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Mooseboy018
Grey Havens
Sep 10 2014, 4:54am
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Deep within the rock they buried him...
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I feel like bringing up the whole High Fells discussion again.
So how do you interpret Galadriel's lines about the men of the North taking the Witch King's "body" and sealing it in a tomb? I think there are only two major ways that it can be interpreted:
1. The Nine didn't go through the full wraithing process in the movie universe, and their mortal forms were actually killed and then sealed in the tomb after the fall of Angmar. And then Sauron rose them from the dead, which made them wraiths. Also, why would Gandalf refer to them as Ringwraiths? If they had just been nine mortal men and only recently turned into wraiths, why would Gandalf know to call them that? He uses the term as if they were wraiths before they were entombed.
2. The Nine were already wraiths (as they should be) but were somehow subdued, perhaps with the help of someone like Glorfindel, and their "bodies" were sealed within the tomb.
The problem with option 1 (other than ignoring an important part of what made the Ringwraiths wraiths in the first place) is why would they go to so much trouble to magically seal the dead bodies of mortal men in the first place? Apparently the idea of anyone actually summoning the spirits of the dead is absurd, and "no such power exists." Were they just being extra careful in case someone just happened to figure out a way to bring the Nine back from the grave?
The problem with option 2 is the issue of the Nazgul having "bodies." How loosely was Galadriel using this word? We know that the Nazgul (in the movies and the books) can obviously interact with the physical world, and they at least have physical disguises that go over their real "bodies." And in the movie universe these wraith "bodies" have enough of a presence to physically attack Radagast as well as be wounded by an ordinary Rohan sword. Because in the movie, Merry of course doesn't have the special barrow blade, and for some reason the Noldor dagger he got from Galadriel was never used as a sort of replacement for the movie. So if option 2 is what the writers intended, then there's some unexplained movie universe event where the Dunedain and probably a powerful elf ally managed to subdue the Nazgul and somehow physically take their wraith "bodies" and seal them in the tombs.
I hope that this is elaborated on eventually, even if it's just in one of the extended editions. It's frustrating and interesting at the same time, and I personally think it's borderline sloppy writing too. But I won't judge this little subplot yet until we have a chance to see it play out to the end. I remember reading somewhere that there was a possible flashback that was shot with Elrond at the High Fells. Does anyone else remember this? Was it just a reporter mistaking Dol Guldur for the High Fells?
(This post was edited by Mooseboy018 on Sep 10 2014, 4:59am)
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Meneldor
Valinor
Sep 10 2014, 5:10am
Post #2 of 54
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This thought just occurred as I was reading your post.
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Maybe after Angmar was overthrown, the victors performed some sort of magic or ritual that returned the wraiths to their bodies so that they would remain bound in their tombs. Kind of like your option #2, but with the spirits bound once more to their original mortal remains.
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. -Psalm 107
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Eleniel
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 6:18am
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I think you are meaning the comment from the Weta Chronicles...
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I remember reading somewhere that there was a possible flashback that was shot with Elrond at the High Fells. Does anyone else remember this? Was it just a reporter mistaking Dol Guldur for the High Fells?
There is a mention of there having been a "de-aged" version of the Morgul blade made for a scene where Elrond casts it into the Nazgul tomb. The inference, at least for me, from this is that the necessity for a newer blade means they may have filmed a very small flashback of the original "burial" of the WiKi and his weapon, and this flashback was possibly originally intended to be inserted during Galadriel's dialogue in the WC scene of AUJ.
Chronicles: Cloaks & Daggers, page 166.
"Later we came to film a scene in which Elrond is seen casting the blade into the Witch-king's tomb, and for that we needed a cleaner-looking version of the weapon, so I remade it with a more subtle degree of aging."
"Choosing Trust over Doubt gets me burned once in a while, but I'd rather be singed than hardened."
Ż Victoria Monfort
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greenbalrog
Bree
Sep 10 2014, 7:06am
Post #4 of 54
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I was also intrigued by this matter
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You describe the issue perfectly. However, both your hypothesis are indeed unsatisfying, and I think they are really the best one can do at the moment. The thing is that there's a clear inconsistency at the moment caused by the Witch King's "body" thing.
I don't recall Gandalf calling them Ringwraiths in AUJ and DOS. That complicates things even more.
Well, I guess we'll just have to wait for BOFA to hopefully clarify this apparent mess. I'm not sure there's more we can do at the moment to try and solve this puzzle. But, I'm confident that we'll know much more from the nine in BOFA. I mean, why give the trouble of filming the all High Fells sequences to then not having the nine doing something important in BOFA?
But, there's also the risk of nothing more being explained, and we end up seeing the nine as Ringwraiths but no explanations be given about the "entombing" and "body" thing, and Gandalf calling them Ringwraiths? I mean, how do you bury or entomb a wraith? Aren't they supposed to have no body? What a mess.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 7:46am
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Sorry if I'm not following but what was the issue with 2?
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That ring wraiths shouldn't have bodies or that the details if their entombing aren't fleshed out?
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 8:35am
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Oh I'm not sure that's right - the ring wraiths have bodies in the text.
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Or at least the witch king does ( at least sometimes! )
Tolkien describes his "flesh" and "sinew".
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ElendilTheShort
Gondor
Sep 10 2014, 9:08am
Post #7 of 54
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do you really think they put that much thought into it with respect to internal consistency?
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to me it seems they are making it up as they go just coming up with what they think are cool set pieces for the movies.
(This post was edited by ElendilTheShort on Sep 10 2014, 9:10am)
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dormouse
Half-elven
Sep 10 2014, 10:06am
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Surely Merry does stab the Witchking's leg from behind...
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... in the film as he does in the book, even if the blade is different? I can picture him doing it, and the look on his face.
As I've always understood it from the book the wraiths do have bodies - invisible ones. The Great Rings prolong life indefinitely but fade the wearer 'he becomes in the end invisible permanently' Gandalf says - the black cloaks and hoods take on the shape of the body which is there, but can no longer be seen, except by someone who's wearing a Ring. But there is still an actual body there - and so presumably Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond as the bearers of the Elven Rings would be able to see it.
That's how I take what Galadriel says. They weren't dead bodies sealed in the tombs. They were the living, magically preserved bodies of the Ringwraiths.
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Silverlode
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Sep 10 2014, 10:29am
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I wrote this whole thing before and then lost it when my post didn't go through. *sighhh* Trying again...
According to Gandalf:
"A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the dark power that rules the Rings."
The Nazgul are invisible men, not disembodied ghosts. They have bodies, just ones which reside in another dimension, as it were. Merry and Eowyn were able to stab the Witch-king. The Nine ride real horses, and Gandalf tells Frodo in Rivendell that they are "crippled" without them - presumably because they now have to walk. And they later use Fell Beasts for transportation. They also fear fire and water, which are physical, primary-world things.
Not even the One Ring causes its wearers to be disembodied. The wearer has weight and mass and can still be felt even if not seen. They, even when invisible, are also affected by the primary world. Bilbo had to avoid being "caught by feel" when escaping from Goblin-town, and was later knocked out by a flying rock while wearing the Ring. Frodo was able to be stabbed and sustained a physical wound while in the spirit-world, and later had his finger bitten off while invisible.
Tolkien's idea of the process of "wraithing" is not that of insubstantiation or dissolution of the body, but of fading from sight; of being pulled from one dimension into the other permanently, and enslaved to the power which did the pulling. But the High Elves, at least, live in both worlds at once and have power in both, so the enslavement and permanent invisibility thing apparently applies only to mortals who have no native power in the other realm and are getting there by evil means.
We see the beginning of the fading in Frodo in Rivendell after being stabbed by the Morgul-blade.
He was smiling and there seemed to be little wrong with him. But to the wizard's eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet.
'Still that must be expected,' said Gandalf to himself. 'He is not half through yet, and to what he will come in the end not even Elrond can foretell. Not to evil, I think. He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.'
One can attribute this amount of fading to the Morgul-blade but it interests me that even after the last splinter's removal, Gandalf doesn't necessarily expect the process to stop - because of course Frodo is still the Ring-bearer and he still has a long way to go and may suffer more effects of the Ring before his journey is over. He's fading but not yet corrupted, where Gollum was corrupted and Bilbo had got to the point of "feeling thin and stretched", the sensation of the weariness of time but neither of them had begun to fade yet either. Gandalf does note that hobbits seem to be particularly fade resistant, and that a Man would have been past saving if he'd had the Morgul splinter as long as Frodo.
Anyway, back to the Nazgul; they do have bodies, and can be seen by at least High Elves and wizards (in the movies, at least), the White Council could certainly carry them and imprison them, if they could overpower them.
Now, about those tombs. In the book, Merry stabs the Witch-king with a Barrow-blade (the movie sword situation is more muddled) which, according to Tom Bombadil, was made by Aragorn's ancestors specifically for the wars against the Witch-king of Angmar in the Second Age.
Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his might knee.
......
So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorceror king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.
It has sometimes been speculated that there were certain spells placed upon such weapons which made them particularly effective against him in battle. Now, if we take the spells idea, and assume that this is the idea the filmmakers are building on, it makes sense of Galadriel's comment about the spells that were placed on the tombs in the High Fells - they'd be of the same sort, only greater. So what we'd have is a prison for Nazgul which confined them on both planes/dimensions at once. They have physical bars and stone, as well as spells which serve to "break the spells which knit their unseen sinews to their wills" - a sort of spiritual immobilization or paralysis, perhaps? The Nine, though not destroyed or dead, would be permanently confined by this, unless they gained the assistance of a power greater than that of the White Council combined, which of course is what has Gandalf and Radagast so worried.
Silverlode
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"Dark is the water of Kheled-zâram, and cold are the springs of Kibil-nâla, and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dűm in Elder Days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone."
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greenbalrog
Bree
Sep 10 2014, 10:36am
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Ok, so it's not so much a problem in the book...
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...but there's something that doesn't feel right in the movieverse regarding this all matter, but I can't put my finger in it, taking LotR into account, of course.
I mean, I resonate with the OP's frustration/wonder feeling because I too was like "what?", when Galadriel mentioned "they took their body and...". Bodies? - I thought. Since when do Ringwraiths have bodies?
So, apparently they do. But, why do I got the wrong message from LotR? Perhaps Gollum's cue when he says: "No, you cannot kill them?". Maybe that makes us assume that they are incorporeal beings that don't have bodies. At least that's how I interpreted the all thing.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 11:20am
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Well I suppose you would have to say the same of the book?
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That it gave you the wrong impression!
In fact, the real answer is I think more that the Nazgul are just very mysterious - and this is the case in the text. Despite clearly having a body at some points, Gandalf also refers to them being "empty and shapeless" after the incident at Rivendell and having to return to Mordor before they could pursue the Ring again. I don't really think there is a neat solution in terms we would usually understand.
Oddly, Gandalf in the same section also makes a similar quote about the Nazgul's kill-ability when he tells us they cannot be destroyed (like that) and that they stand or fall by their master.
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MTT Gandalf
Bree
Sep 10 2014, 12:26pm
Post #12 of 54
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It was the Third Age.
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Riven Delve
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 1:29pm
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that "you cannot kill them" come as a result of the spread of Glorfindel's prophecy about the Witch-King ("not by the hand of man will he fall"), which seems to have became common knowledge that even Gollum picked up on. It's hard to tell, but it's easy to see why the prophecy might make most people think the Witch-King couldn't be killed. Even the Witch-King himself seemed to buy into it.
“Tollers,” Lewis said to Tolkien, “there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.”
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pettytyrant101
Lorien
Sep 10 2014, 1:40pm
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I take Gandalfs comments regards the events at the Ford to mean that not even the WC combined could kill the Nine, they exist in the seen and the unseen worlds, so it seems to me after the Ford they are shoved out the physical world and temporarily only exist in the unseen realm.
Therefore they have no physicality in the world after the Ford and have to return to their Master, 'empty and shapeless', before they can take physical form again.
I imagine empty and shapeless is also a good description of the state the Nine were in after Sauron's initial defeat and when he was still weak and just beginning to regrow.
"A lot of our heroes depress me. But when they made this particular hero they didn't give him a gun, they gave him a screwdriver so he could fix things. They didn't give him a tank, or a warship, or an x-wing fighter, they gave him a call box from which you can call for help. And they didn't give him a superpower, or pointy ears or a heat ray, they gave him an extra heart. And that's an extraordinary thing.
There will never come a time when we don't need a hero like the Doctor."- Steven Moffat
(This post was edited by pettytyrant101 on Sep 10 2014, 1:43pm)
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Riven Delve
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 1:50pm
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I guess I was rather muddled in my thoughts about the bodies of the Nine. I knew the part about sinews, etc., when Merry stabs the Witch-King, but somehow I thought the language was metaphorical or something.  Now it makes sense! 
I'm still not sure how I feel about their bodies being buried, but it seems to click more now for me... I had always thought PJ and co. were just putting more emphasis on how the Necromancer got his name than was necessary, but you've given me food for thought! It seems that in movieverse the burial/breaking out serves the function of giving the White Council the kick in the pants it needs to get the investigation going onscreen.
Perhaps that's where the "Morgal blade" and "Morgal shaft" ideas in the movies come from too...maybe they are the "all that he [the Witch-King] possessed" that was buried with him, which have also been "recovered," and they have certain magical powers that come to play on those they are used against. They would make a nice counterpart, as you say, to the work of the craftsmen of the Westernesse.
But I guess my main question is (in movieverse, of course), why/how did they get entombed in the first place? When the kingdom of Angmar fell, instead of fleeing to Mordor (as in the book), the Witch-King (and the other eight, I presume) was suddenly weakened somehow? So then "the men of the North" could overpower and bury them? How did these Men get such power, or did they have help? (OK, Peter Jackson, now's the time to speak up and explain this.  )
Sorry for the ramble, just thinking out loud...
“Tollers,” Lewis said to Tolkien, “there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.”
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 3:45pm
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In which case we would sort of end up with the conclusion that they sometimes had physical bodies and sometimes didn't! Just one of the many mysterious facets of the Nazgul.
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Aitieuriskon
Lorien
Sep 10 2014, 3:56pm
Post #17 of 54
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You've raised another question
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How was movie-Angmar able to pass through stone in order to ambush Radagast at Dol Guldur?
"After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear." Professor Tolkien, 1951
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moreorless
Gondor
Sep 10 2014, 5:28pm
Post #18 of 54
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I suspect the intension is maybe that things can be interpreted both ways...
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My guess would be that these scenes were written with the intension that they could be interpreted in a fashion that fit into both an interpretation similar to the books AND a simpler one that many film viewers might have, that is that the Nazgul as we know them in LOTR were "created" when they were risen from their tombs by Sauron.
As to Gandalf's use of the name I spose you could argue that in the movies universe the "wraths" don't only mean the formless spirits we saw in LOTR but perhaps something more physical that existed and was buried.
For a more book like alternative perhaps the "tombs" could be viewed as some kind of magical representation? so whilst they weren't needed to encase physical remains of the Nazgul creating a coffin/tomb allowed for there spirits to be imprisoned within? that's pretty standard fare for a lot of fantasy afterall.
(This post was edited by moreorless on Sep 10 2014, 5:28pm)
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Sep 10 2014, 7:12pm
Post #19 of 54
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Bingo. That's the most likely explanation.
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Silverlode and dormouse are correct, the wraiths to have bodies that are invisible in "our" plane, but I doubt seriously if they were ever "entombed".
(This post was edited by Elizabeth on Sep 10 2014, 7:12pm)
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Riven Delve
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 7:16pm
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Except that they were entombed.
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In movieverse only, of course. 
“Tollers,” Lewis said to Tolkien, “there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.”
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 8:39pm
Post #21 of 54
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But I was rather taken with the notion perhaps hinted at by the Pukel Man statue outside: that perhaps the Druedain were involved in creating the spells in the tombs. Their powers were associated with protecting localities and transitioning between living and inanimate objects and I think the idea of a small and otherwise unassuming people being able to hinder the Nazgul seems rather in keeping.
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Mooseboy018
Grey Havens
Sep 10 2014, 8:40pm
Post #22 of 54
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I guess part of the problem was me not completely understanding the way the Ringwraiths worked even after all these years.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Sep 10 2014, 8:59pm
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Another thing this story forgets or ignores is that the Nazgul should have been spread out throughout different regions of Middle-earth, not concentrated in one place. The Witch-king ruled Angmar, but others of the Nine should have been controlling regions far to the East or South. How and when would they have all been defeated and entombed at the High Fells?
Also, why entomb them without taking their Rings? The Nine Rings could have been destroyed (although Saruman would have likely insisted on examining them first).
'There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' - Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Sep 10 2014, 9:02pm)
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greenbalrog
Bree
Sep 10 2014, 9:31pm
Post #24 of 54
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that "you cannot kill them" come as a result of the spread of Glorfindel's prophecy about the Witch-King ("not by the hand of man will he fall"), which seems to have became common knowledge that even Gollum picked up on. It's hard to tell, but it's easy to see why the prophecy might make most people think the Witch-King couldn't be killed. Even the Witch-King himself seemed to buy into it.
Interesting, thanks for the quote. "by no man will he fall". Nope, stabbed by a hobbit and killed by a woman. Prophecy fulfilled :D
Yeah, the more I read and watch about the Ringwraiths, the more I find them deeply mysterious and interesting. I hope we see and know more about them in BOFA.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Sep 10 2014, 9:42pm
Post #25 of 54
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I thought the weight of evidence suggested they didn't wear their rings
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Tolkien's letter 246 in particular?
I think on the first point it's presumably fair to say that isn't something the audience is supposed to think about the Nazgul.
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