Viggo Mortensen arrived on the set of The Lord of the Rings with a swollen black eye after a surfing mishap, forcing director Peter Jackson to adjust shots in the Mines of Moria sequence. The injury occurred amid the trilogy's unconventional shooting schedule. This anecdote emerges as the films celebrate their 25th anniversary with theatrical re-releases.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, was filmed in a non-linear fashion across all three movies simultaneously. As Jackson explained in a video introduction to the re-release of The Fellowship of the Ring, "The thing with these movies, of course, is we shot all three of them at the same time and then in a mixed-up kind of way. So one day we’d be shooting a bit from ‘The Fellowship,’ then that would be on Monday. On Tuesday, we’d shoot a scene from [second film] ‘The Two Towers,’ on Wednesday, back to Fellowship again, on Thursday to [final film] ‘The Return of the King.’ So it was just one film really for us."
During the filming of the Mines of Moria scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, Mortensen, who portrayed Aragorn, showed up with a severe injury. Jackson recounted: "Viggo had been out with the Hobbits during the weekend, and he’d been surfing, and he had sustained an injury surfing, like the board had flipped in the air and whacked him in the face. So he comes in, and his eye is bulged out, black eye, shut, like a boxer swollen, and he says, ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I’m sorry.’ And I said, ‘Oh God.’ So you’ll see that all I could do is to shoot him from the side. I couldn’t shoot [head on]."
Mortensen played Aragorn across the entire trilogy. Jackson is now producing a new entry, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis, with production starting this year and a December 2027 release. Mortensen expressed openness to returning in a 2024 GQ UK interview: "I don’t know exactly what the story is, I haven’t heard. Maybe I’ll hear about it eventually. I like playing that character. I learned a lot playing the character. I enjoyed it a lot. I would only do it if I was right for it in terms of, you know, the age I am now and so forth. I would only do it if I was right for the character. It would be silly to do it otherwise."
The trilogy marks its 25th anniversary with re-releases of the extended editions: The Fellowship of the Ring on January 16, The Two Towers on January 17, and The Return of the King on January 18. These screenings have already generated $5 million in domestic presales, with about 407,000 tickets sold, per Fathom Entertainment.
