Philippa (cont.): [Théoden talks about his relationship with Éowyn] This piece here of Théoden was really to
establish his connection to Éowyn, as it has quite a large payoff in Film Three, of course. We wanted to use this notion
that he should have loved her like a father, and he wasn’t there for her; and it also serves the purpose of not just
explaining his character, but providing a bit of background information about where this young girl came from and why she
might have this attitude to life, which is pretty grim. [One of the Dúnedain] This scene was difficult to decide whether we’d
done the right thing, which is one of the reasons, I think, it didn’t end up in the…
Fran: [in agreement] Mmm.
Philippa: Wouldn’t you say? Because really this is not correct for Éowyn’s character; and Miranda
gave it her best shot at making it work, but what it was was a wonderful piece of, sort of, arcane knowledge of Aragorn
that we wanted to get out, or that we thought might be quite fun to get out, and again, it was finding those moments where
we could make these two connect before they actually had Helm’s Deep, because once they had Helm’s Deep, it was
all downhill, really: there wasn’t much time.
Peter: I mean, I loved finding out that Aragorn’s eighty-seven years old. [Philippa: Yeah. That’s
why we –.] I think it’s really cool.
Philippa: That’s why we did it.
Peter: It was confusing – I mean, one of the reasons why it didn’t end up in the theatrical version
where… is that we follow this scene with a flashback to Rivendell, and we build the whole [?] relationship between he
and Arwen, and the fact that he’s mortal and she’s immortal, and we felt when we were cutting the film that having
a scene where he talks about being eighty-seven years old and then in the very next scenes saying that he’s actually
a Mortal Man, and that people would get confused, you know. Does he die? Does he grow old? How old can he get? It is a little
bit confusing, but, I mean, obviously he does eventually die – he just has a longer lifespan because he’s a Man
of Númenor [Philippa: Mmm.], and in the mythology of Tolkien, they live to be – what? A hundred and fifty, or
something? Númenoreans? You know, they just have a longer [Philippa: Mmm. Yeah, they do.] lifespan to what we do. So
he’s still a youngish Man, you know, certainly not into middle-age yet, and he’s already eight-seven. He’s
been around a long time.
Philippa: Viggo loved doing this, didn’t he?
Peter: Yeah, he –.
Philippa: He loved the concept of being eighty-seven.
Peter: Yeah, yeah.
