As Grey has already pointed out - it’s not a “pivotal moment in the story”. At all. It’s basically a footnote. I’m not sure there’s even ever any mention of Theoden receiving word of the beacons - he gets his summons to Gondor by a messenger bearing the Red Arrow, which is a much more major scene in the books yet curiously absent from the film.
There’s nothing to describe. No main character ever approaches a beacon. The viewpoint of the books never goes there. All you get is Gandalf explaining that the beacons are there to send word from Gondor to Rohan, and then he names the hills they’re on. I don’t have a copy of RotK in front of me, but I’m baffled by the fact that you seem to think this is important. It’s on the same scale as how Gondor recruits its soldiers. It’s just not relevant to the story. Gondor has soldiers, and it got them, presumably, by one of the usual ways. Similarly, Gondor built beacons, and it uses them, presumably, in the usual way. It’s not as if there’s room for much variation in how you use a set of signal fires.
Actually I would’ve given up a few of the drawn out RotK endings for the arrival of the levies. Especially if they had been able to convey how few had come due to the Corsairs.
If both of these are true, you have to wonder how often the Riders of Rohan showed up at the gates of Minas Tirith because some incompetent draftee got drunk and passed out while smoking pipeweed.
Pipeweed wasn’t used in the South as the practice originated with the Hobbits only a few generations previous to the story. It had admittedly spread through local contact to both the Northern Rangers, a Wizard and likely some humans in Bree but not to the Southern Kingdom.
Hell it’s the Dope, how can I not?
Tolkien makes a big deal out of the fact that the horse Shadowfax (of the Mearas race of horses) runs much faster than other horses and does not tire easily. Also, Gandalf and Pippin do not stop at Helms Deep and are already on their way to Gondor when Gandalf sees the beacons light up and tells Shadowfax to speed up (which Shadowfax does after pausing so Gandalf can talk to some messengers).
The beacons are not so important in the book, yet PJ used them in a more prominent role so he can make cool special effects. Main question answered.
It’s pretty much definate that the stations were manned in Tolkein’s story , but as far as I can see pretty damn well inconvenient and and silly to have placed them on top of snowy peaks, as in PJ’s version.
I need to get around to finishing The Return of the King, because I wouldn’t want to go around confusing PJ’s version with the real McCoy.
He still should have used the Maori as the Haradrim, missed opportunity.
I don’t think it was just because of ‘cool special effects’. Film is a visual medium. The beacons are an example of good filmmaking – you need to show stuff happening rather than telling us about it. In the book (haven’t read it yet, but I’m going off of the elaborations here), the beacon is briefly mentioned but apparently Denethor is described as having sent others out to inform the various communities /countries / allies of the need to defend Minas Tirith. I suppose Jackson could’ve showed this, but it’s not very interesting to follow a bunch of guys talking to other guys and repeating the same message. So Jackson instead gives us a powerful visual of the same general idea: the allies at long last waking from (what seems to me like) their slumber-like insularity in order to sound the alarm, thus coming to Minas Tirith’s aid and their own defense against Sauron’s army.
Also fits in with Jackson’s admittedly controversial reworking of Denethor’s characterization, since the asshat in the film was too stubborn to ask for help, so it’s Gandalf / Pippin who are more proactive in playing a role in alerting the others.
It’s a visual shortcut and it works beautifully for te story Jackson was telling.
Why do you think he didn’t? Their faces were mostly covered so I would think that a lot of them probably were Maori extras. According to IMDB, “Harad Leader 2” was played by Shane Rangi. Only two of the Haradrim have listings in the credits, one of whom is Maori.
Oh, I dunno about that… start with a closeup of the rider receiving the red arrow, leaving the gates, pull back to a long shot, as riders spread in all directions from the city…
Then you get an extended riding-and-getting-killed sequence - hell, look at Arwen’s flight from the Nazgul, you can definitely get some visual punch from a long, dangerous, fast ride.
Its also possible its a homage. While its a STRANGE thing to homage, the beacon scene as well as the scene at the end where the Hobbits are knelt down before both seem to be strongly reminiscent of Mulan. Though those scenes may be an homage to something earlier…
(“Did that movie remind you of Mulan?” was perhaps the strangest thing I said when I first saw it)
I think they could’ve done the Red Arrow scene, but I like the results of what was done with the beacons (though less so the whole “Gandalf and Pippin have to light the first one because Denethor is a putz” bit) so it doesn’t really bother me.
I agree with Grey that it would’ve been awesome to see “arrival of the levies” scene in the film - certainly it would’ve been better than the wretched Paths of the Dead sequence from the extended edition - but it would’ve taken some effort to pull off.
Somehow, I’m not getting my point across correctly. I’m aware that many Maori were used as extras, but it’s obvious they were covered up. As has been explained already, Tolkein wrote these characters as presumably Caucasian,and I don’t dispute that, nor do I desire the movie to be more PC. I thought that a group of people who would obviously look exotic compared to the lead characters, could have been used to great effect as one of the races of men in Sauron’s army, without the use of makeup, prosthetics or masks. Hopefully I’ve explained myself clear enough.
Clear. Yes, the Haradrim and Southrons in the movie are almost all masked / veiled, but those that aren’t somewhat exotic and some non-European Kiwis were used in those roles (which is cool), but yes, more could have been bare-faced.
Just one other thought though Musky Moon, I do wonder whether if Jackson had used more unmasked Maori / Polynesians as Haradrim, etc he would have opened up charges from overly PC-types that he was casting dark-skinned folks as villains.
What jumped to mind was some of the odd comments after Lucas cast Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett (and hence all of the clone troopers) in Star Wars Ep:II – there were claims that Fett represented illegal immigrant labour, and that Morrison was Latino. :rolleyes:
I’m reading LotR right now and there are countless references to the black men of Harad and the swarthy Southrons and several other dark skinned men out of the East who allied with Sauron. Now, the heroes and free peoples are all white and if Tolkien wanted to write mythology for the English which expects them to align with the good guys that’s fine, but in Tolkiens time England was entrenched in both Africa and India and the parallels between them and the Fell Men of Middle Earth are indisputable.
Now, I don’t expect the work to be PC and I don’t see any racism in it, but to claim that there are no non-white peoples in his work is a lie.
Not once did this cross my mind, but sadly I think you’re right. Well put. In an alternate universe, where people haven’t evolved into oversensitive PC trolls, it would have been cool. (Disclaimer: this is not to say that there aren’t actual examples of racial insensitivity in Hollywood)
I know from the bonus features that Jackson quite specifically avoided using African motifs for the Haradrim, precisely for fear of the dark skin = bad guy connection. I feel pretty certain that the Haradrim were not portrayed as dark-skinned for the same reason.
Tolkien lived and wrote in an era where it was still acceptable to write a huge history of people who were all white except for a tribe of bad guys. And given the geography of Europe and Africa, it’s even fairly plausible that such a situation might exist. But it’s just not done these days, and there’s no way Jackson could have made the Hobbits, Elves, and Men of the West all white and the Haradrim all Maori and not been heavily criticized for it.
It appears from half a world away that New Zealand now treasures its Maori heritage, but it wasn’t so long ago that there was a White New Zealand policy in force, controlling emigration. I seriously doubt that the New Zealand of today is entirely devoid of racial tensions. I think Jackson was wise to overlook that particular Tolkien detail.
Not wanting to defend dubious (or shitty) things my country has done in the past, but while there certainly was (historically) some attempt to get white immigrants (a lot of English) and other western Europeans (who were seen as “easy to integrate”), NZ’s “white” immigration policy wasn’t as effective or official as our western neighbour’s, with quite early influxes of Polynesian immigrants and some Asian. (Bit on history of immigration in NZ).
Of course we have racial tensions – name any non-homogenous population without some degree of that? (And we are very much a mixed bag here these days).
However, I’d expect that avoiding a black-people-bad motif would at least as much for foreign (US) consumption as for local. The films were made here but the money came from Hollywood – and in any case we were pretty collectively proud to see quite a few of our local actors in the films, heavy makeup or not.
Apollyon, apologies for seeming to put down NZ, if so I seemed to be doing. It was not my intent; in fact, if I could live in any country in the world, NZ would be my choice. I agree that the choices were probably dictated as much by American sensibilities as anything else.
(And we are very much a mixed bag here these days).