Dumbing it down

[Essex]

lord dor-lomin,

Take a close look at the text of the WK scene.

as important as merry's blade is (as I've said countless times) it's not just the blade itself that helps defeat the witch king. It's the point that Merry is OVERLOOKED by everyone (except eowyn) which works exactly as it does in the book. Merry was able to sneak up on the witch king and attack him from behind, hitting him just below the knee (perhaps a play on Achilles' heel?) and dealt a BITTER blow. No matter whether he had a great sword or not, if he was a great Warrior etc, he would have NOT GOT NEAR the WK to attack him. It was becuase he was a 'lowly' hobbit, totally disregarded, that he was able to help defeat the WK. This theme is EXACTLY the same in the film as it is in the book, and is highly important. If PJ could have somehow fit in the Barrowdown scenes with the Numenorean sword then this scene would have been perfect.

On top of this, why wouldn't the WK kneel there for a matter of seconds after taking the blow from Merry? Yes, eowyn removes her helmet and says her line at this point in the film, but the WK had been dealt a BITTER blow as Tolkien tells us. Indeed, in the book, Eowyn slowly gets up from her knees, "tottering, struggling up", so this would take longer than removing her helmet and saying her world famous line at this point.

The reason PJ makes his helmet wither like it does, is because HE WAS BEING FAITHFUL TO THE BOOK. Read the scene from the book closely and you will see.


Neithan,

re

Several times Peter Jackson stumbled when trying to remember how things happened in the book as opposed to his changes. It became quite clear after he was corrected several times by the other commentators that he didn't know Tolkien's stories all that well.

We also see this in the EE of FOTR. PJ doesn;t know the book TOO well, but it really wasn't him that wrote (and re-wrote) the script. In my opinion it was Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh, looking at the interviews the 3 held in various sections of the EEs.