Lord of the Rings: Peter Jackson Reveals His Favorite Scene

The Lord of the Rings films are some of the most beloved, and dense, fantasy films in cinematic history, with every viewer having their own unique favorite moment, with director Peter Jackson recently detailing how his favorite scene isn’t even one that he directed. The scene in question comes from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and offers insight into the duality of Gollum, with the sequence not only written by, but also directed by Jackson’s partner Fran Walsh. Jackson went on to note that the development of the scene was built largely out of necessity to establish the villainous character and his intentions when no other scene was adequately conveying the idea.

“We were shooting Two Towers and it was introducing Gollum,” Jackson detailed to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “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 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 [Wood] and Sean [Astin]. 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 first entry in the saga, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, landed in theaters back in 2001, with the trilogy, as well as follow-up The Hobbit prequel trilogy, both getting remastered for a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The filmmaker recently noted that this new release allowed him to create a more cohesive tone, making them feel as though they were shot at the same time as opposed to more than a decade apart.

“It was interesting going back and revisiting these films because I realized how inconsistent they were,” Jackson detailed earlier this month. “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 on an old-fashioned mechanical way for the first Lord of the Rings movie. Then we switched to digital color timing for the 35mm negative for the next two.”

Both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies are available now on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Amazon Studios is currently developing a new Lord of the Rings TV series.

What’s your favorite scene in the series? Let us know in the comments below!