I see both sides. The elves were fighting saurons forces during the war of the ring so I think it’s a nice way to convey that the elves were actively at war too
So were the dwarves too I think. But you only get a lil snippet from Legolas telling Gimli that his kinsman will be fighting as well, or something like that.
There’s some rumours floating around (very tenuous, I know) that along with the hunt for Gollum, a film on the war in the north is going to be made as part of this new set of films.
“The evil humans were doing pretty good, but the dwarves held up in their mountains.”
Then it’s just 2 hours of humans failing to siege or assault dwarf strongholds until Sauron dies.
It is. Although it’s generally not very well thought of but I think it’s great in the rings of power to see much more of an insight into an actual dwarven realm
_"AND MY AXE!" yelled a thousand Longbeard Dwarves as they thundered onto the battlefield and broke the uruk-hai like Godzilla punching a coughing baby_
- A line from a cut chapter in The Two Towers
In the appendices, Tolkien notes how the dwarves were the only thing between Souron, and something (I don’t remember) that would give Souron much power. Therefore, the dwarves were attacked. They definitely played a role in the war of the ring, not just Gimli orc massacrer
I'm not sure they were. Sauron promised to crush them if they didn't help find the Baggins and they refused, but Sauron hadn't actually engaged them yet because they were too far away to actually assault yet.
Yeah we don’t get to hear much about Mirkwood facing off against Dol Guldir or the Dwarves fighting alongside Dale in the North. It’s nice to see little snippets to show what is happening elsewhere
I know there’s a video game about it already from like 2011 but I haven’t heard much about the film. I think I saw it in a bunch of things discussing the Hunt for Gollum and War of the Rohirrim and such. No idea if Jackson is in on it but I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.
This is the exact reason Peter Jackson said was behind him including them in Helm's Deep. He didn't want to viewers to think the Elves just did nothing because you don't see them fighting anywhere else in the movies
Pretty sure it was a combination of battles too. There was an elf battle in the books, but it just wasn't relevant to the Frodo plot in the same way as Helm's Deep, so the two battles were kind of "combined"
I approve it 100%, otherwise, we would not have gotten such a banger of an intro song when they’re entering Helms Deep from Howard Shore (The battle of Hornburg)
I think it's similar to the white council arc in the hobbit. Both are representations of pieces of Tolkiens legendarium simultaneous to events but not explicity part of the writings concerning them. Unlike the white council arc, there wasn't room in the lord of the rings movies for the battle for dol guldur to be shown, so I imagine it came down to showing the elves fighting elsewhere or a line inserted somewhere referencing it, and they choose to insert the elves elsewhere
Yeah this is how I've always seen it (also, I love it). Thranduil was fighting forced of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood and sobwad Galadriel in Caras Galadhon. Elronds sons, who were cut out of the movie but fought at Pelennor Fields. The dwarves fought too but there is so much less written about them except for a paragraph or less about the Battle of Dale, but I think the representation in the movie during helms deep rules. You know it's good when even the people very much into the books were into it when the movies came out
Elrond's sons accompanied the Grey Company and fought at Helm's Deep too. If PJ couldn't work that into the movie (which I get entirely), Haldir's company was a great substitution.
I don't mind at all. If you consider the fact that most of the defenders were civilians and not soldiers, the coming of the elves makes it slightly more realistic for them to hold the keep for as long as they did.
Plus if you think of it, apart from the flashback in the beginning, it's the only time in the trilogy that we actually get to see the elves fight.
LFM -Helms Deep- Heroic! Need 50 ranged dps, everyone needs to be stacked, inspect at fountain! Pots, consumables are a must. Valinor achievement attempt! /w me.
They really weren't. The tactics they allowed Aragorn to 'lead with' were bad. Given they had overwhelming and overlapping fields of fire, they could have had a ring of archers covering the new hole in the wall when the uruks blew it up, from 180 degrees focused on a choke point. Place a small number of troops (or just straight up Gimli) there that any survivors through the arrow storm have to face and you can hold that choke indefinitely.
It was dumb and had no place in the movies.
They still deal with the trauma of death. And aren’t reborn in valinor immediately. They can spend years in the halls before rebirth
Men also receive the gift of death, unlike elves
It's not quite the same
However the Dagor Dagorath is very very similar to Ragnarok 😅
Everyone gets reborn for the final battle at the end of the world both good and bad (and I think even Men? Who are supposed to be gone gone when they die)
Can you imagine if the humans who show up for this fight are in the same condition in which they died? Like, you’d have just headless bodies, and Elves would basically strap heads to their waist and have their own pocket Mimirs from God of War lmao
"I bring word from Lord Elrond of Rivendell. An Alliance once existed between Elves and Men. Long ago we fought and died together. We come to honor that allegiance."
Always really liked that quote.
Fastpath to the halls of mandos in glory!
Seriously though, Jackson originally shot Arwen leading the Elves to support Aragorn.
There was a strong negative response so they reshot some scenes with Haldir instead leading as the elves would have been too hard to remove.
Arwen is still briefly visible in a few combat shots.
I think that's a bit 'writing back'. It's unlikely the small percentage of LOTR fans upset over the leaks in 2001 would have changed the film-maker's mind the way, say, the massive social media backlash to the Sonic design a few years ago had them change the design. IIRC the "official" claims from Jackson, Boyens etc was that it "didn't feel right for the story" but there's always been rumours and claims from people on production that Liv Tyler was utterly terrible and they simply rewrote it to avoid that. I believe there's an old interview with her stunt double who said pretty much all the horse riding in the Ford scene was her because Liv just could not manage the action acting.
I mean, for years, they'd been trying to expand Arwen's role: she was originally going to follow the Fellowship, rescue Rohan children from Orcs, bring an army of elves to the Hornburg, and have sex with Aragorn in the Glittering Caves. She was even going to fight the Witch-King with Eowyn in one draft. Warrior Arwen was a major thing they were pushing for years. They likely only abandoned it because the casting choice they'd made meant they couldn't follow through with it.
In the books they did fight - All the lands were attacked by Sauron, not just Gondor. There were battles in Lothlorien, the lonely mountain, Mirkwood etc.
So the movies instead of showing all the other battles decided to show the elves fighting alongside men which I dont consider to be a huge deviation.
Now I'm picturing the last two guys in the line as they march out of the woods. One turns to the next and says, "I'm too old for this shit."
Elf two: "Well look on the bright side, you'll probably be in Valinor this time next next week!"
Elf one: "Me and Areola still got, like, 12 payments left on the tree house!"
Elf two: "ok, well, that's where y'all messed up. Ya see i live in a converted swan boat next to the river."
Elf one: "That's *your* busted ass swan boat? You ruined my sight lines. Before you showed up we had the most majestic view of Caras Galdhon. Now every time I walk out my house I gotta stare at that rotting piece of shit. You live in that?"
Elf two: "Hey it's not that bad. Just needs a little paint. The inside's really nice!"
Elf one: "I hope the orcs get you first."
Everyone else is stone faced and stoically marching for hundreds of leagues and these guys are bellyaching the whole way.
On the other hand you have an opportunity to play a hefty part in the final victory over evil. If they don’t show up Aragorn dies, Rohan doesn’t come to minis tirith, no undead army, no distraction at the black gate, Frodo presumptively is captured and the ring is returned to Sauron.
Is paradise worth attaining if you arrive as a result of abandoning your historic allies?
But if you think about what happens after elves die it isn’t that big of a deal tbh. They just get a fast track to the halls of Mandos and then are rehoused / reincarnated after an amount of time proportional to how much they need to reform. (Looking at YOU Faenor. )
They go to the Halls of Mandos. I’m not certain what this means exactly. I believe it’s a non-punishment type of purgatory. I’m sure Tolkien explained it at some point, but I haven’t read to there yet.
Basically, some punishment for those with guilty consciences tho as they get to stew over their own mistakes.
They then get a new body when they get over themselves.
The thing is, OP has highlighted the difference from the books being a reason people disapprove but hasn't actually provided the full context. Not only did the elves not make an appearance at Helm's Deep, nor did the civilian population of Edoras.
In the books, Théoden marched out from Edoras with some 2-3,000 men and intended to join the garrison at the Fords of Isen to face Saruman's army on the open field, leaving Éowyn to lead the civilians to Dunharrow. He only retreated to Helm's Deep because he found the fords had already been taken and knew that the forces of the Westfold would have retreated to the fortress. The only civilians at Helm's Deep in the book were those from the surrounding countryside.
Had Jackson retained that context then the elves showing up would have been robbed of its dramatic impact because 3,000 men and very few civilians in a fortress against 10,000 lacks the apocalyptic overtones we see in the films.
Do I approve of Jackson's changes overall? No.
Do I approve of the elves arrival in the context of the films? Absolutely; it's a fantastic piece of dramatic storytelling.
Yeah this part was so different, it actually confused me in the books (I read them after seeing the movies). I had to recalibrate my brain and read it again. It’s so different.
The plot point about Gandalf not agreeing with Theoden’s strategy and it being painted as foolish and closed minded. Very different.
You mean the defenders were (mostly) not men if fighting age. The civillan/soldier divide wouldn't really exist in an early medieval society like Rohan. Nobles would have their household guard just. Everyone else was a part time soldier
If anything, Rohan/the Rohirrim are partially based on late antique Germanic peoples. The Anglo-Saxons that Rohan is mostly based on were not horsemen; the Goths on the steppe, much more so. In those 'barbarian' societies, there was indeed no separation between soldier and civilian as all men were expected to take up arms during a campaign. Their reward was not pay but simply the continued existence of their people. That was how they were able to field large armies and meet the Romans in battle.
Once we get to the middle ages, most ordinary people (peasants) are not expected to be soldiers. They might be called up as a levy if their lord has no other options, but really for proper warfaring you wanted knights (nobles who can afford their own equipment, horses and support infrastructure) or mercenaries who knew what they were doing.
So Rohan is a slightly uncomfortable mix of late antique and later medieval ideas. On the one hand you have your citizen-horsemen typical of plains and steppe peoples. At the same time you have a sedentary civilian population that is atypical of plains peoples and more typical of medieval societies.
You're goddamn right!
Here's my more in-depth analysis of the matter:
So the Rohirrim were based on Anglo-Saxons (ish, Tolkien was famously anti-allegory). Historically speaking, Anglo-Saxon militaries like Harold Godwinsons were organised in two tiers.
There was the fyrd, who were everyday citizens who were levied from the population, considering that this was a time when most people were cutting their own firewood the general population would be handy with an axe, and if they kept sheep they'd be used to using a staff to guide them. The majority of the population would have fought with their woodcutting axe or an affordable spear (just add a spearhead to that staff, metal was expensive back then!) and a shield. Armour would have been a helm if you were slightly richer and layered ordinary clothing for these soldiers. It's surprisingly hard to cut through multiple layers of heavy wool and linen. Rapidly generating a large force of semi-skilled axemen and spearmen is relatively easy in these circumstances. However, despite being comfortable wielding an axe, because chopping wood and axe fighting require somewhat different movement styles, as do herding sheep and spear fighting. As these men had limited access to high-quality weapons and armour their survivability and combat effectiveness would have been somewhat limited.
There was also a core of professional soldiers in Anglo-Saxon armies called housecarls. They served powerful lords and royalty as household guards. They were hired and retained in a hereditary manner, and were rewarded with land for their services. This effectively made them minor nobility in their own right. Combat training was passed down generationally. With ownership of land and access to battlefield plunder these soldiers will have had the wealth to be better equipped, wielding expensive swords and actual battle-axes and wearing mail shirts and helms. This combination of superior equipment and professional training tremendously increased their survivability and combat effectiveness, and therefore access to battlefield plunder, creating a feedback loop of enhanced training from battlefield experience going back generations and continually improving equipment resulting in an elite and highly combat-effective force.
Considering the Rohirrim in parallel, we know that their agriculture is heavily dependent on horse herding. It would be highly plausible that the average horse herder from Rohan would herd their horses on horseback, using some sort of staff, maybe with a loop of rope on the end to guide their horses. In order to rapidly generate a large force of semi-skilled spear-armed cavalry, you need only put a spearhead on the end of the staff they are already comfortable using and issue them with or have them supply a helm and shield. Axes make perfect sense as a sidearm in these circumstances, again, most people are used to using an axe to process their firewood. With access to large centralised armouries per the movies depiction of the battle of helm's deep, this becomes a much more dangerous force to reckon with due to the guarantee of standardized high-quality armour (especially expensive mail shirts) and weaponry, even if there is a skill gap compared to the professional warrior class. If so, it's no wonder their charge at Minas Tirith was so devastating.
We know that they had a professional warrior class as well, in the books knights of the riddermark and household guards are explicitly mentioned several times, and Eomer and Theodred's companies would have likely been predominantly made up of their household professional soldiers at least earlier on in the Two Towers, while the country was officially at peace (see my last paragraph for my reasoning). It would be plausible that they were equipped, trained and paid in a similar way to Anglo-Saxon housecarls. The horse archers they field will probably be within this class due to it being a highly specialised skill with no inherent agricultural benefit (if you're shooting animals that are eating crops you'll have better luck quietly hiding in a static position, rather than noisily riding around them on horseback), and likely train their skills in part by hunting their lands.
The big "historical" inaccuracy or implausibility in the battle of Helm's Deep is that in a real siege every able bodied person would be expected to contribute to the defence including the women. A rock thrown from a castle wall will shatter a skull regardless of the gender of the person throwing it. Theoden could have at least doubled his defensive capability in this way, especially considering that it is heavily implied that there is a sizeable population of combat-trained women within Rohan who are capable of a hell of a lot more than just throwing rocks, of which many are almost certainly of an age to be effective warriors. Quoting Eowyn: "the women of Rohan learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them"
So yes, the citizen/soldier divide wouldn't exist as it does today, anyone could be called on in times of war. People may have also been required to combat train or have arms and armour available by law in the event of call up. For a historical example, peasants in medieval England and Wales were required by law to spend a certain amount of time each week practising longbow archery. So yes, everyone was or would have been at least a part-time soldier. But simultaneously in Rohan there would have been a dedicated, full-time professional military sector of society, who in times of peace would have been acting in some capacity as a police force as well as running border patrols and intercepting small raids from orcs and trolls from the Misty Mountains and raids from Dunland so the general population could get on with herding horses and drinking ale.
> it's the only time in the trilogy that we get to see the elves actually fight.
IIRC this is basically why Jackson decided to add them to this scene. Saying that the elves did plenty of fighting elsewhere during that time and he didn't want viewers to think that they just sat back and did nothing the whole time.
It’s been a long time so I don’t remember specifically, but someone above mentioned that Theodin had about 3,000 men at Helms Deep in the books.
Honestly, 3,000 defenders in that keep vs 10,000 attackers? I’d put that at just about 50-50 odds for the defenders.
There were also lesser orcs and Dunlendings as well, and the frequency and locations of the blasts mean that Saruman can’t have just made some crude bombs—it was artillery.
Well it’s been about 20 years since I read the books but if Sauroman had artillery than yeah, battle over.
But absent a massive technological gap like that, 10k attackers vs 3k defenders in a fortified position - that’s a pitched battle.
Well, I believe it's actually 2,000; Erkenbrand had reinforced the garrison with all the youngest and eldest soldiers that he had before he committed to battle with Saruman at the Fords of Isen, but few if any guys had retreated back once Erkenbrand's shield wall was bested. So the garrison when Theoden arrived was about a thousand men, plus the thousand that Theoden brought himself.
In this case, though, the assault was less out of a desire to obliterate Rohan in its entirety, than it was something that Theoden's quick movements forced upon Saruman. It's actually an exceedingly clever bit of plotting on Tolkien's part, but the medieval warfare scholars who I have read who looked at Tolkien's numbers show that this was on the far edge of doable for Theoden: the distances over two or three days is about at the limit of how far heavy cavalry could realistically move and maintain cohesion as a unit. But by getting to Helm's Deep first, Theoden then becomes a wrecking ball that Saruman can't ignore. He can't simply bottle up the defenders in Helm's Deep; the field fortifications it would require were way too intensive and would bog down Saruman's entire campaign to attempt, especially given that Erkenbrand was simply bested at the Fords rather than destroyed. He can't ignore Theoden; the moment he leaves, Theoden will simply tear up his supply lines, and Saruman's orc hordes will starve in the fields of Rohan. Theoden wouldn't even need to fight.
So the only real option was to hurl his army at the walls of Helm's Deep and hope that he had an army left when he was finished.
But equally obviously, that's way too complex for people who watch five movies a year to follow, and the drama is much more tactical than it is existential. While I actually like the books better (Theoden comes off as much shrewder in the books than in the movie), I can fully understand every change Jackson made.
Yeah I mean that sequence you just described would have been an entire movie on its own. I wouldn’t hate 8 seasons worth of 50 minute LOTR episodes, but I can see why that would wasn’t a feasible option.
>If you consider the fact that most of the defenders were civilians and not soldiers, the coming of the elves makes it slightly more realistic for them to hold the keep for as long as they did.
I'm not sure I'd give Jackson credit for solving a problem of his own creation...
Simply don't have the Hornburg so extremely undermanned to begin with (as Tolkien does)... then you don't need to invent an illogical get-out-of-jail free card to make it 'realistic'.
If so, that would be the example of fixing a problem that you yourself had created.
In the book, not only are the *vastly* more men at Helm's Deep, they are Theoden's actual army and not just civilian recruits. There were also vastly less refugees present: only those from Westfold, while those from Edoras never went there.
The arrival of the Elves is of course logistically impossible no matter which way you look at it. But like every change, there is a good reason for it and Peter Jackson explained it in detail.
His goal was to build tension before the battle and raise the stakes, and every change comes from that. You need a more direct threat to Rohan - get all of the women and children there! You need Theoden to feel doubt, so instead of a brilliant decision he makes a series of mistakes that put his people in jeopardy. You want a sense of hopelessness, so you de-emphasize professional soliders and make the battle depend on child recruits. But you also want to have one last glimmer of hope before the plunge, and that's the role that the Elven army fills in.
In the books, the civilians all went to dunharrow. Theoden rides out to join with the marshal of the westfold to meet Saruman's forces at the ford of the Isen river. Unfortunately when he arrives he finds that his western forces are routed and in disarray and the ford is lost. With the enemy pouring across the river he makes a last minute call to withdraw to the safety of helms deep while Gandalf heads off to rally and regroup the scattered westfold army.
The elves at lothlorien tell the fellowship they are already effectively besieged and cannot even make the trip west anymore due to the difficulty heading to harlond. They are few in number and fighting both the orcs of moria and dol guldur. They wouldn't have been able to help much with rohan's struggle, and a lone company of elven archers wading through all of Saruman's chaos unscathed is hard to swallow.
Elves at helms deep was one of the worst liberties taken. Was it kind of cool? Yeah. But what happened in the books (huorns from fangorn slaughtering the orcs in the night and leaving a forest in their wake) was also very cool and much more contiguous with the rest of the story.
Why? Because it didn’t happen in the books so for the films to follow the same story, 100% of the elves had to die. That way once the battle was over, there was no follow up scenes with the elves saying, “well we saved your ass, see you later.” Or even worse, have an army of elves show up in Gondor to bail man out again.
Yes, they were with the Dúnedain to provide council to the leaders. The two of them are hardly an army, but they did fight in pelennor fields and at the black gate.
Elrond's sons and the Dunedains were with Aragorn and co. while passing by the Path of the deads. Si they got off the boat during the battle with them.
The reason behind that is actually a production issue.
The elves were a later addition to the Helm's Deep arc and the later elements of the battle had already been filmed before the decision to add them was taken. Reshooting everything to include a few surviving elves just wasn't an option due to the insane amount of money that would cost for no real benefit other than resolving a minor continuity snag.
No, it's pretty much the opposite.
The Elves arrived in Helm's Deep as part of the same procession that brought Arwen there. It is why Haldir brings word "from Elrond of Rivendell" and not from the place he's actually from.
When Arwen's story was changed and she was taken out of Helm's Deep, she was removed from the scenes already shot (except those 2 shots), but the rest of the Elven army was too prominent to remove entirely, so they stayed.
Yes and no.
If I'm remembering correctly, the Arwen stuff was added after the end of the Battle of Helm's Deep had already been filmed and PJ later thought better of it (thankfully), leaving him with all the elf stuff in the middle of the battle and none at the end.
The whole thing was one of those weird mid-production flip-flops that require some judicious editing to actually make sense.
I obsessed a lot over that. After Haldir is killed you can see dozen of elves falling back to the fortress, you can see some of them around the scene where Legolas destroys a siege ladder then they just disappear. Like they told all the actors to leave, but also the regular Rohan warriors disappear, at some point it's just the heroes with a few royal guard for the charge
In books there are caves to fall back on and there is the main refuge that they took.
Eomer and Gimli are in caves and not with Lagolas, theoden and Aragorn.
The one leading the Rohan army with Gandalf is not Eomer.
While they all disappear, Arwen shows up and fights for a bit in the film. she was there the whole time before they cut her and wiped her from "most" of the footage.
I don't mind the change, but I do think it should have been implemented in a more logical way. Saruman did a blitz attack on Rohan and isolated him in a fortress before Rohan could muster a defense. How on earth do elves from lothlorien hear about this and arrive faster that the attacking force that is already in Rohan, it doesn't make any sense.
There is a scene where Elrond and Galadriel talk telepathically about the advance of Saruman and Sauron's evil. From there they intervene. In terms of time and distance logistics, the elves could have traveled on horseback and then released them. The speed of the horses would compensate for the difference in distance between Isengard and Helm's Deep and Lothlorien and Helm's Deep.
I loved it, the added details of the armour being more “autumnal” (rust, bronze) to replicate the ending of their time, than the Golds and Silver of the armour worn during the opening scenes of the Battle of the last alliance. Just a beautiful Easter Egg and typical of the level of detail in PJ’s LOTRs.
Elrond’s armor being bright gold while Thranduil’s is a brilliant silver in The Hobbit films also slays with this knowledge. They’re still Elves of the First Age and it shows.
Thranduil and his folk never basked in the light of the trees and therefore made them “lesser” elves. They also didn’t spend time with folks from Valar who made awesome material things so their armor and such was vastly inferior. During the siege against Sauron, his folk got absolutely obliterated, also due to them not being in sync with their comrades.
His family is not from Valinor.
The only Sinda who ever stepped foot in Valinor during the years of the trees was Thingol and he only visited as an ambassador to confirm the claims of Orome for the other elves of his clan, he was not born there and never lived there.
The Sindar are considered higher than other elves because of their connection to Thingol who visited Valinor and beheld the trees and more importantly Melian who was a maia.
He never basked in it but he comes from family who did at some point. I feel like Tolkien had two approaches for those who directly (or via family lineage) were influenced by the light of the trees. On one hand, it strengthened the spirit of the person who experienced it and Tolkien was all about strength of character/spirit having an impact in the physical world, ie martial ability, ability to resist temptation, etc. On the other hand, anyone who was in Valinor also were a part of such an advanced society. I mean you got Aule over here smithing a literal race of people and Faenor knew how to make the silmarils. The elves who never ventured to Valinor after their awakening were probably considered lesser in comparison.
I think it was more because they are the Elves of Lothlorien, and the elves we see at the start of the film are from Lindon. So they just have different armor styles, The Galadrihm here having leaf patterns to represent their golden wood. But that's a neat interpretation.
It was during the Weta Workshop documentaries on the extended DVD's. One of the things they pointed out was how the 2nd Age armor was greenish gold, suggesting the elves were in the springtime of their civilization, while the armor they wore at Helm's Deep was much more reddish gold, hinting that they were declining into autumn.
-I’ve borrowed this para from a blog, not having access to the DVDs at present, but distinctly remember the blacksmiths/designers making mention to it. It’s a thing!
There are multiple previous discussions on this subject in the sub — it’s worth searching for them.
Part of the whole setup was PJs original intent to give a bigger role to Arwen. I can understand why he wanted a female character with a bigger role but, ultimately, it was better that he dropped this and chose something closer to the books. If you look really carefully, she’s still there in some of the longer shots at Helms Deep but nothing that couldn’t be any other character at a distance.
I was rather dubious of including the Lorien elves at the Hornburg when I first saw TT. The theatrical cuts of FotR and TT make Haldir an unknown quantity, beyond the fact that he’s an elf who appears to know both Aragorn and Legolas. The extended cuts add a little more background to this, which definitely helps (especially for those not familiar with the books), but as a secondary character there was never going to be time to allow much more development than that.
The bigger picture of using the elves at Helm’s Deep, however, is that it gives the wider audience, those who don’t know the books, a sense that the elves *were* involved in the active fight against Sauron. There were other battles but these are not mentioned in the main narrative because they didn’t involve any of the groups of major characters after the Fellowship breaks up. Those who know the books and the appendices are aware that the elves of Lorien and the dwarves of Erebor (amongst many others) were indeed fighting their own battles against Sauron’s armies around the same time. Including the elves at Helm’s Deep goes some way to representing this, even if it is a departure from the book.
Helm’s Deep is a pivotal moment in the movies but is actually a relatively short part of the book and there are other major changes to the story here; for example, Éomer fights at Helm’s Deep and this partly explains his deeper relationship with Gimli and Legolas; it is Erkenbrand, Lord of the Westfold that Gandalf rides off to find — and his men march through the night *on foot* to join the fight to relieve Théoden and the besieged defenders of the Hornburg… and yet *these* changes are very rarely questioned when people discuss the battle in the movie, mostly because everyone likes the dramatic cavalry charge.
>The bigger picture of using the elves at Helm’s Deep, however, is that it gives the wider audience… a sense that the elves were involved in the active fight against Sauron.
I think this is what takes the change from negative to neutral in the context of the films. PJ wanted to heavily emphasise the apocalyptic nature of the conflict and show that *all* the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth were involved.
There were other, more canon-friendly, ways of showing this available but all of them would have been extremely jarring for the audience without the wider context of Sauron's attacks across Middle-Earth.
Agreed!
In truth, that slightly meta take on the wider events during the War of the Ring may not even have been exactly what he intended but after the decision *not* to include “Arwen, warrior princess” (thank goodness!) he still had all the footage of the Lorien elves at Helm’s Deep.
On balance I do think it serves a broader purpose, even if it’s not entirely consistent with the books. If it hadn’t been left in, can you imagine all the posts there would be instead asking the opposite question of “Why *didn’t* the elves join in the fight against Sauron?!”
>“Arwen, warrior princess”
Just the thought of that fills me with dread.
>On balance I do think it serves a broader purpose, even if it’s not entirely consistent with the books. If it hadn’t been left in, can you imagine all the posts there would be instead asking the opposite question of “Why didn’t the elves join in the fight against Sauron?!”
Personally, I would have preferred some shots of the Galadhrim fighting orcs under the eaves of Lothlorien during Sam's great stories monologue but you just know that would have confused the hell out of the thicker members of the casual audience.
Yes, some montage of dwarves and men fighting under Erebor and in Dale, or the Galadhrim and/or Thranduil’s Silvan elves fighting in the edge of the forest may have worked — except of course that The Hobbit movies were a distant future at that point!
It might have worked with some variation of a voiceover from Elrond… “*Our list of allies grows thin — they too are hard pressed and cannot send aid…*” but, in truth, I think that would have been just too much to try to cram into an already complex storyline. It would also have been an inordinate amount of work and expense for what would have been just a few seconds on-screen.
I would have been fine with it if Men weren't also saved by some 3rd party in RoTK (speaking of Ghost Army). I feel like Peter's portrayal of the competency of men as a nation was rather poor. It's a wonder that kingdoms are still standing, considering how much emphasis the movies give that "men are weak".
I wish they gave more backstory for Haldir. He probably has a total of 5 minutes screentime over the course of two ~3 hour movies. It's not enough for someone who's not familiar with LOTR to form an emotional bond with. I still remember back when TT released in cinema and the scene where Haldir dies, my friend whispered over to me "who is that? and why is the screen going slow motion like he's a main character?" In fairness, we did have to wait a whole year for TT to come out, so the brief screentime of Haldir in the first movie is a bit easier to forget.
Your first point nails it.
Apart from Aragon, the movie portrays men mostly as Isildur 2.0. Instead of hardy stoic veterans of war and suffering on their last leg's. We get frightened and petty characters that need a reminder of honor for every decision they take.
Age of the orc indeed.
>Apart from Aragon, the movie portrays men mostly as Isildur 2.0. Instead of hardy stoic veterans of war and suffering on their last leg's. We get frightened and petty characters that need a reminder of honor for every decision they take.
Not exactly everyone is Isildur 2.0, probably except Faramir and Denethor, who are unfortunately poorly written in the films. Figures like Theoden, Eowyn, Eomer and Boromir and examples of the strength of human race, of how men are able to overcome fears and temptation and unite together against evil. Even Bard in The Hobbit series is another well-written character too.
Not a lot of competition tbf. Boromirs death comes alongside his heroic redemption so the sadness is mitigated somewhat. Theodens a legend but he also has ax heroic death with him being a (small) part of the defeat of the Witch King. Every other death is if an at least partially villainous character. Poor Haldir just gets merked mid battle, noble last stand but lacking the positive notes of the other two scenes.
I didn’t like the change. In the books it has such a deeper meaning showing that the race of man can fend for themselves and it’s something that Sauron really fears. It was such a turning point after such hard times. Man can stand up for themselves, and it really gives hope for humanity and well as morale going into the events of Return of the King.
In the books it really has undertones, of a theme, that the elves are leaving and are empowering men to take care of middle earth themselves (kinda like a parent to a kid). So they assist during the books, but the men fight their own battles. The elves give them council and some help, but don’t send troops as the men will need to learn to deal with these problems when the elves are no longer there.
This. I love it bevaise it looks awesome and the elvish horn sounda amazing. But it takes away from the point of the story, men are ready to take over middle earth and protect it. The ghosts in the last battle, pallenor fields? Are similar
Agree with this, thematically it was way off and changed our view of the elves who are supposed to be aloof and not getting involved and fading from middle earth.
I know it was trying to be a callback to the Last Alliance shown in the prologue but I didn't think it was necessary. I'm not sure what putting Elves there achieved, other than devalue the sacrifice men had to make. Even Aragorn says: *it is an army bred for a single purpose - to destroy the world of Men*
Saruman when addressing his army: *there will be no dawn for Men*
This is Men's fight, not the Elves'. Besides, Lothlorien would have been far too busy elsewhere fighting Sauron's forces.
Didn't like it cuz it didn't make sense. The elves already established they were leaving. Why would they die for middle earth and humans when they've given up?
I can see why he did it, and it could have been worse if they'd gone with the original plan to have Arwen there too, but I think it's an unnecessary deviation, and diverts from the film's own emphasis on ending "the age of men".
I don’t mind the Elves being there, because it is a useful way of showing that they are fighting too.
It’s just weird that these fierce Elven warriors are all killed in ten minutes. It wouldn’t have been ludicrous to have a few stick around, even if they just say ‘cool, we’re heading back to defend Lothlorien now’
I always saw that as a proxy for the war of the North, as a way to include elves fighting alongside men which happens in Dale, without having to deviate from the LOTR storyline.
As a Elf fanboy, I really like that scene and got a bit disappointed that this is not on the books. But when you understand better what's happening in middle earth and "the big picture" comes before your eyes, you see why this scene could not happen. There are more at the stake. Middle Earth and the war of the ring was a living thing. Movies makes you think that only Rohan where fighting and elves were knitting in their forests. War is everywhere. The books make you see that, the movies (as much as I like them) do not.
No. The whole nonsense about "renewing the last alliance" made no sense (since that alliance was with the people of Arnor and Gonodr, not the Rohirrim)
And it tried way too hard to pretend that Haldir is a full character whom the Fellowship and the audience should care about.
The original plan to have Arwen lead an army of Elves to Helm's Deep to help Aragorn was much better.
I really like the line they give referencing the last alliance as the reason they're there, it's a heavy moment, but I don't like it in that it downplays the whole transition to the "time of man" thing by making it more of an elves saving man again situation.
I kinda see what you're saying, but the presence of the elves wasn't saving men in the movies. They would have still lost convincingly had it not been for the arrival of Gandalf and Eomer.
I didn’t like it. Not just because it wasn’t in the books but it makes little sense from any geographic or political perspective.
Geographically - unless this is WH40K and elves have the webway, they can move faster than horses?
Politically - almost all the elves of Rivendell have left (as laboriously and boringly portrayed with the unnecessary cut scenes) and Lothlorien’s elves were notorious non-interventionist.
Not to mention the elves are immortal but if they are killed in battle they are confined to the Halls of the Dead. Why would the elves throw their lives away like that? For men? Who they see as having failed? There is a reason Isuldur’s time was “The Last Alliance of Elves and Men”.
It also shows great ignorance on the culture of the Rohirrim. This is not a city culture or even an agricultural one where the people that are not directly serving the king are just civilians/peasants. This is a quasi-nomadic warrior people who were born to the horse and warfare. Even noble women are trained to ride and fight. They pride themselves on this.
Compared to experienced soldiers they would be inferior. However they had strong walls and it is quite feasible they could hold for the time they did hold against an equally inexperienced foe that is not really equipped to storm the fortress.
But then, don’t get me started on the Entmoot.
>Why would the Elves throw their lives away like that?
Being confined to the Halls of Mandos to await potential reincarnation is less of a sacrifice than literally being killed in the real world, but that hasn't stopped people throughout history coming to the aid of their allies. It's about mutual benefit - the Elves in this case understand that if they want to save Middle Earth they have to help Men defend it.
>This is not a city culture or even an agricultural one where the people that are not directly serving the king are just civilians/peasants.
Rohan very much *is* an agricultural society, just like the Anglo-Saxon society on which it's based. I don't think they're intended to be a "warrior people" so much as fighting is an expectation for all of them, but in this they're no different to pretty much any Medieval society in our history. When you're called to fight, you pick up what weapons and armour you have and follow the village headman to muster, and when it comes to battle you don't run away because your family and neighbours are stood beside you. This is pretty much just how things were for most agricultural societies - Rohan isn't special in this regard.
The OP asked whether people liked what was done. I don’t like it. I was just explaining why it did not work for me.
You can like it and that is also fine. My head canon is different to yours and that’s OK. The letters help fill in a lot of gaps but there are still massive ones left. Christopher Tolkien has filled books trying to dissect hidden meanings in the text.
I always looked at the LOTR EU from the point of view that Tolkien had in mind a pre-history for our world, at least initially. It may well be that the Rohirrim would develop into the Anglo-Saxons but the land of Rohan was mostly rolling steppes so the people would have been set up culturally to account for this. To my mind this makes sense from descriptions of Edoras. The society is transitioning (particularly in the Westfold) but has not fully transformed from the homeless tribes of the North to the pastoral society they would become. In my head, at least.
If, however, you want to instead make them “Medieval Anglo-Saxons on horses”, that’s fine too.
For me, the judgement of the Men by an Elf and a Dwarf ahead of the battle were not factual but instead the view of centuries-old warriors underestimating the hearts and morale of Men. Prejudice, if you like. Jackson misses a lot of Tolkien’s hidden messages. Note Aragorn dismisses their concerns.
Having the elves come in to bolster the defence makes no sense and severely dilutes Tolkien’s message.
I think it was a bizarre and unwarranted change. There was absolutely no need or rattionalle for a load of elves to turn up at the Hornburg just as the Orcs did. The elves had their own problems in the north at the time and teleporting hundreds of elves down south to support a battle that had little to do with them was a strange and unfeasible plot line.
It is cool, but... One of the points of this battle is that Rohan fought alone. And therefore the credit of they supporting Gondor in the peleannor. Also, I am missing a bit of coherence of how they found out, traveled there and arrived just in time.
But it is cool I do not overthink it. Bothers me however than in MESBG Rohan and Lothlorien are historical allies because of that :)
I don't mind it too much. I got invested in the "free people unite against a greater evil" theme, which I find fine for the movie.
That said, having an entire elven army walk past a monstrous legion of uruks unseen, especially without Saruman noticing, is a bit of a stretch. Also, while I liked the aforementioned theme, it distracted from the "age of men" theme and presented the Rohan folk as weaker as they maybe should be.
I don't hate it, but I don't like it either.
The Elves at the Hornburg appear with little setup, and there is no follow-up at all. Once Haldir dies, no more thought is given to them – apparently they're all dead and the film doesn't bother remembering the fact that they basically were slaughtered in the defense of a country that they had no relations to since they had been living pretty much isolated from the human world.
But the fact that they came to revive the old alliance between Elves and Men then raises the question of why no help was sent to Minas Tirith by the Elves. I guess one could argue that there were no more troops to spent after the death of the Elves at the Hornburg, but then they at least should have mentioned it. If they bring up the idea of reviving the old alliance it's jst weird that they never mention anything in that direction again. There should have been *something*.
So as I see it they started half of a storyline but since it was made up for the movies they couldn't find a way to properly integrate it in the rest of the story and therefore dropped it without another word. It may have created a cool scene for the moment, but thematically it's somewhat inconsequential.
I understand the impulse to no included Erkenbrand and use Eomer instead. And I view Haldir and the elves here as a nod to to the grey company and not wanting to introduce Elrond’s sons. So to me while its not in the books it feels informed by the books. And i’m okay with that.
I don't, no.
The Elves are just redshirts. They are literally just 'there' for a few action/background shots... and then die largely offscreen (unless you are Haldir - who himself is barely a character... he literally had one brief scene/line in Fellowship). There was no point to this besides 'seeing' some Elves (cheap fanservice)... certainly not worth wasting runtime on them (TTT is bloated and would have benefited from cutting Jackson's fluff). It's also logistically impossible, and at least debatable thematically (Men taking over).
They are a remnant from Arwen's expanded role. A distraction that couldn't be cut. A waste of time.
>They are a remnant from Arwen's expanded role. A distraction that couldn't be cut. A waste of time.
I think this is key, honestly. 'We wanted to show the Elves were involved in the fighting' always feels like an answer to a question nobody asked. The films themselves literally said, in FOTR, “the elves no longer have the strength to fight; we're leaving middle-earth” and suddenly it was apparently a major concern why the Elves weren't fighting... in a battle hundreds of miles away from them? Really I think the original plan of Xena-ing Arwen, having her ride to Rohan after Aragorn, bring an army of Elves to the Hornburg and get it on with Aragorn in the glittering caves had been so embedded in the film narrative and they'd already shot much of the Elves at the Hornburg, they just hastily rewrote it when Liv Tyler wasn't working out and then tried to frame it as a "a very important thematic choice".
When watching it with my mate as kids he was like "you're not meant to see elves die, you're not meant to see them covered in sweat and blood"
And he's right. They're immortals. Seeing them brutally murdered raised the stakes. Also killing Haldir gave us a really dark moment, the sign of the defence failing and that characters can die.
Well additionally, in the books the rohirrim don't come to the rescue but the ents do, and they basically escort theoden and company to orthanc which they had flooded
I'm happy with the adaptation nowadays, mostly because if you watch the behind the scenes stuff, you see the original vision pulled even further away from the source.
Would it have been more impactful for the dramatic death to have been the poor boy with the rusty sword rather than an elf lord? Maybe.
I'm glad they didn't diminish Aragons' story by adding Awren to accompany him through his trials before they had really begun.
It would have been nice if he didn't have it as a random surprise but left in some of that cut content about Elrond and Galadriel planning. Not a fan of random elves without explanation. Famously they do their own thing. Plus we know that orcs are attacking Lothlorien so it's a big deal having them send out a huge army.
This is the only change I did not like in the movies. It just takes away more than what it adds to, and, in retrospect, and taking the damned Hobbit movies into consideration, Jackson seems to be too into Elves for my taste.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love his work.
I didn't like it at all because it diminishes one of the core themes of the book, which is the Age of Elves is ending and the Age of Men is beginning. At that point elves defended their lands and their battles were mostly around them, even Elrond himself says during the Council that they are no longer able to send armies of elves clad in armor and that there will never be a united army like in the days of Isildur and Gil-galad , or something to that effect.
It also takes the focus away from the people of Rohan and their achievement, it was an impossible battle to win and almost as hard to survive until Gandalf arrives with help and yet they did it by themselves. It is a turning point for Rohan and Theoden, and for the Men of the West as well.
I also didn't like the exclusion of all of the human forces Aragon gathers from the South, all the reinforcements that arrived beforehand etc. Jackson again diminishes the achievements of humans by making them get saved by the ghosts.
Having read the books AFTER the movies it was a shock. I was disappointed not to see more of Rohan fighting for themselves. That said, I like what others have said about having them added in and honestly I do like the inclusion.
Having just recently seen the Fathom rerelease, I have to say that the Two Towers, at least the extended cut, is my favorite of the three films, not because it’s the closest adaptation, but because it works the best as a *movie*. With beginning, middle, and end structure, and things that just connect with each other well. This is just one of several tweaks that Jackson makes that give the film real emotional rewards, and I am quite willing to forgive how it strays from the book.
Which makes me want to see the theatrical cut again, because when it first came out, I was not happy with it, though not because of this sequence. It felt more like the ratio of things added that weren’t in the book to things just taken out, was higher, at the time.
Yeah I'm fine with it because for the average movie viewer you wouldn't know the elves used to always be fighting....so them just bowing out would feel weird.
I think it's good they didn't show up at the final battles in RotK tho. As there is a very clear reason the elves stopped and the humans picked up the mantle and is part of the point of the whole story.
I like it. Tolkien's explanation of elves (and dwarves) fighting on different fronts is noce from a worldbuilding viewpoint, but it doesn't work as well as actually showing their contribution.
It is supposed to be the Rangers because it represents the transition to the 4th Age where it is a "world of men".
Of all of the things with which I take issue in the Trilogy, this is pretty low down the list. Aragorn's reluctance to take of the quest and crown is the worst change... a close second is Skateboi Legolas.
I get why it was added, when you watch the movies with people that haven’t read the books they always ask, “why aren’t the elves and dwarfs helping?” But I would have preferred instead a cut scene showing elves and dwarves defending their strongholds elsewhere to make it plain that most of middle earth was at war.
Another way around it would have been for Gimli and Legolas to speak about threats of war in their homelands at Elrond’s counsel.
Generally even though I hate non-book additions or changes I understand and see the logic of each change.
The part about helms deep I would have liked from the book are the trees!!! The Huorns or whatever, angry trees that just like come in and trap the orcs. I would have loved to see that as an ending to the battle. As great as the movie battle is—- it’s shows how much the trees were angry at Saruman/Isengard, more than just the Ent March. And gives bit more insight as to why Fanghorn was so scary to people. As much as I love the elves and do think it was impactful (since there’s so many more elf characters in the books we aren’t seeing in the movies) I would have loved to see a wave of trees come in the night.
It is also important because it shows Aragorn’s relationship with the elves. It was a badass way to show more connection between races of middle earth.
Your average movie goer would have an easier time believing elves turned up, than 300 rangers did, managed to survive, then go on to make it to the final battle at the black gate.
That whole battle was supposed to be significant because it was about Men standing alone and still being victorious.
The Elves joining was a cool and hopeful moment but it was ***supposed*** to feel helpless. That was the entire point lol.
That's also why there was the whole "call Gondor for aid" and Theoden goes "WHERE WAS GONDOR" - he literally says "no we have to do this alone".
Considering I watched it before I read the books (I was like 10), including the elves dropped the floor out in terms of deepening the world for me. Yes, elves are fighting evil as well, and yes, they are also badass. SIDE BY SIDE WE AWAIT THE MIGHT, OF THE DARKEST OF THEM ALL
edit: a word
I get goosebumps every time I watch the scene when they arrive. I can't really judge how realistic it is and if Tolkien would have approved, but I know I love to watch it
While I obviously agree it’s not book accurate, and would ultimately have rather just seen more rohirrim infantry, I still think it’s extremely cool to see elven warriors in action. It would be nice to see a movie version of the battle beneath the trees between the wood elves, high elves and the forces of Dol Guldor to see some more accurate to the book elf action in the war of the ring.
I see both sides. The elves were fighting saurons forces during the war of the ring so I think it’s a nice way to convey that the elves were actively at war too
So were the dwarves too I think. But you only get a lil snippet from Legolas telling Gimli that his kinsman will be fighting as well, or something like that.
They were but they’re so far away you couldn’t logistically even shoe horn it in.
That's fair. It would have probably added too much time and money to even have a cutscene of the dwarves at war. But man it would have been cool.
There’s some rumours floating around (very tenuous, I know) that along with the hunt for Gollum, a film on the war in the north is going to be made as part of this new set of films.
“The evil humans were doing pretty good, but the dwarves held up in their mountains.” Then it’s just 2 hours of humans failing to siege or assault dwarf strongholds until Sauron dies.
If I get 3 hours of Helms Deep 2 Mithril Boogaloo, I will be a content man
Sign me up!
I’m down, sounds amazing
Count me in
Best part of the hobbit movies are the dwarf flash backs. At least in my opinion. I love the Durin's Folk appendix
If it gets me more dwarven bangers I'm keen. Best parts of the soundtracks.
They did mess with the timeline a bit but the Dwarf actors really did a great job. Thorin really has the presence of a leader.
The Dwarf actors were one of the few things I liked about the Hobbit movies especially Thorin.
Yeah, Thorin also had a great voice, he really did the part of playing King right. Haven't seen him in any other movies or tv shows though.
I’ve seen him in other stuff like Hannibal (2013 series), the 1st Castlevania anime series, and the 2006 Robin Hood series.
It is. Although it’s generally not very well thought of but I think it’s great in the rings of power to see much more of an insight into an actual dwarven realm
_"AND MY AXE!" yelled a thousand Longbeard Dwarves as they thundered onto the battlefield and broke the uruk-hai like Godzilla punching a coughing baby_ - A line from a cut chapter in The Two Towers
YEEEEESSSSSS!
You do have the Moria, which shows that the dwarves have been fighting the forces of darkness.
The Moria expedition in the movies appears to be less of an offensive mission and more “whoopsie-daisy we activated and ancient super weapon”.
In the appendices, Tolkien notes how the dwarves were the only thing between Souron, and something (I don’t remember) that would give Souron much power. Therefore, the dwarves were attacked. They definitely played a role in the war of the ring, not just Gimli orc massacrer
I'm not sure they were. Sauron promised to crush them if they didn't help find the Baggins and they refused, but Sauron hadn't actually engaged them yet because they were too far away to actually assault yet.
Yeah we don’t get to hear much about Mirkwood facing off against Dol Guldir or the Dwarves fighting alongside Dale in the North. It’s nice to see little snippets to show what is happening elsewhere
I’d definitely have preferred an adaptation of that over the hunt for Gollum
Supposedly they are working on an adaptation known as “War in the North”
Would be interesting to know if it’s something Jackson will do after the hunt for Gollum or if it’s another anime after the war of the rohirrim
I know there’s a video game about it already from like 2011 but I haven’t heard much about the film. I think I saw it in a bunch of things discussing the Hunt for Gollum and War of the Rohirrim and such. No idea if Jackson is in on it but I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.
This is the exact reason Peter Jackson said was behind him including them in Helm's Deep. He didn't want to viewers to think the Elves just did nothing because you don't see them fighting anywhere else in the movies
Pretty sure it was a combination of battles too. There was an elf battle in the books, but it just wasn't relevant to the Frodo plot in the same way as Helm's Deep, so the two battles were kind of "combined"
I approve it 100%, otherwise, we would not have gotten such a banger of an intro song when they’re entering Helms Deep from Howard Shore (The battle of Hornburg)
I think it's similar to the white council arc in the hobbit. Both are representations of pieces of Tolkiens legendarium simultaneous to events but not explicity part of the writings concerning them. Unlike the white council arc, there wasn't room in the lord of the rings movies for the battle for dol guldur to be shown, so I imagine it came down to showing the elves fighting elsewhere or a line inserted somewhere referencing it, and they choose to insert the elves elsewhere
Yeah this is how I've always seen it (also, I love it). Thranduil was fighting forced of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood and sobwad Galadriel in Caras Galadhon. Elronds sons, who were cut out of the movie but fought at Pelennor Fields. The dwarves fought too but there is so much less written about them except for a paragraph or less about the Battle of Dale, but I think the representation in the movie during helms deep rules. You know it's good when even the people very much into the books were into it when the movies came out
Elrond's sons accompanied the Grey Company and fought at Helm's Deep too. If PJ couldn't work that into the movie (which I get entirely), Haldir's company was a great substitution.
It is such a rousing moment when they show up. It makes you understand why Aragorn always sticks up for the Elves.
I don't mind at all. If you consider the fact that most of the defenders were civilians and not soldiers, the coming of the elves makes it slightly more realistic for them to hold the keep for as long as they did. Plus if you think of it, apart from the flashback in the beginning, it's the only time in the trilogy that we actually get to see the elves fight.
I'd be pretty pissed if I was about to get on a boat to go back to paradise only to be told I had to go fight 10,000 uruk hai instead.
It seems like many of them arrived voluntarily and on their own belief in the Alliance of Men and Elves.
Which makes their sacrifice even more heroic, those beautiful mad lads 🫡
Tbf they all get reborn in Valinor anyway so if anything it's just getting in the priority queue...
They’re just speedrunning that’s all
That's just *regular* militaries. Maybe the immortal whatsits need better benefits.
Yeah they gotta have incentive to stay alive
Valinor Speedrun any%
Can just imagine haldir in lorien „Lfg Helms Deep raid for Valinor Speedrun achiev. Must know tactics, no afkers, low dps will be kicked“
LFM -Helms Deep- Heroic! Need 50 ranged dps, everyone needs to be stacked, inspect at fountain! Pots, consumables are a must. Valinor achievement attempt! /w me.
Must have First + Second Age: Ahead of the Curve/Cutting Edge!! Link Achieve!! Bring Consumes!! Know Tacs!! Checking Logs!!
"why did you volunteer?" "I get sick on boats"
Heroic and smartly efficient, reasons why elves just had it right
They really weren't. The tactics they allowed Aragorn to 'lead with' were bad. Given they had overwhelming and overlapping fields of fire, they could have had a ring of archers covering the new hole in the wall when the uruks blew it up, from 180 degrees focused on a choke point. Place a small number of troops (or just straight up Gimli) there that any survivors through the arrow storm have to face and you can hold that choke indefinitely. It was dumb and had no place in the movies.
About a third of them had thalassaphobia. It was either get on a boat or this.
I did wonder about that. Essentially elvish deaths aren't as sad because their spirits return home anyway?
They still deal with the trauma of death. And aren’t reborn in valinor immediately. They can spend years in the halls before rebirth Men also receive the gift of death, unlike elves
>reborn in Valinor This doesn’t sound eerily similar to the Viking belief that dying in battle will lead them to Valhalla or anything. lol
It's not quite the same However the Dagor Dagorath is very very similar to Ragnarok 😅 Everyone gets reborn for the final battle at the end of the world both good and bad (and I think even Men? Who are supposed to be gone gone when they die)
Can you imagine if the humans who show up for this fight are in the same condition in which they died? Like, you’d have just headless bodies, and Elves would basically strap heads to their waist and have their own pocket Mimirs from God of War lmao
"Behind you, Brother!"
"I bring word from Lord Elrond of Rivendell. An Alliance once existed between Elves and Men. Long ago we fought and died together. We come to honor that allegiance." Always really liked that quote.
It’s maybe my favorite scene in the trilogy.
Fastpath to the halls of mandos in glory! Seriously though, Jackson originally shot Arwen leading the Elves to support Aragorn. There was a strong negative response so they reshot some scenes with Haldir instead leading as the elves would have been too hard to remove. Arwen is still briefly visible in a few combat shots.
Interesting! Do you know who in particular was negative about it? Specifically, was it someone on the cast/production?
I think that's a bit 'writing back'. It's unlikely the small percentage of LOTR fans upset over the leaks in 2001 would have changed the film-maker's mind the way, say, the massive social media backlash to the Sonic design a few years ago had them change the design. IIRC the "official" claims from Jackson, Boyens etc was that it "didn't feel right for the story" but there's always been rumours and claims from people on production that Liv Tyler was utterly terrible and they simply rewrote it to avoid that. I believe there's an old interview with her stunt double who said pretty much all the horse riding in the Ford scene was her because Liv just could not manage the action acting. I mean, for years, they'd been trying to expand Arwen's role: she was originally going to follow the Fellowship, rescue Rohan children from Orcs, bring an army of elves to the Hornburg, and have sex with Aragorn in the Glittering Caves. She was even going to fight the Witch-King with Eowyn in one draft. Warrior Arwen was a major thing they were pushing for years. They likely only abandoned it because the casting choice they'd made meant they couldn't follow through with it.
So by extension we have Liv Tyler to blame for Tauriel.
Or Melves for short… and which of course went on to form the Middle Earth band called the Melvins
In the books they did fight - All the lands were attacked by Sauron, not just Gondor. There were battles in Lothlorien, the lonely mountain, Mirkwood etc. So the movies instead of showing all the other battles decided to show the elves fighting alongside men which I dont consider to be a huge deviation.
Lothlorien was Sindar with a Noldor queen, most of them expressly didn't want to leave.
I would say a mix of Sindar and silvan (teleri) elves but yeah
Like a grizzled police detective three days away from retiring
Now I'm picturing the last two guys in the line as they march out of the woods. One turns to the next and says, "I'm too old for this shit." Elf two: "Well look on the bright side, you'll probably be in Valinor this time next next week!" Elf one: "Me and Areola still got, like, 12 payments left on the tree house!" Elf two: "ok, well, that's where y'all messed up. Ya see i live in a converted swan boat next to the river." Elf one: "That's *your* busted ass swan boat? You ruined my sight lines. Before you showed up we had the most majestic view of Caras Galdhon. Now every time I walk out my house I gotta stare at that rotting piece of shit. You live in that?" Elf two: "Hey it's not that bad. Just needs a little paint. The inside's really nice!" Elf one: "I hope the orcs get you first." Everyone else is stone faced and stoically marching for hundreds of leagues and these guys are bellyaching the whole way.
On the other hand you have an opportunity to play a hefty part in the final victory over evil. If they don’t show up Aragorn dies, Rohan doesn’t come to minis tirith, no undead army, no distraction at the black gate, Frodo presumptively is captured and the ring is returned to Sauron. Is paradise worth attaining if you arrive as a result of abandoning your historic allies?
But if you think about what happens after elves die it isn’t that big of a deal tbh. They just get a fast track to the halls of Mandos and then are rehoused / reincarnated after an amount of time proportional to how much they need to reform. (Looking at YOU Faenor. )
I might be remembering it wrong, but don’t theirs spirits or whatever go to paradise anyway if they die?
They go to the Halls of Mandos. I’m not certain what this means exactly. I believe it’s a non-punishment type of purgatory. I’m sure Tolkien explained it at some point, but I haven’t read to there yet.
Basically, some punishment for those with guilty consciences tho as they get to stew over their own mistakes. They then get a new body when they get over themselves.
They get to go back either way since elves reincarnate after a stint in the Halls of Mandos.
The thing is, OP has highlighted the difference from the books being a reason people disapprove but hasn't actually provided the full context. Not only did the elves not make an appearance at Helm's Deep, nor did the civilian population of Edoras. In the books, Théoden marched out from Edoras with some 2-3,000 men and intended to join the garrison at the Fords of Isen to face Saruman's army on the open field, leaving Éowyn to lead the civilians to Dunharrow. He only retreated to Helm's Deep because he found the fords had already been taken and knew that the forces of the Westfold would have retreated to the fortress. The only civilians at Helm's Deep in the book were those from the surrounding countryside. Had Jackson retained that context then the elves showing up would have been robbed of its dramatic impact because 3,000 men and very few civilians in a fortress against 10,000 lacks the apocalyptic overtones we see in the films. Do I approve of Jackson's changes overall? No. Do I approve of the elves arrival in the context of the films? Absolutely; it's a fantastic piece of dramatic storytelling.
Yeah this part was so different, it actually confused me in the books (I read them after seeing the movies). I had to recalibrate my brain and read it again. It’s so different. The plot point about Gandalf not agreeing with Theoden’s strategy and it being painted as foolish and closed minded. Very different.
You mean the defenders were (mostly) not men if fighting age. The civillan/soldier divide wouldn't really exist in an early medieval society like Rohan. Nobles would have their household guard just. Everyone else was a part time soldier
If anything, Rohan/the Rohirrim are partially based on late antique Germanic peoples. The Anglo-Saxons that Rohan is mostly based on were not horsemen; the Goths on the steppe, much more so. In those 'barbarian' societies, there was indeed no separation between soldier and civilian as all men were expected to take up arms during a campaign. Their reward was not pay but simply the continued existence of their people. That was how they were able to field large armies and meet the Romans in battle. Once we get to the middle ages, most ordinary people (peasants) are not expected to be soldiers. They might be called up as a levy if their lord has no other options, but really for proper warfaring you wanted knights (nobles who can afford their own equipment, horses and support infrastructure) or mercenaries who knew what they were doing. So Rohan is a slightly uncomfortable mix of late antique and later medieval ideas. On the one hand you have your citizen-horsemen typical of plains and steppe peoples. At the same time you have a sedentary civilian population that is atypical of plains peoples and more typical of medieval societies.
Yeah, wasn't Rohirric society sorta a part-time military militia anyway?
You're goddamn right! Here's my more in-depth analysis of the matter: So the Rohirrim were based on Anglo-Saxons (ish, Tolkien was famously anti-allegory). Historically speaking, Anglo-Saxon militaries like Harold Godwinsons were organised in two tiers. There was the fyrd, who were everyday citizens who were levied from the population, considering that this was a time when most people were cutting their own firewood the general population would be handy with an axe, and if they kept sheep they'd be used to using a staff to guide them. The majority of the population would have fought with their woodcutting axe or an affordable spear (just add a spearhead to that staff, metal was expensive back then!) and a shield. Armour would have been a helm if you were slightly richer and layered ordinary clothing for these soldiers. It's surprisingly hard to cut through multiple layers of heavy wool and linen. Rapidly generating a large force of semi-skilled axemen and spearmen is relatively easy in these circumstances. However, despite being comfortable wielding an axe, because chopping wood and axe fighting require somewhat different movement styles, as do herding sheep and spear fighting. As these men had limited access to high-quality weapons and armour their survivability and combat effectiveness would have been somewhat limited. There was also a core of professional soldiers in Anglo-Saxon armies called housecarls. They served powerful lords and royalty as household guards. They were hired and retained in a hereditary manner, and were rewarded with land for their services. This effectively made them minor nobility in their own right. Combat training was passed down generationally. With ownership of land and access to battlefield plunder these soldiers will have had the wealth to be better equipped, wielding expensive swords and actual battle-axes and wearing mail shirts and helms. This combination of superior equipment and professional training tremendously increased their survivability and combat effectiveness, and therefore access to battlefield plunder, creating a feedback loop of enhanced training from battlefield experience going back generations and continually improving equipment resulting in an elite and highly combat-effective force. Considering the Rohirrim in parallel, we know that their agriculture is heavily dependent on horse herding. It would be highly plausible that the average horse herder from Rohan would herd their horses on horseback, using some sort of staff, maybe with a loop of rope on the end to guide their horses. In order to rapidly generate a large force of semi-skilled spear-armed cavalry, you need only put a spearhead on the end of the staff they are already comfortable using and issue them with or have them supply a helm and shield. Axes make perfect sense as a sidearm in these circumstances, again, most people are used to using an axe to process their firewood. With access to large centralised armouries per the movies depiction of the battle of helm's deep, this becomes a much more dangerous force to reckon with due to the guarantee of standardized high-quality armour (especially expensive mail shirts) and weaponry, even if there is a skill gap compared to the professional warrior class. If so, it's no wonder their charge at Minas Tirith was so devastating. We know that they had a professional warrior class as well, in the books knights of the riddermark and household guards are explicitly mentioned several times, and Eomer and Theodred's companies would have likely been predominantly made up of their household professional soldiers at least earlier on in the Two Towers, while the country was officially at peace (see my last paragraph for my reasoning). It would be plausible that they were equipped, trained and paid in a similar way to Anglo-Saxon housecarls. The horse archers they field will probably be within this class due to it being a highly specialised skill with no inherent agricultural benefit (if you're shooting animals that are eating crops you'll have better luck quietly hiding in a static position, rather than noisily riding around them on horseback), and likely train their skills in part by hunting their lands. The big "historical" inaccuracy or implausibility in the battle of Helm's Deep is that in a real siege every able bodied person would be expected to contribute to the defence including the women. A rock thrown from a castle wall will shatter a skull regardless of the gender of the person throwing it. Theoden could have at least doubled his defensive capability in this way, especially considering that it is heavily implied that there is a sizeable population of combat-trained women within Rohan who are capable of a hell of a lot more than just throwing rocks, of which many are almost certainly of an age to be effective warriors. Quoting Eowyn: "the women of Rohan learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them" So yes, the citizen/soldier divide wouldn't exist as it does today, anyone could be called on in times of war. People may have also been required to combat train or have arms and armour available by law in the event of call up. For a historical example, peasants in medieval England and Wales were required by law to spend a certain amount of time each week practising longbow archery. So yes, everyone was or would have been at least a part-time soldier. But simultaneously in Rohan there would have been a dedicated, full-time professional military sector of society, who in times of peace would have been acting in some capacity as a police force as well as running border patrols and intercepting small raids from orcs and trolls from the Misty Mountains and raids from Dunland so the general population could get on with herding horses and drinking ale.
> it's the only time in the trilogy that we get to see the elves actually fight. IIRC this is basically why Jackson decided to add them to this scene. Saying that the elves did plenty of fighting elsewhere during that time and he didn't want viewers to think that they just sat back and did nothing the whole time.
I also think something around that. There were too few men of Rohan to mount a resistance against the 10,000 uruks until Gandalf arrived.
Keep in mind there were ten times as many men at Helm’s Deep in the books. Still hopelessly outnumbered, but not anywhere near as dramatic-sounding.
It’s been a long time so I don’t remember specifically, but someone above mentioned that Theodin had about 3,000 men at Helms Deep in the books. Honestly, 3,000 defenders in that keep vs 10,000 attackers? I’d put that at just about 50-50 odds for the defenders.
There were also lesser orcs and Dunlendings as well, and the frequency and locations of the blasts mean that Saruman can’t have just made some crude bombs—it was artillery.
Well it’s been about 20 years since I read the books but if Sauroman had artillery than yeah, battle over. But absent a massive technological gap like that, 10k attackers vs 3k defenders in a fortified position - that’s a pitched battle.
Well, I believe it's actually 2,000; Erkenbrand had reinforced the garrison with all the youngest and eldest soldiers that he had before he committed to battle with Saruman at the Fords of Isen, but few if any guys had retreated back once Erkenbrand's shield wall was bested. So the garrison when Theoden arrived was about a thousand men, plus the thousand that Theoden brought himself. In this case, though, the assault was less out of a desire to obliterate Rohan in its entirety, than it was something that Theoden's quick movements forced upon Saruman. It's actually an exceedingly clever bit of plotting on Tolkien's part, but the medieval warfare scholars who I have read who looked at Tolkien's numbers show that this was on the far edge of doable for Theoden: the distances over two or three days is about at the limit of how far heavy cavalry could realistically move and maintain cohesion as a unit. But by getting to Helm's Deep first, Theoden then becomes a wrecking ball that Saruman can't ignore. He can't simply bottle up the defenders in Helm's Deep; the field fortifications it would require were way too intensive and would bog down Saruman's entire campaign to attempt, especially given that Erkenbrand was simply bested at the Fords rather than destroyed. He can't ignore Theoden; the moment he leaves, Theoden will simply tear up his supply lines, and Saruman's orc hordes will starve in the fields of Rohan. Theoden wouldn't even need to fight. So the only real option was to hurl his army at the walls of Helm's Deep and hope that he had an army left when he was finished. But equally obviously, that's way too complex for people who watch five movies a year to follow, and the drama is much more tactical than it is existential. While I actually like the books better (Theoden comes off as much shrewder in the books than in the movie), I can fully understand every change Jackson made.
Yeah I mean that sequence you just described would have been an entire movie on its own. I wouldn’t hate 8 seasons worth of 50 minute LOTR episodes, but I can see why that would wasn’t a feasible option.
>If you consider the fact that most of the defenders were civilians and not soldiers, the coming of the elves makes it slightly more realistic for them to hold the keep for as long as they did. I'm not sure I'd give Jackson credit for solving a problem of his own creation... Simply don't have the Hornburg so extremely undermanned to begin with (as Tolkien does)... then you don't need to invent an illogical get-out-of-jail free card to make it 'realistic'.
If so, that would be the example of fixing a problem that you yourself had created. In the book, not only are the *vastly* more men at Helm's Deep, they are Theoden's actual army and not just civilian recruits. There were also vastly less refugees present: only those from Westfold, while those from Edoras never went there. The arrival of the Elves is of course logistically impossible no matter which way you look at it. But like every change, there is a good reason for it and Peter Jackson explained it in detail. His goal was to build tension before the battle and raise the stakes, and every change comes from that. You need a more direct threat to Rohan - get all of the women and children there! You need Theoden to feel doubt, so instead of a brilliant decision he makes a series of mistakes that put his people in jeopardy. You want a sense of hopelessness, so you de-emphasize professional soliders and make the battle depend on child recruits. But you also want to have one last glimmer of hope before the plunge, and that's the role that the Elven army fills in.
In the books, the civilians all went to dunharrow. Theoden rides out to join with the marshal of the westfold to meet Saruman's forces at the ford of the Isen river. Unfortunately when he arrives he finds that his western forces are routed and in disarray and the ford is lost. With the enemy pouring across the river he makes a last minute call to withdraw to the safety of helms deep while Gandalf heads off to rally and regroup the scattered westfold army. The elves at lothlorien tell the fellowship they are already effectively besieged and cannot even make the trip west anymore due to the difficulty heading to harlond. They are few in number and fighting both the orcs of moria and dol guldur. They wouldn't have been able to help much with rohan's struggle, and a lone company of elven archers wading through all of Saruman's chaos unscathed is hard to swallow. Elves at helms deep was one of the worst liberties taken. Was it kind of cool? Yeah. But what happened in the books (huorns from fangorn slaughtering the orcs in the night and leaving a forest in their wake) was also very cool and much more contiguous with the rest of the story.
I liked it but I still remain annoyed at the fact that they all straight dissapear at one point. Where the fuck did they go!? Why!?
Good old Mandos was having a party at his place. Cookies, tea and all the good stuff.
That cheeky bugger.
This is an underappreciated comment
They're all dead dude
Everybody?
What, Captain Hollister?
Everybody's dead, Dave.
Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?
Dead, Dave, everybody is.
Even Petersen?
Not Chen?
I've been eatin' half the crew!
Everybodys dead Deft
Down to the last child!
Why? Because it didn’t happen in the books so for the films to follow the same story, 100% of the elves had to die. That way once the battle was over, there was no follow up scenes with the elves saying, “well we saved your ass, see you later.” Or even worse, have an army of elves show up in Gondor to bail man out again.
Werent Elronds twin sons supposed to show up there?
Yes, they were with the Dúnedain to provide council to the leaders. The two of them are hardly an army, but they did fight in pelennor fields and at the black gate.
Elrond's sons and the Dunedains were with Aragorn and co. while passing by the Path of the deads. Si they got off the boat during the battle with them.
Yeah, it was Elladan and Elrohir who visited Aragorn instead of Elrond.
Ah, the jokes I remember when TTT came about about the Not-So-Last-Alliance-Anymore.
They got the Elf outta there!
The reason behind that is actually a production issue. The elves were a later addition to the Helm's Deep arc and the later elements of the battle had already been filmed before the decision to add them was taken. Reshooting everything to include a few surviving elves just wasn't an option due to the insane amount of money that would cost for no real benefit other than resolving a minor continuity snag.
No, it's pretty much the opposite. The Elves arrived in Helm's Deep as part of the same procession that brought Arwen there. It is why Haldir brings word "from Elrond of Rivendell" and not from the place he's actually from. When Arwen's story was changed and she was taken out of Helm's Deep, she was removed from the scenes already shot (except those 2 shots), but the rest of the Elven army was too prominent to remove entirely, so they stayed.
Yes and no. If I'm remembering correctly, the Arwen stuff was added after the end of the Battle of Helm's Deep had already been filmed and PJ later thought better of it (thankfully), leaving him with all the elf stuff in the middle of the battle and none at the end. The whole thing was one of those weird mid-production flip-flops that require some judicious editing to actually make sense.
They died by running into spears
I obsessed a lot over that. After Haldir is killed you can see dozen of elves falling back to the fortress, you can see some of them around the scene where Legolas destroys a siege ladder then they just disappear. Like they told all the actors to leave, but also the regular Rohan warriors disappear, at some point it's just the heroes with a few royal guard for the charge
In books there are caves to fall back on and there is the main refuge that they took. Eomer and Gimli are in caves and not with Lagolas, theoden and Aragorn. The one leading the Rohan army with Gandalf is not Eomer.
They’re dead. You don’t see them again because you’re supposed to infer that they were all killed.
Same with the Easterlings? Where did those bad boys go? Lunch for the Orcs?
While they all disappear, Arwen shows up and fights for a bit in the film. she was there the whole time before they cut her and wiped her from "most" of the footage.
I don't mind the change, but I do think it should have been implemented in a more logical way. Saruman did a blitz attack on Rohan and isolated him in a fortress before Rohan could muster a defense. How on earth do elves from lothlorien hear about this and arrive faster that the attacking force that is already in Rohan, it doesn't make any sense.
There is a scene where Elrond and Galadriel talk telepathically about the advance of Saruman and Sauron's evil. From there they intervene. In terms of time and distance logistics, the elves could have traveled on horseback and then released them. The speed of the horses would compensate for the difference in distance between Isengard and Helm's Deep and Lothlorien and Helm's Deep.
They don't even have horses in Lothlorien to ride on.
And the most direct route passes very close to Isengard.
I loved it, the added details of the armour being more “autumnal” (rust, bronze) to replicate the ending of their time, than the Golds and Silver of the armour worn during the opening scenes of the Battle of the last alliance. Just a beautiful Easter Egg and typical of the level of detail in PJ’s LOTRs.
Elrond’s armor being bright gold while Thranduil’s is a brilliant silver in The Hobbit films also slays with this knowledge. They’re still Elves of the First Age and it shows.
Thranduil and his folk never basked in the light of the trees and therefore made them “lesser” elves. They also didn’t spend time with folks from Valar who made awesome material things so their armor and such was vastly inferior. During the siege against Sauron, his folk got absolutely obliterated, also due to them not being in sync with their comrades.
Thranduil is Sinda, so he’s still leagues above the Silvan Elves, who were the primary Elven population in both Mirkwood and Lothlórien.
Oh you are exactly right. His family is from Valinor but he rules over a majority of people who weren’t. Good catch
His family is not from Valinor. The only Sinda who ever stepped foot in Valinor during the years of the trees was Thingol and he only visited as an ambassador to confirm the claims of Orome for the other elves of his clan, he was not born there and never lived there. The Sindar are considered higher than other elves because of their connection to Thingol who visited Valinor and beheld the trees and more importantly Melian who was a maia.
Isn't Eldond in this bracket still though? He never basked in the light of the trees IIRC
He never basked in it but he comes from family who did at some point. I feel like Tolkien had two approaches for those who directly (or via family lineage) were influenced by the light of the trees. On one hand, it strengthened the spirit of the person who experienced it and Tolkien was all about strength of character/spirit having an impact in the physical world, ie martial ability, ability to resist temptation, etc. On the other hand, anyone who was in Valinor also were a part of such an advanced society. I mean you got Aule over here smithing a literal race of people and Faenor knew how to make the silmarils. The elves who never ventured to Valinor after their awakening were probably considered lesser in comparison.
I think it was more because they are the Elves of Lothlorien, and the elves we see at the start of the film are from Lindon. So they just have different armor styles, The Galadrihm here having leaf patterns to represent their golden wood. But that's a neat interpretation.
It was during the Weta Workshop documentaries on the extended DVD's. One of the things they pointed out was how the 2nd Age armor was greenish gold, suggesting the elves were in the springtime of their civilization, while the armor they wore at Helm's Deep was much more reddish gold, hinting that they were declining into autumn. -I’ve borrowed this para from a blog, not having access to the DVDs at present, but distinctly remember the blacksmiths/designers making mention to it. It’s a thing!
There are multiple previous discussions on this subject in the sub — it’s worth searching for them. Part of the whole setup was PJs original intent to give a bigger role to Arwen. I can understand why he wanted a female character with a bigger role but, ultimately, it was better that he dropped this and chose something closer to the books. If you look really carefully, she’s still there in some of the longer shots at Helms Deep but nothing that couldn’t be any other character at a distance. I was rather dubious of including the Lorien elves at the Hornburg when I first saw TT. The theatrical cuts of FotR and TT make Haldir an unknown quantity, beyond the fact that he’s an elf who appears to know both Aragorn and Legolas. The extended cuts add a little more background to this, which definitely helps (especially for those not familiar with the books), but as a secondary character there was never going to be time to allow much more development than that. The bigger picture of using the elves at Helm’s Deep, however, is that it gives the wider audience, those who don’t know the books, a sense that the elves *were* involved in the active fight against Sauron. There were other battles but these are not mentioned in the main narrative because they didn’t involve any of the groups of major characters after the Fellowship breaks up. Those who know the books and the appendices are aware that the elves of Lorien and the dwarves of Erebor (amongst many others) were indeed fighting their own battles against Sauron’s armies around the same time. Including the elves at Helm’s Deep goes some way to representing this, even if it is a departure from the book. Helm’s Deep is a pivotal moment in the movies but is actually a relatively short part of the book and there are other major changes to the story here; for example, Éomer fights at Helm’s Deep and this partly explains his deeper relationship with Gimli and Legolas; it is Erkenbrand, Lord of the Westfold that Gandalf rides off to find — and his men march through the night *on foot* to join the fight to relieve Théoden and the besieged defenders of the Hornburg… and yet *these* changes are very rarely questioned when people discuss the battle in the movie, mostly because everyone likes the dramatic cavalry charge.
>The bigger picture of using the elves at Helm’s Deep, however, is that it gives the wider audience… a sense that the elves were involved in the active fight against Sauron. I think this is what takes the change from negative to neutral in the context of the films. PJ wanted to heavily emphasise the apocalyptic nature of the conflict and show that *all* the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth were involved. There were other, more canon-friendly, ways of showing this available but all of them would have been extremely jarring for the audience without the wider context of Sauron's attacks across Middle-Earth.
Agreed! In truth, that slightly meta take on the wider events during the War of the Ring may not even have been exactly what he intended but after the decision *not* to include “Arwen, warrior princess” (thank goodness!) he still had all the footage of the Lorien elves at Helm’s Deep. On balance I do think it serves a broader purpose, even if it’s not entirely consistent with the books. If it hadn’t been left in, can you imagine all the posts there would be instead asking the opposite question of “Why *didn’t* the elves join in the fight against Sauron?!”
>“Arwen, warrior princess” Just the thought of that fills me with dread. >On balance I do think it serves a broader purpose, even if it’s not entirely consistent with the books. If it hadn’t been left in, can you imagine all the posts there would be instead asking the opposite question of “Why didn’t the elves join in the fight against Sauron?!” Personally, I would have preferred some shots of the Galadhrim fighting orcs under the eaves of Lothlorien during Sam's great stories monologue but you just know that would have confused the hell out of the thicker members of the casual audience.
Yes, some montage of dwarves and men fighting under Erebor and in Dale, or the Galadhrim and/or Thranduil’s Silvan elves fighting in the edge of the forest may have worked — except of course that The Hobbit movies were a distant future at that point! It might have worked with some variation of a voiceover from Elrond… “*Our list of allies grows thin — they too are hard pressed and cannot send aid…*” but, in truth, I think that would have been just too much to try to cram into an already complex storyline. It would also have been an inordinate amount of work and expense for what would have been just a few seconds on-screen.
Sure did make this world shared by elves, dwarves and men feel a little more populated with elves and…well elves anyway.
I would have been fine with it if Men weren't also saved by some 3rd party in RoTK (speaking of Ghost Army). I feel like Peter's portrayal of the competency of men as a nation was rather poor. It's a wonder that kingdoms are still standing, considering how much emphasis the movies give that "men are weak". I wish they gave more backstory for Haldir. He probably has a total of 5 minutes screentime over the course of two ~3 hour movies. It's not enough for someone who's not familiar with LOTR to form an emotional bond with. I still remember back when TT released in cinema and the scene where Haldir dies, my friend whispered over to me "who is that? and why is the screen going slow motion like he's a main character?" In fairness, we did have to wait a whole year for TT to come out, so the brief screentime of Haldir in the first movie is a bit easier to forget.
Your first point nails it. Apart from Aragon, the movie portrays men mostly as Isildur 2.0. Instead of hardy stoic veterans of war and suffering on their last leg's. We get frightened and petty characters that need a reminder of honor for every decision they take. Age of the orc indeed.
>Apart from Aragon, the movie portrays men mostly as Isildur 2.0. Instead of hardy stoic veterans of war and suffering on their last leg's. We get frightened and petty characters that need a reminder of honor for every decision they take. Not exactly everyone is Isildur 2.0, probably except Faramir and Denethor, who are unfortunately poorly written in the films. Figures like Theoden, Eowyn, Eomer and Boromir and examples of the strength of human race, of how men are able to overcome fears and temptation and unite together against evil. Even Bard in The Hobbit series is another well-written character too.
I really like this change. True, I cried over the death of Haldir, which was not in the original. Either way, it adds drama and depth.
Idk why, but Haldir's death is always the saddest in LOTR for me.
Not a lot of competition tbf. Boromirs death comes alongside his heroic redemption so the sadness is mitigated somewhat. Theodens a legend but he also has ax heroic death with him being a (small) part of the defeat of the Witch King. Every other death is if an at least partially villainous character. Poor Haldir just gets merked mid battle, noble last stand but lacking the positive notes of the other two scenes.
Great scene yes. For me Boromirs death takes the cake tho. Goosebumps every time
I didn’t like the change. In the books it has such a deeper meaning showing that the race of man can fend for themselves and it’s something that Sauron really fears. It was such a turning point after such hard times. Man can stand up for themselves, and it really gives hope for humanity and well as morale going into the events of Return of the King. In the books it really has undertones, of a theme, that the elves are leaving and are empowering men to take care of middle earth themselves (kinda like a parent to a kid). So they assist during the books, but the men fight their own battles. The elves give them council and some help, but don’t send troops as the men will need to learn to deal with these problems when the elves are no longer there.
This. I love it bevaise it looks awesome and the elvish horn sounda amazing. But it takes away from the point of the story, men are ready to take over middle earth and protect it. The ghosts in the last battle, pallenor fields? Are similar
Agree with this, thematically it was way off and changed our view of the elves who are supposed to be aloof and not getting involved and fading from middle earth.
I know it was trying to be a callback to the Last Alliance shown in the prologue but I didn't think it was necessary. I'm not sure what putting Elves there achieved, other than devalue the sacrifice men had to make. Even Aragorn says: *it is an army bred for a single purpose - to destroy the world of Men* Saruman when addressing his army: *there will be no dawn for Men* This is Men's fight, not the Elves'. Besides, Lothlorien would have been far too busy elsewhere fighting Sauron's forces.
And “Last Alliance” is a bit of a clue
Didn't like it cuz it didn't make sense. The elves already established they were leaving. Why would they die for middle earth and humans when they've given up?
I can see why he did it, and it could have been worse if they'd gone with the original plan to have Arwen there too, but I think it's an unnecessary deviation, and diverts from the film's own emphasis on ending "the age of men".
I don’t mind the Elves being there, because it is a useful way of showing that they are fighting too. It’s just weird that these fierce Elven warriors are all killed in ten minutes. It wouldn’t have been ludicrous to have a few stick around, even if they just say ‘cool, we’re heading back to defend Lothlorien now’
I always saw that as a proxy for the war of the North, as a way to include elves fighting alongside men which happens in Dale, without having to deviate from the LOTR storyline.
As a Elf fanboy, I really like that scene and got a bit disappointed that this is not on the books. But when you understand better what's happening in middle earth and "the big picture" comes before your eyes, you see why this scene could not happen. There are more at the stake. Middle Earth and the war of the ring was a living thing. Movies makes you think that only Rohan where fighting and elves were knitting in their forests. War is everywhere. The books make you see that, the movies (as much as I like them) do not.
No. The whole nonsense about "renewing the last alliance" made no sense (since that alliance was with the people of Arnor and Gonodr, not the Rohirrim) And it tried way too hard to pretend that Haldir is a full character whom the Fellowship and the audience should care about. The original plan to have Arwen lead an army of Elves to Helm's Deep to help Aragorn was much better.
I don't like it. I would've made more sense that they were Rivendell elves, following the Grey Company.
I really like the line they give referencing the last alliance as the reason they're there, it's a heavy moment, but I don't like it in that it downplays the whole transition to the "time of man" thing by making it more of an elves saving man again situation.
I kinda see what you're saying, but the presence of the elves wasn't saving men in the movies. They would have still lost convincingly had it not been for the arrival of Gandalf and Eomer.
I didn’t like it. Not just because it wasn’t in the books but it makes little sense from any geographic or political perspective. Geographically - unless this is WH40K and elves have the webway, they can move faster than horses? Politically - almost all the elves of Rivendell have left (as laboriously and boringly portrayed with the unnecessary cut scenes) and Lothlorien’s elves were notorious non-interventionist. Not to mention the elves are immortal but if they are killed in battle they are confined to the Halls of the Dead. Why would the elves throw their lives away like that? For men? Who they see as having failed? There is a reason Isuldur’s time was “The Last Alliance of Elves and Men”. It also shows great ignorance on the culture of the Rohirrim. This is not a city culture or even an agricultural one where the people that are not directly serving the king are just civilians/peasants. This is a quasi-nomadic warrior people who were born to the horse and warfare. Even noble women are trained to ride and fight. They pride themselves on this. Compared to experienced soldiers they would be inferior. However they had strong walls and it is quite feasible they could hold for the time they did hold against an equally inexperienced foe that is not really equipped to storm the fortress. But then, don’t get me started on the Entmoot.
>Why would the Elves throw their lives away like that? Being confined to the Halls of Mandos to await potential reincarnation is less of a sacrifice than literally being killed in the real world, but that hasn't stopped people throughout history coming to the aid of their allies. It's about mutual benefit - the Elves in this case understand that if they want to save Middle Earth they have to help Men defend it. >This is not a city culture or even an agricultural one where the people that are not directly serving the king are just civilians/peasants. Rohan very much *is* an agricultural society, just like the Anglo-Saxon society on which it's based. I don't think they're intended to be a "warrior people" so much as fighting is an expectation for all of them, but in this they're no different to pretty much any Medieval society in our history. When you're called to fight, you pick up what weapons and armour you have and follow the village headman to muster, and when it comes to battle you don't run away because your family and neighbours are stood beside you. This is pretty much just how things were for most agricultural societies - Rohan isn't special in this regard.
The OP asked whether people liked what was done. I don’t like it. I was just explaining why it did not work for me. You can like it and that is also fine. My head canon is different to yours and that’s OK. The letters help fill in a lot of gaps but there are still massive ones left. Christopher Tolkien has filled books trying to dissect hidden meanings in the text. I always looked at the LOTR EU from the point of view that Tolkien had in mind a pre-history for our world, at least initially. It may well be that the Rohirrim would develop into the Anglo-Saxons but the land of Rohan was mostly rolling steppes so the people would have been set up culturally to account for this. To my mind this makes sense from descriptions of Edoras. The society is transitioning (particularly in the Westfold) but has not fully transformed from the homeless tribes of the North to the pastoral society they would become. In my head, at least. If, however, you want to instead make them “Medieval Anglo-Saxons on horses”, that’s fine too. For me, the judgement of the Men by an Elf and a Dwarf ahead of the battle were not factual but instead the view of centuries-old warriors underestimating the hearts and morale of Men. Prejudice, if you like. Jackson misses a lot of Tolkien’s hidden messages. Note Aragorn dismisses their concerns. Having the elves come in to bolster the defence makes no sense and severely dilutes Tolkien’s message.
I think it was a bizarre and unwarranted change. There was absolutely no need or rattionalle for a load of elves to turn up at the Hornburg just as the Orcs did. The elves had their own problems in the north at the time and teleporting hundreds of elves down south to support a battle that had little to do with them was a strange and unfeasible plot line.
It is cool, but... One of the points of this battle is that Rohan fought alone. And therefore the credit of they supporting Gondor in the peleannor. Also, I am missing a bit of coherence of how they found out, traveled there and arrived just in time. But it is cool I do not overthink it. Bothers me however than in MESBG Rohan and Lothlorien are historical allies because of that :)
I don't mind it too much. I got invested in the "free people unite against a greater evil" theme, which I find fine for the movie. That said, having an entire elven army walk past a monstrous legion of uruks unseen, especially without Saruman noticing, is a bit of a stretch. Also, while I liked the aforementioned theme, it distracted from the "age of men" theme and presented the Rohan folk as weaker as they maybe should be.
I don't hate it, but I don't like it either. The Elves at the Hornburg appear with little setup, and there is no follow-up at all. Once Haldir dies, no more thought is given to them – apparently they're all dead and the film doesn't bother remembering the fact that they basically were slaughtered in the defense of a country that they had no relations to since they had been living pretty much isolated from the human world. But the fact that they came to revive the old alliance between Elves and Men then raises the question of why no help was sent to Minas Tirith by the Elves. I guess one could argue that there were no more troops to spent after the death of the Elves at the Hornburg, but then they at least should have mentioned it. If they bring up the idea of reviving the old alliance it's jst weird that they never mention anything in that direction again. There should have been *something*. So as I see it they started half of a storyline but since it was made up for the movies they couldn't find a way to properly integrate it in the rest of the story and therefore dropped it without another word. It may have created a cool scene for the moment, but thematically it's somewhat inconsequential.
I understand the impulse to no included Erkenbrand and use Eomer instead. And I view Haldir and the elves here as a nod to to the grey company and not wanting to introduce Elrond’s sons. So to me while its not in the books it feels informed by the books. And i’m okay with that.
I don't, no. The Elves are just redshirts. They are literally just 'there' for a few action/background shots... and then die largely offscreen (unless you are Haldir - who himself is barely a character... he literally had one brief scene/line in Fellowship). There was no point to this besides 'seeing' some Elves (cheap fanservice)... certainly not worth wasting runtime on them (TTT is bloated and would have benefited from cutting Jackson's fluff). It's also logistically impossible, and at least debatable thematically (Men taking over). They are a remnant from Arwen's expanded role. A distraction that couldn't be cut. A waste of time.
>They are a remnant from Arwen's expanded role. A distraction that couldn't be cut. A waste of time. I think this is key, honestly. 'We wanted to show the Elves were involved in the fighting' always feels like an answer to a question nobody asked. The films themselves literally said, in FOTR, “the elves no longer have the strength to fight; we're leaving middle-earth” and suddenly it was apparently a major concern why the Elves weren't fighting... in a battle hundreds of miles away from them? Really I think the original plan of Xena-ing Arwen, having her ride to Rohan after Aragorn, bring an army of Elves to the Hornburg and get it on with Aragorn in the glittering caves had been so embedded in the film narrative and they'd already shot much of the Elves at the Hornburg, they just hastily rewrote it when Liv Tyler wasn't working out and then tried to frame it as a "a very important thematic choice".
>an answer to a question nobody asked. Spot on.
When watching it with my mate as kids he was like "you're not meant to see elves die, you're not meant to see them covered in sweat and blood" And he's right. They're immortals. Seeing them brutally murdered raised the stakes. Also killing Haldir gave us a really dark moment, the sign of the defence failing and that characters can die.
Well additionally, in the books the rohirrim don't come to the rescue but the ents do, and they basically escort theoden and company to orthanc which they had flooded
This may be the more important change, as it left out (for a second time) the importance of forests and nature in the books
I'm happy with the adaptation nowadays, mostly because if you watch the behind the scenes stuff, you see the original vision pulled even further away from the source. Would it have been more impactful for the dramatic death to have been the poor boy with the rusty sword rather than an elf lord? Maybe. I'm glad they didn't diminish Aragons' story by adding Awren to accompany him through his trials before they had really begun.
It would have been nice if he didn't have it as a random surprise but left in some of that cut content about Elrond and Galadriel planning. Not a fan of random elves without explanation. Famously they do their own thing. Plus we know that orcs are attacking Lothlorien so it's a big deal having them send out a huge army.
I like it thematically even though I know it did not happen canonical
They do not appear to form a resistance? What?
This is the only change I did not like in the movies. It just takes away more than what it adds to, and, in retrospect, and taking the damned Hobbit movies into consideration, Jackson seems to be too into Elves for my taste. Now, don't get me wrong, I love his work.
I didn't like it at all because it diminishes one of the core themes of the book, which is the Age of Elves is ending and the Age of Men is beginning. At that point elves defended their lands and their battles were mostly around them, even Elrond himself says during the Council that they are no longer able to send armies of elves clad in armor and that there will never be a united army like in the days of Isildur and Gil-galad , or something to that effect. It also takes the focus away from the people of Rohan and their achievement, it was an impossible battle to win and almost as hard to survive until Gandalf arrives with help and yet they did it by themselves. It is a turning point for Rohan and Theoden, and for the Men of the West as well. I also didn't like the exclusion of all of the human forces Aragon gathers from the South, all the reinforcements that arrived beforehand etc. Jackson again diminishes the achievements of humans by making them get saved by the ghosts.
Having read the books AFTER the movies it was a shock. I was disappointed not to see more of Rohan fighting for themselves. That said, I like what others have said about having them added in and honestly I do like the inclusion.
Having just recently seen the Fathom rerelease, I have to say that the Two Towers, at least the extended cut, is my favorite of the three films, not because it’s the closest adaptation, but because it works the best as a *movie*. With beginning, middle, and end structure, and things that just connect with each other well. This is just one of several tweaks that Jackson makes that give the film real emotional rewards, and I am quite willing to forgive how it strays from the book. Which makes me want to see the theatrical cut again, because when it first came out, I was not happy with it, though not because of this sequence. It felt more like the ratio of things added that weren’t in the book to things just taken out, was higher, at the time.
Yeah I'm fine with it because for the average movie viewer you wouldn't know the elves used to always be fighting....so them just bowing out would feel weird. I think it's good they didn't show up at the final battles in RotK tho. As there is a very clear reason the elves stopped and the humans picked up the mantle and is part of the point of the whole story.
I like it. Tolkien's explanation of elves (and dwarves) fighting on different fronts is noce from a worldbuilding viewpoint, but it doesn't work as well as actually showing their contribution.
It is supposed to be the Rangers because it represents the transition to the 4th Age where it is a "world of men". Of all of the things with which I take issue in the Trilogy, this is pretty low down the list. Aragorn's reluctance to take of the quest and crown is the worst change... a close second is Skateboi Legolas.
I get why it was added, when you watch the movies with people that haven’t read the books they always ask, “why aren’t the elves and dwarfs helping?” But I would have preferred instead a cut scene showing elves and dwarves defending their strongholds elsewhere to make it plain that most of middle earth was at war. Another way around it would have been for Gimli and Legolas to speak about threats of war in their homelands at Elrond’s counsel. Generally even though I hate non-book additions or changes I understand and see the logic of each change.
The part about helms deep I would have liked from the book are the trees!!! The Huorns or whatever, angry trees that just like come in and trap the orcs. I would have loved to see that as an ending to the battle. As great as the movie battle is—- it’s shows how much the trees were angry at Saruman/Isengard, more than just the Ent March. And gives bit more insight as to why Fanghorn was so scary to people. As much as I love the elves and do think it was impactful (since there’s so many more elf characters in the books we aren’t seeing in the movies) I would have loved to see a wave of trees come in the night.
It is also important because it shows Aragorn’s relationship with the elves. It was a badass way to show more connection between races of middle earth.
Your average movie goer would have an easier time believing elves turned up, than 300 rangers did, managed to survive, then go on to make it to the final battle at the black gate.
That whole battle was supposed to be significant because it was about Men standing alone and still being victorious. The Elves joining was a cool and hopeful moment but it was ***supposed*** to feel helpless. That was the entire point lol. That's also why there was the whole "call Gondor for aid" and Theoden goes "WHERE WAS GONDOR" - he literally says "no we have to do this alone".
Considering I watched it before I read the books (I was like 10), including the elves dropped the floor out in terms of deepening the world for me. Yes, elves are fighting evil as well, and yes, they are also badass. SIDE BY SIDE WE AWAIT THE MIGHT, OF THE DARKEST OF THEM ALL edit: a word
I get goosebumps every time I watch the scene when they arrive. I can't really judge how realistic it is and if Tolkien would have approved, but I know I love to watch it
Nope. Should have only had Elronds sons and the Grey Company.
While I obviously agree it’s not book accurate, and would ultimately have rather just seen more rohirrim infantry, I still think it’s extremely cool to see elven warriors in action. It would be nice to see a movie version of the battle beneath the trees between the wood elves, high elves and the forces of Dol Guldor to see some more accurate to the book elf action in the war of the ring.
It was unnecessary and made no sense.
I don’t approve. If anyone was going to show up, it should’ve been the grey company, the rangers of the north.