Random thoughts on re-rewatching Return of the King

[bunn]

1) My goodness the Rohirrim are hard.  I mean, they are quite tough in the book, but here 6,000 Rohirrim go through the Armies of Sauron, including Oliphaunts, like a knife through butter.   I think Rohirric horses may be closely related to rhinos.    I don't care though. I love the charge of the Rohirrim at the battle of the Pelennor Fields in

Comments

[bunn]

Right at the start of their journey, Frodo and Sam are walking through a field of maize when Sam loses sight of Frodo - then Merry and Pippin appear through the maize running from Farmer Maggot.

Now, OK, hobbits grow potatoes, which are also a South American plant - but there is a horticultural explanation given for the Gaffer's 'taters' in the Appendices: 'potatoes' is being used as a translation from the Westron word for another starchy root vegetable, a type of yam which holds a similar position in Hobbit culture. And we never actually *see* the potatoes, which helps.

Maize is a plant with a lot of specific and important cultural associations, all of them very specifically New World. I felt that it stuck out like a sore thumb in the Shire, and the first time I saw Fellowship of the Ring it rather abruptly interrupted my belief in the setting, in the same way that it might have done if all the hobbits were dressed in Peruvian rather than English styles.

But I can't really quibble because I am the only person I have encountered who noticed or cared, so I've got over it now. :-D

[andrewducker]

Aaah, of course, that makes perfect sense. I think that I saw it as wheat, and would probably not register that it wasn't.

[bunn]

I'm guessing that was a difficult scene for the location-finder people (if they thought about the whole maize thing at all), because there really aren't that many crops that grow densely above head height without support that you *could* get lost in.

Wheat, oats and barley will grow maybe 2-3 feet tall, but I'm not sure even a hobbit could not get lost in them. Beans or raspberry canes would be tall enough, but are always grown on supports so would probably look too modern and be hard to push through (and difficult to position the cameras, perhaps). When you see the standard scene in a film where people get lost and can't find each other in a crop-field, it's *always* maize.

A 2-year-old hazel coppice-wood would have been good, but I'm guessing NZ doesn't have a lot of old, wellmaintained coppices. Or orchards of tall, old-fashioned appletrees (modern industrial apple orchards would look wrong again, I suspect).

WHY YES I seriously overanalyse plants in films. :-D

[bunn]

... of course, a hazel coppice or an orchard might well register with most of the audience as just 'woods' - and since they are trying to make the point that they are still safe inside the Shire at that point, that would be the wrong impression.

So I can see why they would use maize, which at least comes across to everyone as obviously a cultivated crop.

There's a pumpkin in the pub at the end of Return of the King, which is equally transatlantic - but for some reason I found that less bothersome. Though it would have been nice to see a traditional Gigantic Onion instead, as widely grown in competitions across England for many generations.

[wellinghall]

Some grain crops (especially rye, I think) used to grow taller - one of the changes in modern cultivars has been to make them shorter, and so more easily harvested.

[bunn]

There are certainly some very tall varieties of oat, some of which are grown as very lovely decorative plants. I've never had a good site for one, but Stipa Gigantea, the Golden Oat, is an *awesome* plant which will grow well above head height.

But I don't think that solves the problem for the poor location-finder who has been given the job of hiring a suitably-furnished field to film in for a couple of days. I mean, if they'd hired it for a year and planted it up with Golden Oat, I *would* be cheering, but it does seem a lot to ask.

[bunn]

... whereas you can go anywhere and find a field of maize, and as it's such a cheap crop I imagine it's not hard to find someone who will cheerfully sell you the right to charge about filming in it.

[andrewducker]

I just saw this, and the first point reminded me of this conversation:
http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2011/10/five-things-you-should-never-do-in-epic-fantasy/

[bunn]

LOL, good article! Though I think the person who objects to Punch and Judy in Pratchett is missing the point of Pratchett somewhat!

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I made the same comment on my own journal as regards the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay universe - it's at least partially satirical, so I expect realism to take a back seat to what's fun/funny some of the time.

[wellinghall]

The live action film of 101 Dalmatians has a vat of molasses on the English farm. And a raccoon.

[jane_somebody]

You totally are not the only person you have encoutered who noticed and cared - I guess it just hasn't come up in conversation! It really seriously bugged me too, and yes exactly that to throwing me out of the feeling that this really was the Shire (acheived excellently up till that point.) If it was an American film I would have put it down to the classic 2-nations-divided-by-a-common-language thing of not realising that your corn=maize is not the same as our corn=wheat.

I am no gardener, and can't say any other plant issues bothered me, but there are a few places where quibbling over landscape type things annoyingly intrudes into part of my brain even while the rest is happily being swept along by the sheer beauty of the thing. The 'moorland of Rohan' rather than rich fertile plains is one of them, as is the bit in the beacon sequence when I can't help questionning the idea that a couple of men could apparently live on the summit of a very pointy, high, and snow-covered mountain :-(

However, familiarity breeds, well, familiarity, so in general these things have become less bothersome :-) Well, apart from Aragorn And The Mountain of Skulls :-P