Headscratchers / The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Headscratchers for the film trilogy as a whole

The Opening Scene

• Sauron clearly bashes Isildur's dad into a cliff, and that is where he gets his finger cut off and subsequently explodes. But, when they show the explosion, the two are clearly in the middle of a mob of Orcs, and there's not a cliff in sight.
  • Other than dramatic effect, no reason in particular. Unless you count Sauron having some sort of delayed reaction to losing the One Ring, shrugging it off as a flesh wound etc.
  • The whole scene is a mythical retelling of an ancient event. Much like any oral retelling of an old legend, there will likely be some inconsistencies.
• Why didn’t Sauron just use his mace to bash in Isildur’s face?
  • Because he wanted to grab Isildur, likely holding him up to strangle or burn his flesh with the heat of his body. Just because he's an evil overlord doesn't mean he's going to do things in the most efficient manner.

Frodo's first brush with the Ring

• Do the patrons of the Prancing Pony have short attention spans or what? The Ring falls onto Frodo's outstretched finger. Everyone reacts with the sort of shock you'd expect and stare down at the empty space. He's invisible for no more than about ten seconds. Yet by the time he takes the thing off everyone's forgotten all about it and is chatting mildly as if nothing has happened.
  • The patrons of the (movie) Prancing Pony are drinking copious amounts of beer of the Prancing Pony. Would you care about such trivial a thing as a vanishing midget if your tankard was running empty ? Priorities, man. Priorities.
  • Maybe they were at stage that he didn't vanished but changed into white mouse?
  • We're seen that all sorts of folks come into the pracing pony (the bartender knows Gandalf and he's a wizard), what's to say that the people in there haven't seen something like a vanishing person before? They might be surprised that someone decided to up and vanish but once he has they would be like "Oh, ok, he's just ones of THOSE folks. Back to the drinks!"
  • For that matter, hobbits are well-known for being able to blend into the countryside. Possibly the bar patrons saw him vanish, gawked a bit, then quipped, "Wow, that's the fastest-hiding hobbit I've ever seen!", and went on drinking.
  • Keep in mind that Middle-Earth is a realm where low-key magic tends to happen and is not uncommon. Gandalf is passed off by many as a mere "conjurer of cheap tricks," which means that there's likely plenty of illusionists and conjurers out there who know a bit of disappearing magic, or at least tricks to make something vanish. A bit of a sudden disappearing act might be something to briefly remark upon but it's not really something shocking and unheard-of, especially among an inebriated audience.

Entering Moria

• One, why didn't Gandalf tell the Fellowship 'oh hey, I've heard Khazad-dûm isn't exactly a swinging place these days? They could still have chosen it as the least treacherous route, but it seems somehow cruel to let Gimli build up their expectations of feasting and fun for no good reason. And two, how did Gimli not realize something was up a lot sooner? Okay, maybe the lighting was bad and they didn't see the dwarven bones, but shouldn't he have noticed it was awfully quiet?
  • The dwarf who attempted to retake Khazad-dûm was a family friend. Gimli was far too optimistic about it. In the books, the entire Fellowship was aware that Moria was a hellhole, but it was literally their only route.
  • Balin was Gimli's cousin, and in the books, he states that part of the reason he wants to go through Moria is to find out what happened to Balin and the others who tried to retake the place.
  • It seemed that Gandalf knew about the Balrog and the orcs, but hoped that there was the very small chance that the dwarves hadn't run into them. After all, Moria is HUGE. Gandalf says that "it's a four-day journey to the other side", and the entire trip is in "Moria". When they find Balin's tomb, Gandalf says "It's as I feared.", implying that Gandalf wasn't 100% certain that the colonization failed until that moment.
  • As to the quietness, Balin's colonists don't have the numbers to garrison the entire mountain. It's not unreasonable for the fellowship to think that most of the dwarves are congregated in a main hall deeper in and don't have the manpower (dwarfpower?) to guard the outposts.
    • Wouldn't manning the outposts be the first priority, even if one left much of the interior unoccupied? If you're not going to man (dwarf?) that gate, shouldn't you disable it for security purposes?
  • Also, the Fellowship entered Moria through a different, less-used gate, and had to pass through a major section of mineworks. Balin's expedition was to be a triumphant return, so they probably used the main gate on the other side of the mountains.
  • Gandalf is also thinking about the four very-scared Hobbits who have never been outside the Shire before. They've already been hunted by Ringwraiths, had to journey through a blizzard and nearly got killed by the Watcher in the Water. Add that to the fact that they get trapped in Moria literally right after they discover the dwarf bones, and he's probably guessed that it's not a good idea to scare everyone else more than necessary. There's not much they can do once the Balrog shows up, except run.
    • But before they decide to go to Moria he passes the decision off to Frodo ("let the ringbearer decide") without ever telling him why going to Moria would be a bad idea. Is Gandalf just passing the buck in a no-win situation?
    • Gandalf mentions that some sort of destiny is guiding the course of events. ("Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.") So my best explanation for this bit is that he's deliberately trying to invoke destiny, figuring that the ringbearer will make the right choice even if he doesn't have all the information.

An elvish password to a dwarven mine?

• Why is the codeword to open the door to Moria in Elvish?
  • It's harder to guess a password if it's in a different language than you would expect.
  • Don't remember whether the film explained this, but the land around the western gate was originally populated by Elves allied with Moria^note It's actually where they made the Rings of Power, and was destroyed and depopulated when Sauron came to seize them, making it one of the most important places in the backstory. Plus, the Dwarves don't seem to have an aversion to learning other peoples' languages, but they seem secretive about their own.
  • Precisely. The inscription on the doors, visible only by moonlight, is Elvish artisanship: in Tolkien's writings, it was put there by Celebrimbor, the great craftsman who also personally created the Three Rings later borne by Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel. His people were (uniquely) friendly with the Dwarves of Khazad-Dûm in an earlier age and so the great West Gate of the mines was built as essentially the tradesmen's entrance for them. The password would have been primarily for their use in their frequent comings and goings to deal commercially etc. with the Dwarves. And as the comment above notes, the Dwarves kept their own ancient language of Khuzdul very close to their chests so weren't going to be handing out even a word or two to use as a password, if they could avoid it.
• Isn't it insecure to have a password on the outside of the gate at all? Isn't that like writing your computer passwords on a post-it note and sticking it to the underside of your desk's roll-out keyboard tray? Heck, in that case at least you can change your passwords on a regular basis.
  • The gate was built in a time of peace, when Dwarves and Elves got along well. Anybody who could speak Elvish was presumably a friend, and the gate was mostly just there to keep out wild animals. Setting it up so that Elvish visitors would have to learn the password in advance just raised the risk that some Elf would show up in the middle of the night, realize that he'd forgotten the password, and then awkwardly stand around for a few hours while he waited for somebody to notice he was there. Since the risk of accidentally being rude to a guest was considered much larger than the risk of enemy action (since again, this was a time of peace), they decided to just write the password on the door itself.

How did Gandalf get Glamdring and his staff back?

• Saruman clearly took the staff and presumably took the sword, and Gandalf clearly flew straight away, so how did he get them back?
  • Gandalf could easily get a new Staff, probably from Galadriel or so. The Staff itself is not so important on it's own, as it's more of a Symbol of a Wizard's power then anything else. As for the sword, I got no idea. Maybe Saruman didn't even know Gandalf had it, and he kept it hidden.
  • The making of shows that Gandalf the Grey has two staffs — the one with the pipe which fits in the top and the one with the crystal at the top, which we see close up in Moria. And I think that Gandalf hiding his sword from Saruman is probably the most likely explanation.
  • As for the sword, I think we see it once on his horse that he takes to Isengard. If it ran off after Saruman's betrayal, Gandalf could retrieve it later.

Boromir's gift from Galadriel

• Why on Middle-Earth, in the extended editions, is Boromir the only one who doesn't get a gift from Galadriel? I know that they changed some of the other gifts, but just to completely ignore any gift for him seems to make it as though he is a less worthy member of the fellowship. Poor Boromir.
  • Because it's totally irrelevant to the plot? I don't even remember what he got in the book.
  • He got a golden belt. It played a semi-semi-major role when Faramir had that vision-thing where he saw Boromir dead. He only believed that it was true when he saw the belt on him. PJ cut out a lot of Galadriel-relevant scenes anyway, so it's not such a big deal, but it would have been a nice bit of continuity. Plot-wise, it does less than the other gifts anyway, what with Faramir's altered personality and scenes.
  • But they changed half the gifts anyway (Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn). Why not give Boromir something that he can use in his remaining screentime?
  • Maybe she knew he was going to betray the Fellowship (still a unfair move though). Most likely it just didn't matter. It's not like he was ever going to get a chance to use the gift, since he died at the end of the movie anyway.
    • There's no "maybe" about it. She tells Frodo outright: "He will try to take the ring. You know of whom I speak."
  • In one of the DVD extras, Philippa Boyens (one of the scriptwriters) addresses the complaints of fans who thought Tom Bombadil shouldn't have been excised from The Fellowship of the Ring... She says that there's nothing in the movie that would suggest the Hobbits didn't meet Tom Bombadil, so maybe they met him, and that whole episode just wasn't shown, because it wasn't relevant to the main plot. Similarly, nothing in the gift-giving scene suggests that Boromir didn't receive a gift, so maybe he did, and his gift simply wasn't shown in the movie, because it wasn't important.

Isildur and Elrond in the Crack of Doom

• Why didn't Elrond force Isildur to throw the Ring into the fire? "Evil was allowed to endure", indeed!
  • Perhaps the Ring itself subtly influenced him not to? It's at its most powerful within Mt. Doom, where no one has the strength of will to destroy it — Elrond could concievably have pushed Isildur in with the Ring, but even that likely wouldn't have worked, and he would have been reluctant to murder a friend. In the book, of course, there's no indication that either of them actually went inside the mountain, so the opportunity for Elrond to do anything beyond talking to Isildur never really came up.
  • Tolkien specifically addressed this — attempting to seize the Ring in an act of force (or push Isildur in) would have corrupted Elrond much quicker than Isildur. Tolkien says this is why Bilbo wasn't corrupted as easily as Gollum, who stole the Ring and killed his cousin after being tempted by it.
  • That doesn't explain why Elrond couldn't have just slapped it out of his hand, or cut his hand off, or hurled him in. There are lots of ways to get that thing in the lava without taking it. Elrond seemed to be lacking creativity. The thing that stuck out in the scene most for me is that Elrond didn't even have another go at getting Isildur to throw it in, he just lets him walk away and looks a bit annoyed. "Cast it into the flames... please?"
    • All of those are attempts to take the Ring by force. They may be means intended to destroy them, but they are acts of aggression to control the Ring. The mere act of doing so would have corrupted Elrond irreversibly, especially in the Crack of Doom. At the very least, starting up a threatening action against the Ring and its bearer would have had the Ring aggressively attacking Elrond's mind, which would have delayed him enough to let Isildur escape or strike him down.
    • No, knocking the ring out of the range of one's control, rendering it permanently unavailable to oneself, is not an attempt to control the ring or take it for oneself, quite the opposite, regardless of what Tolkien says. If Elrond had tried to blow up the cave with gunpowder and drop everyone into the lava would that also have instantly corrupted his mind despite his never making any move toward the ring? And if the ring had the capacity to aggressively attack Elrond's mind it should have done so when he ordered Isildur to drop the ring - indeed using the expansive definition that should have counted as an attempt to "control" the ring and should have corrupted Elrond's mind instantly.
  • Because then he'd have to walk out and explain to the tens of thousands of Human soldiers still remaining where the ring went and why Isildur, their beloved Prince-turned-king and the guy who 'killed' Sauron, is no longer with him.
  • Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but Elrond at this point does not fully realize how bad of an idea it really is to let the ring continue to exist. He knows it's an evil thing, but Sauron is as far as he knows, dead, and not coming back. He may suspect allowing the ring to exist is a stupid idea, but not one worth pushing your buddy into a volcano over.
  • Plus, given that the Ring was already influencing Isildur's mind for the worse, Elrond may have realized that if he pushed the issue any further at the moment it would probably drive Isildur completely mad with jealousy, provoking a fight to the death on the spot. Letting Isildur step away from the brink of the Cracks of Doom, at least for the moment, was Elrond's only hope of buying time for the king (who was his friend) to come to his senses: time he didn't know Isildur wouldn't have.
  • I was always of the idea that Elrond did know the importance of the Ring (otherwise he wouldn't have led Isildur inside the volcano), but that he didn't force Isildur for two reasons: 1) he couldn't. He entered before Isildur so he couldn't block him, and as soon as he tried to force him Isildur would have slipped the Ring on and vanished. 2) he was probably hoping to convince Isildur at a later date, or possibly do the deed himself after stealing the Ring, but the Ring got away before this could be done.
  • He could've just grabbed the Ring it out of Isuldur's hand and throw it into the fire and magma himself, which could avoid either one getting killed!
    • The Crack of Doom is where the will of the Ring is strongest. Any act of aggression against its wielder, even to destroy it, would rapidly (read: immediately) corrupt the one responsible. If Elrond reached out to strike the Ring from Isildur's hand, all that would happen is that he'd instead just grab it and keep it, falling completely under its control.
  • Remember how Gandalf refused to touch the Ring, and seemed loathe to even talk about it? He was terrified of what would happen in the event he possessed the Ring for even of a fraction of a second. Galadriel just looks at it and freaks out. Elrond is one of the Wise yet weaker than either of those two. He knew the second he touched the Ring, or even tried to take the Ring from Isildur it would corrupt him. He wouldn't turn into Sauron v2 instantly, but he definitely wouldn't throw the Ring into the fire, either. Isildur himself was mentally tough, and probably full of hatred and determination against Sauron since his father and brother were both killed, his old Kingdom destroyed and his new one at war. Yet the Ring influenced him in the short walk to Mount Doom.
    • Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond are the bearers of the Three, which were deliberately kept hidden while Sauron had the One and only wielded once it was taken from him. The books make clear that if Sauron ever regained the One, the bearers of the Three would fall under his sway because they would no longer be hidden from the One. So it would also be if the One's influence turned any of them into a new Dark Lord. Their level of terror and caution was as much about protecting the others from harm as it was about avoiding the One's corrupting influence themselves.
  • Also remember that this is happening immediately after a huge battle where King Gil-Galad of the Elves and King Elendil of Men died. Elrond is grieving and probably doesn't want to kill Isildur. Something the movies really don't explain well is the fact that the Kingdom of Numenor was first established by Elrond's twin brother Elros, and the line of Kings are all direct descendants of Elros down to Isildur — thus he's Elrond's many-times-great-great-great-nephew. (Hell, in the Third Age Elrond traditionally fosters each of the chieftains of the Dunedain, Isildur's heirs, who continue the ruling line of Numenor down to Aragorn.) Elendil and his people were actually refugees from Numenor who fled shortly before its destruction and ended up establishing new kingdoms in Middle-Earth. Isildur is one of Elros' last living descendants at the time: his younger brother died in the siege against Sauron and their father Elendil has just been killed at the end of that war. Not to mention that Elrond was personally close to both Gil-Galad and Elendil. Elrond probably couldn't bring himself to kill Isildur after all the other losses that day.

Sam versus Ringwraiths

• During the attack on Weathertop, Sam bravely challenges the Ringwraiths and slashes at them twice, both attacks being blocked. We see one of them swing his sword, we hear a slashing sound, and Sam is hurled aside. Where's the big gaping wound?
• Actually, if you look closely, it appears that the Ringwraith in question batted Sam aside with the flatof his blade while countering his swings.
  • Fine, but what's with the slashing sound?
  • Big scary wraith-men make big scary sounds when they do stuff.

Dark Queen

• "In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!" Since when is the dawn considered terrible?
  • Elves like the moon and stars more than the sun, and due to their acute eyesight, don't fear the night. Dawn probably has the same poetic connotations for them that nightfall does for us.
  • For the Elves, dawn and the appearance of the Sun represent the appearance of Men (who came into the world at the first sunrise).
  • Remember, the Sun was set in the sky as a herald of the coming of Men and the beginning of the diminishment of the Quendi: "...and Anar the Fire-golden, fruit of Laurelin, they named the Sun. But the Noldor named [it] Vasa, the Heart of Fire, that awakens and consumes; for the Sun was set as a sign for the awakening of Men and the waning of the Elves..." Dawn more likely has the same connotations for them as dusk does for us: fading and diminishment, both of which the Elves are big on stopping; indeed, the warding off of decay and preservation of what was loved was part of the power of the Three Rings.
  • Indeed, her line might make more sense if written: "...beautiful and terrible as The Dawn" i.e. the first sunrise ever.
  • She could also just have been using the archaic meaning of the word 'terrible' as in "great and awe-inspiring" instead of "extremely bad." This is the same as the usage for the Russian ruler Ivan the Terrible.
  • This is certainly the intention: i.e. the literal meaning of 'terrible' as in "terror-inducing", in just the same way as 'awful' properly means "awe-inspiring". She's not suggesting she'd be "Not dark, but beautiful and frankly-a-bit-crap as the dawn."
  • Galadriel saw the first sunrise ever. It was totally unexpected, and freaked out plenty of the goodies who saw it as well as the baddies. And then all the elves who'd crossed the Helcaraxe started fighting Morgoth. Not something with entirely fluffy connotations in elvish culture, and probably something that made you as an individual feel pretty small.
  • Stare into the sun for long enough and you will go blind. So, while it might be necessary for life on Earth (and Middle-Earth) it has its downside.
  • Remember the desert crossing scene from Lawrence of Arabia? Dawn can indeed be a terrible prospect, if the sun is radiant enough.

What's the password, cousin?

• Okay, so Gandalf was too clever by half in trying to figure out the password to get into Moria. But why didn't Gimli know it? It's his cousin's place, and he was expecting a "royal welcome," so shouldn't he at least know how to knock on the door?
  • Several reasons, Gimli never visited Khazad-dûm beforehand. Also worth remembering that Balin went on the expedition against the wishes of his kindred, it's also reasonable to assume that because of Durin's Bane most of the Dwarven folk deliberately forgot the password to ensure no one would stupidly go in and try to destroy it themselves. Gandalf also directly implied that forgetting such passwords is common amongst the Dwarves so thats another factor. Finally, consider that by the end of the Third Age, the Dwarves were living in the Lonely Mountain and the Iron Hills, which are northeast of Khazad-dûm. So, Balin would logically have gone through the eastern gate, but we don't know if that gate needed a password to get in to it.
  • Another Headscratcher from that scene: How likely is it that, of all the hundreds of other passwords that Gandalf knows and tries, in various dialects of Elvish and dozens of other languages, not even one of them would incorporate the Elvish word for "friend", or a homonym of that word in some other tongue?
    • Gandalf isn't even trying to brute-force the password, he is trying different kinds of opening spells, most which probably involve variations of "I command you" and "open up".
  • What the below says, it's probably just the exact word. And it's a Dwarvish door, making the password the Elvish word for "friend" is actually pretty brilliant, it would be like a white supremacist making his password "my_nword".
  • Not really. The password (as well as the carved words) are in Elvish because they were created to facilitate trade and cooperation with the elven city of Hollin.
  • The West-gate of Moria was originally built to allow access for the elves of Eregion (Hollin), the realm that lay outside Khazad-Dûm in that direction, with whom the dwarves had good relations and free trade during the Second Age. It makes sense that the elves would have a password in their own language, not least because the dwarves as a race were always notoriously secretive about their own tongue so wouldn't have been using snippets of it for external passwords.

Why wait to toss Frodo?

• In Moria, when they're jumping over the shattered stairs, why do they wait to get Frodo across last? He should have been second, after there was someone on the other end to catch him. He's got the Ring. You've got a balrog chasing you. A balrog getting the Ring is the second-worst thing that could happen after Sauron getting the Ring.
  • They didn't exactly have a lot of time to plan, or much room to maneuver. It's a narrow stairway and they're being shot at and chased. At that point, you go in whatever order you ended up in when you got there.

How come Gandalf knows what happened down in the mines of Moria yet Gimli doesn't?

• Saruman says that Gandalf knows the Dwarves Dug Too Deep and unleashed the Balrog. If Gandalf has heard about this, how come Gimli never heard anything about what happened to his own cousin?
  • Two different incidents are involved here, not one. Going by the books, the Balrog was released centuries ago. Gimli's cousin-once-removed Balin (who, like Gimli's father Glòin, was one of the company of dwarves Bilbo met in The Hobbit) was leader of an expedition that tried to resettle the long-abandoned Moria — not one of the original inhabitants who were killed and/or driven off by the Balrog and his minions. Everyone, Gimli included, knew what happened to the original inhabitants; although the book gives the impression it wasn't common knowledge that the monster of Moria was a Balrog (the dwarves just called it Durin's Bane), it was pretty clear that anyone who'd heard of Moria by this point knew that there was something bad lurking down there. Gimli's excitement was mostly him getting his hopes up unrealistically high that the colony had been successful.
  • It's actually not as clear in the book that there is anything necessarily lurking in the dark. Moria had been abandoned for nearly a thousand years by the time Balin and his followers showed up to reclaim it, some 30 years before the events of LotR. Exactly what happened down there had been lost to Dwarven myth and legend. All that's remembered is that the miners of old unearthed... something and for all anyone knew it was long gone, if it even existed in the first place. For all Balin knew, "Durin's Bane" could have been something as mundane as a poisonous gas pocket which had been conflated by legend into a fire-breathing monster. It's worth noting that in the book, Balin's colony in Moria survived for quite some time (5 years), reclaiming a small part of the mines and even starting to work them again, before things began to stir once more.
  • (Also only in the book:) Gandalf and Aragorn have both been inside Moria before (apparently before Balin attempted to re-colonize the place.) They know its general history — but not the nature of Durin's Bane.
    Aragorn: I, too, have been in Moria. And although I, too, came out again, the memory is very dark. I do not wish to enter there again.

Why Didn't Boromir Bring His Shield During the Fight at Amon Hen?

• When Boromir tried to save Merry and Pippin from Saruman's Uruk-hai battle group at Amon Hen, why didn't he bring his shield (which he usually carries around) to the battle? If he did, he would've been able to protect himself from Lurtz's arrows and not be killed!
  • If I remember correctly, the events at Amon Hen happen at a rather quick succession: Boromir talks with Frodo, he tries to take the Ring from him, Frodo runs away, the Orcs attack, Boromir tries to save Merry and Pippin from the Orcs. Boromir doesn't have his shield with him when he goes to talk with Frodo, because he has no need for it then. And the Orcs attack immediately after that, so possibly he thinks there's no time to go and fetch the shield, because they might've already killed Merry and Pippin before he comes back with it.
  • But didn't he rest his shield nearby when he was gathering firewood when he talks with Frodo? He could've grabbed his shield after Frodo ran away.
  • His shield was at their camp. Boromir and Frodo were far away from their camp. The orcs were showing up right then, Boromir didn't have time to go back to camp.
  • Far enough away that no-one can hear the yelling or crashing about, but still close enough for the horn to be heard. Think of how far a car alarm or a siren can be heard if the wind's right, versus the racket when the pubs chuck out. If it's a mile to the camp, that's a round trip of ten minutes or more. Of course, it's bad security to wander off alone in the first place, but Frodo seems to be lacking in self-preservation instinct, and Boromir is not thinking straight by then.
  • Boromir left his shield behind because they tend to be heavy, and when collecting firewood you need to minimize the extra weight you're carrying if you want to stay fresh.
  • Boromir was also clearly not in his right frame of mind during this scene. While it would be prudent to take the shield, he was already being corrupted by the Ring, so being prudent wasn't on his mind. Getting the Ring was, and it was overwhelming all of his other thoughts. After all, if he was in the frame of mind to be cautious and bring his shield, he would probably be in the same frame of mind that would tell him threatening Frodo and trying to steal the ring is not such a good idea.

Checking the mantelpiece

• Why does Gandalf check the mantelpiece when Bilbo tells him the ring is there? Considering Gandalf got there before Bilbo, he should know that's a lie.
  • Bilbo could have put it there while pottering about. He likely knows it's probably not there but was just giving his old friend the benefit of the doubt.
  • Remember that at this point Gandalf doesn’t know Bilbo’s ring is the One, nor the corrupting effect it is having on him. He has no real reason to suspect Bilbo is lying.
  • He checked the mantelpiece so he could say "It's not here, Bilbo." Also it's possible he expected to find an empty box or something which the ring was supposed to go inside.

Four spare daggers

• Obviously this is about the film only, but how come Aragorn had four spare daggers for each of the hobbits at hand?
  • Out of universe, Aragorn having some extra daggers is a hurried explanation for where the Hobbits got their weapons since the scene from the book where they would have gotten them wasn't included. In-universe, I guess it could be explained as him picking up a commission for some other rangers, knowing at least SOME Hobbits would be coming through at some point since he's a friend of Gandalf and he's overprepared, or buying them right before they left Bree.
    • But that's just it - too little time elapsed between Aragorn even learning that there were four hobbits and all of them having to leave Bree in a hurry... I guess we'll have to go along with him being Crazy-Prepared then.
  • Far-fetched, but it is possible that Aragorn acquired the daggers from a weapon cache squirreled away by the Dunedain. Amon Sul was a meeting place and hideout for Rangers patrolling the wilderness between Bree and Rivendell, so it would make sense that they would keep supplies of weapons on hand.

Rooms at the Prancing Pony

• Butterbur proudly informs the four travelers that he has Hobbit-appropriate accommodations available. But when the Nazgûl attack, it's clearly in a full-sized room with full-sized beds. Did someone have the nerve to mis-inform them?
  • The explanation is probably that this scene is an homage to the one in the Ralph Bakshi production.
  • The guy is trying to make a sale here. He's probably in the habit of telling everyone that he has rooms that fit them, whether or not they actually fit.
  • I'm sure this isn't canon, but just imagine: Maybe they snuck into some hobbit-sized rooms and stabbed all the beds...but they were empty. So then they went to the next room over and stabbed those beds, but they were empty. And they kept this up all night, but nobody ever got stabbed because every single patron had already fled in terror.
  • Y'know, you could read this as a potential joke of the style Tolkien might've written himself. I can imagine a Man of Bree describing something as "Hobbit-sized" meaning, with a wry sense of humour, that it's Man-sized but will do just fine for a Hobbit. After all, a Man might struggle to fit in a Hobbit-size room, but a Hobbit won't struggle to fit in a Man-size room (a tall bed isn't the end of the world, while a low ceiling is a lot harder to deal with).
  • The line is also a nod to the book: in the book Butterbur explains that with so many travellers passing through Bree, the only rooms he had left were Hobbit-sized, and if Frodo and his group weren't Hobbits he wouldn't have been able to accommodate them.

Travel time from Hobbiton to Bree

• Gandolf tells Frodo to meet him at the Prancing Pony in Bree. Frodo gets there maybe two days later, and he’s surprised to find that Gandalf hasn’t arrived. Did he really expect that Gandalf would get from Hobbiton to Isengard and then back to Bree again in such a short time?
  • Blame the movie shortening events: in the books, several months passed between Gandalf telling Frodo to leave and Frodo actually leaving (he had to put his affairs in order so Bag End wouldn't be auctioned off in his absence like what happened to Bilbo in The Hobbit), and the journey across the Shire to Bree itself takes at least a couple of weeks.
  • In fact, in the books, meeting up at Bree was the backup plan. Gandalf planned to travel with Frodo the whole way. His instructions were: "If I don't come back to Bag End by midsummer, then go to Bree and I'll meet up with you there." Frodo actually goes back and forth a lot on whether he should set out alone or try waiting for Gandalf.

Why are the Nazghul such big idiots?

• Why were the Nazgul easily tricked by a fluffed pillow and why didn’t they immediately kill Frodo by stabbing him a bunch like they did the pillow?
  • YMMV about the pillow, but as for why they didn't immediately kill Frodo - because they don't care in the slightest what happens to Frodo, and neither does Sauron; the only thing that matters to Nazguls and their lord is the Ring. They might not even have bothered stabbing the pillows if they had not been in the middle of the town where they had to make sure that no alarm would be raised prematurely. One could also argue that not killing Frodo immediately but stabbing him with a Morgul blade instead was an act of deliberate sadism on part of the Witch-King, since it caused much more pain and suffering to Frodo than a simple death would have done.
    • Unless you have been afflicted with a bad case of plot-induced Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? you should always care about finishing off your enemy because it's always possible he'll interfere with your plans if you don't, even if it's just by giving information to your pursuers.
  • In the books, the Witch-King intended to stab Frodo in the heart with his Morgul Blade, and it's said that Frodo would have turned into a wraith (enslaved by the Nazgul) almost immediately if he had. But Frodo summoned up some desparate resistance and twisted his body at the last second, so the blade stabbed his shoulder instead.
  • As far as the pillow goes, look at how the world appears when Frodo puts on the One Ring. That's basically what the Nazgul see as well: a ghostly, distorted reality. In that sort of ethereal and disorted view of the world of the living, they probably would have been fooled by pillows.
• Also, why do the Nazgul abandon their fell beasts to go look for the ring, thus reducing their mobility enough to let their plans be frustrated? At a minimum they should have kept some of their number on fell beasts as a mobile reserve. Flying on fell beasts, no she-elf on a horse is going to outrun them and flowing water poses no obstacle. Notionally it's about stealth, but they don't behave in a stealthy manner and it's not clear they even have the intellect for that kind of strategy. Also it's doubtful that anyone in the Shire or its environs is willing or able to defeat a pack of flying Nazgul. For that matter, how is Aragorn able to defeat a whole pack of Nazgul by himself? Shouldn't that be beyond even his abilities? Does getting set on fire by a torch really deter a Nazgul? An Uruk-hai is badass enough to pull himself forward on your sword blade after you impale him but a Nazgul runs away because he's been set on fire? I'm betting that Uruk-hai, set on fire, would leap on you and give you a bear hug.
  • Aragorn caught them by surprise, and fire is one of their biggest weaknesses. Also Aragorn has OP royal Numenorean powers that make him an extremely dangerous foe, even to things like them. It's debatable if they could have defeated him if they tried, but they'd already stabbed Frodo: they thought they'd already won. If they had pierced Frodo's heart, as intended, he would have become a wraith within a few days' time and been under their power. So all they had to do was wait, and they'd get the Ring... so they thought. They didn't expect Frodo to be that resistant to the dagger's effect and get so close to Rivendell.
• Also, when confronted by rising flood waters, why do the Nazgul run straight downstream instead of just continuing to where Arwen is, a presumably safe location (since she's not going to drown herself)? Always close the distance against the caster. This kind of behavior is not unheard of in dumb animals like rabbits, so one is left with the question of how intelligent the Nazgul are.
  • They panicked at the river. As undead beings, pure running water is a weakness for them... especially water infused with the powers of the Elves. They were already taking a risk just crossing the river, and then when the floods came upon them they freaked the hell out. Furthermore, Arwen wasn't the one casting that spell. It's made more clear in the books that that was a combined effort by Elrond, Gandalf (he's the one who added the horse shapes), and another Elf-Lord named Glorfindel.

Farthest away from home

• How does Sam know that the crop belongs to Farmer Maggot if he's never been to that part of the Shire before?
  • Presumably somebody told him about it. Or he saw it on a map or something.

Is Middle-Earth full of wraiths?

• Everyone who is stabbed by a morgul blade dies and becomes a wraith. How many people have the Nazgul stabbed through the centuries? How many wraiths were created in the defense of Gondor?
  • Not too many, I'd wager. Morgul blades disintegrate after stabbing just one person, so they'd have to be used sparingly.

Why didnt Lurtz fight Boromir instead of shooting him with arrows?

• All he does is let boromir fight other Uruk-hai. I mean he's shown as being a very capable fighter as he able to hold his own against Aragorn before being killed.
  • Why take the risk? Boromir is a One-Man Army who manages to slay every single Uruk-hai that gets close to him. Obviously, confronting him head-on would be suicide.