Just when you thought it was safe to go back to New Zealand…more LOTR geek touring.
It started when Kathy an I went to Wellington for a day to fail to apply for our visas for French Polynesia. A visit to Weta Studios was always on our bucket list and we couldn’t go to Wellington without making time for it.
The Weta Cave
We had some initial disappointment when we learned that you can’t actually tour the Weta Studios. I guess hey’re always filming movies there and doing actual work. Instead, they’ve set up the Weta Cave tour, which is adjacent to the studios and intersects with some of the buildings.
It’s not a long tour – 45 minutes or so. But it you love movies – and in particular if you’re fond of the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies, it’s worth the time to take it.
We had no idea how many movies Weta had been involved with. Turns out I’ve seen over thirty of them.
Unfortunately you can’t take pictures on the tour, but they do provide some photo ops before and after.
The techniques and detail work they do there is simply amazing.They have the ability to create or re-create almost anything with 3D modelling, composite construction and painstaking painting and fine work. They even have a sword-smith on premises to make perfect swords for closeups.
Of particular interest to us was that both of our children were using some of the same 3D design and modelling tools they use in house – a tool called Rhino. Will uses it almost daily in his yacht design job, and Danielle learned as part of her digital art and 3D modeling course at Bucknell.
The Second Road Trip
With all of our problems with Evenstar and us getting stuck in Tauranga waiting for parts to arrive, we decided to take Danielle and go on a road trip. We were frustrated waiting around in AirBnBs and decided to just DO something rather than stew around the house and grumble about UPS and their inability to get a package through customs without punting it.
South to Wellington
Kathy and I spent one day in Wellington, and most of it was ruined by the pall cast over our failure in the French Embassy. We returned there with the boat for a week or so, but we didn’t really get to spend as much time seeing things as we wanted to. We knew Danielle would love Weta, so we decided to press on for Wellington and work our way back. We still had one of our crew members with us (Lauren) but she was departing halfway through and joined us for part of it.
So we took Danielle to Weta, then explored the town for some locations after an enormous breakfast at Americano’s with one of the best (read only, except for Denny’s) bottomless cups of filter coffee in New Zealand.
Mount Victoria & Flight from the Shire
Many locations around Wellington, both in the city and around it, were used in the LOTR movies (presumably some were used for the Hobbit movies too, but we didn’t much like those). Right smack in the middle of the city is Mount Victoria, a wooded park full of walking paths and trails with a stunning view from the top.
It’s also where they filmed a number of scenes around the flight from the shire, including the road scenes and the terrifying sequence where the Nazgül almost finds the hobbits as they cower and hide under the roots of a large, gnarly tree.
Most of this was filmed in Mt. Victoria park, though the tree was built and later removed so you can’t see the roots. But there still are trees like that along the paths, and you can feel the atmosphere and the lighting from the movie walking through the woods. The topography is obviously the same and the dappling of the light similar even if it’s not so easy to find the exact spots since props have been removed and scenery restored.
The Hutt River
North of Wellington, the Hutt river was the site of several other scenes. One scene which annoyed purists like me (because it was 100% created for the movie) was when Brego the horse finds a sodden and unconscious Aragorn lying on the banks of the Anduin river. Aragorn dreams of Arwen Evenstar and imagines the horse starts sniffing his face and…
…it didn’t go the way it could have.
Our rental car’s GPS had a number of LOTR movie sites conveniently marked on the map for us. This location was on a very scenic river, with fast moving clear water and smoothed stone beaches.
The exact spot, as always, was a little difficult to pinpoint. Rivers run higher and lower, and clever camera angles show you different views. But the GPS doesn’t lie…
Lower Hutt & Rivendell
Outside the town of Lower Hutt lies the Kaitoke regional park where many of the scenes in Rivendell were filmed.
The Greater Wellington Regional Council was wise enough to commemorate the filming and preserve it with several signs and plaques and maps which show where certain scenes were filmed.
The maps and posts and guides are more helpful than many of the locations which are barely visible any more. This one even had Peter Jackson! Even if his face in that kiosk is more evocative of Jack Nicholson coming through the bathroom door in The Shining than any of Jackon’s cameos in the LOTR.
Many of the scenes like this were filmed on sets built in this area.
After the filming was complete, all of the sets were removed and the sites restored, as they did in every location. The trees are still there though, an someone left a scale model of an arch to leave as a reminder.
Nerdvana IIa – Confession Time
If you read these posts, you’d think that between our last LOTR trips and now we’d done no other movie sites. That’s not completely true. In March of 2018 Kathy and I came to New Zealand for a week to clear out visas back in Australia and celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
While we were there, we visited Arrowtown and the Ford of Bruinen where the Nazgül almost catch an injured Frodo only to be rescued by the combined magics of Arwen (Glorfindel, dang it!!) and Gandalf.
We also came really, really close to finding the canyon where the Argonath was filmed, somewhere near the Kawarau Suspension bridge.
Anyone who has spent any time in New Zealand or around Kiwis wouldn’t be surprised for a second to learn that bungee jumping was basically invented, at least commercially, by jumping off this perfectly nice bridge into a terrifying gorge.
Anyone who has spent any significant time around us wouldn’t be surprised to learn that we never found the Argonath, but we did find Chard Farm winery which was quite delightful and distracted us from the mission at hand.
We don’t know how many more movie sites we’ll be able to take in. We’ve seen many of the ones you can reach without a helicopter. But it’s been a fantastic way to see New Zealand, because every time you look for a movie site you find three other cool things on the way worth seeing.
