Lord of the Rings: Books vs. Movies

[Skyblade]

"So, at any point, this army of the dead could have just come and wiped out the enemy, right?"

They could have wiped Mordor clean on that same day. If they were going to fight more than one battle, why would they not stick around an extra hour or two and fight one more?

It's stated pretty explicitly in the books that the curse only bound them for one battle. In the books, there's only one they needed to fight in, at Pelargir, which gave them an effective way of transporting Northern reinforcements. There were more defenders at Minas Tirith in the book, so there wasn't much of a need for the Dead Army there. Maybe if they had not removed 90% of the country, things could be different.

The magic is also not strong enough to clean out Mordor. Consider the source of the level of sorcery required to keep these figures in check: a noble/king of Gondor cursing a few thousand men for about a thousand years, the source of which is dead, versus a Maia enslaving an army of living people on his own and maintaining nine Nazgul and their Rings of Power. It does not compare.

Oh, I know. The problem is that you get none of this, at all, in the movies. There is no indication that there is any limits to the duration, or power, of the curse. The army of the dead is specifically described as "an army more deadly than any that walks the Earth", and is shown mowing over essentially half of Mordor's forces without even pausing. Further, the movie actually implies that the curse could have held them longer, had Aragorn not chosen to release them, as his word is needed to release them and let them be at piece.

And, yeah, I agree that there was a lot more need for the magical cure-all army in the movies, but that's because they did remove all the defenders, allies, and other forces that were present. And, I'm sorry, but those should not have been removed.

Prince Imrahil was NOT a minor character. He's the uncle of Boromir and Faramir, and I believe he's also Eomer's father in law. He was the guy who was in charge of the city with Denethor and Faramir...disqualified (since he was related by blood to Stewards). And the Knights of the Silver Swan were responsible for a number of really important turning points in the battle.

There was no reason to cut any of that, and there was nothing (in the movies) to explain why the Army of the Dead weren't used more than they were. If they were counting on everyone to have seen the books, they failed because they didn't represent the books properly, and if they were forming their own version, they failed to make their story as complete and consistent as it should have been.

In addition, they also had to compress the timelines. What is supposed to happen over the course of a few days is instead, told in the span of less than an hour. No amount of altering the background to give the impression of passing time can change that, and it is a flaw of movies as a form of media. If they wanted to portray it accurately, the actual battle would have been extremely slow, plenty of downtime, no sense of urgency at all. Most wars are not started and ended in the span of a few hours. I don't know how much you liked the Faramir scenes where he's actually shown strategizing attack patterns, but Return would have been littered with them, and the movie would have risked feeling like a History Channel documentary.

I can dream.

One thing about the movies that have bothered me, is that the Middle Earth that's painted in Peter Jackson's vision feels extremely underpopulated. It isn't. Sure one can point out "hey it's a movie," and that it is difficult to fill in that information for the viewer at a glance, but there was a lot more that the crew could have done to fill in some of the blanks.

This gives this impression that the world will end even if Sauron loses, simply because the Elves are going away. Very "this is the final battle" sort of feel. Only some of the Elves are going away. The native Elves of Lorien and Mirkwood have no reason to travel West. because that's not where home is for them. Granted, this makes life a lot easier for the filmmakers, and I am not sure they could have pulled off such an adaptation otherwise. It definitely would have compromised how Arwen was portrayed in the trilogy, and taken a significant amount of emotion from the character and her decision-making process.

If it makes anyone feel better, I actually liked the Appendices more than the actual movies.

I think they do a fairly decent job of making the world seem populated, mostly through the second movie. The refugees and towns of Rohan helped to give some much needed depth to the world. We also know that the Southrons and Easterlings are still around (though we do miss Aragorn making peace with them), as are the Dwarves and men. It didn't feel as huge as it could have been, true, but I still think it was ok. Maybe that's one thing that The Hobbit will fix (even though it ruins so many other things).