Peter Jackson Was WRONG About Orcs

Welcome to Ep. 22 of Movies vs. Manuscripts: Lord of the Rings edition! Today, we analyze Merry and Pippin's night on the edge of Fangorn forest with the Uruk-hai and orcs. Did they really want to eat Merry and Pippin? Spoiler: Meat's NOT back on the menu, boys...

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Music:
"Arthur-Marie Brillouin - Bien-Aimée" is under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) license.
@arthur-mariebrillouin4496

"Scott Buckley - The Long Dark" is under a Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0) license.

"Alexander Nakarada - Frost" is under a Creative Commons (BY 3.0) license:
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Timestamps:
0:00 They Changed the Uruk-hai & Orcs
2:04 Movie Recap...
3:41 Character, Timeline, Location Differences
5:14 Plot Changes
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Sources:
"The Fellowship of the Ring," directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema, 2001.
"The Two Towers," directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema, 2002.
"The Return of the King," directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema, 2003.
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#tolkien #tolkienlore #lordoftherings #lotr #peterjackson #newlinecinema #warnerbros #jrrtolkien

[factorfantasyweekly]

*DISCLAIMER:* Crazy that I have to say this, but I LOVE both the movies and the books. This series isn't meant to hate on either. It is simply an *analysis* of the differences between the two mediums. Because I'm a nerd. :)

*Minor Correction:* Lugbúrz is just Black Speech for Barad-dur. It’s not a separate place.

Thanks to everyone who noticed this. Love this community!

[simonkoster]

The "Meat on the menu" moment is where PJ could let his love for horror peek out. Made me LOL when it happened.

[kennethferland]

I can imagine an unwritten scene where Marry and Pippen try to convince Grishnack that the Lambas bread in their pockets is a elven biological weapon agains orcs.

[williamhervey]

Lugburz is not an outpost, "Lugbúrz is the Black Speech name for Barad-dûr, a fictional fortress in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, and is located in northwest Mordor, near Mount Doom"

[abelingaw]

Amazon's ROP Season 1: Orcs are like vampires, they get burned by sunlight
Amazon's ROP Season 2: Orcs are now immune to sunlight

I guess somebody forgot about that in the production room.

[Gandalf]

I love this series. Your straightforward presentation combined with your cinematic elements are sublime. As a voracious Tolkien reader myself, every time you post a new weekly LOTR MvM video, I feel like I’m sitting in an old, yet familiarly comfortable, armchair that I haven’t seen in years.

[kmaguire]

This series has been so fun. My mother was a huge Tolkien fan so I started reading the books very early on when the Rankin/Bass and then Bakshi versions of The Hobbit and LotR came out in the 70s. I read them all many times when I was young so when the Jackson movies came out I of course spotted almost every little change he had made. It has been a while since I read the books though and I have watched the Jackson movies many times so now I've started to forget some of the changes. It has been really fun following along and being reminded. I should probably read the books again soon.

[crebostar]

Lugburz 10:20 was NOT an outpost of Sauron… it was Barad-dur itself! Here’s what the Mordor Wikipedia page says ‘The name Barad-dûr is Sindarin, from barad "tower" and dûr "dark". It was called Lugbúrz in the Black Speech of Mordor, from lug "tower" and búrz "dark".’

[heloisavillela]

the Uruk-hai chapters are some of my favourites in the books!

[davinhunt]

I have been enjoying this comparison series

[raimat]

After Grishnackh has been killed, a horseman is riding past the hobbits. The rider does not see Merry or Pippin, as you mention, but the horse either sees or via some sixth sense senses their presence and jumps over them to avoid harming them. I'm guessing that incident inspired Peter Jackson for the scene with the horse that almost steps on Pippin's face, but misses.

[mevb]

Originally in the film, Snaga was meant to be stabbed rather than beheaded but on the day of shooting Peter Jackson, who likes gore and guts (hence why many of his earlier movies like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Braindead/Dead Alive have gore in them, The Lord of the Rings because of the PG-13 rating have a lot less of it but with the black blood of the orcs and Uruks, he could get away more with that compared to human and animal blood, though they did make gore and guts for the filming in case he wanted to do an R-rated version one day and to see how much he could get away) he decided the orc to get his chopped off.This have been confirmed by Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin) in the actor's commentary.
On a side note, Grishnak is played by Shepthen Ure, who plays several orc characters throughout the trilogy including Gorbag in The Return of the King, though voiced by Jim Duncan. Snaga is played by Jed Brophy, who earlier in The Two Towers was the Rohirrim who found Théodred and later in the movie he plays Sharku the Warg Rider leader and in The Hobbit trilogy he played Nori the dwarf plus he played Void in Braindead/Dead Alive and as a Venture Crewmember in King Kong.
Andy Serkis (Gollum) voiced The Maggoty eaten-bread Uruk, Snaga and Ugluk.

[PwnEveryBody]

I love me some orcs/goblins. Comic relief brutes are fun, but plenty of humans are brutes too. Orc soldiers should be brutes, not because they're orcs, but because they're soldiers, amplified because of a strict army hierarchy based on fear and perhaps a touch of corruption, both from the magic of Sauron and from the orcs' origin as a twisted mockery or imitation of elves. On orc-nature, orcs are routinely referred to and seen as goblins by Tolkien in the Hobbit, and goblins are traditionally overwhelmingly seen as wily tricksters, powerful in the ways of magic and quite intelligent.

[irena]

The bit with suggesting to eat the hobbits' legs because they don't need them was funny but I'd much rather see the menacing Grishnakh of the books, with the voice softer but more evil. The movie orcs are depicted as part comic relief, part simple-minded brutes, they don't evoke fear in the way that the original Grishnakh would, which is a pity. And again, we are robbed of Pippin's quick and brave thinking in a very dangerous situation - what a pity again.

[MrNoucfeanor]

I didn't mind Jacksons changes.

I can't imagine the difficulty of adapting hundreds of thousands of words into just a few hours on camera.

[CaptanAsh]

The cheesiness of Legolas after this giving the "red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning"-like line

[Teddyngham]

I do own a Grishnákh action figure.

But I do remember in the video game War of the Ring, which didn't have many characters from Lord of the Rings in it, that Grishnákh was one of the playable evil heroes, and one Evil mission has Grishnákh destroying the Warning beacons of Gondor.

[FullPerspective]

I personally wish that Grishnak and Ugluk would have stayed true to Tolkiens version. Tolkien has Grishnak and the Orcs look smarter and less primitive than Peter Jackson and I prefer that version since it seems more realistic and makes for a better story in my opinion. I love Peter Jacksons version, but I think Tolkiens is better.

[Nobody-dfis]

I was a bit disappointed with Grishnákh in the movie. He has some great lines in the books indeed. And these Captains were not dumb. I really like this part in the books because it give great insight of Orc life. Jackson got that somewhat right. And they sure do look extremely good in the movies.

[mevb]

Lugburz is actually the orcish name for Barad-Dûr the Black Tower.