One Thing That I Think Tolkien Did Wrong and Jackson Did Right

[TheAzn]

My Grand Refutation to the General Counter-Arguments Made Against Me(Cont'd)
The only thing left against my arguments now is that the Mordorians simply might have used a far more technologically superior set of artilleries. My refutation to the argument, again, should have been easily understood from the beginning. There is a limit to how powerful the Mordorian artilleries can be. We know that the Mordorians were not using cannons because of several reasons.
1. It said so in the text itself.

As soon as the great catapults were set, with many yells and the creaking of rope and winch, they began to throw missiles marvellously high, so that they passed right above the battlement and fell thudding within the first circle of the City; and many of them by some secret art burst into flame as they came toppling down.

2. More importantly, we know that intact heads were thrown. If the heads were fired from inside the cannons, then these projectiles would explode into smithereens before they could even left the barrels.

So the best artilleries that the Mordorians are left with are trebuchets. One of the largest trebuchets, flinging an average pumpkin - about 10 to 20 lbs, almost the same as a human head - has a maximum range of far less than one mile. Here is the record list from Pumpkin Chuckin.
http://www.punkinchunkin.com/current-world-record
Look for a siege engint titled Yankee Siege II.
Here is a Youtube video about it. The first trebuchet shown is Yankee Siege II.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNbIVvtujZA

Of course, it might be that the Mordorian artilleries were enhanced by “magic”. However, I have a refutation to that argument as well. Since I do not have a lot of time left, I will not post my refutation here. You can ask me for it later if you are curious.

Then there is also a limit to how weak the Gondorian artilleries can be. No matter how Gondor was lacking in resources, an entire nation will always have more resources than a middle-income family of modern time. Yet, as seen in many Youtube videos, middle-income families can amazingly build ancient style artilleries that can compete with archery. Yes, some of these scrawny artilleries built by lay people may fall very short of standard, but they are still impressive given their cheapness. Ancient artilleries like ballistas, catapults and trebuchets required many people to operate. If the artilleries are not better than a simple bowman, then there is no point in building them. And I have made a strong point that Gondor MUST have artilleries.