Corrected entry: In the first film when the fellowship is attacked by Balrog, Gandalf says something like "Swords are no use here" to Aragorn who wanted to tackle it with his sword. But in the next film you see Gandalf stabbing Balrog with a sword. This makes no sense.
Corrected entry: In the Helm's Deep scene when the orcs charge the castle and begin to prop up the first set of short ladders, Aragorn yells "Ladders." in Elvish. Gimli shouts in response, "Good." However, Gimli most certainly does not speak or understand Elvish. In the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring, Gimli grows angry when those around him are speaking Elvish, and speaks Dwarfish to anger them in return. (02:15:07)
Corrected entry: You'd think that in the Battle of Helm's Deep, where the defenders of a fortress are hopelessly outnumbered, one of the best hopes would be to take out as many of the enemy as possible before it came to hand-to-hand fighting ? ie, shoot as many as you could before they reach the walls. Certainly we see the Elves (and the Men) firing often. However, even at the end of the battle, most of the archers have quivers full of arrows. There are a number of shots where this can be seen but the most obvious is just after Haldir has been wounded ? there is a brief shot of the retreating soldiers (Elves and Men) and most, if not all of them, have quivers full of golden-fletched arrows. I know that Tolkien speaks of archers 'gleaning' arrows from among the dead, but so many, and in the middle of a huge battle? Plus the arrows are all clean and neat looking.
Correction: There is a brief overhead shot of Helm's Deep sometime during the day in a previous scene, before the battle, and if you look closely you can see a few soldiers placing quivers of arrows in barrels along the walls. It makes sense that once a quiver was empty, the archers would just pick up a new quiver from a barrel and keep shooting.
Corrected entry: When Shadowfax runs to Gandalf you can see two tyre tracks in the field. Were these caused by the horse trailer and truck that took Shadowfax to middle earth?
Correction: The action here takes place in Rohan, which is mostly settled farming country. There is no reason this could not be a cart track used by the people of the district.
Corrected entry: In any shots of Fangorn Forest from a distance it is an evergreen forest. However, when it is seen from close up or inside it is a deciduous forest.
Correction: The native beech forest of New Zealand where these scenes were filmed ARE evergreen and will look that way from distance. However they aren't coniferous forests (ie pines, firs etc) and the beech trees have actual leaves rather than needles, so I guess if you didn't know them you could mistake them for deciduous in a close-up shot. Just to avoid any confusion these trees aren't any relation to northern hemisphere beeches, they only grow in NZ.
Corrected entry: In the scene at Rohan where Legolas is giving the Evenstar pendent back to Aragorn, Aragorn's ring is on his finger in the shot where Legolas's hand passes it to him, and gone in the next, when he looks down at it.
Correction: In the second shot the view is lower so Aragorn's fingers are not so fully in frame - hence the ring is also not visible.
Corrected entry: After Sam slides down the hill in front of the gate to Mordor, he ends up half-buried. Frodo goes and pulls him almost all the way out, but in the next shot, Sam is still buried.
Corrected entry: In the scene when Frodo and Sam hide from a Mordor soldier by making the cape look like a rock, the surroundings change after the soldier is gone. When they take the cape off there is a large rock nearby that was not there. When the soldier was looking at them, the only large rock visible was the cape itself.
Correction: Yes, because when the soldier was looking at them it was a closeup shot that showed the cape taking up almost the entire width of the screen. The large rock is not visible at this time because it is off the screen to the right.
Corrected entry: At the very end of the movie, Gollum says he would bring Sam and Frodo to 'her' (if you don't want parts of the next film to be revealed, you should stop reading). 'She' is a monster that lives in the tunnels. Earlier in the movie Gollum said he knew about another way to Mordor through the same tunnels. However, at the time he was being faithful and helpful, before he turned evil/conflicted again. Was he planning to get them killed all along, even when being nice?
Correction: They would have to go through the tunnels anyways. In the book, (spoilers ahead) Gollum deserts the hobbits in the tunnels and awakes Shelob; At the point in time you're thinking about he was probably thinking he would lead the hobbits all the way through and protect them.
Corrected entry: As Arwen's father describes his vision of her future with Aragorn, a few tears stream down Arwen's face. Seconds later, she lays her head on his shoulder, and her cheeks are dry.
Correction: No, actually, they're not. You can see faint tear tracks and the slight reddening that the tears left behind.
Corrected entry: When we first see Shadowfax, the horse, come into the film outside of Fangorn Forest, it has only a small amount of black on its muzzle. This remains the case when Gandalf is about to leave with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, as they set out for Helm's Deep. Yet, at the end of the film after the Helm's Deep battle, when we see Gandalf, Theoden and the others come over the hill, Shadowfax has a black muzzle which covers about half of it's face. (01:44:10)
Correction: Although it is a fact that during filming there were two horses used for Shadowfax, we can forget about it in this case. Light grey horses like Shadowfax tend to turn much darker when sweating profusely, especially on the face. Since the shot is taken right after battle, we can consider that Shadowfax is just sweaty. If you look closely, you can see that all the horses are sweaty all over, so I wouldn't count it as a mistake.
Corrected entry: Whilst Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are on the trail of Merry and Pippin at the beginning of the film there is a panning shot beside a mountain, when they are seen running. If you watch Orlando Bloom he slips on a rock and skids slightly before recovering his balance and running on. Surely Legolas, a member of the most graceful creatures on Middle-Earth, would be able to run over some rocks without slipping?
Correction: As Gimli says, the three companions had been traveling for THREE DAYS without food, or rest, or sign of their quarry. Even an Elf's stamina would be tested by something like that, and although Elves are indeed graceful, they are not utterly infallible. A small slip is not outside the realm of possibility.
Corrected entry: It makes an amusing scene when Saruman stops Wormtongue from putting his candle too near the explosives, but why is he walking round with a candle? He even takes it outside with him to view the army. No-one else seems to need extra light in Orthanc.
Correction: Grima Wormtongue is merely trying to make himself 'equal' to Saruman. In the scene Saruman is carrying a wizard's staff and Grima is holding the candlestick in the same manner. Even the way he walks is similar to Saruman.
Corrected entry: When Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are chasing the Uruk-hai just before the Rohan riders appear, they run between two rocky outcrops over a ridge. Aragorn signals to hide, and almost at once the riders appear. Strangely Aragorn can hear Uruk-hai on foot 1 day's march away, but not a group of riders 30 seconds ride away. Legolas, famous for his eyesight, obviously forgot to have a look over the ridge where he might have spotted the riders.
Correction: In order to hear the Uruk-hai, Aragorn had to lie down in perfect stillness and put his ear to rocky ground, which transmits sound much better. Remarks that he couldn't hear "a group of riders 30 seconds away" are ridiculous, as he DOES obviously react to the Riders' approach. As for Legolas not looking over the ridge, the Rohirrim came upon the three companions from *behind* them. The terrain in Rohan is so varied and the Rohirrim travel so swiftly that they could have easily appeared from out of virtually nowhere and caught the Companions by surprise.
Corrected entry: When one of the Uruk-hai captured hobbits drops his leaf brooch it gets stepped on and we can see it in a clear patch of mud. Later when Aragorn picks it up it's resting on fresh grass.
Correction: Aragorn had previously said that the Uruk-hai were a day's march ahead of them. Any mud would have been dried up in the bright sunlight that was shining overhead. This is also assuming that the brooch hadn't been kicked or stepped on or moved *again*; it's easily possible that one or more of the other dozens of Uruk-hai in the column kicked it or shuffled it out of the mud to a more grassy place.
Corrected entry: When Aragon convinces Theodin to ride out of Helm's Deep with him at the end of the battle to meet Gandalf, Legolas is the only rider with a white horse. Looking at the downward shot of them riding through the Uruk-hai on the bridge out of Helm's Deep, there are two riders on white horses, and both look suspiciously like Legolas.
Correction: They're two different people, but worth keeping an eye out anyway - the other character was originally Arwen, filmed as being in the battle, but removed/edited out later in the process.
Corrected entry: When Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli meet Eomer and the Riders of Rohan, Eomer says that they burnt all the bodies of the Orc company. He points towards where they Orcs are piled and from a distance there is a shot of smoke rising from a fire. There is no forest nearby. When the travellers reach the pile of dead Orcs they are only yards from the eaves Fangorn Forest, which is vast and would surely have been visible even from a distance.
Correction: The pile of corpses is actually far to the left of where the smoke is "appearing" over the obscuring hill -- the wind is blowing the smoke way off to one side. The next scene where Aragorn and company come upon the corpses bears this out, as the smoke isn't rising straight up in that scene either. Thus, when Eomer gestures towards the smoke, Fangorn is not visible because it's off the screen to the left.
Corrected entry: When Frodo, Sam and Gollum reach the black gate of Mordor, there is an army of men marching towards the gate. According to most film books they are Easterlings, who are marching from the east to Mordor to help Sauron. However, if you check a map of Middle-Earth you will that they are marching from the west, not the east.
Correction: There's only one entry to go to Mordor: the Black Gate where we see the army of men going through. Even if they come from the east , they have to pass round the Ash Mountains.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Legolas kills a warg that Gimli was about to kill, the warg falls behind Gimli. When Gimli kills a warg and it falls over him, Gimli should have fallen over the warg Legolas killed before, but it's nowhere to be seen.
Correction: You can't see it in the close-up shots, but when the camera is back a little you can see the dead warg lying on the ground, right where it should be.
Corrected entry: When Gimli is talking to Eowyn about dwarf women, and his horse throws him, the axe in his hand goes flying. In the wide shot, the axe is shown going a fair distance from the horse, about 4 or 5 metres. In the shot of Gimli on the ground, the axe lands right next to him, only about 1 metre from where it flew out of his hand.
Correction: It has been shown numerous times before that Gimli carries multiple axes, strapped to his back and sides. The axe from his hand does fly off to the side; the axe that "lands right next to him" could easily be one of the other axes, dislodged during his fall.
Correction: Gandalf can fight the Balrog with a sword because he is powerfully magical, and the Balrog is falling and at a disadvantage. The book tells a little of their long fight, from the chasms deep below Moria to the high mountains where the Balrog is finally beaten. If Aragorn had tried to attack the Balrog at the bridge, he wouldn't have got anywhere near it before being killed; Gandalf knows this.
STP ★