Random thoughts on re-rewatching Return of the King

[bunn]

1) My goodness the Rohirrim are hard.  I mean, they are quite tough in the book, but here 6,000 Rohirrim go through the Armies of Sauron, including Oliphaunts, like a knife through butter.   I think Rohirric horses may be closely related to rhinos.    I don't care though. I love the charge of the Rohirrim at the battle of the Pelennor Fields in both book and film. 

2) I wonder who lent Eowyn her nightie.  Because that does not look like an Eowyn nightie to me.  

3)  Elijah Wood has really odd lips, and his ridiculous youth is just silly. Frodo should not be that young.  Fastforwarded through the Frodo Closeup bits for this reason.  Also Frodo Closeups appear to cause Mollydog to whinge.  Whereas at the point where there was a closeup of the One Ring, Yama Bungle stood up in front of the telly and went 'Yowp!'  in the manner of a cat saying ' I want one of THOSE!'  This confirms all my worst suspicions about Yama Bungle. 

4)  Sam!  Hurray!  Let's face it, he is the real hero.  Aragorn  Hurray again!  I really can't imagine Aragorn played by anyone else now.   Arwen on the other hand.... hmph.   Eowyn would wipe the floor with her. 

5) I really hope the dwarves in the Hobbit film will have better makeup than Gimli. 

6) I wonder where the three dead rabbits strung on a frame in Mordor came from.  And what they did. 

7) Did the Mouth of Sauron have *oil* on his teeth?  I wonder how that works. 

8) I wonder if Gondor has hairdressers that specialise purely in putting in people's incredibly-neat backplaits.   Oh, and Arwen?  Very-pale-green?  REALLY? 

9) It was worth getting the extended DVD just for the proper nasturtians at the end, rather than those rather naff and obviously-grown-in-pots petunias that were in the cinema release. 

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If you had a special Rohirric horse, it probably comes with a special anti-stumbling muscle. ;-)

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Far as I remember that charge, it was straight down a precipitous bank onto spears. Am no military historian but it looked like a demo from "how not to use cavalry" to me. Stumbling would have been the least of your worries.... :-D -N.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That's the Two Towers charge - the one with Eomer and the Unfeasibly Steep Slope. The Return of the King one is the one that is more or less on the flat, but involves an awful lot of horses moving at speed and tightly bunched!

Mind you, in both cases they hit the spear-armed enemy with an impressive splat.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I used to worry about Eomer and the Unfeasibly Steep Slope, until I realised that his men have magic horses. At one point, it is stated that they are 300 leagues away, and yet they manage to ride all the way back a bare few days. Either we have a case of Leagues Don't Mean What You Think They Mean, or we have magic horses. I favour the magic horses, definitely. They probably grow on trees.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't think this is out of keeping with the book, what with Shadowfax being able to run more or less without stopping or eating all the way from Isengard to Minas Tirith. I reckon Rohirric horses are to modern horses as Oliphaunts are to elephants. And as Ents are to trees. Eagles to eagles. Aragorn to a pensioner. Etc.

Basically, I think we can apply the law 'Everything is more Epic in Middle Earth' here.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Ah, I hadn't realised they were magic horses (not having caught the "300 leagues" bit).

It's explicit in Unfinished Tales that a Middle-earth league is almost exactly* 300 miles, but this doesn't necessarily translate to the films.

*For a given value of "almost exactly", that is.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

1 league = 3 HUNDRED miles? Really? Surely that must be a miswriting?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Um, would you believe I meant to type "3" ?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Can't trust numbers. They are sneaky little buggers. :-D

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

The charge at Helm's Deep should never have worked, the slope was too steep for any sort of movement, never mind a charge. The disordering effect of the dawn on the uruks would have compensated for the problems of charging into a spearwall, to be fair - though one does wonder why the Uruks weren't aware that dawn might be coming. After all, it's probably the favourite time to launch any sort of operation, so they should have been ready.

At Pelennor Fields, one can't help thinking that perhaps the bit where the Rohirrim say "Hello! We've surprised you in the flank! Yes, us, over here! If you don't get a minute or two to regroup we're going to massacre you without warning! Now, if you could just hold still for a bit while we have a rousing speech..." is a bit of a shame ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Re: Pelennor Fields : I think Theoden has to do that because his men are hugely outnumbered and terrified. He has to pause and get them into death or glory mode, or they wouldn't have been able to do the charge at all. I think he's also waiting for the sunrise.

Most of the Uruks are only weeks old, the poor loves, so it's kind of understandable that their strategic thinking might be a bit lacking.