• How do you film on a planet that doesn’t exist? How did Tolkien come up with the world
of Middle Earth? Here are 15 fictional places you didn’t know actually existed.
15 – Pokémon – the regions (Kanto etc.) • At least seven of the regions from the
Pokémon games are based on real world locations – and at least four of them closely resemble
regions in Japan. • Kanto for instance is an actual Japanese
region that is part of the greater Tokyo area. • Pallet town however is inspired by the
hometown of Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri, who wanted to recapture the Japan of the 1960s,
before the economic boom, with its forests connecting each town.
14 – Lord of the Rings (books) – Middle Earth locations
• Many of the locations in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy were inspired by
the city of Birmingham and its surroundings in the north of England.
• Tolkien grew up in a place called ‘Sarehole’, which was the basis for The Shire. The black
tower of Isengard closely resembles images of Birmingham University which has it’s
own central tower; and Mordor is directly inspired by the ‘Black Country’, named
for all the smoke that billowed from the chimneys of the mining area.
13 – Spirited Away • A festival in Japan inspired Miyazaki
to make ‘Spirited Away’ - but its setting has more in common with two places in China
and Taiwan. • Hongyadon in the centre of the Chinese
city of Chongqing [chong-ching] shares similarities with the Bath House from the film, with its
ancient buildings stacked on top of one another. • The street of ‘Jiufen’, Taiwan was
the central inspiration for the setting of the film.
• Its combination of Japanese and Chinese influences can be seen in the architecture
and food stalls in the film. 12 – Up – Paradise Falls
• Throughout the Pixar film UP, the two protagonists are searching for the mythical
location of Paradise Falls. • The fictional location of the film is
directly modelled after ‘Angel Falls’ in Venezuela, home to the largest uninterrupted
waterfall in the world. • The flat-topped mountains of Paradise
falls are actually called “tepui”. Pixar sent a team to Venezuela to sketch, film and
photograph Angel Falls and the tepui as a guide for designing Paradise Falls.
11 – Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon – bamboo forest
• The memorable fight scene in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, where the two fighters
defy gravity by walking on the tops of trees was actually staged in a real life location.
• No studios were used; instead the crew set up in Anhui Bamboo Forest in China – the
largest such forest in the country. • The actors performed their stunts in the
trees, and computers were only used to digitally remove the wires holding them up.
10 – Star Wars - Tatooine • When filming the original ‘Star Wars’
film in 1976, George Lucas and crew scouted out locations in Tunisia, North Africa to
serve as the planet of Tatooine, home to Luke Skywalker.
• Djerba Island is where “Ben’s” house can be found. When Obi-Wan isn’t staying
there, local fishermen use it for storage. • The igloo that is Luke’s house is located
in Tozeur, and was rebuilt for the filming of the prequels.
• If you want to stay in Luke’s home you can visit Hotel Sidri Driss in Matmata.
9 –Twin Peaks • David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surreal
series Twin Peaks was set in a fictional town in Oregon, but many of the exteriors filmed
in Washington State. • Snoqualmie is the primary location, and
is home to the famous Great Northern Hotel (actually Salish Lodge) and the iconic waterfalls.
• The Double R Diner that serves as the hub for much of the series is actually “Twede’s
Café” in North Bend, Washington. 8 – Disneyland/Sleeping Beauty Castle - NEUSCHWANSTEIN
CASTLE • Disney are known for using many real world
locations as inspiration for their films, but even the castle at Disneyland is based
on an actual castle - Neuschwanstein Castle in south-west Bavaria to be exact.
• Built by the reclusive King, Ludwig II of Bavaria, known as “the Fairy-tale King”,
it inspired Walt Disney in his designs for Disneyland after he visited prior to building
his theme park. • Most of the Disney towns and castles share
more than a passing resemblance to locations in real life, from Beauty and the Beast to
Frozen. 7 – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Doctor and his Father go in search of
the mythical Holy Grail – one thing that isn’t mythical is the location of the Canyon
city where he finds the grail. • ‘The Canyon of the Crescent moon’
as they call it in the film is in the Jordanian city of Petra. The sandstone canyon leads
to ‘The Treasury’, which is carved, into the rock.
• In the movie the characters are seen venturing deep into the temple, although in real life
there is not much inside at all. 6 – Batman – Arkham Asylum
• ‘Arkham Asylum’, is the fictional prison used to house many of Batman’s arch
villains, and was originated by writer Dennis O’Neal in 1974.
• O’Neal named the facility after the ‘Arkham Sanatorium’ and town created by
writer H. P. Lovecraft. • Lovecraft used the Danvers State Hospital,
an asylum in rural Massachusetts as his inspiration. • The infamous hospital opened in 1878 but
its methods fell out of favour in the 1960s and by 1992 it had been closed down.
• If for some reason you wanted to live at Arkham Asylum, apartments were recently
built there. 5 – Avatar – Pandora
• The computer-generated world of ‘Pandora’
in James Cameron’s Avatar may seem fantastical but it is openly modelled after two real world
locations in China. • The “yellow mountains” of Anhui and
the Southern Sky column in Hunan are combined to create Pandora and the Hallelujah Mountains,
as they are known in the film. • The local government named the massive
pillars after the success of the film, but later denied doing so after there was an outcry
from the local people. 4 – The Truman Show - Seahaven
• The fictional world of ‘Seahaven’ in the Truman Show turned out to be too good
to be true for Jim Carey’s character. • Rather than being some elaborate Hollywood
set though, the movie was actually filmed on location in the appropriately named Seaside,
Florida. • The entire town is actually privately
owned and was designed from the ground up. Robert Davis built it after he inherited the
80 acres. 3 – Cars – Radiator Springs
• The town of ‘Radiator Springs’ in Cars is located along Route 66 in the USA.
• While there is no town called Radiator Springs in reality, the fictional town and
its landmarks were all modelled on real places along route.
• For example, ‘Ramone’s body art shop’ closely resembles the ‘U-drop gasoline station
and restaurant’; The ‘Cozy Cone Motel’ is modelled after the Wigwam Motels; the radiator
Cap Mountains are inspired by the Tucumcari Mountains, and Cadillac range is a composite
of the Black Mountain in Arizona and Cadillac Ranch in Texas.
2 – Harry Potter - Hogwarts • Although Harry Potter takes place in a
magical world, you can visit many of the locations without stepping foot in a theme park.
• For the first two films, Alnwick castle in Northumberland doubled as Hogwarts. Platform
9 ¾ can be found at Kings Cross Station in London; the Hogwarts express travels along
the West Highland line in Scotland, and passes over the Glenfinnan Viaduct just like in the
films; and ‘The Great Hall’ is really Christ Church at Oxford.
• As for 4 Privet drive – well it’s actually 12 Picket Close.
1 – GoT – Westeros (various) • Game of Thrones makes use of many of Europe’s
historical cities to double for the cities of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and Essos,
as well as the varying landscapes. • The Maltese Capital Mdina and Dubrovnik,
on the Coast of Croatia, have both served as King’s Landing.
• Many of the Northern Locations are found in Northern Ireland Including ‘Winterfell’,
really Castle Ward just outside Belfast. A national park in Iceland is used for the frozen
wastes beyond the wall, and Morocco is used for many of the cities in Essos.