The Lord of the Rings (film): Difference between revisions

** On that note, the other Dunedain rangers, who only appear in storyboarded scenes and the trading card game, wore longcoats, as well.

* [[Battle Butler]]: Sam.

'''Sam''': His '' gardener''. }}

* [[Battle Cry]]: Due to the martial nature of the series, there are a few examples:

* [[Butt Monkey]]: Gimli in ''The Two Towers'' and ''Return of the King'' (Not so much in ''Fellowship'', and not at all in the book).

** He did have a ''few'' small moments of it in ''Fellowship'' though.

* [[Butterfly of Death and Rebirth]]: The white moth that brings giant eagles to the rescue when Gandalf is imprisoned at Orthanc, and again when the Gondor army is at the gates of Mordor. (Only appears in the Jackson films, not the book).

* [[Call That a Formation]]?: While lip service is paid to forming battle-lines, the battles quickly devolve into total chaos.

** An interesting example occurs with several shots used more than once (Green Dragon Inn exterior, Boromir's last stand, a certain close-up of Elrond) in different movies: frame-by-frame comparison shows exactly the same imagery with drastically different colors.

* [[Come with Me If You Want to Live]]: Aragorn gets introduced this way in Bree, as a wilderness expert who can outrun the Nazgûl. More so in the film, since they set out that very morning after they outwit the Nazgûl ambush. Film-Aragorn fits the trope to a T:

'''Aragorn:''' [[Scarily Competent Tracker|Into the wild]].<br />

'''Merry:''' How do we know this Strider is a friend of Gandalf?<br />

* [[Convection, Schmonvection]] The lava pours out of Mount Doom within feet of Sam and Frodo at the end of the movie. Then {{spoiler|the eagles swoop down and pick them up}}.

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by John Rhys-Davies in the DVD commentary.

* [[Cool Mask]]: The Witch-King.

* [[Cool Old Guy]]: Gandalf and Theoden.

* [[Evil Chancellor]]: Grima Wormtongue.

* [[Evil Gloating]]: See Fate Worse Than Death.

* [[Evil Is Hammy]]: Saruman, Gollum, and the Witch King.

* [[Evil Tower of Ominousness]]: The (original) Dark Tower, Barad-Dûr. It's actually depicted as under construction during the first film; the completed tower itself is first seen at the end of the film, from the Seat of Amon Hen; and revealed in the second film.

* [[Fade to White]]: Peter Jackson enjoys doing this, ''especially'' at the end of the third film.

* [[Fate Worse Than Death]]: The heroes (and the unfamiliar reader) assume Frodo suffered such a fate. Subverted, somehow, as Aragorn deduced the messenger was lying.

'''Aragorn''': (smirks, strolls up to the Mouth of Sauron, and cuts of his head) I do not believe it. ''I will not.'' }}

** In the book, the Witch-King [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome|specifies what will happen to Eowyn]] if she "comes between a Nazgûl and his prey." Specifically:

* [[Fanfare]]: The fellowship theme.

* [[Fatal Method Acting]]: Averted, thankfully, but nonetheless a close call for Viggo Mortensen, who was pulled under by a current and nearly drowned while filming the river scene in TTT.

* [[Good Lips Evil Jaws]]: The film has a lot of Orcs with no lips at all. They're humanoid, and besides just being ugly look fairly normal. They have rather human mouths, if unusually sharp teeth, but these [[Squick|mouths are not covered by lips.]]

* [[Green Aesop]]: The conflict between Isengard and the Ents.

** The vision Frodo sees in Galadriel's mirror is of the Shire being burnt to the ground and its inhabitants enslaved by orcs.

* [[Groin Attack]]: Happens a couple of times to orcs during battles.

* [[Heartbeat Soundtrack]]: Deagol's death in the third movie.

* [[He Didn't Make It]]: ''The Two Towers'' has a strange example because that scene was filmed before the script was totally ironed out, the director wasn't sure what actually did happen to Aragorn, so decided to keep the dialogue vague to save time.

'''Gimli:''' He fell. }}

* [[Helmets Are Hardly Heroic]]: Unless you are a Rider of Rohan, or an Elf soldier, or a Dwarf, or a soldier of Gondor.

* [[I Am Not Left-Handed]]: When Gandalf confronts Saruman while the latter is speaking through the possessed King Theoden, Sauruman mocks him with the declaration "You have no power here, Gandalf the Grey!". At this, Gandalf casts off his grey outer cloak, revealing himself (to possessed!Theoden's shock) as Gandalf the White before successfully casting Saruman out of the king's mind.

* [[I Lied]]

'''Gollum''': Sméagol lied. }}

* [[I Like Those Odds]]:

* [[I Meant to Do That]]: Gimli, when he falls off his horse in ''The Two Towers''.

* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]:

** "You will taste '''''man-flesh!"'''''

* [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]]: Several characters.

* [[Insane Troll Logic]]: In ''The Two Towers'', there is the following exchange where it's used twice in a row:

'''Treebeard''': That doesn't make sense to me, but then you are very small. Perhaps you're right. }}

** Which surprisingly makes sense. The last thing any army expects is for the enemy to go straight to their most heavily protected base. For a Hobbit (small and subtle) like Pippin, it's a plausible strategy. For an Ent like Treebeard (that can be seen from a mile away), its nearly impossible.

* [[In Vino Veritas]]: At the end of ''The Return of the King'', Sam avails himself of some liquid courage before going up to talk to Rosie. Merry and Pippin [[Head-Tiltingly Kinky|drop their jaws]]. The next scene is Sam and Rosie's wedding.

* [[Ironic Echo]]: Gandalf finds a record of Isildur's journal, accounting the finding of the One Ring.

** Averted in some dubs where they change Gollum's ''my precious'' but [[Lost in Translation|miss this echo]].

* [[It Has Been an Honour]]: Many times.

** Boromir's last words to Aragorn:

** Gimli and Legolas before the final battle:

'''Gimli:''' ...Aye, that I could do. }}

*** Note that these are their final lines of dialogue in the trilogy.

* [[The Man in the Mirror Talks Back]]: When Gollum talks to Smeagol, it's via some variation on this mechanism. (Most noticeable in ''The Return Of The King''.)

* [[Manly Tears]]: {{spoiler|Boromir's}} [[Final Speech]]:

* [[Man On Fire]]: {{spoiler|The Steward of Gondor and nearly Faramir.}}

** Also the {{spoiler|Nazgul that Aragorn throws a torch at}} on Weathertop

*** In a subversion, the orc army gets a [[Oh Crap]] when Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn get off the boats and charge at them. They [[Oh Crap]] BEFORE seeing that these three dudes brought an army of ghosts with them, at which point they simply panic.

*** Similarly:

'''Aragorn''': ''This'' army. }}

** And then there's Gandalf giving a big speech to the Gondorians about how they can fight whatever comes through the gate. When the first thing through is three huge trolls, Gandalf gets a look on his face like, "Well, I wasn't expecting ''that''."

** [[Peter Jackson]] himself invoked this in his explanation as to his complete rewrite of the meetings of Faramir and Frodo's group: in the books, he lets them go free after learning of their quest and agreeing with it; in the film, he keeps them captive in order to take The Ring. Jackson said specifically this was because after the first book, the Ring's power to corrupt became an [[Informed Ability]] until it surfaced again at the tail-end of Return; in order to remind the viewer that it was basically evil incarnate, and keep with the rules Tolkien himself set, he had to have Faramir be tempted by the ring.

*** The Osgiliath detour even gets a [[Continuity Nod]]:

** Also, he wanted to move Shelob to the third movie because ''anything'' was going to pale next to Helm's Deep, and that left Frodo and Sam completely out of (action-y) danger for the entire movie. There had to be a threat, and poor Faramir got drafted.

*** When Tolkien commented on ideas for a film version by Forest J. Ackerman, he said they should probably skip the Hornburg entirely so that the Ents' attack on Isengard as well as the final battle would look that much more impressive.

* [[Rousing Speech]]: The charge of the Rohirrim and the siege of the Black Gate.

** When Bernard Hill/Theoden said that the tipping of the spears with his sword was his idea to begin with.

* [[Rule of Cool]]: Peter Jackson has admitted that he and his design team weren't exactly sure whether a Balrog literally had wings or not in Tolkien's idea, but decided to go with the look in the films "just because it looked cool."

** Legolas's stunts.

* [[Windows of the Soul]]: "There was no lie in Pippin's eyes", declares Gandalf after the former has looked into the Palantir, meaning that he has not revealed Frodo's mission to the Enemy.

* [[World of Cardboard Speech]]: Sam's monologue at the end of ''The Two Towers''.

* [[World of Ham]]: Ask Gandalf and Saruman and even the Witch King, as well as Aragorn and the Dead King as to why this trope was casted onto this page.

* [[You Didn't Ask]]: When Frodo and Sam hook up with Gollum to guide them, Frodo asks Gollum to "take us to the Black Gate" of Mordor, which he does. They see how massive and impenetrable the entrance is, and when they are about to make a charge for it anyway, Gollum pulls them back and tells them there is another way in. Sam asks why he didn't mention this before. Well... you didn't ask...