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The orcs seem more disgusting than scary, but you have to admit, just how brave would you be if you had an entire platoon of those monsters bearing down on you, with their crude weapons drawn, thirsty for your blood? Particularly if you weren't armed and didn't have well-armed friends at your back?

Same goes for the Uruk-hai. They are mostly disgusting too, but they are pretty damned scary when on the move, ready to kill everything in their path. That, and the fact that they do not lose the urge to kill, even when they are defeated, makes them all the scarier.

You don't feel scared because you're in your safe movie seat, and you know these beasts aren't real. But just how frightening do you think it was for the people in the film to have to deal with? Not to mention the issues Merry and Pippin had to deal with when captured by the Uruk-hai?

If you listen closely, that ghost army was trapped inside those ruins. It didn't matter that they could fight and not get hurt; they were stuck in one spot and were mostly useless. It was because of Aragorn's agreement with them that the ghost army got what they wanted, where if they fought for him, they would be released and able to cross over into the afterlife. Didn't matter if they could take over the world, they weren't interested.

By the way, if they had not recruited Rohan, the war would have gone very badly in ROTK. The good guys would not have had the manpower they needed to help stop the siege of Minas Tirith, and Eowyn would have never been around to stop the Witch King of Angmar. Things happened in these movies for a reason. You have to look deeper and listen more when watching. Taking everything at face value doesn't work very well at interpreting a movie. They can't do all the thinking and imagining for you.

Regarding Eowyn being able to kill the Witch-king: it's one of the hallmarks of mythology that there are certain magics and prophecies which are very reliant on tricky wording. It's almost like a legal contract. The whole film Bedazzled, and its remake, are based around a man making wishes of the Devil and being duped each time because the Devil finds little workarounds in his wording. Tolkien was crafting a mythology, and was a linguistical master, so it only makes sense that the prophecy of invincibility for the Witch-king, and his downfall, are hinged on such things.

He goes into battle, arrogant, couched in power he assumes is almighty, but it isn't. His lust for power, his arrogance, and his reliance on twisted, wrung-out words: it's his downfall.

There's a similar prophetic loophole in Macbeth. "No man of woman born..." is said to be able to kill Macbeth. He assumes, reasonably, that that's everyone, only to find out that Macduff was a c-section, "From my mother's womb untimely ripped." It's a bit of a cheat, but that's magic: it betrays you. It's tricky. The Ring is similar. It slips from fingers and pockets. Or sometimes onto or into them. But it's always betraying people.

It's interesting that you think Pippin's annoying but you also think Gandalf is a jerk to him. He annoys Gandalf, that's why Gandalf yells at him. There's definitely a father-figure thing with Gandalf and the Hobbits, but I get the impression that Pippin is actually one of his favourite Hobbits. He comes down hard on him because he has to get wise or die and it's a tough-love thing. That's just my take.

I don't mind the eagles at the end. Other people are with you on this, but I don't mind them.

I think the way they look and act are aligned with Peter Jackson's style of schlocky horror design.

They're basically the Middle Earth equivalent of Storm Troopers -- menacing, but totally ineffective. They can't defeat a band of dwarves and hobbits. In real life, in an era of hand-to-hand combat with edged weapons, they would cut through Frodo and Co. in about 15 minutes.

OP, the Uruk-hai ARE Orcs. Your complaint is like “I don’t think the werewolves and the lycanthropes are scary.” The Uruks are a special breed of Orcs, bred by Sauron to walk in the sunlight, but they are nonetheless Orcs.

Nice precis, Ace. It may interest you to know that The Silmarillion states that the Balrog is second ONLY to Sauron in malevolent power in Middle-earth at the time of the Rings story.

The orcs & all of Sauron's minions have only one motivation: to serve Sauron unto death. Period. They've been bred & trained for that. Some of considerable power obviously have aspirations of supplanting Sauron—Saruman is a prime example—but as long as Sauron exists, even they must serve him obediently, whatever they may be secretly scheming otherwise. It's not unlike C.S. Lewis' conception of Satan in The Screwtape Letters—ultimately, all beings are consumed & subsumed by Satan. Similarly, Sauron ultimately sees all other beings as existing only as extensions of his own power; certainly that's his goal.

Yet ironically, Sauron himself is subordinate to Morgoth. It's only because Morgoth has been chained & imprisoned for eternity that Sauron can claim to be the ultimate power. And so in some corner of his being, he must fear the return of Morgoth. And he knows that any of his more powerful minions feel the same way about him. But as long as he's in control, he revels in his superiority over them, even as he always harbors that hidden fear, which continually eats away at him. The more his power increases, the more his fear of losing it increases as well. And the more he has to tighten his control over them.

For me, there are a lot of plot devices Tolkien created and used that defy logic. I don't blame Peter Jackson for his interpretation of the Dead Army because they did pretty much the same thing in the books but as you say they could have marched into Mordor and done the same amount of damage to Sauron's armies, but they didn't so therefore it never happened.

ORCS RULE! THE URUK HAI ARE SEXY! I WOULD LET MY DAUGHTER MARRY ONE!!!