Production Companies New Line Cinema, WingNut Films, Lord Dritte Productions Deutschland Filmproduktion GmbH & Co. KG (in association with), The Saul Zaentz Company (licensor) (d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises)
The city would reflect the Northern European-style sophistication of the Gondorians, who are a race of warriors but whose city would also reveal their sense of beauty and majesty. The architecture of Minas Tirith emerged from the drawings of Alan Lee. "Alan created a number of pencil sketches that began to develop the culture of Minas Tirith as well, not just the architecture, but to figure out how the different aristocracies and different segments of society would live," says Richard Taylor.
It took production designer Grant Major’s construction crew of hundreds of people roughly six months to build. "Peter had so much he wanted to do in Minas Tirith," comments art director Dan Hennah. "He wanted to see Faramir’s men marching down the streets on their way to certain death. He wanted the grandeur of that shot in the streets so you can have a hundred men with horses and a crowd for them to march through. And Gandalf gallops through the streets with Pippin in the saddle. To do that, you need some scale; you need some length to it. And then, when the extras turn up and line the streets, you’ve got a city. It’s real. And it’s a wonderful thing to be part of the creation of something real."
For the lair itself, round and diamond-shaped chiseled rock were constructed from polystyrene to create interactive tunnels through which the actors and technicians could freely move. "The tunnels are real," says Hennah. "We made lots of tunnels to run around in, cliffs to jump over and holes to dive through."
John Howe initiated the concepts for the Lair, revealing the eroded rock that would house an ancient, venomous creature that would leave acid trails wherever she went. Dripping from the walls are intricate webs which the art department built out of F2 type glues set in water, which were then removed and applied to the walls to appear like the sticky spiders’ silk of Shelob’s web.
The major location of The Return of the King is the looming wasteland of Mordor, which Jackson and his team found in Mount Ruapehu, a "staggeringly amazing, graphic, violent landscape that is an incredibly difficult location to film, hard to access and subject to violent conditions," describes director of photography Lesnie.
The epic journey of the Fellowship ends in Mordor, and the landscape had to pulse with the evil of Sauron. "We’ve got to feel this sense of dread and awe when we look across towards Mount Doom," comments Alan Lee. "If we don't manage to capture that in the movie, we will have failed to a certain extent."
A huge amount of symphonized elements went into the creation of Mordor – from CG elements to detailed miniatures of the Crack of Doom, at the mouth of an ancient volcano where The Ring of Power was forged. "We had shot lava tests for a couple of years on the miniature stage, trying to generate the element that will ultimately realize the conclusion of this film," states Richard Taylor. "We wanted to generate the feeling that the world of Middle-earth is coming for The Ring; that the journey of Sam and Frodo, and ultimately Gollum, are drawing to an end on this precipice overhanging this huge cauldron of lava in the depths of Mount Doom."
Movie Database
In Theaters
