![]() Wētā Workshop's effects have remained impactful to this day. Lurtz was an original creation for The Fellowship of the Ring film, as he did not appear in Tolkien's writing.Īs important as all of these factors were, the attempt at making The Lord of the Rings' monsters scary would have fallen flat if they were not believable.Per Jackson's request, Wētā Workshop modeled Shelob on the black tunnelweb spider native to New Zealand.In The Return of the King, Tolkien described the Mouth of Sauron's face as "a frightful mask, more like a skull than a living head.".These death fake-outs were believable because the film proved that the forces of Sauron could kill the heroes. It often seemed like Frodo would not survive the trilogy, such as when Shelob stung him. Gandalf's death caused a similar revelation for Frodo it was then that the peril of his journey truly sunk in. The audience believed that if such major characters could die, anyone could. The film had previously established Gandalf and Boromir as capable fighters, making their killers seem even mightier. Later, the Uruk-hai Lurtz brought Boromir down with a barrage of arrows. First, the Balrog ensnared Gandalf and dragged him to his death at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. In the first movie alone, two members of the Fellowship fell at the hands of monsters. This established the Orcs as a serious threat, increasing tension when they fought the Fellowship shortly thereafter. When the Fellowship first entered the Mines of Moria, they saw Orcs had slain Gimli's cousin Balin and his fellow Dwarves. In addition to the psychological aspect, The Lord of the Rings' monsters were frightening in a practical sense because they posed a danger to the characters. Like possessed dolls or killer clowns, the dissonance of seeing something innocuous turned evil heightened the uncanny feeling. Throughout the rest of The Lord of the Rings, horses were kind, faithful companions, so these dark horses were a corruption of something innocent. Tolkien described the Nazgûl's steeds as ordinary black horses, but the cinematic versions had glowing red eyes and bloody, nail-ridden hooves. The films psychologically manipulated the audience in some ways that the novel did not. If the set and CGI model could frighten Jackson behind the scenes, it would certainly frighten audiences caught up in the movie's magic. The great spider's lair was filled with thick webs and the remains of her previous victims, spine-chilling imagery that contributed to her creepiness. Similarly, Jackson suffered from arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, and he wove this fear into Shelob's scenes. ![]() The knowledge that something could skulk unseen beneath the surface built up a sense of unease before the Watcher appeared. The Watcher in the Water that attacked the Fellowship outside the Mines of Moria lurked at the bottom of a deep, dark lake, tapping into thalassophobia, the fear of large bodies of water. As well as making the monsters themselves visually scary, Jackson and Wētā Workshop ensured that the films scarily presented them. The monsters of The Lord of the Rings were horrifying because they preyed on the audience's psychology. Since readers - and later, viewers of the film adaptations - were already familiar with these tropes to an extent, the narrative did not need to do as much to convince them that the monsters should be feared. For example, Orcs and Uruk-hai behaved similarly to zombies, being cannibalistic, humanoid monsters who moved in droves. Some of Tolkien's monsters even paralleled tropes that would not become popular until long after The Lord of the Rings' publication. Shelob and the Oliphaunts, meanwhile, embodied the similarly popular trope of giant versions of ordinary beasts. ![]() Ghosts and similar creatures have persisted in pop culture and mythology throughout history because humans have always been haunted by the question of what happens after death. In Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo also struggled against the ghoulish Barrow-wights, a scene Jackson did not include. ![]() In the chapter "The Forbidden Pool" from The Two Towers, Faramir even described them as "living ghosts." Nazgûl were far from the only undead creatures who roamed Middle-earth, as the Dead Men of Dunharrow were cursed by Isildur to linger as phantoms in the White Mountains. The first servants of Sauron that Frodo encountered, the Nazgûl, were essentially ghosts they were invisible wraiths who rode under the cover of night and struck those around them with intangible fear. Despite the term's negative connotation, tropes came into existence for a reason: they have been proven to work. Tolkien was a pioneer of the fantasy genre, but he also drew from long-standing tropes.
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