Viggo Mortensen Had a Surfing Accident That Forced a Major LORD OF THE RINGS Workaround
This year marks the 25th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the film that launched one of the most ambitious cinematic undertakings ever attempted.
To celebrate, all three films are heading back to theaters, complete with new introductions from director Peter Jackson. Along with the nostalgia comes a few incredible production stories, including one wild moment where a surfboard to the face left a permanent mark on Middle-earth.
As the trilogy returns to the big screen, Jackson is opening up about just how unusual the shoot really was. While audiences experienced the story as three epic chapters, the production itself functioned more like one enormous movie shot out of sequence across years. Jackson explained the chaos of that approach in a new introduction shared with Entertainment Weekly.
“The thing with these movies, of course, is we shot all three of them at the same time and then in a mixed-up kind of way. So one day we'd be shooting a bit from The Fellowship, then that would be on Monday.
“On Tuesday, we'd shoot a scene from [second film] The Two Towers, on Wednesday, back to Fellowship again, on Thursday to [final film] The Return of the King. So it was just one film really for us.”
That kind of schedule left little room for error, which became a serious issue when Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn, showed up to set injured after a weekend off.
During production on a major Fellowship sequence, Mortensen had gone surfing with the Hobbits cast and took a brutal hit when his board flipped into his face.
Jackson recalled walking into what should’ve been a routine shoot and immediately realizing they had a problem.
“So in the Mines of Moria scene, too, the other thing I remember, we all show up to shoot that scene. And Viggo had been out with the Hobbits during the weekend, and he'd been surfing, and he had sustained an injury surfing, like the board had flipped in the air and whacked him in the face.”
Injuries weren’t exactly rare on The Lord of the Rings set. Mortensen famously broke his toes kicking a helmet in The Two Towers, a moment that made it into the final cut. But a swollen, battered face was a lot harder to hide, especially during a massive action sequence involving dozens of actors, a Cave Troll, and one very tight schedule.
Reshooting or delaying wasn’t an option. With sets, crews, and effects all locked in, Jackson had to adapt on the fly.
“So he comes in, and he's got his eye is bulged out, black eye, shut, like a boxer swollen, and he says, 'I'm sorry, Peter. I'm sorry.' And I said, 'Oh God.' So you'll see that all I could do is to shoot him from the side. I couldn't shoot [head on].”
That quick decision shaped how Aragorn appears during the Mines of Moria battle, particularly once the Cave Troll enters the fight. If you rewatch the scene closely, you can spot the careful framing that keeps Mortensen’s injured eye out of view. What feels like a stylistic choice is really a last-minute fix born out of necessity.
It’s one more reminder of how much improvisation went into bringing Middle-earth to life. Twenty-five years later, The Lord of the Rings still holds up as a cinematic miracle, surfboards, black eyes, and all.