25 Things You Didn't Know About 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

It has been 10 years since the hobbits took over the planet. On December 19, 2001, 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' opened and accomplished the impossible. It proved that, despite a half-century of abortive attempts, J.R.R. Tolkien's supposedly unfilmable trilogy was not only filmable, but could be a magnificent achievement on its own terms. It changed the business of filmmaking, with innovations ranging from motion-capture and computer-generated special effects to social media marketing. It made an A-list director out of an obscure New Zealand filmmaker and made stars of newbie Orlando Bloom and journeyman Viggo Mortensen. Plus, it turned the whole world into Middle-earth fantasy geeks for at least three years as we watched the installments come out every December. Still, as celebrated as Peter Jackson's magnum opus has been, there's still a lot you may not know about how the three-part epic was made, from how the movie almost became a low-budget condensed version of Tolkien's massive saga, to the risqué ways the hobbits spent their downtime, to the real-life collision of Tolkien's universe with George Lucas' 'Star Wars' cosmos.