Peter Jackson’s films based onThe Lord of the Ringsnovels are some of the most successful adaptations of all time. Fans would be hard-pressed to pin down any one scene from the trilogy of movies to name their favorite. During an interview with Stephen Colbert, Jackson, who was promoting the 4k remastered version of hisThe Lord of the RingsandThe Hobbittrilogy of films, revealed that his favorite scene from the franchise was one that he did not even shoot.
“We were shooting Two Towers and it was introducingGollum. A key thing with Gollum is that most people know he’s Sméagol and he’s Gollum, it’s like a split. But we hadn’t got a scene where you really got the idea of, “This guy is two people.” So we knew that we needed it but we had no time to shoot it. So Fran [Walsh] wrote a scene where Sam and Frodo are asleep, so they can be just lumps in the bed, we don’t even have to have Elijah and Sean. We didn’t have anyone to direct it, so I said to Fran, “You wrote it, you should shoot it.” So she went in for a day and she wrote and directed a scene which has become pretty famous now.”
The scene in question is one of the quieter ones in the films, and arguably the most popular scene of the breakout character of the series, Andy Serkis' disturbing take on Gollum/Smeagol. In that scene, more than any other, audiences are able to understand theheartbreaking duality of the twisted creatureSerkis portrayed, one part of whom desperately wants friendship and a normal life, while the other part is a slave to the will of the One Ring, and willing to do anything to get his hands on it.
In a previous interview with IndieWire,Peter Jacksonhad explained why he felt a desire to remaster his six movies aboutMiddle-earth. According to the filmmaker, the 4k remaster allowed him to introduce new technology into the process of updating his films and making changes to make the visuals ofThe Lord of the RingsandThe Hobbittrilogies more consistent with each other, despite their being shot a decade apart.
“It was interesting going back and revisiting these films, because I realized how inconsistent they were, and that’s really due to the way in which ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was shot first, about 20 years ago. The Lord of the Rings' was shot on 35mm. The color timing was done in an old-fashioned photo mechanical way for the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie, then we switched to digital color timing for the 35mm for the next two. Being able to tweak individual colors we just couldn’t do 20 years ago, so it’s fun having all the toys now. We didn’t have all this stuff to play with in the old days.”
