Once again, welcome to The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! I hope you aren’t as tired of hearing it as I am of writing it.
Today was another day of many sights. But unlike yesterday, all of today’s sights were in the same location. Sort of. Today featured in Deer Park, a once almost vacant park turned milling ground for tourists by the Lord of the Rings movies. Although we didn’t see many today. Come on, it’s a Sunday.
Deer Park, unlike previous assumptions, is not a flat, beautiful field dotted in trees and bristling with little animals. Scratch the words ‘flat’ and ‘little’ and you’ve basically got it covered. Actually, it might help if you interchange ‘flat’ with ‘insanely steep and scary.’
But that’s not what we care about, is it? We want to know about Lord of the Rings. Okay, I’m just going to start abbreviating that. So, sight number one. You guessed it, your going to need you DVD or VHS (that is if they made LOTR on VHS, I’m not sure). The Two Towers if you please. First disc.
The scene’s toward the end of the first disc and it’s called Exodus from Edoras. Fastforward to Wormtongue’s little spiel. Something like, “They will flee to Helm’s Deep.” Then you see a bunch of people walking along the edge of a lake. This lake is actually pretty small. Like 10ish ft by 30ish ft. This area is on top of hill, not the flat area it seems to be.
Continue on to the second disc. It’s the first scene, “Dwarf Women.” Here people are walking along another lake, much smaller this one. Gimli is saying, “It’s true you don’t see many dwarf women.” You’ll note the mountains here are different. Deer Park is completely surrounded by mountains (way off in the distance). But all the mountains look different, so you could make it look like you’re in like four or five different locations.
The scene continues. Then it flips to the people camped out at a *gasp* lake. This is in fact the same lake they were just walking past (during Gimli’s spiel)…or maybe t was the lake they were walking past during Wormtongue’s spiel. Um…
Next scene! Scene: The Wolves of Isengard. We’re going to skip around a bit. Two knights on horseback ride away from the group. One of the horses freaks when they ride alongside a stone wall. One knight comments, “What is it? Hama?” Hama replies, “I’m not sure.” The camera slides up the wall where a Wolf of Isengard is waiting to pounce.
This scene was filmed in the area of the park containing deer. Therefore, the park was none too happy about either people bothering the deer or deer bothering (ehm, injuring) the people. So the cage is locked and the sign that originally pointed to the spot has been torn down (the post’s still there though). Did I mention there were sign posts everywhere that said LOTR 120 m (or whatever)? Anyway, we kind of peered around the fence at this scene, but couldn’t actually get to it.
Move forward to the clash between wolves and men. Actually, go back a little bit to Legolas shooting his first arrow at the wolves (the horses then ride up behind him). Interestingly steep hill that couldn’t have been fun to ride (on horseback) up. Keep going. Clash. Bang. Ouch. Pain.
Long scene here. This all happened in a very small area. It was also a bit valley like because it was a steep hill leading down to this tiny strip of flat area, followed by a slight up inclined to the cliff Aragorn latter falls off. Feel free to watch the whole scene with all the interesting scenery.
But, at least get to Aragorn falling off the cliff at the end of this scene. So, just as he’s falling off the cliff. Look out and tell me what you see. A river in the distance. Green fields. Mountains (we’re currently having an argument as to whether or not that was all digitally imposed. I argue that there was city down there). So, continue on to Gimli and Legolas realizing Aragorn is probably dead. They’ll both call out his name, talk to a dying orc and then walk to the cliff’s edge. Now look and tell me what you see.
A river at the bottom of a chasm. I kind of missed that chasm in that first scene. But anyway. That cliff Legolas is looking over, isn’t really a cliff. It’s like a three foot drop. Yeah, onto rocks, but it wouldn’t kill you.
Two more quick things. First of all. The lake I mentioned previously (the one during Wormtongue’s spiel). In the third movie, Gandalf and Pippin ride through that lakeish thing on their way to Gondor (Third movie, first disc, scene: Minas Tirith. Gallop over hills, gallop through forest, gallop through river. Yeah, that was it). Incase you haven’t noticed yet, that lake is used a lot.
And finally. We didn’t get to see this, but we know it was around there somewhere. Very end of The Return of the King first disc. The Siege of Gondor. Rewind to the trio (Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli) leaving the Paths of the Dead. The exit wall to the Paths of the Dead was around there somewhere (they leave spooky underground area, you see wall, Aragorn sees ships headed to Gondor and despairs). If you don’t know, Paths of the Dead is where all the ghosts are hanging out. Aragorn goes to recruit them.
I’m afraid it was all very confusing. But those first couple scenes were really cool because you could definitely see them. The rocks in the background. The lake/swamp. The tufts of grass. The other tourists…
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! We apologize for any confusing in this article dealing with location of or description of scenes. Any questions will be readily answered. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode dealing with lands far and near. We thank you, and goodnight.
