Gandalf Vs. The Witch King

[Essex]

We have to remember also, in the book, that Rohirrim's forces were also fading. When they saw the ships with the black sales all hope was lost. So therefore, Aragorn and his men also saved the day. In the film, as you point out Guinivere, that

In the end it's the ghastly green termite-army of the undead who saves the town.

I've tried to answer this one before. If we do not have the men of the Dead in the Pellenor, then we would have to have yet ANOTHER battle scene at Pelagir on the River. We would have to invest time in the men of the Dead fighting the Corsairs, Aragorn freeing the Slaves, Aragorn picking up all the other men, Aragorn freeing the King of the Dead and his people from their curse - in the book we had this told to us in retrospect - this would not work in a movie - all none book readers would be shouting 'where di all the green guys go?'

so without the 'green men' at Pellonor we would have to have ANOTHER big fight scene, lots of scene setting and dialouge which would SLOW the film down now that Jackson has helped skillfully bring it up towards a crescendo, and therefore we would have no surprise entrance into the Pellenor (as we have in the book) by Aragorn and co.

Therefore film wise, I can understand why Jackson had the Dead help fight Sauron's forces at Pellenor rather than at Pelagir. It was the lesser of two evils. Hey, I'd like a full length unabridged version of the text made into a mini series, and then we can have the EXACT scenes acted out as Tolkien described them. 54 hours of material (thats how long it takes to read it out aloud), with exposition, retrospective telling of tales etc cannot be fitted into three 3-4 hour movies.