Scenes of Middle Earth

Ringwraith

The Black Riders, or Ringwraiths, pursued Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin in The Fellowship of the Ring. In one scene a Ringwraith was silhouetted on a path at the top of a hill:

Here is the pathway and hill where the scene was filmed, at Mount Victoria in Wellington:

There is another scene where the hobbits hide under a tree, and a Ringwraith rides on the path overhead. The tree was artificial and created by WETA, although the scorpions and spiders that emerged from the Ringwraith's armour and crawled over the hobbits were real.

All that remains today is a hole near the path, above which the artificial tree was placed. This is a side on view, and is also Mount Victoria:

Forest Pathway

In an earlier scene, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin had rolled down a hill and fallen onto a pathway.

The hill and drop onto the pathway were also filmed at Mount Victoria, and here is the exact spot:

Gardens of Isengard

Before Gandalf realized that Saruman had been seduced by Sauron, he sought Saruman's counsel in the gardens of Isengard. This scene was also in The Fellowship of the Ring.

The gardens are in Harcourt Park in the Lower Hutt Valley north of Wellington:

Aragorn and Brego

In The Two Towers Aragorn is flung over a cliff into a river, where he drifts downstream. Aragorn ends up on a pebbled shore, where he is rescued by his faithful horse Brego.

Here is the exact spot where this scene was filmed:

Comments

[PythonMagus]

Great demonstration of the versatility of the landscape in NZ, and the talent of the film-makers to transform it into a fantasy world.