Synopsis: The fight to protect Gondor proceeds while Frodo and Sam are lead through the lair of the ancient spider Shelob.
Reaction: There are too many ending sequences but with a story this long, a long denoument is to be expected. Otherwise very well made. You have to be ready to sit for quite a while, though.
Andy SerkisAndy Serkis was not the film-makers' first choice to play the real Smeagol at the beginning of the film. However, once they started considering other actors, they realized that Serkis was the natural choice.
For the lighting of the beacons sequence, one beacon was helicoptered up to the top of a mountain and then lit. The rest were all computer generated.
The WETA special effects crew felt very challenged when creating Shelob by how effective the giant spider had been in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Peter JacksonPeter Jackson is arachnophobic and based the Shelob design on the types of spiders he feared the most.
A normal major motion picture averages about 200 effects shots. This film had 1488.
The final reel of the film to be completed was done only five days before the world premiere in Wellington, New Zealand. It was actually still wet from the developing process because there was no time to dry it. The premiere was the first time that Peter JacksonPeter Jackson had seen the completed film.
While filming the trilogy, Viggo MortensenViggo Mortensen got so into character that during a conversation, Peter JacksonPeter Jackson referred to him as "Aragorn" for over half an hour without Mortensen's realizing it.
Theoden touching the spears of his soldiers before they charge into battle was Bernard HillBernard Hill's idea.
The battle scenes, which reportedly contain over 200,000 digital participants, are so huge that an extra room had to be built onto Weta Digital's effects facility to house all the computer equipment needed to render the scenes.
