Hence the question, “Is this addressed in the books?”
I assumed it’s simply PJ neglecting that little detail, but since I never made it through the entire Return of the King, I wondered if Tolkein explained how this was accomplished.
The movies show these beacons being lit by people, but show no sign of how they got there or whether they are stationed there (since there is no sign of any buildings). It’s a small infraction, but one that kind of bugged me.
As for the Maori, I figured there would have been some in makeup, but I was kind of hoping they would have been used as Haradim, they might have, but most of the oliphant riders had masks. Seems a waste not to use prominantly a race of people so different from the Caucasian leads that are so readily available. Glad there was plenty of work for them to be extras though.
Do you mean just the Beacon Hills or the mountains of ME in general? Because ME wasn’t really very, very old at the time of the War of the Ring, IIRC. There was an unmeasured span of time before the Rising of the Sun, but I can’t imagine that it covered billions of years. And the timespan between the Rising of the Sun and the War of the Ring is actually well within the 10s of thousands of years, practically nothing on a geological timescale.
First Age: Probably not more than 20,000 years (counting the period before the Sun rose, since we’re more interested in actual time passed in this case than in arbitrary dating systems).
So a complete count of years for ME at the time of the War of the Ring would be approximately 30,000 years, which is a long time by human standards but not really much more than an eyeblink to geological processes. The thing that differs from a realistic portrayal isn’t that the mountains of ME appear to be too new, but that they appear to be too old.
Agreed; it was one of the many breathtaking moments of the trilogy, and really gave the impression of a whole population, splintered but united, rising up to join their allies’ defenses in battle together.
(Whether that was the point, I dunno. But that’s how it read to me.)
I agree that it’s a beautiful, and emotionally moving, scene.
The problem is when suspension of disbelief fails, one notes that it’s unlikely that there would be outposts in those locations (mountain tops above the clouds?) and it’s unlikely that the people manning those locations would be paying attention and be able to immediately ignite their own pyre so quickly. But the scene is breathtaking and enjoyable on its own terms, IMHO.
Signal beacons don’t make any sense unless they’re permanently manned. Of course they had full-time crews.
Historically there have been such beacons – Tolkien didn’t invent the idea. I had them listed as an early example of long-distance communication in my book “Wonders of Science Simplified”. Other examples in the book were early mechanical telegraphs, such as the one described in C.S. Forester’s “Hornblower and the Hotspur”, in which the signal sent by the semaphore-like arms of the station can be read at a distance and transmitted to the next station in the line. Pretty clearly these were all perpetually-manned stations, or the system wouldn’t work.
CalMeacham pretty much covers the logistics. There’s not really any reason for Tolkien to have “gone into” how these things work any more than he should have “gone into” how the Fellowship started their fires every night. There’s really only one way to do it, and “there’s never any mention of anyone having a tinderbox!” doesn’t mean much. If you have signal beacons, you have people there - and not just one or two, but enough to staff shifts. The whole point is that the beacons need to transmit the message faster than a man on a horse could (Though curiously, in the books, the beacons aren’t lit until after the message rider delivers the Red Arrow, which seems a little strange. Maybe it was for dramatic effect.) so you need people not just to be there, but to be WATCHING, so that it’s not more than a few minutes between one beacon getting going and folks getting on the move to light the next.
That said, PJ did take some artistic liberties with this scene (which, incidentally, doesn’t really appear in the books in the same way. In the books, Gandalf and Pippin are riding to Minas Tirith in the middle of the night, and they see one of the beacon fires ignite, and Pippin basically says “Gah! Fire! Are there dragons here, Gandalf?” to which the wizard replies, “No, you idiot halfling, that’s a signal beacon.” and goes on to name all the beacon hills from Rohan to Gondor (I think there are only 13 of them or something, but I forget.)). Anyway, they’re not set on the tops of huge mountains - that’s neither practical from a staffing standpoint nor particularly useful from a “beacons that need to be seen by the next beacon in the line” standpoint. They’re a series of “hills” - foothills of the White Mountains, really - selected, one presumes for the obvious reasons, namely, good line of sight to each other, reasonably accessable, not completely unlivable, and probably reasonably difficult to assail/find your way up onto if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I always took that scene to obviously contain a certain measure of “time compression” for dramatic effect; I don’t care how seasoned your pile of wood is, it doesn’t go up like a piece of newspaper drenched in lighter fluid. Indeed, if you’re paying attention, the various beacons are even shown at different times of day. So it’s not quite so farfetched as it might seem on the surface when you consider that that 15 second or whatever sequence actually takes, apparently, overnight to actually happen.
The beacons were probably a great place to send the most misbehaving troops. And it doesn’t really suspend disbelief that much, not to me anyway, that was the way people communicated in days of yore anyway - with fire. Cause, you know, you can see it for miles.
As others have said, I don’t care how false it was - it was beautiful.
I don’t know about that. They were using flamable oil on the fires. I don’t know how effective of oil they had, but I do know from experience throwing a couple gallons of gasoline on a fire will get you 10 foot flames instantly.
At risk of getting into a really STUPID argument; Gasoline is pretty different from any sort of ‘oil’ that was available at the sort of tech level we’re looking at here, and in fact, has been refined to be…more flammable.
Also, on what are you basing the assertion that “they were using flammable oil on the fires”? The scene of Pippin emptying a lamp-like thing onto the beacon? You could use jet fuel if you wanted to, dropping something that size onto a pile of wood that size isn’t going to get you an instant bonfire.
Unless you are suggesting that the beacons are somehow kept permanently soaked in some sort of Naphtha substance, my point stands.
Sorry for the hijack, but since a LOTR thread is open…
I watched ROTK last night, too (watched the whole trilogy on TNT, being sick and all, kind of made for the perfect down day…) and was wondering - Was Elrond just going to let the race of men get wiped out if Arwen hadn’t showed up?
It seems like it wasn’t until his daughter came running up to him after quitting the exile that it occurred to him that maybe he ought to do something. Isildur’s (?) sword was repaired, Elrond made the journey and gave it to Aragorn the night before the battle and said oh by the way, ten yards away is a road leading to an invincible army that’s at your disposal if you show them this sword and can talk them into it.
It didn’t seem like Elrond would have offered up these rather crucial assets unless Arwen’s well-being was at risk. He had the key to the battle all along. Would he have just let the race of men get slaughtered? With friends like that… But then again I could have missed something.
I disagree. Several gallons of flammable fuel, a pile of well stacked very dry wood for airflow, and a core of good kindling like dry hay, and the thing is going to be very big instantly, and start the wood buring shortly after.
My main problem with the scene are the clouds. How are the beacon attendants supposed to maintain a line of sight when they keep dipping above and below the cloud line?
Don’t worry about hijacking, the question has been answered to my satisfaction.
Airk, I have to disagree that the lighting of the beacons is equivilant a daily task like making nightly camp fire. It’s a rather pivitol moment in the story and a massive undertaking. I would expect an author who took the time to create individual languages and generations of backstory would have done a thorough job at describing one of the coolest parts of the story. Since I hadn’t finished that book, it’s just curiosity about how that particular scene differs between film and novel.
