Almost lost for two and a half millennia, the One Ring, a corrupting relic forged by the dark lord Sauron, has resurfaced in the most unlikely of places: the verdant, unsuspecting hills of the Shire. To prevent absolute darkness from consuming Middle-earth, it falls upon Frodo Baggins, an ordinary young hobbit, to carry the fate of us all to the fiery chasms of Mount Doom, deep into hostile enemy territory. The brave halfling is not alone, though. A wizard's staff, a ranger's sword, an elf's bow, and a dwarf's ax have sworn to protect him. But as the shadowy ruler fixes his gaze on the little ring bearer, the ultimate threat emerges. Will the seductive, eroding power of the artifact itself tear the fellowship apart before their journey even begins?
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During downtime in New Zealand, most of the Fellowship cast took up surfing, and Viggo Mortensen wiped out badly enough to bruise one whole side of his face. Makeup couldn't hide it in time, so Peter Jackson just shot the Moria tomb scene from Aragorn's other side for the rest of the sequence.
Real hobbits are meant to stand around 3'6", so Weta had to fake that constantly. Every hobbit actor had a scale double of that exact height, and depending on the shot, you might be looking at the double's whole body with the actor's face digitally added on top.
Almost everything on screen that isn't CGI, from weapons to prosthetics to miniature sets, came out of Weta Workshop. It was a level of practical craftsmanship film hadn't really attempted at that scale before, and it changed how fantasy movies got made afterward.
When Bilbo finally lets go of the Ring in Bag End and it drops into Frodo's palm, that little thud was added in post-production. To make the Ring visibly feel heavy as it fell, the crew rigged up a hidden magnet to pull it down.
Gollum doesn't properly show up as a character until the second film, but he technically appears in Fellowship three separate times: as a shadow during the prologue, briefly during his torture in Mordor, and as a pair of eyes watching from the dark in the Mines of Moria.
The Shire needed to look properly lived-in on camera, so the Hobbiton set near Matamata, New Zealand was actually built a full year before filming started, giving the gardens and hedges time to grow in naturally.
New Line Cinema thought the original opening prologue was too long and confusing, and asked Peter Jackson to trim it down to about two minutes. He came back with one that ran seven and a half minutes instead, and it made the final cut anyway.
That moment where the Fellowship leaps a gap in the collapsing stairs while orcs fire arrows at them, with Aragorn and Frodo riding a broken chunk of stone across the gap, was built as a real physical set piece rather than a digital effect.
Nicolas Cage was reportedly approached for the role of Aragorn before Viggo Mortensen came on board, but turned it down over family obligations, since it would have meant relocating to New Zealand for a couple of years.
Christopher Lee wanted to play a wizard so badly that years earlier he'd deliberately auditioned for wizard-type roles just to build a case for himself. He even sent Peter Jackson a photo of himself dressed as one, half joke, half not-so-subtle hint.
