Ringer Mattforce spotted the following post over on the IGN boards following the posting of these screencaps.
The post (corrected for appalling grammer) reads:
At the end. After all the orcs are washed away. At Isengard. Pippin and merry are looking for food. and Pippin finds an apple floating in the water. and they follow the apples.
And they get to this little like store room where Isengard had all its food. like chicken and fruits and all. And then Pippin sees a barrel that says “South Farthing” and they open up the barrel and its full of weed from the Shire!
And at one point Pippin’s like “Do you think we should give Treebeard some of this?” And Merry’s like “No, it’s dead plant, he wouldn’t understand, it could be one of his relatives”. And they both start smoking it. And start laughing their asses off. And smoke comes out of the room, they fog machined it! And Treebeard’s looking at the smoke coming out of the doorway and listening to Merry and Pippin laugh their asses off!!!
This tends to mesh with War of the Ring’s description: “After the trashing of Isengard, Merry and Pippin mock Saruman. Floating apples, and other food lead them to discover the storeroom where they promptly find two barrels of Long Bottom Leaf. (One barrel for each of them of course!)”
Not long to wait to find out, now.
Ceejay writes: I’ve just started watching the first of the extras disc on TTT exdended edition DVD after watching the film twice and have come something that caused quite a stir on the internet between the makers of the film and the fans. I remeber quite a while back about the huge uproar fans made whenit was suggested that PJ would have Arwen turn up at Helms Deep and deliver the sword of Kings to Aragorn while indulging in some sword play herself. One of the books on the films production even had sketches of her armour but to my knowledge none of the footage was ever sen if they had shot any.
Well in the second featurette on disc three of the DVD titled”From Book to Script: Finding the story” Not only do they cover the other touchy subject of Farimir’s character adaptation (fully justified) but they also explain why they decided to originally have Arwen at Helms Deep and why they scrapped the idea late into filming. They also show footage of Arwen and Aragorn fighting at Helms Deep side by side, she is not in armour though, only a burgundy dress but you see her dispatch an Orc sending him over a wall. We also see Liv Tyler training with her sword choreographing her fight scenes on the set. On a side note, the same featurette also shows a few scenes from ROTK a few of which were never seen before. Amongst them are Farimir and his Rangers returning to Osgiliath, Gollum leading Sam and Frodo up some part of Mordor and also the complete shot of Gandalf racing up the side wall ontop Shadowfax to see the enemy surrounding Minas Tirith. There are also some footage of the Elves at Helms Deep not used in the final film as they await the coming forces of Saruman.
I’m loving this gem of a DVD!
Ringer Mattforce writes in with a few tidbits about a new RoTK game trailer (from EA) he saw on the Fox network during MadTV. Here be spoilers, you have been warned.
I just saw this ROTK game commercial – it was all about Gollum. It showed clips from the theatrical trailer, with a voiceover from Gollum. I can’t quite remember, but he was talking about eating the hobbitses and pulling their fingers from their bodies and licking them and eating them one by one.
Miami Mofo writes: While at B&N to buy Jude Fisher’s ‘LotR:RotK Visual Companion’, I was leafing through an imported October, 2003 issue of ‘Empire Magazine’ where I read the following in a report written as filming drew to a close in July, 2003:
‘Hobbit extra Peter Eastwood (no relation to Clint), a naturally diminutive tax inspector from Auckland blessed with startingly large eyes, stubs out a cigarette and grins from ear to pointy ear. “I was going to be Sean Astin’s stand-in,” he announces to anyone in the vicinity whom he suspects to be a member of the press, “but I’ve been a Hobbit, another Hobbit and a Dwarf in the Council of Elrond, and now I’m that first Hobbit again. ‘During lunch, waiting to be rustled back to finish a secret “Shire party scene” for the end of the movie, the Hobbits tend to stick together. …’
A “Secret Shire Party scene”? This tidbit of info, coupled with AICN’s news that we will not see Saruman’s demise in LotR:RotK makes me wonder if P.J. made a last minute decision to change Saruman’s end as originally filmed for one that takes place in the Shire, to be used in the Extended Edition DVD.
If so, I would certainly welcome this last minute change. Best regards!
Harry Knowles from AICN got word about some major developments in the editing of RoTK from Peter Jackson himself. AICN’s server seems to be having trouble coping with the load right now, so I’ve taken the liberty of cutting down Harry’s verboseness and reproducing Jackson’s statement below:
Harry writes:
“Hey folks, Harry here… Sometimes working on an epic ain’t easy. Specially when you have so much passion involved, not only by the filmmakers, but the fans themselves.
About two weeks ago I heard that the Saruman/Grima work had been edited out of RETURN OF THE KING. My immediate reaction was… “OUCH!” I mean, Christopher Lee has owned in each of the 2 Lord of the Rings movies we’ve seen thus far, but also… His presence has been iconic and classy in a way that defies description.
I figured that this news would best be left to Peter to address in interviews once the film began screening, as I was sure it was a decision he did not relish making.
Here’s what Peter wrote me….
[The] Saruman thing you describe is a muddle of half-truths.
We have decided to save the Saruman sequence for the DVD. It’s a great little scene. 7 mins long. Chris is wonderful, as usual. Brad is in about 6 shots. It was a film maker decision – nothing to do with the studio.
The problem is that the sequence was originally shot for The Two Towers, as it is in the book. Since The Two Towers couldn’t sustain a 7 min “wrap” after Helm’s Deep, we thought it would be a good idea to save it for the beginning of the Return of the King. The trouble is, when we viewed various ROTK cuts over the last few weeks, it feels like the first scenes are wrapping last year’s movie, instead of starting the new one. We felt it got ROTK off to an uncertain beginning, since Saruman plays no role in the events of ROTK (we don’t have the Scouring later, as the book does), yet we dwell in Isengard for quite a long time before our new story kicks off.
We reluctantly made the decision to save this sequence for the DVD. The choice was made on the basis that most people will assume that Saruman was vanquished by the Helm’s Deep events, and Ent attack. We can now crack straight into setting up the narrative tension of ROTK, which features Sauron as the villian.
It was a very similar situation to last year when we decided to take a nice Boromir/Denethor flashback out of The Two Towers, and put it in the DVD. It was causing us pacing problems in the theatrical version, but with the Extended Cut just coming out now, fans can see this great little scene. Thank God for DVD, since it does mean that a version of the movie, which has different pacing requirements, can be released later. The Saruman sequence will definately be a highlight of the Extended ROTK DVD.
We have a lot of great DVD material this time around. As we crafted the movie, we reduced it from an over 4 hour running time, down to 3.12 (without credits – about 8 mins long). This was done by us. There were no studio cutting notes. We now have a movie with a pace that fells ok for it’s theatrical release. One more week to go. We are nearly there. Will we still be standing? It’s going to be a close run thing.
Cheers,
Peter J
A week to go? The news about New Line making the cuts themselves had instantly struck me wrong, because I knew that New Line wasn’t supposed to take possession of the film till November 1st.
However, I had found out that 11 days before that time, Peter had added, I believe it was 12 visual effects shots for the Minas Tirith battles, and I had heard it was going to put them past their deadline a bit… Well, now it’ll be 2 weeks past that date, which means that Next Friday… New Line will finally take over possession of the print, then about a 2 months of work will be squeezed into a month – as prints are created for world consumption.
Wonder how wet these things will be by the time they hit theaters?
Anyway, that’s the truth about Saruman and his scenes in RETURN OF THE KING, straight from Derek’s mouth! A hard decision, one of many in the making of an epic.”
Demosthenes here. This is very interesting, for sure. Sounds like we all get to play a giant game of “let’s pretend” with that particular scene until the DVD is released sometime next year. Personally, I’m not particularly fussed – I enjoyed EE release of Fellowship far more, and I expect I will feel the same for Towers.
Most of the outcomes of the confrontation at Isengard are plot trivialities with no great plot implications – except the Palantir. We’ve seen images of Aragorn holding it, and the implication is that Pippin does use it at Meduseld. I’ll be keen to see how effectively Walsh, Boyens and Jackson rework that.
Taniwha sent in the link to the countdown clock and webcam overlooking the home of ROTK’s world premiere, The Embassy Theatre. [More]
He also sent word of a really good trilogy marathon to be held at the Embassy. Here’s the word from them:
As we countdown to the World Premiere of the final instalment of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the Embassy Theatre in Wellington is preparing for yet another unique event in conjunction with Tolkien’s trilogy – a one-off screening of all 3 films back-to-back on Wednesday 17 December. The screenings start on Wednesday afternoon with Fellowship of the Ring, leading into The Two Towers and finally at midnight with the first public, and sure to be extremely excitingly charged, screening of The Return of the King.
The first 400 marathon viewers will receive a stunning commemorative desktop item made of solid pewter that incorporates images from each film and this collectible will not be available anywhere else in Australasia. We are advised that this has been created by Peter Jackson and the Weta Workshop. Each of the pieces will be unique and different, containing original film frames from The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Two Towers and The Return Of The King.
“In my experience, never has there been this much interest in a film” said Embassy Manager Michelle O’Donnell. “The interest in The Lord Of The Rings – The Return of the King is getting bigger by the day – it just seems to be growing and is getting really exciting!” she said.
After the Monday 1 December Wellington World Premiere of The Return Of The King, the Embassy will begin screening exclusively the extended version of the Fellowship of the Ring from Thursday 4th December. A week later the Two Towers extended version will begin its exclusive season on Thursday 11th December. Then both of these films screen back to back on Wednesday 17th leading into the midnight screening of the much anticipated The Return Of The King.
This marathon event of screening the 3 The Lord of the Rings films together has proven popular in the USA, selling out in many cities there and Wellington is certain to follow this pattern.
“Bookings are coming in from all over New Zealand, Australia, USA and Europe” said Ms O’Donnell “with a huge interest from Asia as well. Many are wanting to be in Wellington for the World Premiere of The Return Of The King, then are holidaying through the country and coming back to Wellington for when the film opens on the 18th. But I think many are now having to adjust their plans to be here for this unique marathon screening of all 3 films. These are the real Tolkien aficionados and for them, Wellington is LOTRwhere its at, as the Embassy is recognised as the spiritual home of the film.” she said.
Tickets for the marathon will go on sale in the next few weeks but if you need further information or wish to register and be first in line, then please contact us at; info@deluxe.co.nz
