swords from saruman's army

N

nounderscores

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Oct 18, 2001
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I've been thinking about the odd geometry of the human/orc army swords from lord of the rings. These fantasy swords have three inch wide blade about three feet long with a sharpened front edge, a 90 degree corner on the point with a swept false point that goes about two inches behind the back false edge.

Although most of the battle scenes featured completely unintelligable camera-shake closeups of the main characters faces, I think I saw some of the half orcs make swings at the actors with the front edge, and then try to hook the actor or actor's weapon with the false point.

how practical would a weapon or a tactic like that be in real life (Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to put such a weapon into a normal sheath)? I've seen swords with complicated hilts and guards designed to disarm, but never anything with a disarming tool built into the point. Also if the false edge on top of the square "point" were sharpened, it might have a tanto effect and be capable of defeating armour that an ordinary point would break on.

thoughts?

yours
No_s
 
It IS a movie, after all...they gotta have SOMETHING odd to catch your eye. After all, I mean, that Balrog just might not do it... :D

But anyway, as far as odd extrusions at the tips of swords, have you ever seen the Oriental Hook-Swords? Makes that little spike on the Uruk-Hais' blades look titchy.

My reasoning for its presence it that it's just that, a spike, rather than a 'blade,' per se. The Uruk-Hai are fierce fighters, and very strong, but not much for finesse. Thus, their blades seem to me to be more of an extended axe or a Smatchet, more designed for crude chopping and hacking, rather than slashing or thrusting. With that in mind, and knowing that these guys are only about as smart as a good dog, you'd want them to have as much edge surface as possible, wouldn't you? Thus, the extension of an axe-head into the weapon that made the screen.

Just my two coppers...
 
They also look to me as a product of wartime economy. By only sharpening one edge, constuction time is cut down. The back spike is an easy way to get some "backcut" like ability w/o having an back edge.

Don't look terribley effective to me against an armored foe.

Those Orcish bows were impressive. The arrows were like javlins they were so thick! And what was the draw weight on that bow?
 
OK Dave K. Nobody wants to get hurt. Put the 10 sided die down before somebody loses a hit point. ;)
Uruk-Hai are bigger, meaner, and smarter than orcs. Then again, that ain't sayin much. The huge bow with the spear like arrows was for the Uruk-Hai. The Orc bows were just you basic small horseman's recurve.
In an recent issue of "Primitive Archer" they had an article on the "English Battle Bow". Sort of a Magnum Express long bow. The Uruk-Hai bow looked like one painted black with Orc pooh or something.
Orc's fight in packs. They use shields as do many of their foes. The hook point would be to pull down the shield of the enemy, while your gang hacked him up.
This is of course merely conjecture on my part, but if one were to do a "profile" on the fighting style of Orc's in various stories by Tolkien and in RPGs I think my conjecture is sound.
 
This is all movie conjecture of course. In the books the Orcs had curved scimitars the Uruk-Hai which are basically just suped up Orcs that can stand the sun a little bit had short straight broad bladed swords, it says nothing about swords with hooks.
 
I should have said Uruk-Hai instead of Orcish bows. I still think of the Uruk-Hai as a subset of "Orc"

Another thing, in MERP, the RPG, they distinguish between Uruk-Hai and Half-Orcs. It is harder to tell from the books and the movie makes no distinction at all.

Sword Content: I always wondered why the orcs carried scimitars and the heroes seem to carry standard cruciform swords. Always wondered if it was a leftover from the crusades...
 
I think you might be onto something there. I've noticed that there are many times in fantasy fiction where the bad guys are armed with scimitars. Probably sort of a cultural memory from the crusades as you suggest.

There might also be something of a psychological element there, i.e. the good guys have straight "true" swords while the bad guys have twisted "weird" swords.

Personally I'll take a cruciform sword over one of those curvy things any day. :)
 
But the elves have eastern curvey blades too.
In a documentary on the making of "LOTR:FOTR" they said that they wanted each "race" to have weapons that were "ethinically distinctive" of the 3 races.
Orc's are stupid and ugly, so are their swords.
But what I don't understand is, when you see the scenes of the battle with the Elves and men fighting Sauron, the Elves are using distinctly Asian looking weapons. Also Arwen's sword is rather Asian or Mongolian looking. But Sting and Glamdring, that were forged by Elvin smiths, for Elven Princes are regular old Eurpean cruciform.
I'm sure the "scimitars vs cruciform" is a hold over from the crusades. More importantly the "Empire vs. the Ottomans".
 
What I want to see is a closeup of the nagamaki type weapons that the elves carried on the front lines in the opening battle scene.
 
Sure but that is all movie yishvish. Tolkien never mentioned anything about elves using curvy weapons, and as you have pointed out there is a pretty serious inconsistency there with Glamdring and Orcrist.
 
I was surprised to see the Elven weapons looking so Asian.

I think the elves implements are supposed to be very "organic" with smooth natural contours and no harsh right angles.

The Elves in the Second Age were seen with 3 weapons -- the bow, the one pictured above, and these glaive-type weapons (se below) Before I saw the still shown above I thought this 3rd type of weapon was what the front line was carrying.
 

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Hey Clay, where'd you get these stills? I can't see the first one cuz it is too dark on my monitor. Admittedly my monitor is probably going tits-up.
 
:eek: Thanks for posting those still shots.
Those went by so fast in the theater that it was hard to get that good of a view of them.
 
I know what you mean. Gotta love the DVD.

The one thing that gets me is that we are going to have to wait another year to see the next installment of the story.
 
I know. A year! I think 6 months between movies would have been sufficient. Wonder if they will re-release Fellowship to the theatres shortly before The Two Towers comes out.???
 
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