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

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by TheAzn

This would be true if the intelligence of the Gondorians was far lower than that of us human beings today. Nothing in Tolkien’s work suggested that. The threats that they were facing were very obvious, and I am trying my best to view the world from a Gondorian general point of view. It does not take a perfect race to figure out the necessity of artilleries based on the threats that they are facing. No matter how much lacking in resources, an empire should have no problem filling a city with artilleries. Even middle-income families can build several artilleries during their leisure time.

This would not have been much of a problem except that one of the main point of the Trilogy is realism. Considering that Professor Tolkien was also a war veteran, the standard of consistency should be higher for him than non-military authors when it comes to warfare.

The art of war is usually universal across even fictional universes; strategies and tactics have to make sense.

The problem I have with arguing for the realism of defensive artilleries is that even ancient and medieval warfare didn't really use defensive artilleries. Artillery was used in these time periods for attack, as we see at Minas Tirith, but not for defence, as we also see at Minas Tirith. Virtually all ranged defence in Medieval warfare and earlier was done through archery and whatever missiles could be dropped through murder-holes, so I don't see how you can insist on realism by arguing for something not grounded in reality. Warfare in the Third Age in Middle-earth was a hodge-podge of Ancient (Easterling chariots and Haradrim elephant cavalry, for instance) and Medieval (Iron/steel weapons, mail armour). Saruman's explosives are a rare and deliberate exception. So where's the precedent for defensive artillery, which wasn't used in these time periods? I don't deny that they'd be useful, but I don't think their absence is in any way inconsistent with the mode of warfare being depicted. It would be more unrealistic, ie less true to reality, if they did have them. If the Men of Gondor are unrealistic by not having them, then I guess reality is unrealistic. This is why I don't consider it to be a plot hole.