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A ROUNDTABLE INTERVIEW WITH THE CAST AND CREW OF THE LORD OF THE
RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
On Wednesday, Dec. 5th, Jeffrey Overstreet
joined several other privileged film critics, including Steven D.
Greydanus (Decent Films), Andrew Coffin (World), Steve Beard
(Thunderstruck), and Michael Elliott
(Movie Parables) to talk with members of the
cast and crew for the year's most ambitious, exhausting, and gloriously
realized film. Over the course of this week, Looking Closer will be
adding excerpts of those interviews here. Keep checking back!
Liv Tyler (Arwen)
and Orlando Bloom
(Legolas)
Press:
You guys were the rock stars of the whole trilogy. That’s how
[teenagers] look at you guys.
Bloom:
Peter Jackson really didn’t know how to handle the elves. He certainly
didn’t know about Arwen, or what they were going to do with [her
character.]
As far as Legolas
goes, I did all this work on the physicality. At the beginning we did
all of this movement training.
Tyler:
It’s hard
to find ‘the look’ for them.
Bloom:
Tolkien
created them as red-blooded fighting machines as well as angelic spirits
that are god-like, androgynous, zen-like
warriors. So I certainly didn’t want Legolas to be like a fairy at the
bottom of a garden.
So, Peter wasn’t
really sure. As the film went on, in terms of ‘Leggy,’…
Tyler:
…they
found something more realistic. Originally, the elves
were really weird.
Bloom:
They were
really fairy-ish.
Tyler:
They were
almost like aliens.
Bloom:
They were
very pretty and… not real. But you wanted them to be real and
accessible and cool. And Pete got that. All that stuff
with Leggy running up on top of the cave troll and sliding down the
stairs on an Uruk-hai shield in the second movie, and hopping onto the
horse, and, obviously, that oliphaunt scene… That was all Pete, because
he just started to get it.
Tyler:
You don’t
want them to look too precious, you know?
Bloom:
The way
he shot Liv was particular… Arwen and Galadriel were shot very
differently than Miranda Otto’s character [Eowyn], who was one of the
humans. 'Leggy' fell
in with the Fellowship. [The elves all had] a
kind of mysticism.
Arwen:
They kind
of airbrushed a glow around us.
Tyler:
There are moments in the movie where,
watching it with ‘Hair and Makeup’
[crew], and with Pete and Fran, they cringe at the look of the
elves … [regarding their] hair and makeup and costumes… for Elrond… for
all of us that were elves. We were trying to figure out the look. There
was a time we were doing something weird with the eyebrows. We looked
like Spock!
Bloom (to Tyler):
So many of those elven extras just got
sliced [out], didn’t they? You remember in
Rivendell… there were hundreds of extras in Rivendell, because Rivendell
is the place of the elves, and they were all peppered all over the
place… all of these velvety gowns…
Tyler:
It looked
a bit weird.
Bloom:
They’re
sort of an unusual race. I remember having to go out and teach them how
to walk. I’d been working on the movement, but I hadn’t even been
[filmed] yet. I got a call from Pete, and he said, would I go down to
the set and teach these guys how I was walking? Because they were all
just prancing through the forest.
You know how with
ballet dancers, you can’t help but marvel at their physicality… the way
their legs are ripped. They can move. They’ve got this composure,
like gymnasts. They’ve got that kind of strength that comes from the
core. That was what we were trying to go with with the elves. Although
they’re incredibly graceful, they’ve got that kind of strength that you
just marvel [at].
Jeffrey:
As you probably know, Tolkien believed that humankind is ultimately
unable to resist the forces of evil. And yet there is hope in the story,
suggested by these hints of a higher power, a higher author of the
story. The elves are portrayed as having a more significant connection
to that power… to that otherworldly reality that he believed in.
Does that belief, that suggestion of a higher
influence, resonate with you and your beliefs
regarding where we are in the world today and the hope that we might
have? Did you think about that sort of issue while you were playing the
elves?
Tyler:
I think as you get older, you tend to
lose that voice that you have when you are a child… I don’t know that
‘God’ is the right word. When you’re younger you fell more connected. I
think it’s so easy to lose that as you get older. I try really hard in
my life to be connected to myself, and to listen to my own voice of
reason, in a way.
Jeffrey:
How do you go about that?
Tyler:
I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that.
Press (to Tyler):
How much has your dad been a voice of reason for you?
[Note:
Tyler’s father is Steven Tyler, the lead singer of the rock band
Aerosmith.]
Tyler:
I don’t always listen to my dad! [laughing] I love him, but… I’ve
learned more, in regard to all that stuff, from my mother. She really
taught me. At a very young age, she was my manager. She really wizened
me up and protected me. I really grew up quite quickly and I got the
chance to see the mistakes that people had made. In a way, I wanted to
do everything to not make those mistakes myself. And now that I’m an
adult, I’ve relaxed about that, and I [can say] “It’s okay to make
mistakes.”
Bob Smithouser:
During the whole course of the experience of The Lord of the Rings,
did you learn a life lesson that you think would be valuable to pass on
to teenagers today?
Bloom:
[smiling
at Tyler] We’ll probably answer the same thing.
Tyler:
[smiling
back] Don’t steal mine. I’ll kill you.
[laughter all around
the table]
Bloom:
(to the press) Well, that’s one thing we didn’t learn!!
[more laughter]
(to Tyler) You
answer first. You’re a lady.
Tyler:
Reflecting back, I really learned a lot about patience and trust.
It was such a long
experience. So much of it was… it was great material, but sometimes, it
wasn’t clear. Sometimes, we would shoot a scene, and then they would
change it, and shoot a scene with other characters and give them those
same words. I learned how to be patient in that and to trust Peter… to
give over to the experience of working on this movie, and to know that
he would use the best material and do what was right.
It’s hard to always
trust somebody that much. I think that’s
something that can be relevant in school with a teacher. You sort of
think you have all the answers sometimes.
I felt, a couple of
times, that I made mistakes, and I wish I had listened to Peter more.
This has definitely made me more aware of that in myself.
Bloom:
There are so many themes and messages that run through this movie.
Friendship, the fellowship of strangers, mixed races, putting aside
their differences to come together and make a difference. Legolas and
Gimli couldn’t be further apart, but then they say, “What about standing
side by side with a friend?” There’s something about having the passion,
the wisdom, and the courage to live life with integrity.
All of those
characters in The Lord of the Rings … not one of them doesn’t act
with integrity. The message to the kids… one of the messages… is one of
courage and humility and integrity.
And that’s the
message of the film as well, that came down from the top from Peter… It
was a real ensemble. There were no egos. We were all treated very much
the same. We all went into it with that energy. That’s a good message
for kids, isn’t it?
Press:
Had you all read the books before? How much did you let that inform what
you did?
Bloom:
It was a great tool for us. Legolas is a character who speaks through
action. Actions speak louder than words. He’s a very strong presence
within the book, but it’s in what he does as opposed to what he says. I
just had this overwhelming feeling that wherever he was, you could feel
his presence and there was a watchful eye to make sure things turned out
alright. He wasn’t going to let anything slip through the net.
Tyler:
He was the protector.
Bloom:
We all used the book as a way of finding the world of The Lord of the
Rings. Bits from the book came out, and others went in. But it was
all to forward the movie and make it accessible for a movie audience
today.
Press:
Part of the reason I ask that question is that not only is the book
about the fantasy of The Lord of the Rings,
but there there is the whole religious worldview behind
it. Did you connect with that? Did you think
about that as you were trying to realize your character?
Bloom:
In terms of the religious elements? In terms of that, we were all very
much aware of the energy and the spirit in which Tolkien had created
this story and these books.
Press:
How would you define that? How would you describe that spirit?
Bloom:
It’s a very positive… I answered that in an earlier question. There’s a
group of strangers, of mixed races, putting aside all of their beliefs,
all of their differences, to come together… in terms of the wisdom that
is within that alone, I think there is a great message.
And in New Zealand,
for us, which is very much outwardly a sort of classless society in many
respects… we were all treated with equality. That had a big influence on
us.
And nature.
So much of this movie is about the landscape, and about the way that it
is shot. We were all affected by the landscape around us. The
environment is very important to us now. Future Forest which is a
company… I know Dom’s wearing the t-shirt… that is about being “carbon
neutral.” Coldplay, and a lot of musicians and actors are coming
together to be involved in this company [that suggests] if you drive a
big car or fly around the world in airplanes, you can plant enough trees
to make what you do to negatively impact the world cancel out… so
that you’re carbon neutral. That’s a great message as well.
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