Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies is undeniably a masterpiece. For more than 20 years, these movies have been a benchmark for fantasy movies, if not other genres far beyond that, and even so long after their original release, they completely hold up. Part of this was, of course, the source material also being brilliant, as J.R.R. Tolkien’s books were absolutely masterpieces as well and laid the groundwork for the movies to succeed.
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Yet—and Lord of the Rings fans may struggle to accept this—the movies are still not perfect. Generally, fans accept and engage in criticisms of the trilogy of movies based on The Hobbit or the show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but the original trilogy tends to be put on a pedestal. However, those movies did have their own flaws, one of which was making a key army completely overpowered.
The Army of the Dead Was Ridiculously Overpowered
In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Aragorn finally accepts his rightful place as the heir to the throne of Gondor, and a critical part of that is his decision to call upon the Army of the Dead, also called the Oathbreakers and the Dead Men of Dunharrow, to help them win the Battle of the Pelennor Fields—a massive step, ultimately, in taking down Sauron and winning the overall war.
The trouble is that, rather than incorporating ghosts in a way that felt somewhat grounded in reality, or at least more tempered in terms of their abilities, The Return of the King goes all out, making them not only invincible but also able to massacre thousands of enemies. In the end, this is really how the battle is won. The army moves across the Pelennor Fields and into the city of Minas Tirith, wiping out all in their path.
Yes, the movie is great. In fact, many Lord of the Rings fans count The Return of the King as the greatest movie overall. Even with that in mind, though, it cannot be denied that this was a completely overpowered army, and their involvement in the war effectively became a cheat code that massively accelerated the narrative.
The Books Didn’t Have This Problem
While Jackson generally stayed true to the source material—although he did make some major changes, such as by taking chapters like Fog on the Barrow-downs out of the story and removing characters like Tom Bombadil altogether—the Army of the Dead in The Return of the King reflects one of his more serious deviations from the books. This army exists in Tolkien’s books, and they generally have the same dynamic with Aragorn.
However, the issue with them being so overpowered does not exist in Tolkien’s stories. Rather than a completely invincible army able to wipe out the masses, in the books, the Army of the Dead feels much more like standard ghosts. That is, they don’t actually physically destroy others in battle. In fact, if anything, they’re more like a scare tactic wielded against the enemy. While ghosts can’t exactly be ‘realistic,’ this version of the story gets considerably closer to that description than the movie does.
Fans Still Forgive The Movies (And They Should)
While Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings trilogy should continue to be seen as some of the greatest fantasy movies of all time, fans also must be able to accept the ways in which they are flawed. These flaws may arguably be few and far between, but the changes to the Army of the Dead have to be among them. It just isn’t a well-crafted story arc to make these soldiers this powerful; truly, it feels like a cheat code that allowed Jackson to skip over the battle (probably to make more room for the very long, multi-story epilogue).
Even so, The Return of the King has to be forgiven for this, and it largely has been. While some fans may want to ignore that this is a flaw entirely, others readily admit that it’s a bit ridiculous for the army to have this much power. The general consensus, though, is that The Return of the King is such an incredible movie that this isn’t a dealbreaker in terms of it being brilliant. There’s also the so-called “rule of cool” that makes this decision by Jackson even more forgivable.
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