Gah ! Not with the longbow again ! I grow tired of fighting the misconception of the longbow being a medieval superweapon.
The English longbows only defeated knights when they had upper ground advantage and time to fortify their positions. Crossbowmen or even regular archers would have done just as well (and did, if the Italian wars or the Reconquista are any indication). The advantage being of course compounded by the utter stupidity of the French knights (notably in the case of Azincourt). Whenever the English longbowmen were caught in the open, they were just as fucked as any other missile unit.
Like I said, that particular unit had infighting problems, and they faced the same critical problem the orcs in Moria did (I’ll come back to this)
What makes you think Boudicca’s warriors (or any “barbarian” tribe for that matter) didn’t fight shoulder to shoulder with large shields ? Most of them did. The genius of the Roman army wasn’t in it’s choice of weapons or individual tactics, but the flexibility of their formations, and the fact that they were all professional soldiers trained to fight as units and keep in formation, instead of a bunch of individual warriors trained to fight one-on-one.
Considering the orcs were slaves whose only reason to be was battle, and never had any delusions of glory, I don’t think they’d go all tribal. I wouldn’t say they were the Legions either, but cut them a little slack. The book was written by the winners after all, we don’t have written records of the orcs’ point of view. Biased propaganda, man !
A warrior father thinking his warrior heir is an invincible battle god ? How shocking. But you forget one crucial fact : both Aragorn and Boromir are obviously Player Characters. So is Eomer (told you I’d get back to this). Killing low-level mooks by the dozen is what PCs do :p.
Except that when the Rohirrim charged the Pelenor Fields in ROTK, the Orc field commander specifically orders “pikes in front…archers behind.” And when Saruman is reviewing his troops at Isengard, they clearly have more pikes than Braveheart with them. AND we see them deploy pikes against the Rohirrim as they are charging down the hill at Helms Deep. But in that last instance, a wizard did blind them enough for them to lower their guard.
So they did know counter cavalry tactics, they actually used them but they just didn’t work against the magic of Rohan
We’ve discussed this recently but I don’t remember if you were part of it.
Anyway in the movies during the final Rohirrim charge at Helm’s Deep the Uruk-hai are, as you say, blinded by a wizard. No other explanation needed.
When the Rohirrim charge at the Pelennor Fields the Orcs do bring their pikes to the front but they panic and drop them just before the horses reach them, rendering them road kill.
I think this is perfectly consistent with how the Orcs are portrayed in the books and in the movies. They were great at waylaying outnumbered travelers (Moria, the Goblin Cave in The Hobbit), shooting arrows from a safe distance into an already fatally wounded man (Boromir), or running a pike through a dying warrior (Osgiliath).
Personal bravery and battlefield discipline in the face of a foe remotely their equal? Not so much.
In the movie the orcs DO have time to turn and prepare for the charge. I remember the scene well because the first time I saw it I remember thinking “The orcs have fixed their pikes! The Rohirrim are going to be slaughtered!”
However, just before the charge hits the pointy bits Gadalf does some magic with the light of the rising sun and the orcs recoil from it, spoiling their wall of spears and allowing the charge to succeed.
Yep, I saw it, and I’m sure not going to try discussing Italian political history since I know pretty much nothing about it. Except that, according to Wikipedia, the vile Capitan Vidal was a Falangist. And in Spanish, falange means phalanx formation.
Which ties right into the general discussion here.
But, my diss on Jackson wasn’t his choice of villains (they’re ugly and like pollution, just like in the books) or overall themes (again taken from Tolkien) but in the scene-by-scene directorial choices where he telegraphs banal, cliched moments and follows through with banal, cliched moments.
Over and over I’d think, I’d know what’s going to happen 12 seconds from now, and Jackson would never rise above my expectations. (And 12 seconds in movie time is long enough to drum your fingers repeated.)
Pan’s Labyrinth was consistently surprising and unpredictably. I didn’t love it as much as some, but it was damn well directed. I’ll salute Jackson’s staging of the big battles, and his organizational capabilities in pulling off a complex 10 hour movie… but again, he doesn’t recognize triteness and predicatability when he’s about to step in it.
AndI don’t think it’s just a matter of my being already familiar with the LOTR story arc.
Many orcs were pretty cowardly. But Saruman and Sauron’s buinch were pretty damn tough. Saruman’s were crossbred with humans to make he toughest, strongest bastards around. Sauron’s were old, with possibly centuries of combat experience per soldier. They didn’t break and run easily (or they wouldn’t have survived as long as they did).
Edit: Looking at the orcs arrayed in a line at Pellenor fields, they were not well-armed for fighting off cavalry. They had light, small weapons… perfect for punching through armor in melee and assaulting walls but not for open-field engagements. Had the orcs more time to pull together, things might have been different.
The orcs who were cut down outside Fangorn forest by Eomer and his men were outnumbered, taken by surprise, and had their order broken by javelins.
Actually, you’re right. I screwed that up. I took a quick glance at this map since my Atlas of Middle Earth was at home. No real excuse for thinking that going toward Isengard to go around the west flank of the mountains was better than just following the northern line. Glad I don’t have a reputation as a Tolkein scholar to maintain
Still, that’s a long damn march with an army behind you. Better hope no one falls behind. Not to mention that Theoden would have had to abandon all of his settlements to be sacked by that army.
Of course, in the book it was all different and, naturally, makes a lot more sense. Theoden marches toward Saruman’s forces while Eowyn is tasked with leading the non-combatants into the mountains, east and somewhat south of Isengard, away from the invading army. Gandalf, based on the news of one of the Marches falling and that commander’s intention to make for Helm’s Deep, advises Theoden to go there also and regroup, using the fortress as a strong point threatening Saruman’s flank and train if the enemy declines to engage.
I can see Jackson’s dilemma; if he splits up Eowyn and Theoden at this point, he has to devote screen time to getting them back together again sooner or later, and in the meantime he’s already dividing audience attention between several different groups. I can see movie-goers being confused by the idea that Theoden and Eowyn split up, Theoden fights at Helm’s Deep, and then leads the combined forces to and past where Eowyn took the rest of the people. Jackson oversimplified and admittedly cheesed it up a bit by having women and children directly threatened by the monsters, but he did have a tough situation to resolve with minimal exposition. I wouldn’t make the same choices, but I do see where he was coming from.
I’d say Pike beats Knights, Swordsmen beat Pikes, Knights beat Swordsmen. Interestingly enough, almost the same infantry with swords tactics that the Romans used to defeat the Greek phalanxes was reinvented around 2000 years later when the Spanish discovered that pike formations could be defeated by swordsmen.
