Scenes were shot that involved Aragorn tackling Sauron one-on-one while outside the Black Gate. In the scene, Sauron would have appeared taller than the Sauron we see at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring. Once footage was reviewed, however, it was decided that to include this scene would pervert Tolkien's ideas. Footage from the fight remains: Aragorn's charge outside the Black Gate was to take him into the fight. Temp work on this scene can be seen on the third disc of the Return of the King Extended Edition DVD.
In the scene when Denethor burns Faramir on the pyre, the pyre could not truly be on fire because Gandalf's horse would not go near it. To solve this, the crew reflected a real fire onto a pane of glass in front of the camera so that it looks as though the pyre is burning.
In the extended cut of the film, the song during the Houses of Healing sequence is sung by Liv Tyler.
According to a magazine article, Peter Jackson hated the Army of the Dead; he thought it was too unbelievable. He kept it in the script because he did not wish to disappoint diehard fans of the book trilogy.
Dominic Monaghan was allergic to the elven cloaks the Fellowship wore. Before scenes were shot, Peter Jackson used to joke around and say "Are we ready to go? Does Dom have his cape on?"
The confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf from the second book was filmed but was not included in the final cut for reasons of length and pacing. The scene will be included on the DVD.
To create realistic galloping horses for the largely CGI horseback army, they took some footage of a horse in a motion-capture suit.
The live-action Rohan army is made up of several hundred New Zealander extras, who responded to an open casting call for anyone who could ride a horse.
When Frodo is writing the book, the top of the page notes that Sam was elected Mayor of Hobbiton.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy became the most nominated film series in Academy Award history with 30 nominations, surpassing both the Godfather trilogy (28) and the Star Wars franchise (21).
The first sci-fi/fantasy movie to win a top category since 1990 (Whoopi Goldberg won Best Supporting Actress for the fantasy film Ghost (1990)).
The movie marks the second time in history that the third movie in a trilogy was nominated for Best Picture, by the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, after The Godfather: Part III (1990) and the only time that a third movie has won the Best Picture Oscar.
The movie tied with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997) to win the most Oscars (11) in a single year.
It broke another record by winning all the Oscars for which it was nominated (11 out of 11). The previous record was nine out of nine by The Last Emperor (1987) and nine out of nine by Gigi (1958).
The deformed orc leader Gothmog is based on the alien leader from Peter Jackson's earlier movie Bad Taste (1987).
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