Why did people hate that Peter Jackson added Elves to the Battle of Helms Deep, besides the fact that it wasn't accurate to the book?
I feel like it's improvement to the main story by showing that it wasn't just Gondor and Rohan fighting and dying against Sauron.
book purists are the worst
The biggest issue for me is mainly the leap in logic, whilst obviously Elves are fast af, a force like that making it to Helm's Deep both before the Uruk-Hai Army as well as the Rohirrim was rather odd.
The change makes sense from what they were trying to portray however, since it was to show other peoples of middle earth taking part in the fight and it would have been budgetarily irresponsible to show brief clips of shit going on in Lorien, Mirkwood, the Dale, etc. Probably should have emphasized Elrond and Galadriel's foresight on the matter earlier on though I take it they didn't want to spoil it for the movie
Also adds some tension to the battle since there aren't a lot of main character deaths in Lord of the Rings
Also this
Books are better than Hacksons moronic invincible killer ghost army
Ghost army is in the books it's not Jacksons idea.
And Jackson also hated it
The ghosts couldn't kill anyone in the books; they scared off the corsairs so Aragorn and the western Gondor army could steal their ships
Ghost army in the books isn't invincible, nor does it destroy the entire army of Sauron
>just Gondor and Rohan fighting and dying against Sauron
it was THE WHOLE FRICKING POINT
the AGE OF MEN was dawning and instead of helping deal us with THEIR old sins, the fricking elves pissed of to their magical masturbation island to keep wanking for all eternity
but Jackson was moronic just like you
and his two women only cared about fricking pussy romance bullshit
What is it about Tolkien book purist homosexuals that turns them into insufferable autistic spastics
piss of predditor
>awww someone disagrees with me and is calling out book hardos, must be a redditor
Grow up homosexual
They can't handle the fact that if a "proper" adaption of the books were done that they'd be absolutely awful movies that no one would look back on fondly. So all they can do is seethe on the internet like it's perpetually 2001.
bruh, we're talking about seemingly minor changes that outright erase subtext and overtones.
i mean, do you really think elves not being at helm's deep would make the movies insufferable?
>we're just talking about the elves at helm's deep bruuuuuh
Stop being a disingenuous homosexual. The anon you responded to was talking generally about book purists and their autistic internet tantrums and you've done your best to prove him absolutely right.
The fact that you think this particular change goes far enough to somehow erases or invalidates the heavy lifting done by men at the dawn of the fourth age already tells me enough about what you think a good movie should be like.
>was talking generally
thread context is specific, of course. some changes were fine. some weren't. bemoaning "book purity" in response to a change that was not for the better, at all, is stupid.
Thank God he cut out Arwen.
The entire point of Lord of the Rings is the lesser mortals are now in charge, for better or for worse. They're responsible, the Elves aren't driving history anymore. Will they rise to the occasion? Will they end up defeated or worse yet will they end up seduced by evil? It's fundamentally what LotR is about.
Then Hackson stuck Elves in Helms Deep. Top laf.
This.
Don't ever let anyone tell you whining on the internet never accomplished anything.
And what factor did the elves give to the battle besides a delay? They were completely wiped out and the battle was only won because of a quasi-suicidal charge but the last defenders.
>The entire point of Lord of the Rings is the lesser mortals are now in charge
but the elves and are fighting, just off-screen in lotr in other places. They're not all just leaving for the west
Did you really feel like the elves stole the show and drove the historical event by showing up? By the end it's just Theoden and his rohirrim and then Eomer bails them out, at best it's just a nice nod that the elves are showing goodwill to men in spite of "men are weak" etc, it works very well.
you could argue that it makes the effort of men seem even greater because even with the aid of the elves their effort was barely sufficient; they would have all willingly perished if not for their aid - it took the riders of rohan to save the day both the elves (most of them died) and men
indeed fren
It was a very small contingent of Elven volunteers, not a levied Elven army
>entire point of the battle is humans making a last stand in the face of tremendous odds
>actually the Elves saved them
If you can't work out why it's moronic you're probably an amazon shill.
>actually the Elves saved them
But they didn't. All the elves that came to help them died. The Rohirrim and Gandalf were the ones who actually saved them.
in the book:
>humanity standing alone against the armies of sauron
in the movie:
>actually humanity doesn't stand alone they have lots of help
the elves are characterized as being done with middle-earth, ready to just abandon everything and move on to the fricking moon or whatever, where sauron can't reach. because they can't let go of islidur's fall.
The majority of elves, not all elves. Did you forget that Legolas exists?. The fact that a small group of elves.stood to help mankind and died doing so despite the fact they could have fled and had eternal life is moving and tragic.
>Did you forget that Legolas exists?
right so dwarves should've been at helm's deep too?
non sequitur.
>legolas was there so elves should be there
gimli was there so dwarves should've pitched in too. it just makes sense. screw the subtext/overtones of humanity dealing with the sins and failures of the gods and elder races. everyone pitches in!
gandalf brings an army at the end, so shouldn't all the wizards (except saruman) should be there too! and the eagles since they show up at the end! maybe there are also some rebel orcs/goblins/trolls who don't like sauron as well! IT WOULD'VE BEEN EPIC
DOOD WHAT IF ONE OF THE RINGWRAITHS SHOOK FREE OF SAURON'S CONTROL AND PITCHED IN???? OMFG
>bookgay goes full moron
point being, there was no limit to how "epic" they could've made that battle. so why stop at just throwing in a few elves? the subtext/overtones were already removed by then.
This. The voluntary death of the Elves hits harder for the viewer because they didn't just choose to die early, forfeiting a mortal life of labour and worry, they choose to give up peaceful immortality to do the right thing. Imagine giving up everlasting life just to show your allies that your people care for them
In the book, the weird, half-wild walking trees(not Ents) are picking away at the Uruk through the whole siege. I always figured that's why they subbed in the Elves - because one of the few references we get to animated trees was related to Bombadil.
>saved them
I felt the thousands of rohirim had more impact than the the few elves who died in the first assault
All the elves are dead by the time Theoden makes his death charge
So why bother shoehorning them in in the first place? Their presence makes absolutely no difference to the battle whatsoever. Hackson is a moron.
They do provide some relief and buy time for the defense.
Considering how we see rohans forces could only man the fortress, if not for the elves the Deeping wall wouldn't have been manned, or they would've had to spread their forces very thin.
But in the Book that wasn't the case. That situation was manufactured solely for the movie. Do a proper adaptation and you don't need to waste everyone's time by inserting a bunch of elves getting pointlessly slaughtered.
>do a proper adaptation
>run time: 22hrs
>budget: 500 billion dollarydoos
See
they were allies and friends of each other's people. It would've been despicable had no elves at all showed up and would've made the viewer resent them as selfish, stuck up cowards. The fact that a small contingent arrives voluntarily (likely to their own deaths), fits the theme of the story; that the races of Middle Earth and selfish and vain, and only redeemed by the great sacrifice of the few, out of love for the many
Their presence made a difference to the soldiers who lived and didn’t get shitstomped in their place.
>The entire point of Lord of the Rings is the lesser mortals are now in charge
But that wasn't the case in the books, Elves and Dwarfes were still fighting battles in other places of Middle Earth.
It's the case in the appendices that the War Of The Ring is going on outside Man ruled kingdoms, but no one except autists like you and me actually read that shit
They all get killed almost immediately. What was the point?
They needed to job
Probably to hint at deeper issues with the elves. Maybe they don't all agree blindly with the council, and it's conceavable that the elves are "enlightened" enough to not punish one captain and his bodyguards for going off on an adventure to help the humans. Or maybe those elves didn't intend to get on the boat and figured it'd be better to kill the orcs instead.
This.
It's likely that the reason it was a small force is because they were volunteers. Galadriel and haldir asked for volunteers and these elves came along. Probably more out of respect and loyalty to galadriel than anything else
Plus many elves had left and many were set on leaving now. Along with a general prejudice towards men meant most wouldn't have been down to help.
To show that alliances and friendship still mean something. I'm convinced the further you were born from WWII the less values you have as a human being
LotR isn't WWII and elves aren't human beings.
Frick you.
How much money did the elven quartermaster spend marching them all the way there? Did the families of the dead elves get a payout? Did they invest in life insurance in the war chest?
>I feel like it's improvement to the main story by showing that it wasn't just Gondor and Rohan fighting and dying against Sauron
That's already in the books, though; an army of Elves arrives in Gondor.
>an army of Elves arrives in Gondor.
Only Elrond's sons show up with the last of the Rangers in the books.
We're not talking about the books.
>>I feel like it's improvement to the main story by showing that it wasn't just Gondor and Rohan fighting and dying against Sauron
How is it an improvement when it's something that already existed in the source material? It's not as if the Elves just sat around doing nothing.
In this case, it would have been monetarily irresponsible to have sets of that demonstrated, and they wanted to show something more
Granted I think Elrohir and Elladan making an appearance at Minas Tirith would have been better, albeit then it would have just been two Elves
from what i understood everybody was too busy fighting to come to their aid the elves mary sued their way in there for capeshiterino
Of all the Cinemaphile shills I hate amazon shills the most.
Imagine shitting on the IP you're currently trying to promote because otherwise no one gives a shit about your non-canon new nonsense.
It cucks the race of men out of their defining moment standing alone against the hordes of Sauronman until relief can arrive, it's essentially making a movie about the Siege Of Vienna and for some reason there's a cohort of homosexual degenerates that show up for no reason
youve got a point there it was meant to make the men look more desperate and pathetic than they really were ( we can use all the help we can get! kind of thing ); the elves showed up to make the humans seem more desperate whilst at the time same time building hope for their cause legolas was enough it was unnecessary - i bet when tolkiens grandson the ultimate bookgay critcized the films for being action schlock he was thinking of helms deep and the shield surfing elves
But the men were desperate it's entirely why they went to helms deep. Their forces were depleted and were facing an massive force with nowhere to run. They were arming children even
And that's the whole point of them winning on their own, Gandalf even lampshades it with that whole "turning of the tide" comment, but no we need to have some effeminate poofters show up and shoot their bows instead for some reason
>homosexual degenerates
sounds spot-on
I actually liked a lot of the changes Jackson made, as blasphemous as that may sound to bookgays.
Thank god if bookgays got their way we would have Tom,endless singing and boring shire segments.
Only issue is why such a small contingent was sent. Elves are immortal and have had no conflicts that would deplete their ranks. So they should have a force many times bigger than sent. Sending such a small force means High chance that force will die due to being outnumbered
They've been abandoning Middle Earth for a while, which is why the whole thing looks ridiculous, they'd have their hands full dealing with shit in their own realm without the luxury of sending expeditionary forces out to Rohan. Also how did they get there? Sauronman still controled the mountain passes and they couldn't go through Moria
They came from lorien so probably headed south along fangorn then through rohan.
They probably didn't face any issues on route because saruman had called all his forces in to the attack on helms deep.
>saruman had called all his forces in to the attack on helms deep.
Is he stupid? Because not keeping a reserve army when you live near elves that hate you is pretty stupid.
He likely didn't think they would come to rohans aid. As they hadn't done anything to help anyone else outside their borders in years. Rohan had been under severe attack for over a year by this point and nobody has helped them once.
Also he was wienery. Even if anyone helped rohan the sheer size and strength of his forces couldn't be defeated.
I didn't hate the fact some Elves arrived to help, but the fact there were literally only about 300 fighting age men, most having seen too many winters (formerly too few), was just absurd. That's because Jackson loves to shoehorn insane levels of melodrama into his movies.
Another example is...
>Gandalf, Pippin and the seemingly twenty or so remaining soldiers defending the last tier of Minus Tirith
>Gandalf gives a touching speech about death not being so bad
>le green ghost army floods in out of nowhere and kills all the baddies at the last second
Peter Jackson also hated the ghost army. It was worse in the book though.
In the book they just help to defeat the reinforcements. Which makes even less sense why they weren't used like in the movie to defeat the entire force.
I think they were just ghosts, they couldnt actually kill people. All they did was scare the shit out of the Corsairs in their ships which caused them to jump overboard and drown. The rest of the Corsairs were killed by that Prince guy's soldiers and Aragorn's crew.
>they were just ghosts, they couldnt actually kill people
They're basically the same thing as a the Barrow wights, they absolutely can kill people. The reason they don't turn up at Minas Tirith has more to do with the nature of their oath and being spiritually tied into the land
In the book they coudnt kill anyone, they were just used as a scare/distraction tatic to help take the ships
In the book they didn't NEED to kill anyone because all the Corsairs shit themselves and fricked off, as wraiths they can totally kill people like all the other wraiths that exist in the Tolkien lore
Stop making up shit and treating it as fact.
>Wheredo((You))thinkyouARE.jpg
>It was worse in the book though.
No it wasn't. The Ghost army summoned simply spooked and scared away the pirates and allowed Aragorn to meet up with reinforcements from the south and sail up by river without having to battle pirates and the like. It is this force which helps save Minas Tirith - not a ghost army.
Movies>>>>>>>>
.
>I feel like it's improvement to the main story by showing that it wasn't just Gondor and Rohan fighting and dying against Sauron.
It makes more sense for Sauron to concentrate on Gondor and Rohan anyway, so Elven reinforcements make sense.
Why don't the dwarfs ever help?
Surely if maybe bilbo had written or visited erebor and asked for help they would've done something? After all he did for them
They're busy dealing with their own shit, it's in the appendices only morons like me read
The dwarves are fighting a goblin invasion in the North.
Fair enough. Maybe they did but should've mentioned it in the movie to tell the audience.
There's an exchange between Legolas and Gimli in the movie that does exactly that
Fair enough thanks for letting me know
the war of the ring wasn't just in rohan and gondor
You know what would have been a cool ending instead of the invincible ghosts (that demand to be released after 1 hour of service)? Imagine if Radaghast the Brown showed up with an army of thousands of animals. He leads a horde of them into the enemy force and they swarm all over those mumakils. Also it would have been cool if the Blue Wizards suddenly showed up too, and they started casting spells too like lightning and torrential rain to hinder the enemy
Radaghast is a meme character and is best not mentioned
Aren't the blue wizards dead? Or just disappeared? I imagine Radaghast could have been busy in the north since that area was getting blown the frick out by goblins.
Nobody knows what happened to them. They went west, and weren't heard from again
East you mean
They were busy.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Blue_Wizards
>Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion ... and after his first fall to search out his hiding (in which they failed) and to cause [?dissension and disarray] among the dark East ... They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of East ... who would both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have ... outnumbered the West.
I always figured they were the Magi who come to endorse Christ
A cool climax would've been to firstly not have the elves show up at helms deep.
Then instead have the elves turn up at minas tirith, with elrond, galadriel, dain. along with rohan, dwarfs etc. A climactic moment where the free people's of middle earth finally unite against sauron.
Maybe I misunderstood, but if Tolkien left so much mistery and wanted this to inspire new mythology, why not make the copyright shorter or public domain?
It being "300 humans versus 10000 orcs" is more offensive to me.
while Christopher's critique on the over the top action sequences is very true it's a true passion project and we couldn't have gotten a better film adaptation
Those action sequences are vital though in the film medium.
Exciting action Visuals are a fundamental aspect of film, especially fantasy, and so they're necessary.
If it was all just exposition it'd be boring
And whereas Books can give the readers an insight into the inner monologue of characters, their thoughts and feelings. Movies can't so they have to use action to give the insight
I agree but it should have been more into the theme of the movies. Legolas surfing down stairs on a shield and single-handedly killing an Olifaunt followed by Gimli's comedic relief could have been executed better. They just witnessed thousands of their brothers in arms die, that deserves a more serious approach.
I agree with you on this. It seemed a little out of place, though i did enjoy gimli and legolas's back and forth (except for later when they should be more melancholy and sorrowful). I
get why they did it though. Was for the young audience. But they could have done it better.
So many morons in this thread
Simple reason: to show the sacrifice that the other Free Peoples were making in the War of the Ring and not leaving it to a description in the appendices
Jackson randomly adding and/or cutting to the sieges of Lothlorien, Mirkwood and Dale/Erebor (happening right before/during the Pelennor) would be jarring.
Jackson also not mentioning or showing any of their fights would not be giving them justice
Literally the only people who dislike the change are:
>logistics autists
>pure bookgays
>racists against elves
The Elves going to Helms Deep is an easy, harmless add that does NOT take away from the heroism of men during that sequence and was an overall positive to the trilogy. Plus we get the kino elf battle motif as the Uruks start charging the Deeping Wall
Jackson went full moron after Fellowship. I don't know what happened, but he stopped trying to adapt LOTR and instead decided to make a fanfic hollywood spectacle. I still enjoyed these movies a great deal, but they are not LOTR.
Because it was successful that's why
he streamlined fellowship a lot and to good effect, which made him think he was a super genius who could do no wrong.
I read that as "added Elvis." Now I want this.
I actually don't dislike anything about it other than that it isn't accurate to the book. Almost all of the changes that Jackson made to the plot made the movies worse than they would have been had he followed the book's plot, but I think this one is kind of just neutral. It is neither better nor worse than the book plot version.