For the scenes depicting the creation of the Wizard Saruman’s gruesome Uruk-hai minions, the design team at Weta Workshop conceptualized several different stages of development. It was suggesting that when first pulled out of the ground, these towering warriors would be vulnerable and perhaps not quite fully developed, with soft unformed features and squinted eyes, like newborn rabbits.
Quickly and brutally indoctrinated into a life of harsh service and warfare, the helpless brutes would be whipped and beaten by their Orc attendants until their growing strength made them too dangerous to bully. Thanks to the sorcery through which they were born, this process took mere hours rather than years, yielding Saruman a vast army in a very small space of time.
To achieve the most undeveloped Uruk-hai look, a contortionist was hired and glued head to toe in a full prosthetic suit that took eleven hours to apply. Once in the make-up the performer couldn’t see, eat or use the bathroom. He could barely hear and breathing was restricted to a single opening in the mask. Employing his contorting skills, the performer writhed and bent, as he was prized from his membranous sack by the Orcs before the cameras.
