Legolas Bow

In 1997 Peter Jackson began preproduction work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “un-filmable” fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. With a budget of 280 million dollars concurrent filming of all three films began in October 1999 completing in December 2000. Inserts, re-shoots and pick up shots continued until 2004. The final shot filmed, for the extended DVD of Return of the King (some skulls rolling towards Gimli) were filmed after the film had already won an Oscar.

This is one of the bows used by Orlando Bloom as Legolas throughout the trilogy. Legolas began the first film with a shorter dark coloured bow, the “Mirkwood” bow (designed by Daniel Falconer) and can be seen up to the Mines of Moria scenes. Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) then presents Legolas with this “Lothlorien” bow at the gift giving ceremony seen in the extended cut of The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lothlorien bow was sculpted by Warren Mahy and used for the rest of the epic.

Just shy of 6 feet long, this fully practical bow features an ornate Elven leaf pattern which twists around its body. The string features a single intertwined golden thread which, according to the books, represents a hair from Galadriel’s head. The weapon is painted brown with a hand detailed grain resulting in a very realistic wood effect. The bow appears almost bone white under studio lighting but is actually quite dark. The quality of work produced by Richard Taylor’s Weta Workshop of New Zealand is quite something and the attention shown by them to every detail never fails to draw comment.

The Legolas bow was one of eight main character props from the trilogy that were given away by toy company Hasbro to celebrate the release of the multi Oscar winning third movie The Return of the King in December 2003. These prizes were showcased in museum quality displays and were accompanied by certificates from producer Barrie Osbourne.