The Two Towers Preview: Battle

Sources and Links:

TheOneRing.net
   (trailer analyses)
   (scrapbook)

Decipher

Official LOTR site

Fantasy Planet
   (Pan Prstenu)

Numenoreen.com

Elbakin.com

Other LOTR features at the Daily Digest:

"Deleted scenes" from Fellowship of the Ring

A little Rohan preview

Rings Things: More trivia than you can shake a stick at

One Cast to Rule Them All: Where else you've seen the FOTR actors

Cleolinda's review of the film

The piece de resistance: Basically, this is what all the other pictures have been leading up to. Several sites broke the news of all of these pictures--Gandalf the White leading the charge at Helm's Deep--a good long while back. (This image links to Herr der Ringe.)

But we were so impressed with Gandalf's new threads (dig that spiffy new staff, too), that we didn't really bother to look at anything else.

(Except poor Shadowfax, who kinda has this befuddled "Huh? They promised me carrots" look on his face.)
(TheOneRing.net)

Suddenly it occurred to us yesterday evening--might we not spot a few other members of the (broken) Fellowship if we squinted real hard?

Why yes--yes we might.

We know the watermark is a little questionable, since the picture wasn't ours to begin with, but the last time we added numbers, another site borrowed it without even crediting the original source (whose watermark is on the full-size version). So, forgive us for trying to err on the side of overcreditation.

At any rate--AND THIS IS TOTAL CONJECTURE--here's who we think the numbered characters are:

1. Gandalf. (Okay, we know it's Gandalf.)
2. Eomer. We have a pretty strong case for this--his helmet's pretty distinctive. (See Numenoreen's picture of Eomer.)
3. Legolas--99.5% sure. (Please--Legolas sticks out like a sore, if extremely good-looking, thumb.) We can't see Gimli, who was behind Legolas on the same horse the last time we saw him, but by this point in the book, the two had been (briefly) separated in battle. Also, even if he is here--he's probably too short to see.
4. Okay, now we're out on a limb. We think--think--this might be Aragorn. Note both the hair and the leather armor/chain mail combo, as seen on our previous page.
5. . . . And where Aragorn is, Arwen can't be far behind, again on her white horse (is it, in fact, Asfaloth?). You can see it better in the original version of the picture at TORN, but, in this distorted wash of blue, it's the same red dress as on our first page.

Anyway, that's the theory...

But wait! There's more!

If you've read the books, you know that the charge is actually the morning after the night's battle--and that's where we get some of the really good stuff. Ironically, these pictures were among the first to be released--in the internet-only preview trailer.