Useless ringwraiths

G

Geldof the Grey

The Shire
Hi, new here.

All the hobbit news resulted me watching FOTR yesterday for the first time in ages. Film holds up even better than I remember but one thing that struck me was how useless the ringwraiths are.

The trilogy makes a big thing about them being the most terrible servants of Sauron. ROTK particularly bigs up the Witch King - who cannot be defeated by any man and even breaks Gandalf's staff in the extended edition. Yet at Weathertop, five of them (including the invincible Witch King) can't defeat 4 hobbits and one guy with a fiery stick. FIVE of them! They actually run away shrieking. There isn't even any ambiguity over whether they have the ring - Frodo puts it on and disappears right in front of them. Personally I wouldn't wanna be any of them reporting back to Sauron.

"So, did you get my ring back that I've been seeking for thousands of years?"

"Er, not exactly Boss"

"Oh. Oh right. Well, that's dissapointing. Why not?"

"Well, there was four them"

"What, Hobbits?"

"Yeah. They had little swords. And a there was a guy with a torch. He set Colin on fire"

"I see. Well, I suppose you'd better try harder next time. Er, I think I have some flying dragons somewhere you could use. Might be quicker than horses"


I dunno, maybe the dark lord would have been angrier. Difficult to judge his character when he's only a flamming eyeball. It's been years since I read the book - maybe events were slightly different? As far as the film is concerned though, I'd forgotten have ineffective they were!
 
The good guys pretty much win every fight, eventually escape every thight spot and turn the tables on the baddies. Notice that they make a plan to fool Sauron, and reader is allowed to know this plan all along. Yet it works perfectly. I recall there's a script writer's rule that if the characters make a plan and the audience is told about it the plan must fail, but if the audience doesn't know what the plan is then it must succeed. Tolkien flips the bird for this rule. Sauron at points seems almost like an idiot who swallows every hook(of course, this is bit unfair for him), and whose underlings are incabeble idiots, beaten even by the comedic sidekicks.

Now contrast this to the Silmarillion, where the good guys lose almost everything, all their realms get trashed and some 90 % of characters die of unnatural causes...

As for the Nazgûls on Weathertop: it was handled better in the book. They weren't really defeated, they just pulled back after succeeding in their mission, as they thought. The Witch King stab Frodo with his blade, causing him to start to become a wraith. They though it would be just a matter of short time before he'd come to them. Had they realized how resistant Hobbits are they probably would have tried harder or made a second attack, this time not trying to be too tidy.
 
from Saruman, that the nine would take the ring and kill the one who has it. While Frodo being stabbed by the WK may have accomplished this in their mind, they clearly were not done with Frodo when Aragorn arrived. I enjoyed the ensuing horse-race with Arwen, but the river scene also seemed less than convincing that what we saw visually was enough to take out all nine of them. Unless they are related to the Wicked Witch of the West and melt when a bucket of water is thrown at them.
 
The fact that the good guys win every battle in LOTR and the Hobbit dose make the enemies seem useless. However did the plan really work I mean at the end it was Gollum not Frodo who destroyed the Ring. I guess in a way yes but not the way it was planed. The more I look in to Tolkien's works the more I find the Silmarillion is becoming my favorite.
 
You have a very good point. They do come across more as boogey men under a child's bed who, when the light is turned on, shrivel into nothing but a useless shadow.

The dialogue you wrote gave me a few giggles. [laugh]
 
First, it's great that the Hobbit news got you back into FOTR!

I haven't had time to watch the films, but the Hobbit talk, and the discussions here, have at least gotten me to check out a few favorite scenes on youtube -- Aragorn taking out those 5 wraiths is one of my favorite scenes, so that was on my list!

In Letters, Tolkien says that the wraiths' chief weapon is fear -- so they can't do much more than scare you, or stab you, I guess, if you are Frodo. Beyond that, they really are not all that effective, even in the books...though they do have that black breath thing going for them.

In film verse I think that they got that fear element down pretty well. And I guess I'd also say that you could infer that they are vulnerable to two elements -- fire and water. The Hobbits are naturally terrified of the Riders, so don't know how to defend against them as Aragorn and Arwen do.

In TTT, when they come back, they've got those Fell Beasts, which make them less vulnerable to attacks on the ground -- though a good arrow shot can take out their beasts. So they are still not all that effective at doing anything other than scaring the heck out of you -- or attacking you when you don't have a chance to defend yourself.

In ROTK, Gandalf says that Sauron has yet to unveil his most powerful servant, I think, and then we get that shot of the helmet being put on that guy. From that I gathered that just as Gandalf came back as Gandalf the White, sort of supercharged on some levels, that the WitchKing got the equivalent of that treatment somehow when they put that helmet on him, which made him so big and bad that no man could kill him. So the stakes have been raised on both sides, good and evil, and the underlying sense is that evil had a bit more ability to supercharge their guy than the folks who sent Gandalf back until his task was done.

Don't know if this helps, but it's at least a rationale for why those guys get taken out so easily...[:)]

Did you ever read Unfinished Tales? There's a really entertaining section in that, where Tolkien tries to explain why the Nazgul didn't catch up to Frodo sooner than they did...lots of convoluted somersaults by the Professor, it's quite a read!

Again welcome -- hope to see more of you, and if you want to talk about the LOTR films, well, you found the right place!
 
Orcs really are the stormtroopers of middle earth. There are several points throughout the trilogy that I really wish Jackson had toned it back a little with regards to the fellowship's heroic exploits:

Aragorn telling Frodo to run, then turning to face what seems to be an entire Uruk army at Amon Hen (I think that's where it was).

Several points during Helm's Deep - Aragorn jumping onto the ladder and falling into the middle of yet another Uruk army (this guy really doesn't care if the odds are stacked against him).[tongue]

Aragorn again, this time with Gimli, fighting off the Uruk's on the bridge outside the wall of Helm's Deep.

Sam rescuing Frodo from an entire orc garrison. Stout-heart that little hobbit.

Don't get me wrong, I love the films and the sense of adventure that Jackson gave them, but these few moments really make you wonder if the fellowship are ever in any danger. In fact, they just make Boromir look careless for getting himself turned into an orc pin cushion.
 
...is the idea that the Wraiths seem to become more powerful as Sauron regains his strength (although I think this ties in with what Weaver said). In general, though, as noted above their chief weapon seems to be fear. PJ seemed to feel the need to crank up the tension with the WK breaking Gandalf's staff - nothing like that happens in the book.

I have to agree about the overall ability of Our Heroes to overcome hosts of foes, more of an issue in the films than in the book. I understand that this is fantasy but...

As for the "happy ending" criticism: it's true that The Sil is more in line with traditional mythologies - even the "good"characters come a cropper, usually through their own faults. Most mythologies, for all the supernatural trappings, describe the consequences of recognizably human greed, pride, etc. With LOTR, though, Tolkien accomplished the storytelling equivalent of "deliverance". We don't have to be orthodox believers to acknowledge the possibility of something...else.
 
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The Ringwraiths were pretty weak. They should have been a bit stronger. Are you sure his names Colin? [laugh]
 
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That's such a common, ancient, deeply rooted universal understanding on evil things: that they cannot gross water. There must be something subconscious to it, because the same belief appears all over the world.
 
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