New Zealand is a fantastic place to visit. It has buckets of natural beauty and at time other-wordly locations that you feel like you are on an away mission. This combined with forward thinking initiatives by the New Zealand Government and a legion of actors, production crew and creatives – it is no wonder that it has become a popular place to film anything from key scenes to entire franchises.

Want to showcase a rural town in Maine but it’s the wrong time of year to shoot there – head to the town of Puhoi just north of Auckland like the makers of The Tommyknockers did. Need a barren landscape for a fantasy setting – both George Lucas (Willow) and Peter Jackson (LOTR; The Hobbit) chose Tongariro National Park.

New Zealand provides!

Here are a few of the movie locations we have either happened upon or specifically sought out.

In many ways, it is a fairytale country with the kind of locations that make your jaw drop

Mark Johnson, Producer on The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“You’re not warriors. You’re pigs!”

The struggle between good and evil begins. Released in 1988 the fantasy movie Willow was a fantastic dose of escapism. Sword fights, monsters, sorcery and a great pair of villains played by Jean Marsh and Pat Roach. On top of that – the leading man was then tennage Warwick Davis – in only his 3rd movie. Years later he would make a cameo at our wedding as he was staying in the same hotel that weekend.

On repeat viewing of this classic you start to recognise some of the environment. You think you have seen it before and you have. 11 years later many of the same New Zealand locations would be used in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. (We have a nice post on that here).

The opening scenes in the Nellwyn Village and Forest were all shot in the UK – in Epping Forest. We haven’t made it there yet but have visited or come close to some of those New Zealand locations.

The crucal ‘crossroads scene’ where Willow meets Madmartigan (played by Val Kilmer) was shot just south of Queenstown at Jack’s Point. This is near Deer Park Heights that was used for some of the Rohan scenes from LOTR. Also on the South Island and doubling for the Lake of Fin Raziel is none other than Milford Sound. The Island itself actually located back in Queenstown – being Hidden Island – a tiny island that sits in the middle of Lake Wakatipu.

Selection of Milford Sound Images versus stills from the movie Willow (Courtesy of Lucasfilm)

The following sequence of scenes takes place in a mountain camp in the snow as the heroes are taken captive by Sorsha (played by Joanne Whalley) and General Kael (played by the excellent Pat Roach). This is actually located on a ski slope – the Cardrona Alpine Resort. We didnt make it up here on our trip but we stopped in Cardrona town below the slopes on our road trip to Wanaka.

The background for Bavmorda’s Nockmaar Castle is located in the North Island in Tongariro National Park (south of Auckland) that was also used by Peter Jackson to represent ‘Mordor’ and ‘Mount Doom’ in the LOTR Trilogy. The actual Castle set was half the world away in a quarry in Wales.

Milford Sound (Stage)

As well as Willow a number of other films have been made in Milford Sound.

Alkai Lake and it’s Weapon X facility were located at Stirling Falls in X-Men Origins:Wolverine starring Australian legend Hugh Jackman. It is here that adamantium is grafted to his body. A pivotal moment in the character’s history.

8 years later Milford Sound would play host to Ridley Scott’s Alien movie Alien:Covenant (2017) starring Billy Crudup, Michael Fassbender and Katherine Waterston. This sequel to Prometheus (2012) is set before the original movie from 1979 with the wild and natural Fiordland National Park playing a planet that is investigated by the crew of the Covenant. in A lander craft was built on the lakeshore and it is here that the opening Act takes place where the crew meet Fassbender’s David character. You can see Lady Elizabeth Bowen’s waterfall in the background clearly.

It’s not just a spot for a Science Fiction, fantasy or action movie setting. Milford has also hosted a wedding – albeit one that is the figment of Tom Cruise’s imagination. In the opening scene of Mission Impossible:Fallout (2018) we see a dream sequence where Ethan Hunt (Cruise) marries Julia (Michelle Monaghan). It’s a short scene before we are catapulted back into the main movie plot. Later in the movie, Mount Earnslaw and the Centaur Peaks – north of Glenorchy double as ‘Kashmir’ and the medical relief camp that sets the stage for the final act of the movie.

Paradise Found

As mentioned in our Lord of the Rings Post, Paradise (just north of Glenorchy) was the setting for Beorn’s House from the Hobbit Movie. It’s rolling pastures, farmlands and dramatic mountain backdrops creating a wonderful stage. It was also here that the Fellowship would enter the realm of Lothlorien.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine has a sequence of events that take place once Hugh Jackman’s Logan escapes from the Alkali Lake facility (at nearby Milford Sound) and is taken in by an elderly couple. To see some of the Australian locations for this movie you can check out our post here.

Landscape shots were taken of Paradise in 2005 fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe during the scene where the White Witch (played by Tilda Swinton) has her powers challenged and the children set off in search of Aslan. The winter turns to springtime to represent this diminishing of the White Witch’s grip on Narnia. Paradise makes an appearence in the follow-up movie Prince Caspian when the children are being chased by the telmarines as does the Dart River.

That Must Have Been A Hard Shoot

That’s what legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog had to say about 1988’s The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey. This fantasy film set in both 14th Century England and 20th Century New Zealand was the second movie New Zealander Vincent Ward directed and wrote. It had a number of scenes shot in Tongariro National Park, Auckland and Wellington.

Medieval England was shot from the shores of Lake Harris. An Alpine lake located on the Routeburn Track near Glenorchy. It’s 1,100m above sea-level so filming was difficult as Werner guessed. We flew over this lake on our way to Milford Sound and came close to it when we hiked the first section of the Routeburn Track. To get there by foot you need to climb all the way to Harris Saddle.

The climax of the movie was shot at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland.

There is an interesting connection between this movie and the LOTR Franchise as Noel Appleby stars in both. He is Odo Proudfoot in Hobbiton – the sour faced Hobbit who secretly enjoyed Gandalf’s fireworks at the beginning of the movie. He plays Ulf the Fat in this movie which garnered him a Australian Film Institute award for his performance.

Without a Paddle

2004’s male adventure comedy film stars a trio of male actors – Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard. The plot centers on the search for their friends treasure buried in the woods of Oregon.

The film was mostly shot in New Zealand with rivers and forests around Rotorua and Lake Taupo standing in for the US Northwest. Being filmed in 2003 it also managed to make use of many of the LOTR production crew that had just wrapped production of the trilogy.

The Waikato River and Huka Falls were used heavily in the movie with additional scenes near Auckland and down in Ohakune. You may remember the Huka Falls from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – during the barrel escape sequence as Bilbo and the dwarves flee the elves of Mirkwood.

Here be Dragons

On the outskirts of Rotorua on the North Island are the fantastic Californian redwood trees of the Whakarewarewa Forest. It is here in 2016 that most of the outdoor scenes for Pete’s Dragon was filmed. The life-action remake of the 1970s Disney Animated movie had it’s CGI effects done by Weta Workshop and the cast includes New Zealand titan Karl Urban.

Conrad Meachum (played by Robert Redford) has a workshop that is located at 7A Western Road, Ngongotaha – a northern suburb of Rotorua. It looks just like it did in the movie.

Other scenes were filmed down in Queenstown – with the familiar Remarkables Mountain Range used as a backdrop for a flying scene.

Just down the road from the forest is Lake Tikitapu (Blue Lake). The sequel to Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997) had scenes filmed here in addition to Queensland, Australia.

On our next trip to New Zealand we hope to explore more new regions such as the Coromandel Peninsula and Twizel. So stay tuned for more movie locations.