Me, too! I mean, he can shoot a chain at the exact right place so it splits, but he can’t off one really big guy running in the clear holding a torch for Og’s sake?
Legolas’s skills are extremely variable, as they were in the first movie. I have hobbyist friends- not Grand Master Bowman type guys but I shoot every couple of weeks guys- who shoot faster than what he’s portrayed as doing, and more accurately. He’s had how many decades to practice? He should be way better.
Hey, it’s Tolkien’s Eleventy First birthday today!
I would agree with this, EXCEPT that there’s a shot of the bad guys recovering and another shot of the good guys riding their horses through a line of readied pikes. If Gandalf made the riders invulnerable, the pikes should have bounced off. If the orcs were blinded and disoriented so they unset their pikes, they should have mostly bounced off but some should have hit still.
We should have seen some serious horse-kabob.
He hit the thing twice, its obvious that Legolas needs a higher caliber arrow for stopping power.
Again, a pike that is level is not a pike that is braced or readied. The pikes may have been pointing at the horses, but unless the orcs revcovered enough to brace them they aren’t going to do much good.
It still would HIT the horse, then either just scratch it or bounce. These did not touch the horses at all.
And I suspect that if you hit the horse with the pike, you may not get the benefits of bracing, but you’ll still make it have a Bad Day.
The sharpening wheel turns backwards cause it was filmed in New Zealand. Duh!:smack: 
I agree with you on the first, but Aragorn and Arwen are related – First cousins, 100 times removed. Not as close as sibs but, um . . .
Oh yeah, in the book, Aragorn is pushing eighty (Those Numenorians got good longevity genes!) and lasts another 120 years after Awen and he wed. This is glossed over or ignored completely in the movie for reasons that are self-evident.
DD
A millenium perhaps…
And in the book, of course, Frodo is also 60-80 years old. A middle-age hobbit. 
And the orc with the torch reminded me of the Olympic torch.
Yes, book Frodo is the eldest of the four hobbits, but movie Frodo looks like he’s still in junior high. Book Pippin is supposed to be the youngest, but film Pippin (Billy Boyd) is 32 years old.
Um…I knew about the lineage part. Both are descendents of Earendil and Elwing. Thought I was being funny (ya know, Luke, Leah(sp?), sis and bro) with winky smile, no?
Although at the time of Bilbo’s party, Frodo was a youngster of 33. Gandalf didn’t exactly rush him out the door in the book.
In the book, both Pippin and Merry are hobbit-teenagers (tweenagers). Sam is older, mid 30’s, and Frodo the oldest of all.
But Frodo is also supposed to look as young as Merry and Pippin, since he had the ring since his grown up birthday (30).
I’ve seen the movie twice, and haven’t seen the shot of the orcs recovering. I’ve seen them stagger a bit, but I certainly didn’t see anything that could be called recovery. And the orks definately don’t have readied pikes for the riders to go through - the pikes are just fairly horizontal, not braced like a readied pike would be. I think the visuals in the movie were quite clear that the orks were disoriented when the charge hit, and not to be too harsh but anyone who knows anything about medieval warfare should know that a readied pike does not have both ends in the air, and that it’s quite possible to live through charging pikemen who do not have their pikes ready and who are disoriented and in poor order.
The orks were blinded and disoriented and did unset their pikes (this was pretty clear in the movie), and the riders of Rohan generally went between the unset pikes. I don’t think there was enough imagery of the charge to say that no one got injured by a pike at all (ISTR a rider or two falling, but I may be misremembering).
What I missed were more Legolas and Gimli moments. I could count on one hand the scenes where they actually talked to each other in both movies. Especially Legolas toward Gimli.
Is it because maybe Bloom isn’t quite the actor Rhys-Davies is and it would’ve looked bad?
I was hoping they’d talk amongst themselves after Aragorn fell. I wanted more of the orc-killing contest. The scene were Aragorn and Gimli went (tossed) on the bridge could’ve easily been Legolas and Gimli, showing them working together.
It always seemed like Aragorn & Gimli or Aragorn & Legolas, but rarely the other combination.
Hi. I found this site whilst searching for a good discussion on the changes to TTT. Looks like I found it. And now, for my two cents:
Agree with all who disliked the changes to Faramir and the detour to Gondor. WTF? I realise that some changes are necessary when transcribing a book of this size to a film, I want those changes to be faithful to the book and its characters. For instance, I can forgive the omission of the Huorns, the postponing of Shelob until TROTK, and the melding of Eomer and Erkenbrand into one character, because neither of these were major details, and they serve to make the story flow in film format. The changing of Faramir does not do this. The scenes take up as much time, and I cannot imagine how the detour to Gondor will do much to speed up the plot. I don’t really care about the “skateboarding” scene, as it’s a stylistic choice–not what I’d have done, but it’s of no consequence. The other thing that irked me was Aragorn’s near death experience. This took up extra time in the movie, it didn’t serve to condense the plot one iota. I also liked the above rewrite of the Ent thing, so that the Ents make the right decision in the Ent moot. I also think that more emphasis on the Ents not-so-hasty nature could have been made.
I do have to say, though, that the bit where Arwen envisions the future when Aragorn is dead was fairly inspired–and not exactly of PJ’s creation. Read the appendices at the back of TROTK, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find a reference.
Almost, but not quite right. Merry and Sam are both in their mid-thirties, roughly equivalent to human mid-twenties. Pippin is 27 or 28, roughly equivalent to a human somewhere around 18. Frodo is fifty, IIRC, (human late thirties or fortyish), but hasn’t aged noticeably since he got the ring at age 33 (human 21).
As stated above, I was basing my nitpick on the direction the sparks flew, not the rotation of the wheel. Please read all my posts before rebuking me.
I apologize to the OP that my nitpicks have hogged so much of this thread. I truly didn’t forsee this much comment
welcome aboard tolkie. have you seen the “someone other than tolkien” author thread?
how would you have made the difference between faramir/boramir apparent on the screen?
Was that the same New Zealand forge where they filmed the forge scenes in The Navigator? (Another NZ movie, where the forge was central to the plot.)