The Untold Truth Of The Lord Of The Rings

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

From the printed page to the silver screen, J.R.R. Tolkien's monumental trilogy The Lord of the Rings has long held a special place in the hearts of old and young alike. The epic three-part fantasy, brimming with goblins, elves, dwarves, and, of course, hobbits, has become a common part of the modern vernacular, sparking the imagination with its vivid imagery, moving readers with its deep character development, and providing a blast from the past with its overall archaic voice and style.

It's no surprise that a work of this magnitude involved years and even decades of Tolkien's life — and decades later, a massive commitment from director Peter Jackson and his cast and crew. The backstory of the novels as well as their cinematic counterparts are riddled with a plethora of exciting factoids that make the entire Middle-earth experience that much better. From the books that revolutionized the modern fantasy landscape to the films that followed, here are some of the best pieces of trivia to ever surface from Tolkien's beloved literary classics and their adaptations. This is the untold truth of The Lord of the Rings.

It didn't take long before The Fellowship of the Ring alone dwarfed The Hobbit in size. It turns out, though, that the very length of the story was actually one of Tolkien's main challenges that he set himself in its composition. The author pointed out in the foreword that his "prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of the readers," adding that some readers considered his work "boring, absurd, or contemptible." However, he followed this up by explaining that the most critical defect of the whole story, in his opinion as well as others', is the simple fact that "the book is too short."

Tolkien didn't always feel that way about the story, though. In a letter to his editor in December of 1939, he wrote that he feared that the story was "growing too large." It wasn't a temporary feeling, either. In a letter to his son five years later, he reiterated, "I'm afraid I have made a great mistake in making my sequel too long and complicated." Fortunately for his readers, he didn't let the desire for brevity diminish the growing size and scope of the story.

While the world at large may see The Lord of the Rings as the pinnacle of Tolkien's writing, in many ways the story ended up being more of a bother than anything else to the busy Oxford don. In a letter to his publisher in February of 1938 he explained that "for the moment the story is not unfolding," blaming the issue largely on "squandering" too much material on The Hobbit. In his foreword to The Fellowship of the Ring, he explained, "I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me." And then, of course, there was the rather hefty distraction of World War II, which happened to overlap neatly with the period of time that he wrote The Lord of the Rings (1936-1949). 

But even when war, work, and family didn't call him away, Tolkien's greatest passion was still reserved for other works. In another letter to his publisher later in 1938 he said his mind was "really preoccupied with the... The Silmarillion." While the world clamored for more adventures with Hobbits, Tolkien's mind swirled with events like the epic Tale of Tinuviel, the fall of the elvish city of Gondolin, and the foundation of Middle-earth itself by Illuvatar and his mighty Valar. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings seemed to be little more than a tangential story to what really mattered to the author.

While Viggo Mortensen's portrayal of Aragorn has been stamped on the hearts and minds of Middle-earth fans, it turns out Mortensen was nowhere to be seen when the cameras started rolling. Instead, it was none other than Stuart Townsend who initially donned the Strider persona. However, a mere three days into filming, Townsend left the project and Mortensen was tapped to jump into the role. That's right: Mortensen wasn't officially brought in to play Aragorn until three days after filming started.

As the dust settled, it became clear that the switch simply came about because Townsend ended up coming across as too young for the virile yet aged king in exile — a feeling that, according to Jackson, Townsend shared. That didn't make matters easy for the incoming Mortensen, though. He had never read the books before that point, not to mention the fact that he was jumping into a key role next to actors that had been prepping for months. One thing he had going in his favor, though, was that he was already familiar with many of the old Nordic sagas that had originally inspired Tolkien.

While Ian Holm is lovingly remembered for his portrayal of Bilbo in both The Lord of the Rings as well as a reprised role in the later Hobbit trilogy, it turns out that playing hobbits was old hat for the veteran actor before he ever stepped foot on any of Jackson's sets. We all remember him playing the old bachelor of Bag End, but his Middle-earth debut actually came in the form of a much younger character — none other than Bilbo's younger cousin, Frodo.

Holm was cast as the ring bearer in a BBC radio broadcast of The Lord of the Rings in 1981. You can actually hear him singing the Man in the Moon drinking song in the Prancing Pony before accidentally slipping the ring on his finger here. While the radio broadcast was a nice way to get his oversized, hairy hobbit feet wet, there's no doubt that he ratcheted things up a notch when he joined Jackson's mammoth cinematic production.

In an era when motion-capture characters have become as commonplace as they are breathtakingly realistic, it's easy to forget one of the greatest breakthroughs in mo-cap history: Gollum. Peter Jackson and company faced a challenge when it came to adapting Smeagol to the silver screen. He was integral to the storyline, required a lot of close-up screen time, and was practically buck naked, so you couldn't settle for good facial expressions and throw an overcoat over the character to hide the rest.

Weta Digital, the New Zealand-based company co-founded by Jackson, brought Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as the Hobbit films that followed. But while they were focused on the technical aspects of the job, what they really needed was an actor brilliant enough to play the character on the set. Enter Andy Serkis, whose performance was one for the ages as he acted out many of Gollum's scenes while covered from head to toe in motion capture gear.

The mingling of Weta Digital and Serkis was magical, to say the least, delivering one of the first truly believable motion capture performances in cinema history. It was a benchmark and an inspiration that spurred the development of countless other characters, like Marvel's Thanos and Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The only question is, why is it still so difficult to nominate Serkis for an Oscar? The man has to have earned one by now.

Tolkien's writings went through massive revisions over the course of his life. While this is especially true for many of the stories that ended up in The Silmarillion, it also affected The Lord of the Rings as it unfolded. One of the most entertaining examples is the short-lived character of Bingo Baggins.

According to David R. Collins' J.R.R. Tolkien Master of Fantasy, when Tolkien initially began to write what eventually became The Fellowship of the Ring, he created the character of Bilbo's son Bingo to carry on the story. However, this wasn't much to his liking, so he changed the character to Bingo Bolger Baggins, the nephew of the hero of The Hobbit. The thought was initially that Bingo would find a ring as his father/uncle had beforehand. As the story grew and became more serious, Tolkien eventually decided to change the name to the familiar Frodo that we all know and love.

The debate over whether Tolkien's infernal monsters come equipped with a set of wings has raged for years. The films depict the fiery demon with large leathery wings that tower menacingly, adding to an overall fearful demeanor. However, in the book, all that is said is that "His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings." The use of the word "like" implies that the description is referring to the general darkness that the creature is wreathed in. Not actual wings.

In addition to this, when Gandalf finally defeats the Balrog, he knocks him off the mountainside. The same event takes place in The Silmarillion when the hero Glorfindel duels a Balrog on a mountain and both are destroyed in a fall. If they had wings, the clear solution should have been a quick, winged flight to safety. On the contrary, whenever Balrogs are mentioned as "flying" or having "wings" it is used as a form of imagery, which is Tolkien's bread and butter. At the end of the day, the thought of Balrogs having wings is pretty sweet, but the desire for wings can't trump the fact that nowhere in Tolkien's writings does it explicitly state that they exist.