10 Mistakes That Actually Improved The Final Films
2. Viggo Mortensen Broke Some Bones In A Memorable Scene
Viggo Mortensen made the character of Aragorn his own in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies. The Danish-American actor even performed many of his characters stunts, putting himself in real danger on numerous occasions. This resulted in a couple of on-set accidents that turned into great movie moments.
In the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, an Uruk-hai tosses a knife towards Aragorn, who deflects it away with his blade. This wasn't actually intentional, and the knife was meant to miss Mortensen's head altogether, but the actor reacted quickly to parry the shot.
Then, in the second film, Mortensen really did get injured, but it resulted in one of his most powerful moments in the entire trilogy. While tracking Merry and Pippin, who had been kidnapped, Aragorn and co discover a pile of burning bodies and worry that their friends have been killed.
In a fit of rage, Aragorn kicks a helmet and screams to the heavens as he falls to his knees. This sequence was scripted, but Mortensen's scream was real. When he kicked the helmet, he actually broke a couple of his toes in the process, resulting in a scream that was part-performance, part-genuine pain.