The Lord Of The Rings series is known by many as one of the most impressive and iconic works in the history of film. Three epic main films and three slightly less epic prequels concluded by The Return Of The King, which (in its extended form) clocks in at over four hours long.
Given the notoriety of the series, you’d expect a perfect, flawless work of cinema. However, when you’re working with hundreds and hundreds of minutes of film, there are bound to be some slip-ups along the way. Here are ten continuity errors in the film series’ conclusion that you might have missed.
The Moving Scar
By the time we reach the end of The Return Of The King, Frodo Baggins has been through a lot. Not only has he had a very stressful trek across Middle Earth, but he’s also lost a finger and collected a fair few scars. One of them, in particular, is very prominently positioned on his face.
However, a lot of its prominence stems from its inability to sit still. Given the scale of the films and the length of time between shooting each one, there’s no way of telling how long there was between these scenes in real-time. As such, it moves from one side to the other multiple times.
Silent Suit Of Armour
When Elrond comes to give Aragorn his fixed sword, there is a suit of armor standing quietly in the background minding its own business. In fact, it’s so committed to its role as the shy, silent type, that it is able to defy physics just to give a convincing performance. When a strong gust of wind rattles past the characters, the armor falls over, yet doesn’t make a single sound. Unless it’s made of felt or the floor was a 100% absorbent sponge, this doesn’t seem to add up.
Disappearing Horses
When the film reaches its really, really long conclusion and we watch the huge battle at the gates of Mordor, everything seems quite perfect. The hundreds of extras are basically indistinguishable from the CGI characters and the battle is fast-paced and bloody.
However, during the periods of tense pre-battle silence and facing off, we can see the thousands of Gondor soldiers are on horseback. Unless they’re magic teleporting/invisible horses (which, in fairness, would make sense for LotR), where are all of the horses when the fight actually starts?
Disappearing Breadcrumbs
One of the key moments in the film comes when the manipulative Gollum frames the lovely, bouncy Samwise Gamgee. Gollum puts breadcrumbs on the shoulder of the Hobbit and convinces Frodo that Sam had eaten all of their food, leading to him being sent away from the quest. There are a few errors like this that take you slightly out of the moment, but in the end, have no real impact on the story. Considering these breadcrumbs are the key part of a very pivotal scene, you’d think more of an eye would be kept on whether they keep appearing and reappearing with each change of shot.
Disappearing Treebeard
Considering Treebeard is a massive humanoid, anthropomorphic tree, he stands out quite a bit. He also happens to be one of the best characters in the series, so fans are always on the lookout for what he’s up to.
When Saruman is talking and Treebeard is standing in front of Orthanc’s door, he’s pretty easy to spot. Then as the scene progresses, he’s gone. Then as it comes to an end, he’s back. Again, considering he’s a walking tree, he can’t exactly slip away unnoticed.
A Visible Harness
Lord Of The Rings introduces us to a lot of cool and quite terrifying monsters over the course of its many hours. JK Rowling went on to ‘take inspiration from’ (steal) many of these, including Shelob, a massive spider. In this particular interaction, Frodo is caught in a giant web and looks as though the spider’s magical silk is holding the Hobbit up by itself. If you look carefully, though, you can see the outline of the harness he was actually strapped into during filming.
And A Clean Face
In the very same sequence, Frodo must have had a lot more free time than it seemed. Due to the adventures he’d been getting up to recently, his face was pretty dirty throughout most of The Return Of The King, and rightly so. While he’s wrapped up, though, his face is about as clean as it would be if he’d spent the entire film series tucked up warm back in The Shire.
When they go on to the scenes that come next, he’s acquired all of the facial dirt once more. It’s disappointing that the filmmakers missed this one piece of continuity that keeps the film linked together.
Changing Size Oliphants
Oliphants are presented as pretty huge throughout almost every scene they’re in. In battle sequences, they stand many times taller than anything around them and look particularly imposing. There are a couple of scenes, however, when we end up getting much more up close and personal with the giant elephant things, and they don’t really seem much bigger than a normal elephant. This turns them from scary to quite cute and really takes you out of the moment when you notice the inconsistency.
Heat Resistant Hobbits
Taking a bit of a sciency route uncovers one of the biggest issues with the entire Mount Doom scene at the end of the film. The volcano is not only active, but has a massive lava pool which is approaching 2000 degrees centigrade. Ending up even half as near as Frodo and co do would start melting human skin, and getting to where they did would have quite literally made them catch fire.
Also, Gollum himself sinks into the lava when he falls in. This isn’t quite what would have happened, as, despite the fact that he’d already be on fire by this point, his body would have essentially floated on top of the lava.
Re-growing A Finger
Right at the end of the film, Frodo is down one finger. This is because Gollum had bitten it clean off in his attempt to get to the ring he so desperately wanted. However, when Frodo is back at The Shire and as merry as can be, his own anatomy seems to have forgotten to play along. There’s a quick moment when Sam approaches Rosie when Frodo seems to have all ten of his fingers firmly attached. Maybe Gandalf had something to do with it…
