The Siege of Gondor is one of the finest chapters in The Return of the King. Lush but taut, action-packed but psychologically precise, full of well-crafted tension and sentence-level heavy-lifting, it’s a master-class in the art of writing war.
So adapting it faithfully for the screen is no small feat. With so many moving parts, Peter Jackson had his work cut out for him when filming the battle for Minas Tirith. The different requirements of the medium mean that a lot of things end up getting changed or even lost in translation.
For a historical take on the scene, look no further than Bret Devereaux. A professional military historian specializing in the “Roman army of the Middle and Late Republic,” Devereaux runs a blog called “A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry,” where he analyzes the historical accuracy of battle scenes and details in popular culture. (Like armor penetration myths and what a post-battle battlefield really looks like.) Back in May, he published an excellent six-part deep-dive into Jackson’s version of the Siege of Gondor, looking at everything from orc-army logistics to historical precedents for war elephants to troll physics (no, seriously). You really should drop what you’re doing and go read it right now (Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI), but to entice you, here are some of the highlights.
- Peter Jackson’s huge orc army? It’s way too big to even get to Minas Tirith all in the same day, even in the tightly packed columns we see depicted. (Especially in the tightly packed columns we see, in fact!)
- The Beacons of Gondor are 100% real, and a version was used by the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century!
- The Pelennor Steppe isn’t supposed to be just be a massive field, but should be dotted with fields, farms, trees, rocks, and small towns.
- The rectangular Tetris-esque orc formations outside Minas Tirith take extensive pre-planning to pull off, even if they’re only utilized for a display of intimidation, and their presence in the movie is most likely inspired by Nazi propaganda.
- Denethor is a far more active and shrewd defensive battle commander in the books, and is arguably the reason Minas Tirith survives up to the arrival of the Rohirrim.
- The films largely get armor and weaponry correct (with the exception of the shield Eowyn uses), even when something looks too fanciful (like the orcs’ spears).
- War elephants are real, but also surprisingly easy to defend against.
- The Lord of the Nazgûl’s super-cool mace/morning-star? It’s not a mace/morning-star at all, but a flail. And flails are very controversial, historically. They might not…have ever existed for use on a battlefield?
That’s not even a tenth of what Devereaux unveils. The historian explains all of this in the conclusion of his compelling series, but it should be noted that by no means is he saying the movie is bad while the book is good:
I actually think that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings must stand as both one of the most difficult and one of the most successful adaptations in film history. Many of the film’s shortcomings in portraying a sense of battlefield realism have more to do with the constrains of the medium. Film is an incredible powerful medium, after all, but also a very limited one. Time is very limited and everything in a film must be compressed. Given those limitations, Jackson’s effort is nothing short of marvelous, even if it doesn’t always capture the depth and nuance of the books.
For more break-downs of high fantasy battle scenes from a military historian’s perspective, check out Devereaux’s two-parter on the “Loot Train Battle” from Game of Thrones season 7 episode 4, “The Spoils of War” and his one-off on that Dothraki charge from GoT season 8 episode 3, “The Long Night.” (Stay tuned for a complete look at the Battle of Winterfell some time in the future, which he calls “a train wreck.” We can’t wait.)
Meanwhile, if that whole section about elephantry caught your eye, you might want to check out his three-part series on War Elephants (Part I: Battle Pachyderms, Part II: Elephants against Wolves, and Part III: Elephant Memories). And if you’re a world-builder, Devereaux has conveniently collected all of the relevant pieces in one place.
Honestly, you should just head over to the whole blog, where more long-form goodies (like this one about the position of main gun batteries in Battlestar Galactica or this one about the effectiveness of arrow fire) await.
Every time I think my hobby has scaled the Heights of Nerd, someone on the Internet takes me by the hand and (like a kindly Sherpa) bids me wait but a little moment for the weather to clear and LO! there they stretch up and out ahead of me, climbing from the Himalayan to the downright Olympian in the far distance.
Truly, such moments make me a better and more humble man … sometimes! (-;
I’ve always thought PJ’s battle of Minus Tirith was kind of a weak point in the film. No where near the dramatic tension and power of the book. I don’t know if the blog mentions is, but the Trebuchets tossing what must be huge, hundred ton blocks of stone that would leave craters visible from space and such like. I guess it is hard to accomplish in a show, don’t tell medium.
Jackson took a few liberties though – he got the army of the dead so wrong it hurt – they were ghosts, not zombies, and they didn’t come to Pelennor. Cursed to haunt their lands by breaking their oath, they wanted nothing but to fulfill their oath and have peace. They scared the pirates of Umbar off their ships, which Aragorn then sailed up the river, picking up the troops that had been staying behind to ward off the pirates.
The blog does discuss both the large chunks of rubble being tossed and the changes associated with the army of the dead, for what that’s worth.
I’ve got so many characterization and thematic issues with Jackson’s ROTJ that I don’t care much about the logistic and tactical ones, but the sections analyzing the military characteristics of the Siege of Gondon and the Battle of the Pelennor in the books were very interesting.
I’m so glad you’ve referenced Bret Devereaux’s wonderful blog — it really deserves to be known to a wider audience. His series on Sparta is also really good.
A very interesting analysis!
WOW! This was a lot of fun to get lost in!
I honestly think Bret Devereaux deserves an award for Best Named Blog ever. I laughed out loud, and then dived deep. Bravo.
I will have to check it out, if only to see if he addresses surfing through the battlefield on your shield. ;-)
I have always been offended by the utter lack of logistics displayed in movies. But I think the worst offender was Game of Thrones, where the Unsullied should be renamed the Unsupplied, since there are never any packs or canteens on the soldiers, no supply wagons, no camp followers, and (other than a few scaling ladders) no sign of any engineering support.
@Alan: Unfortunately, Bret has yet to do a series on Helm’s Deep—although he mentions he ought to.
While the weapons may be REAL, they are also inconsistent. There’s several centuries between the weapons and armor of the Rohirrim and those of Gondor. Whereas in the books, the Rohirrim were equipped by the smiths of Gondor, in the movies, it was more like the museum curators…