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Crossbows and pikes in Middle-earth, oh NO! - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

August 16, 2000 at 12:38:42

In what is sure to be deemed another departure from Tolkien by hard-core purists, TheOneRing.Net's super Ninja spy Galadriel has provided a review of weapons and armor for the movies and revealed that some soldiers will be using very un-Tolkien-like crossbows and pikes. But there is good news, too.

The two helmets recently displayed at an industry tradeshow are confirmed to be Rohirric helms. The helm with the leather backing is, according to Galadriel, "the helmet of a Rohirim Royal Guard of the King".

Theoden did have a company of "household knights" according to Tolkien, so it is appropriate that he have a separate "royal guard" in the movies. And because Tolkien referred to these soldiers as knights to distinguish them from the regular Riders of Rohan, it is good that they have their own armor in the movies.

The standard Riders of Rohan will have scale mail. Well, in Tolkien, everyone who wore armor wore chain mail shirts or hauberks, but scale mail is a more ancient form of mail armor than chain mail (both types of mail were developed several hundred years BCE). The use of scale mail is an unusual departure from the usual medieval styles permeating the movies, but given that visual distinctions are being sought for units and periods, scale mail probably lends itself well to the movies' needs.

Six soldier types are attributed to the cinematic Uruk-hai. The literary Uruk-hai were very similarly armed and organized to the Rohirrim, except they did not ride horses. Tolkien used soldier archetypes. A typical Rider of Rohan wore a chain shirt, bore a long sword and long spear, had a round shield, and some bore long bows. The Uruk-hai wore chain shirts, carried scimitars, used long bows, and some had round shields.

Uruks were usually found as leaders among other Orcs, and one Uruk in Moria attempted to skewer Frodo with a spear, so the variation in weaponry among Orc-types is acceptable to Tolkien purists.

Some might question the use of fire arrows by Elves, particularly since most of the Elves in the movies will probably be Wood-Elves. Tolkien's Elves never employed weapons of destruction. But so far all the battle scenes appear to be filmed in the wide open, where fire arrows won't do much harm to the environment (in fact, there isn't much point in using fire arrows in such circumstances, as they are supposed to be used against wooden structures).

The most controversial armaments, however, will be the use of crossbows by some of the soldiers on both sides. Crossbows do not occur in Tolkien's stories (he avoided deliberate connections to medieval weapons and armor, and on several occasions denied connections with specific medieval sources, particularly where the Rohirrim are concerned).

Tolkien fandom has long debated whether crossbows belong in any visual depiction of Middle-earth, but the discrepancy is probably a minor one, unless the movies portray Genovesian crossbow companies moving around the battlefields wiping out Orcs.