February 18, 2004

B: Black Breath
Elendur

"Nazgul! Wraiths on wings!"

Oddly enough, Gollum's words in The Two Towers foreshadowed what would eventually happen: With the removel of the Black Black(or lack of mention of it) the Nazgul were reduced to simple "wraiths on wings", their only purpose being to control the Fell Beasts. Instead of flying high above Minas Tirith, driving the fear into the soldiers that would be one of the deciding factors, they swoop down and the Fell Beasts do the work. They don't scare the audience, and they don't scare their enemies. There is no explanation of why Merry is healed from his brush from the Witch-King in time for the battle of the Morannon.

-Elendur

PS: I failed to mention two things in my post about Aragorn.

1: Leaving out the houses of healing left the abilities of the king incomplete.

2: The crowning. The audience sees Aragorn crowned king. Of what? Of Gondor. What is Gondor? For all the audience(who hasn't read the book) knows its Minas Tirith. There is not even a hint of the idea that he is king of the Reunited Kingdoms, Gondor and Arnor, and almost half the known (Middle-)Earth.