“I like it, but...” - Episode #3

The Lord of the Rings - Part 3: The Niggling Little Things

This is the third instalment of what I hope will become a semi-regular entry on my blog, “I like it, but...”, where I will discuss films, books, games, and other such things that I really do like, but there are still a few things I'd like to complain about. This is Part 3 of my discussion of the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Number one on my list of little things that irritate me in the film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings is a simple geographical error during Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas's pursuit of Saruman's Orcs with their captives, Merry and Pippin, across the plains of Rohan. When Aragorn asks Legolas what he can see with his Elf eyes, he responds; “The Uruks turn north east. They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!” This is such an elementary mistake, which anyone who has so much as looked at a map of Middle-Earth would have recognised, that I simply cannot understand why it wasn't fixed in post-production. Nowhere in Rohan is it physically possible to turn north east towards Isengard, because Isengard is north west of Rohan, amongst the southernmost marches of the Misty Mountains. Did the Orcs overshoot their mark and actually pass through the Gap of Rohan and have to double back on themselves? That would mean they crossed the entire country of Rohan--the long way, from the Anduin to the Gap of Rohan--in just a couple of days, and on foot no less! And then, to arrive back at the edge of Fangorn Forest, they would have to have overshot their mark again and travelled too far back to the east. Do these Orcs just have no sense of direction? No, obviously not. The screenwriters (or perhaps Orlando Bloom) got the line wrong, but they could have corrected it. There was nothing to stop them from doing so and they really ought to have done, since it's such a glaring error. And it's not as if it doesn't matter, because the audience has no real knowledge of Middle-Earth's geography; the films show us a map of the place often enough and a map is available in the inside cover of all three of the special edition DVD boxsets, so the audience does know the geography of Middle-Earth. Hell, Faramir is even shown closely studying a map of Rohan and Gondor and he points at Isengard, which is clearly north west of Rohan. Mistakes like this really have no excuse, unless we're supposed to attribute it to Legolas simply misspeaking, but you'd think a Wood Elf accustomed to journeys in the wild would know better than to get east and west mixed up.

Number two on my list is a filming error that recurs a lot in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, though I can't say I've noticed it in The Fellowship of the Ring. Watch the scene where Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas arrive at the site of the battle between Éomer's men and Saruman's Orcs on the edge of Fangorn Forest. If you're paying attention, you may notice something peculiar about our heroes. Look at them closely. Do you see it? That's right, all their clothing and equipment has been reversed, implying that they're all suddenly left-handed, when the three of them have clearly been portrayed as right-handed up until now. Why did the actors get into costume like this? Simple answer; they didn't. For whatever reason, the film's horizontal axis has been inverted: the image was filmed the right way round and then mirrored in post-production. Why? I have absolutely no idea. It seems totally pointless. For the record, this is a legitimate technique in filming, where leaving a shot the original way round would create a continuity error or some other kind of inconsistency, and during my fourth year at university, while working on a group assignment to make a short film, we did use this technique in one shot; if I remember rightly, it was to stop the camera from crossing the line of action, which can be confusing to audiences. But if a shot is inverted at all, it really ought to be done in a way that's inconspicuous, which The Lord of the Rings completely fails at. Perhaps they were trying to correct apparent geographical errors, though I cannot understand what those errors may be. In none of these scenes where the image has been mirrored does it seem that leaving the image the original way round would have created any inconsistencies or geographical errors, and, if you've got an eye for detail like I do, it's quite distracting to watch Aragorn going from holding Andúril in his right hand and a torch in his left hand one moment to him holding the torch in his right hand and Andúril in his left the next. Perhaps, like the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya, he can fight almost as well left-handed as right-handed, but that doesn't excuse the strap of his quiver being over his right shoulder in one shot and his left in the next, which we also see with Legolas. Unless a character is completely symmetrical (which is almost always impossible if you've got characters carrying weapons), inverting a shot ought to be avoided or at least done at such distances that these details cannot be easily seen.

Number three on my list is the army of the dead and how Aragorn goes about recruiting them. This is a bit different from the book, where a small army of Aragorn's own people, Dúnedain of Arnor, arrive in Rohan shortly after Saruman's defeat, bearing a message from Elrond advising Aragorn to take the Paths of the Dead in order to bring aid to Gondor. This small cavalry of horsemen accompanies Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas on the Paths of the Dead and, once they have recruited their ghostly army, they journey south to Pelargir, the City of Royal Ships upon the River Anduin, where they defeat the Corsairs of Umbar with the aid of the dead. After that is done, Aragorn releases the Men of Dunharrow from their curse and they depart. With Pelargir liberated, Aragorn and his company gain reinforcements from the city and commandeer the Corsair ships to take them up the Anduin to the landings of Harlond, below Minas Tirith, where they are able surprise Sauron's forces, who were expecting their allies from Umbar. With Aragorn's arrival, the tide of the Battle of Pelennor Fields is turned and the forces of Gondor and Rohan are victorious. In the film version of The Return of the King, however, this is enormously simplified. The Dúnedain make no appearance. Elrond delivers his advice to Aragorn in person, when he brings the sword, Andúril to him at Dunharrow. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas go alone into the Paths of the Dead and they keep the army of the dead in their service until the end of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, where they are shown to be instrumental in taking down at least one Mûmak and cleansing Minas Tirith of Sauron's Orcs; they seem to simply wash over the battle like a green tide of death, leaving none of Sauron's forces alive.

For me, I felt that this cheapened the victory somewhat. In the book, it is more-or-less mortal Men and mortal Men alone who defeat Sauron on the Pelennor, with the notable exceptions of one Dwarf, three Elves (the two other Elves besides Legolas, are Elladan and Elrohir, the sons of Elrond, who ride to Aragorn's aid with the Dúnedain), two Hobbits, and one wizard, who never actually seems to use any magic in the battle and, in fact, spends most of his time trying to keep up the morale of the soldiers defending the city. This is, arguably, the point of The Lord of the Rings; it is the story of the end of the time of the Elves and the beginning of the time of Men. There is a reason the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was called the Last Alliance; never again would Elves and Men stand shoulder to shoulder against evil in such great numbers as they did during Sauron's defeat at the end of the Second Age. By the time of the War of the Ring, it is time for Men to assert themselves, to stand alone and face evil without aid from Elves or supernatural forces like the army of the dead. In the book, no Elves marched to the aid of Rohan during the Battle of the Hornburg and no ghosts helped Gondor defeat Sauron on the Pelennor. But in the films, Men only finally stand up for themselves, by themselves, with the tools and the wits they have, in the final battle before the Black Gates of Mordor, and even then it is only the destruction of the Ring that brings them victory. Again, as with Aragorn only deciding to become King late in the story, perhaps this was to give the race of Men some character development in the films; they could depend on the old order of magic and mysticism to hold their hands part of the way, but the final task was given to them to handle alone. Some might think this is better, and I can, of course, appreciate the argument, but, like Aragorn's change of character between the book and the films, it doesn't sit that well with me, and I wish they had been a little more faithful to the book. Though, as far as the army of the dead is concerned (and the removal of Aragorn's fellow Dúnedain), I suspect it was a matter of time constraints that moved most of their action to the Pelennor, which is understandable. A book can be as long as the author wants it to be, but there's only so much time a studio can expect an audience to spend sitting down and watching a film.

In the final part of this blog rant, I will be discussing one huge change that I personally think works very well from a dramatic perspective; but, due to what I consider to be hugely important thematic reasons, I really wish the films had been more faithful to the book in this case. Indeed, this final complaint is the single greatest thing I object to in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.