Debbie A sends along news from a VERY interesting conversation she had with Billy Boyd while he was at Trent University, take a look!
I don’t post at One Ring but lurk quite a bit. I must say your website had been very useful in my LOTR obsession. I found out about the Exbition at the Te Papa Museum and made a point of stopping there on a recent trip to NZ but best of all I found out that Billy Boyd was coming to my home town…
I am well connected with the university and pulled a few strings. And last night before he spoke to the rest of the University, myself and my two sons had a private meeting with Billy for half an hour…
Anyway he told me some interesting things about what will be contained in the extended version of TTT, but I do not want it posted, in case he wasn’t supposed to talk about it. But because you run such a great site I thought I let you know what he told me…but if you post it, just don’t say where it came from, either myself or Billy – Thanks
We were talking about Sean Bean and want an amazing job he did as Boromir and Billy let it slip that he will be in the extended version of TTT but he wouldn’t tell me in what way. Since he also told me that there are many more Fairomir scenes, I was suspecting that maybe it was a type of flashback, similar to the Smeagol/Deagol possible scenes.
…and yes there is more Treebeard, they go to Treebeard’s house and drink Entdraughts and listen to bad poetry.
Paul writes:
In the most recent issue of the LOTR Fan Club Official Movie Magazine (Issue #7, Feb-March, 2003), there is an interview with Peter Jackson. In it he is asked from Steve Stone of Markham, Illinois:
By now we all know that the “Scouring of the Shire” won’t be in the films due to the fact that there can’t be a second, lesser climax in the story after the larger events that take place. But please tell us if you are going to use the “Sailing away from Middle-Earth” ending, which would age the characters a year or two from their final battles in the films and provide a more fitting farewell to such well-loved characters?
The answer is “yes.”
gruffy the elf writes: In the most recent issue of the LOTR Fan Club Official Movie Magazine (Issue #7, Feb-March, 2003), there is an interview with Daniel Reeve, a (the?) calligrapher for the movies.
When asked about how he went about creating Bilbo’s journal, he talks a bit about training Ian Holm to do his “Concerning Hobbits” bit at the beginning of the FOTR extended DVD. He goes on to say,
“…, I had to train Elijah to write with his quill, too, and do his little bit in the journal.”
Does this give us a little insight as to what events might appear at the end of ROTK?
Recently Ain’t-it-cool-news ran a story quoting PJ as stating that there MAY be a POSSIBLE ROTK trailer out in the month of May. Missy sends this along to add a little more fuel to the fire:
Thought I would drop you a line, I work at a movie theater and we get these magizines every couple of weeks the newest one listed the ROTK trailer was going to be sent out in may along with a one sheet to promote the movie (a one sheet is a poster just printed on one side not both like a movie poster or a teaser poster).
msilverstar sends along this small bit of VERY interesting information in regards to the design and interface creation portion of the TTT DVD’s are complete down in NZ. What does this mean in plain english?
When the FOTR:EE DVD was in the works the folks making the DVD headed down to NZ and had WETA re-create Bilbo’s desk to shoot some live action sequences of book turning and so on. It seems the same idea is being used for the TTT, and that process has apparently been completed:
I have a friend who knows people went to New Zealand to work on the Two Tower DVDs, and she says they’re finished already. She thinks that the extended edition is done as well.
Also good news is that they are trying to do the internationalization as part of the process, so everyone all over the world should get the DVDs at the same time.
Rumour and debate has abounded recently on just how many shots from TTT:EX and RoTK may already have been flashed in front of our noses, in the form of the rapid-fire montages that make up the FoTR and TTT trailers. Ringer Spy Raggo mentioned in Barliman’s tonight the possibility that the venerable near-subliminal shots of Sauron wielding his mace in the first major FoTR trailer which we analysed back in the day – might in fact be an unintentional preview of RoTK goodness. Specifically, the bright blue sky doesn’t look particularly Mordoresque.
But on closer inspection, going through the footage of The Last Alliance in the FoTR Prologue (in the theatrical cut) reveals precisely the same shot…
…but now, with all-important digital colour correction applied; transforming a sunny day somewhere in New Zealand into the darkest shadows of Mordor. So the conclusion to be reached is, alas, that we have no better idea as to the nature of Sauron’s corporeal form (if any) in RoTK than we’ve ever had, since the original “20 Questions with PJ” AICN interview back in August 1998:
We still don’t have a definitive answer. The Sauron of the books is sketchy at best, which makes it hard to turn him into a screen villain to carry 3 movies. Imagine not really seeing Darth Vader for all 3 Star Wars films. You just can’t do it.
We obviously have Sauron’s various emissaries to represent him, but just how Sauron himself appears is still a puzzle we are trying to solve. I agree that you can’t reduce him to being a big guy striding around in black armour – but he cannot be limited to a flaming eye either. It’s tough. We’ll keep working on it.
Updated!
Demosthenes did some digging around and found two key reports from almost precisely 2 years ago, courtesy of Ringer Spy Sylvesterpasemester by way of Tehanu, which describes how when working as extras on the set, they saw “a huge guy with black armour and a huge kind of battleaxe or a hammer, who was standing in the front of a giant bluescreen and there were nine, I repeat !!NINE!! smaller guys with crowns around him…” [More] (N.B. the updated report then reappraises this figure to EIGHT smaller guys). Now, there is obviously the chance that this was an abandoned shot from the FoTR Prologue – but the mention of “Around him there lay tons of dead human bodies and a great corps[?]” hints perhaps even at the infamous RoTK Oliphaunt Set? We sure didn’t see this in FoTR, though…
And further revelations about the extent of Sauron’s appearance in the films were made by Philippa Boyens herself in Creative Screenwriting Magazine as discovered by Ringer Spy Hunter – specifically the top of the third column on this page. And in the same story, Sylvesterpasemester updated his original report – giving details of the armour of the troops on set. But is it the Last Alliance (complete with Nazguls who never made it to the final cuts) – or the Last Battle before the Black Gate of Mordor? Decide for yourselves… [More]
