June 17, 2003

Minas Morgul + FotR EE Interactive Map
Bob Praz

Since some of you have been talking of Minas Morgul, I'd thought I'd just add my own response that it is in the movie. In fact, you can see the miniature for yourself on the official site. Go to "inside the effects" and then go to Enter Helm's Deep (you'll need shockwave 3D and Flash 6). Watch the video called "Bigatures", and the very first thing you see is a full sweeping shot of the Minas Morgul miniature. The quality is not huge, but it’s good enough. There's also a shot of the Grey Havens miniature later on in the video.

On a second note, I did notice the rather embarrassing mistake (or change) on the FotR EE interactive map which G had posted about. Bree has been placed at the southern end of the Old Forest and the Hedge. However I don’t think this was intentional on Peter Jackson’s part. It looks more like the guy designing the interactive map may not have enough coffee that morning. Why? Because the map they use in this segment of the DVD is the same map that we’ve seen many times in the movie (the best example is just as the scene “Concerning hobbits” begins, you see it very close up) and on various LOTR merchandise (including the EE DVD case), and on that map Bree is exactly where it’s supposed to be. If they bothered to put Bree there on the original map designed for the movie, why change it for the DVD? Plus, in the interactive map, you can see the hill of Bree on the way to Weathertop, except that there’s no name with it, and the Old Forest is named Chetwood. Only the DVD designers may know the answer to this odd change/error, but either way I doubt this was the fault of P.J. and friends; there’s just no reason to make that kind of change to the DVD map.

P.S: Sorry I've been posting so much lately, even though I'm new. I guess I've just got a lot of stuff to say, and I've only been able to do so now. Thanks.