Fallen King, by Ian Spelling

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an epic of many layers, with many characters, special effects, and stories to be told of its making. Bernard hill is an actor of many talents and interviewee of many words. All of these--and many more--are good things. Good for the Rings movies, and good for the purposes of this article.

'It's an interesting arc" Hill says of Théoden, King of Rohan, the role he essays in both The Two Towers and The Return of the King. "It kind of grew and developed. There was a process with [co-screenwriters] Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, so there was input from the conception stage of the script, and it helped. If you [the actor] were productive in that area, chances were you could manipulate the character, manipulate the scenes and come out slightly ahead. If you were bad at it, you still probably got the same number of lines, I suppose, but if you were fairly good at it and you worked with them and they were happy with the work process, you got some valuable scenes.

"In the end, the character surpassed every expectation I had of him. When you [first] see Théoden, he's 150 and under the poison an influence of Saruman [Christopher Lee] by Wormtongue [Brad Dourif] who has killed Théoden's son and manipulated things so that Théoden's nephew, Éomer [Karl Urban], has been cast out and made to  leave the kingdom, which makes the King more vulnerable. So I'm sitting there on my throne when the bedraggled remains of the Fellowship arrive. I was sitting there with nine hours of makeup on my face because I'm supposed to be 150 years old.

"Later," Hill continues, "Théoden goes through this wonderful, seamless morphing process where he comes back to being roughly his age. He realizes that his son has died and there's a burial. During the process of being poisoned, the kingdom has fallen into complete disarray, so there's not really a working kingdom anymore. So Théoden is full of guilt and self-doubt. He grieves for his son and that sets him back quite a bit. And all of this makes him very conservative in his approach to these problems. People want to activate the whole kingdom again and get Éomer back, and there's a line where I say "Éomer is too far away. We can't get a hold of him now." They want to go to Helm's Deep, which is this massive fortress. I say, 'I know what you want of me. I know what you want me to do. But I'm not going to put my people at risk anymore.' Théoden says that because of the things that have happened to him, because he blames himself for allowing himself to be subjected to Saruman's evil."

The King Reborn

From that point, matters get even more complicated. They do go to  Helm's Deep and get involved with the Elf [Legolas, Orlando Bloom], the Dwarf [Gimli, John Rhys-Davies], Aragorn [Viggo Mortensen] and the wizard [Gandalf, Sir Ian McKellen]," explains Hill. "And they're all thinking, 'This isn't going to work at all. Helm's Deep isn't going to help us. There are too many [opponents]. The enemy is going to run right through Helm's Deep.' And that's more or less what happens. Théoden goes through a whole process where he pulls himself up a little bit, but then he drops back down again. At Helm's Deep, he's fine, but then they do a head count and there are only 300 old men and boys [left0. There's a wonderful line where someone says, "Some of these people have seen too many summers.' And someone else says, 'Or too few.'

"So Théoden is fighting against going back into this depression," says Hill. "He needs to save his people. And then he finds out that 10,000 of these bloody monsters are about to come. He gets wounded during the battle.  He's like an old Irish king, Like Henry V, because he leads from the front. There's a scene at Helm's Deep where he's at the sharp end of the gate trying to stop the gate from being broken through. Then he gets wounded and and has to retreat and he reluctantly pulls everybody back. Then he's inside the Great Hall and says, 'It's over. It's over. We've lost. We might as well just pack it in.'

Of course, that's not the way Aragorn thinks," Hill adds. "Aragorn is much more positive and direct. He hasn't been subjected to the same things that Théoden has experienced. So Aragorn turns Théoden around and you get this wonderful Shakespearean stuff: 'Now for the wrath, Now for Ruin.' And you see them on horseback in the Great Hall. They just go forth and charge through the door and down a ramp, as they blast their way out of this corner that they've been trapped in. It's a sensational moment. And from that moment onward,  Théoden starts on this very fresh air, clean progression of rediscovering who he is and taking the kingdom back and taking responsibility for it all. And all of that will project into film three. It's a really interesting journey.

"Théoden also feels responsibility for his niece, Éowyn [Miranda Otto]. He says, 'This is awful. You needed a father, not some decrepit old king.' Théoden has been aging at an accelerated rate, and he has had to be everything to her: uncle, father, mother and guardian. But Théoden thinks he has failed. And that's why I think film two is better than film one, because of those kinds of ingredients. You have much more of the human response, the human qualities, which are looked at and analyzed in The Two Towers. The world of man enters the trilogy, and with the world of man you get love, jealousy, bereavement, self-doubt, guilt and all those things that weren't really applicable in The Fellowship of the Ring."

Hill's adventure didn't end when Rings' production wrapped just before Christmas 2000. The actor--like the rest of the cast and crew involved with The Two Towers--returned to New Zealand for several weeks of reshoots led by director Peter Jackson. "It was like going back with your buddies," enthuses the British stage, screen and TV actor, whose credits include Gandhi, The Wind in the Willows and, most notably, Titanic, in which he played Captain Edward J. Smith. "We behaved and acted toward each other as if we were a theater company. We all got together because we were there in June--which is [New Zealand's] summer solstice-- and they celebrate that like Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere.

"Viggo and I used to go riding up the coast and near the riding school, there's this pottery [shop] that both he and I independently of each other, discovered. It's about two miles up this canyon. This old couple, old potters, live there with their family on a small farm. They have animals you can touch, and lots of trees with things hanging off of them. It's a bizarre place. And they serve food. Viggo approached them and said, 'Can we celebrate our summer solstice, here?' They said, 'Absolutely.' So 20 of us went. There was Viggo, Ian, Liv [Tyler], Orlando, Hugo [Weaving], Karl, some stunt guys and doubles. It was like a school outing. We were all singing songs in the coach. It was fantastic. It was like, 'Ahh, here we are. We're back again. We're back at school."'

Cry of Battle

Although Hill is full of stories about The Two Towers and The Return of the King, he's practically mute when it comes to The Scorpion King. In that sword-and-sandal film, he portrayed Philos opposite Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. The Scorpion King was intended to launch a franchise and performed well, although sequels are unlikely. "'Shall we move on?" Hill asks. "The Scorpion King was The Scorpion King, for God's sake. The movie you saw wasn't the script that I read. There's something else there. It became an action flick. It was an adventure movie, but it became an action flick. The Rock was an absolute delight, though. I'm glad I did it, just to meet him "He's a fantastic guy."

So then it's back to Lord of the Rings, and happily so for Hill. "When I first arrived in New Zealand, we went around the Weta Workshop," he recalls. "Richard Taylor is this astonishing man, and he has it all in his head. He doesn't use computers and hardly uses a notebook. He keeps all the information in his head. He said, 'Come on. I want to show you around the Workshop. I want to show you the Rohan stuff.' So I went through the Workshop and they took me all around and showed me everything that they had worked on day and night for five years, I saw the costumes, and they were very proud that they had invented this metal that looks like it's solid, which they used in the armor. It's very light, or  lighter than it looks. They also showed me the special process they used to make the prosthetic rubber for the Uruk-hai.

"Then they said, 'This is Rohan. This is Rohan' and we went down an aisle. There was a long, long rack, and there were about 40 spears on it, all lined up at an angle. And I started to think way, way ahead [to Return of the King]. I thought about being in the field, with Théoden addressing his front line of troops. There wouldn't be that many of t hem, and they would all have their spears leaned forward. Théoden would then ride down to the front ranks and go tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh, touching every spear with his sword and saying, 'We're all in this together. Here's my courage going through  my sword to give you courage.' And then there would be a battle cry.

"I mentioned [this idea] to a couple of the guys, then I eventually went to Philippa and Fran when I felt a bit confident and had [formed] a good relationship with them," Hill remarks. "I said, 'I've got this idea. It has to do with the kind of king that Théoden is. He's there. He's leading from the front. He's at the sharp end and investing everyone with his courage and whipping them all up.' They said, 'That's a really good idea.' So it got put in their little box. Eventually, we took it out and looked at it again and put it away. But it was put into script form and we did do it.

"I pestered Pete about it for ages and ages and ages, and he wouldn't concede at all. I asked, 'So are we going to do this idea of mine?' He said, 'Well, yeah, we'll give it a go and see if it works.' I said, 'You bastard.' He wouldn't say, 'Yes, it's a good idea.' I also realized during this process that I was nowhere near as good a horseman as I should have been to do the scene. I couldn't have done it. So, throughout the course of filming, w hen I had time off, I would attend very intense sessions at the riding school. I became a horseman. I could ride before, but I wasn't a horseman. So I turned myself into one.

"Those were very rewarding developments," Bernard Hill grins. "I became a horseman and I came up with an idea, a sensational idea that's going to mark The Return of the King as something that will make people say, "God, that makes Braveheart look like Walt Disney."