Ian McKellen found Lord of the Rings script changes “tiresome”

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. The cast looks back.

With the original movies now available in 4K, the 20th anniversary coming up this year and a new TV series heading to Amazon Prime Video, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films are getting more buzz than they have in a long while. So what better time than now to revisit a terrific interview series Empire put out a few years back, where the original members of the Fellowship ask each other questions about the movies, life and everything?

Some of the most interesting comments come from Ian McKellen, who played the wizard Gandalf. Apparently, Jackson threw a lot of script changes at him throughout filming, to the point where it kind of became a nuisance. “It was tiresome, wasn’t it?” McKellen said when Elijah Wood (Frodo) asked about the changes. “Particularly for this theatre actor who has spent a career honoring a text, honed and settled before production starts. Still, it kept us on our toes and I always had the paperback ‘Lord of the Rings’ hidden in my robe, to refer to.”

As for Wood, he remembers how cozy and friendly the set felt, despite it being a huge production. “I had nothing to compare it to then, but this quality has become more special over time,” he said. “All of us embarked on something that had never been done before on such a massive scale, tucked away in beautiful New Zealand, and it all felt homegrown, like the world’s largest independent film. That feeling of family and forging a path as we were working was truly extraordinary.”

Both Wood and McKellen returned for Jackson’s Hobbit movies, but only McKellen had a big role, and Orlando Bloom (Legolas) was the only member of the original Fellowship around. “[There were] so many old friends behind the camera, but I missed the old team of actors,” McKellen said. “Mind you, it was a joy to work with Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and the dwarves. I was glad to be rid of that old stick Gandalf the White. The Grey was always my favorite.”

There are lots of interesting tidbits in these interviews, including Viggo Mortensen’s pick for a scene from the books he would have liked to see adapted:

"I’d like to have seen what Peter Jackson would have done with the character Ghân-buri-Ghân, the chief of the Drúedain, wild men of the Drúadan Forest. Seeing him lead King Théoden and his army of Rohirrim through the forest to join the fight to save Minas Tirith would have been thrilling. Towards the end of Tolkien’s The Return Of The King, the Forest of Drúadan is given by newly-crowned Aragorn to Ghân and his people for their exclusive use, leaving it to them to decide that from then on if anyone else is to be allowed to enter it. I suppose all of that extra material would have given the already thematically complex and quite lengthy movie far too long a running time and an overwhelming amount of information for viewers to easily assimilate. Die-hard Tolkien aficionados, however, might have enjoyed the character, as he is a one-of-a-kind noble descendant of prehistoric humans."

Oh, I nearly forgot about Ghân-buri-Ghân from the books! To my knowledge, he and his followers have never shown up in any adaptation of the story.

Beyond the movies, all eyes are on Amazon Prime Video to see what it will do with its Lord of the Rings TV series, which is making good progress. Suddenly it seems really important to me than some of Ghân-buri-Ghân’s people be included. Or even him, because I like saying his name out loud.

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h/t IndieWire