Anyone who has read either Tolkien or Lewis will realize that there is a special love for the woods and trees shared by these Inklings. In fact, they used to go on long hikes through the woods around Oxford, following a good British tradition. They also enjoyed meeting at the pub known as the Eagle and Child for ale and conversation about their writings, including LOTR and the Narnia tales. It is not a surprise then that trees, even talking trees and tree shepherds, feature in these tales. Ann and I traveled to remote parts of the southern island of New Zealand near Glenorchy to see the forests that became Lothlorien and find the tree which became Treebeard after a CG makeover.
Isolated grand trees inspire admiration, such as the party tree in Hobbiton shown below.
But forests can be foreboding, especially at night. Remember the famous Hobbit run to the ferry trying to escape the Nazgul? Here is the forest through which they ran.
This picture was taken whilst trying to escape a Ring Wraith who was lurking at the top of the hill (see below).
Fortunately, there was also some protection from above as well.
Now as to Treebeard, here in fact is the tree which gave Peter Jackson the mental image from which to create Treebeard.
Whenever Peter Jackson wants to create a beautiful forest scene he looked for a particular kind of beech tree that had very tiny leaves which let the light gently filter through the canopy. For example, here is such a forest used in these films.
One of the more famous and delightful scenes in the films is of Rivendell, the home of the elves. Many of these scenes were filmed in the Kaitoke Regional Park outside Wellington. Perhaps you will remember Orlando Bloom standing in front of a tree. Below is the Legolas tree. The platform now protects the roots from hordes of tourists intent on standing upon them.
Here is another shot in Kaitoke (aka Rivendell). Notice I am holding a staff much like Gandalf’s, but alas without its power.
In this last picture, you will notice that the New Zealand Middle Earth is really a temperate rain forest sporting giant tree ferns. You won’t find these in today’s England.
Below is my wife, the tree fern hugger.
The challenge for Peter Jackson was to make NZ look like the UK, even though its flora and fauna were different in many respects. Middle Earth is not just England with much better weather. It is in a whole different hemisphere and eco-zone. The challenges of making LOTR or Narnia movies way down there at the bottom of Earth were considerable. The next stop south from the southern island of NZ is Antarctica! Queenstown, near which much of the filming took place for both the Narnia and LOTR movies, is one of the southernmost cities in the world, even well south of Capetown, South Africa. And yet, the island climate is much better suited for these movies than the climate often is in the U.K.
In our next post we must talk about rivers, waterfalls, and streams in Middle Earth.
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