Lord Of The Rings' Most Famous Meme Had A Funny Origin

Peter Jackson's 2001 movie The Fellowship of the Ring might have been released before the social media era, but it helped inspire one of the internet's most famous memes. The image of Sean Bean's Boromir announcing that one does not simply walk into Mordor has become a defining part of modern pop culture, and now the movie's cast and crew have spoken about it.

The conversation was part of the recent Lord of the Rings reunion, which took place online and was hosted by actor Josh Gad. Many of the cast joined the chat, as well as director Peter Jackson. While Bean wasn't there, that famous scene was discussed. It turns out that the entire speech, which Boromir gives to the Council of Elrond, was hastily written the night before.

Bean is a great actor, but even he needs time to prepare for a dialogue-heavy scene. So he decided to keep the script with him and place the dialogue out of sight of the camera. Next time you watch it, you'll see Bean starts the scene looking down as he continues to learn the dialogue.

"That entire speech that Sean had to deliver at the council of Elrond was written the night before," said Jackson. "We gave it to Sean the morning he arrived. What Sean did, which I thought was very clever, is he got a printout of the speech taped to his knee. When he did that scene, you'll see."

The Lord of the Rings reunion chat was packed with other fascinating information about the production of the movies, including the casting of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn and the unusual order in which Ian McKellen filmed his scenes as Gandalf.

In related news, the Lord of the Rings TV show is expected to resume production in New Zealand soon. For more, check out GameSpot's guide to the upcoming Amazon show.