them only 3 hours after delivery to say he'd love to work with them. Howe meanwhile was living in Switzerland, and because someone hadn't worked out the time differences between Europe and New Zealand correctly, was rung about 2am. He says that the biggest frustration with that phone call was waiting for Jackson to finish his pitch before he could say yes.

Boromir's speech at the Council of Rivendell is read from a sheet of paper sitting on Sean Bean's lap as it was only given to him the night before.

When the dragon firework goes off at the party, the shriek heard is Billy Boyd actually screaming, as he was unaware at the time that the firework was really going to explode on set (he thought that it would be put in digitally). It was not scripted, but that take ended up in the final film.

Legolas's arrows in the final battle are computer generated. It would have been physically impossible for even the most gifted archer to fire off so many arrows so quickly.

The different colors of blue for the elves' eyes revealed what race they were. The Lothlorien elves had light blue eyes, and the Rivendell elves were dark blue.

Liv Tyler accidentally stabbed herself up in the right thigh, when filming the 'If you want him, come and claim him!' sequence. Footage was featured in bloopers and outtakes of the film.

During filming, most of the members of the Fellowship took up surfing in New Zealand in their spare time. Among them was Viggo Mortensen, who wiped out terribly one day, and bruised one whole side of his face. The next day, makeup tried to mask the bruising and swelling, but were unsuccessful. Instead, Peter Jackson opted to film Mortenson from one side for the entire scene. In the Mines of Moria when they find the tomb, Aragorn is only seen from one side in the whole scene.

It is estimated that filming of the trilogy pumped about $200,000,000 into the New Zealand economy. The New Zealand government even created a Minister for Lord of the Rings, whose remit was to exploit all the economic opportunities the films represented.

The four actors playing the young Hobbits would have to go into make-up at 5am and stand for an hour and a half while their prosthetic feet were being applied. Sean Astin's personal make-up artist doing this was called Sean Foot.

During the Council of Elrond, leaves are continually falling in the background to suggest that this is a meeting that is taking place outside. This meant about half a dozen crew members were positioned above the set, dropping leaves at various intervals. This also meant that the production department had to collect sacks and sacks of leaves during autumn, and of course dead leaves turn brown fairly quickly. Which also meant that every single one of those leaves had to be individually painted.

Viggo Mortensen purchased Arwen's horse after production and gave it to Liv Tyler's riding double.