What’s that weird thing we spotted in the corner of a The Lord of The Rings movie? Even if you consider yourself a big The Lord of the Rings fan, you’ve probably never noticed the car that snuck into one of the best fantasy movies ever made, Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring.
The opener to his magnificent trilogy, Fellowship follows the Lord of the Rings cast of characters are they start their perilous journey to Mordor. Now, whether you think these are the best movies of all time or grimace every time your roommate pops the Blu-ray in, you know modern motor vehicles do not belong in the Shire, the Hobbits’ home.
But there was indeed a car in the first LOTR movie, and we know it was there because the VFX team, try as they did, couldn’t completely remove it once the shot it appeared in had been committed to celluloid.
At 0:11 in the clip from an early scene from the movie below, you can see a plume of white smoke in the top right corner in the distance. It’s not a chimney, it was from a car. The rest of it was scrubbed from the footage for the DVD release of Fellowship.
The story goes that the driver, unconnected to the production taking place in New Zealand, was just driving through the countryside at the wrong place wrong time.
The evidence remains, however subtle. And honestly, we’re glad it’s gone. Look at how much everyone complained about that rogue Starbucks cup in one clip from an episode of Game of Thrones… let’s not revisit the past.
For more LOTR, revisit the Lord of the Rings movies in order.