For no reason at all, I was watching some LOTR footage on YouTube last night, and I was reminded just how visually cool so much of that franchise was. Whatever your feelings about Peter Lordoftheringsguy's handling of Tolkien's story (and personally, I am still furious about the lack of the Scouring) he did the visuals. Um-BOY!
I mean, holy man, the Charge of the Rohirrim...!
Holy crap-on-a-stick! I'd get out of the way too, even with ten to one odds. Three thousand huge, be-piked cavalry men with nothing to lose? You bet!
Some of these battle sequences are so virtuosic it's easy to start thinking that it really looked like that... and then you have to stop yourself and remember that it didn't actually happen at all.
This is why I still like the movies. And why I still really want something that a friend of mine got when she bought the full set some years ago. They were sold with little dodads from the films, one of which was a set of Argonath bookends.
If anyone knows where, (EBay?) you can get one, let me know.
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The Charge of the Rohirrim is my favorite scene in film. Period.
ReplyDeleteI especially appreciated the way Jackson counterposed the Charge with the doomed sortie of Gondor's cavalry which had taken place earlier.
"Doesn't matter how many archers you have this time, Orky...."
Jackson also earns points from me for looking back at accounts of mass cavalry charges during the Napoleonic Wars as inspiration.
While I have problems with Jackson's handling of some of the material (the Scouring being a gripe of mine, too), by and large he deserves kudos. Even stuff I didn't like he usually had a reasoned cinematic explanation for.
And he absolutely nailed the Rohirrim--he got the Sons of Eorl in one. I want one of the White Horse banners, in fact.
Me too. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I think I'm going to watch it again...