Every Lord of the Rings movie adds up to 1,160 minutes of total footage. Of those minutes, Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson's all-time favorite scene in the franchise is about 2 minutes and 31 seconds long and it is a pivotal scene between Gollum and Smeagol.
"A key thing with Gollum, as most people know, is that he's Smeagol and he's Gollum; it's like a split," Jackson said in an interview with Stephen Colbert. "We hadn't gotten a scene where you really got the idea, 'This guy is two people.' So, we knew that we needed it."
The scene occurs towards the end of Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings movie where Gollum is introduced as a central character. In the scene, Gollum is speaking to his more benevolent half, Smeagol, attempting to convince him that Frodo and Sam will ultimately betray him. "You're a liar and a thief," Gollum tells Smeagol. As the two halves continue to battle for dominance inside the character's head, Smeagol eventually tells Gollum to "leave now and never come back."
"…Fran [Walsh] wrote a scene where Sam and Frodo are asleep -- so they can be just lumps in the bed, [and] we don't have to have Elijah [Wood] and Sean [Astin] -- and a little set," Jackson said. "And we didn't have anyone to direct it, so I said to Fran, 'Well you wrote it, you should go and shoot it.' So she went in there for a day, and she wrote and directed the scene, which has become kind of pretty famous now."
Jackson went on to say that this moment "captures a lot of the spirit" of the iconic fantasy franchise. The Oscar-winning director explains that the films needed this scene in order to establish to the audience that Gollum and Smeagol were two different people living in the same body.
Written by Walsh and directed by Jackson, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which includes Fellowship of the Rings, Two Towers and Return of the King, is available to stream on Hulu and HBO Max.