The Lord Of The Rings: 10 Scenes Actors HATED Shooting
2. Pretty Much Every Actor Suffered At Helm's Deep
The Battle of Helm's Deep was the epic culmination to the Two Towers. The forces of Rohan, augmented by a small force of elves, were shown stoically facing down the armies of Isengard. It was one of the biggest battle sequences ever put to the big screen, and one of the most exciting climaxes to a movie.
Creating the sequence was a mammoth undertaking. The fortress itself was built almost in its entirety to serve as the backdrop; hundreds of extras and stuntmen were required to make up the armies; and a plethora of crew members and medics were required on set at all times. Over twenty hours of footage was recorded over a period four months. Three and a half of those months were night shoots, and half the time the actors were drenched in rain and frozen to the core.
Running around, play fighting with a bunch of orcs and elves sounds fun in theory, but when you're doing it night after night, in terrible weather conditions, anyone would be bound to get fed up. Things got so miserable at times that the stunt crew (dressed as Uruk-hai) would perform Hakas in an attempt to keep spirits up.
Several stuntmen received injuries after falling from the tops of the wall, and Viggo Mortenson lost a tooth to a rogue sword swing. When the shoot was over, everyone on the crew received t-shirts saying "I survived Helm's Deep" in commiseration for what they had all gone through.