Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy provided audiences with multiple iconic moments, including epic battles and harrowing escapes from fantastic creatures. However, Jackson recently revealed that his favorite scene in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is a dialogue-heavy sequence involving Gollum in The Two Towers.
While Andy Serkis' Gollum was featured briefly in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the character was properly introduced to audiences a year later in The Two Towers. Early in the sequel, Sam and Frodo discover they are being followed by Gollum, a former hobbit who once possessed and became corrupted by the One Ring. While Sam and Frodo accept Gollum's offer to help guide them to Mordor, the extent to which the character has been warped by the ring is revealed to the audience in a scene where he argues with his alter-ego, Smeagol, over whether or not to kill the sleeping hobbits and steal back the ring.
During an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jackson listed the Mines of Moria sequence from Fellowship of the Ring as one of his favorite scenes in the trilogy. However, the scene Jackson believes captures the spirit of the franchise is the conversation between Gollum and Smeagol. "We were shooting Two Towers and it was introducing Gollum," Jackson said. "A key thing with Gollum, as most people know, is that he's Smeagol and he's Gollum, it's like a split. But we hadn't got a scene where you really got the idea of it, that this guy is two people. So we knew that we needed it but we had no time to shoot it."
Fortunately, Lord of the Rings trilogy co-writer and co-producer Fran Walsh devised a solution to their problem which she would ultimately direct. "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]," Jackson said. "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."
Fans will return to Middle-Earth when Amazon's Lord of the Rings series debuts on the streaming service. Set before the events of Fellowship of the Ring, the series is being spearheaded by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay.
Meanwhile, many cast members of the original Lord of the Rings films recently made headlines when they called on fans to help save J.R.R. Tolkien's home. If the campaign raises enough funds, the intention is to turn the property into a literary center dedicated to the late author.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is now available in 4K Ultra HD.