November 17, 2003

Mithril Coat and Mordor Uruk-hai
Bob Praz

In response to Danny, I think I'm reassured now that PJ will somehow incorporate Frodo's mithril coat in the movie, especially now that you've reminded me of the Mouth of Sauron. However, the clip to which you referred (assuming you're talking about the one that was shown in the DVD preview) was not an orc climbing up Barad-Dur, but rather Sam making his way up the Tower of Cirith Ungol. Anyhow, I still agree with you. The Gorbag/Shagrat thing was just something I noticed; I believe it's just a slight simplification of the story, among others.

On the matter of the Mordor Uruk-hai that are seen in the ROTK game, I've been wondering about that as well (I think too much these days). I'm not sure if PJ is going to have these guys in the movie, or if it's just another invention for the EA game. As I said before, in one of the recent pictures Shagrat looks very similar to an Isengard uruk, unless it’s just me. Although in the book there are uruks (at least of some kind) from Mordor, I think it would probably confuse much of the audience if they were in the movie, because FOTR and TTT gave the impression that Saruman was the only person able to breed them. I’ve looked through the trailers, pictures and previews, however, and the only creatures that I can see that resemble the Mordor uruks in the game are simply big, dirty, yet regular orcs.

PS: If any of you saw Matrix Revolutions, the actor who plays the Train Man (Bruce Spencer) is the same actor who plays the Mouth of Sauron, in case you happened to see that movie and you didn't know. After seeing him in Matrix, I'm already convinced he'll do a good job; he looks really freaky (I just hope he doesn't duel with Aragorn or anything of the sort, of course).