Why does anyone in Middle Earth take the Orcs seriously?

[JoesshittyOs]

Did you perhaps miss how in not one, but two books/movies they had all but won each giant battle until reinforcements arrived right before the clock struck twelve?

 

[TheCommanders]

Someone may have mentioned this already, but the enemies the fellowship fought in Moria were actually goblins, which are even smaller and weaker than orcs. Just saying.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Ofcourse, which is why it is responsible for about 200 books. Literally. 200 novels. Maybe not 200 yet, but I'm not about to count all of these!:

Making irrelevant posts in response to posts you haven't bothered to read is certainly frowned on in the escapist.

You seem to have missed the part when I said I have been a fan of 40k since I was practically a sperm. You also seem to have missed the part where I explicitly pointed out what the appeal of the setting is.

But do not pretend to me that when people writing about the 40k setting describe the deaths of millions of people they're expecting me to feel sad. There is no weight to any of the violence which occurs in 40k, just as there is no weight to the violence in a typical slasher movie, and that is part of the appeal.

 

[Therumancer]

Depends on how far you want to go into "Alien".

The Alien franchise is my favorite sci fi one, sooo we can go far down the hole here....

The corporation is involved in most versions of it, and the reasons have ranged from generally wanting to study them "think of what we can learn" to arguements about their right to exist alibet usually by those that had some belief they could get something out of them.

You had a few psuedo enlightened sorts at times, but when it came to Weyland Utani, no, it was all about the benjamins with them. They didn't want to preserve xenomorphs for any reason except to make bank off of them.

There was even story line (novels) where they wanted to keep them around simply to extract a drug called "fire" from glands in the aliens purely for recreational reasons. While the corp was involved, that one was largely driven by civilian criminals if I recall, and they used environmental arguments to defend why the aliens should be preserved.

You'd have to cite which series you're referring to.

Also, the aliens are a bit more than that, of course it depends on the writer and which direction they went in. The movies do not specify if the aliens are self aware or not, however some of the books and comics do

The franchise, god though I love it so, does truck in a lot of continuity problems, especially when you mingle the Predators into the mix. No, the movies do not speculate on the xenomorphs being self aware. The version I prefer to stick with is from "Hive War", which placed them at ant level thinking and organization.

I *think* the book I'm thinking of is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Genocide-Aliens-David-Bischoff/dp/0553563718/ref=pd_sim_b_3

I had to go through a list to find a referance to it, it's been a very long time but it mentions the drug "Fire" and a group of civilians making it from Aliens, so it's probably the right one.

 

[Fisher321]

When not fighting major characters they have a better success rate. They also would've taken out all of Gondor and Rohan's suicide attack if not for the destroying of the ring... That doesn't need spoliers this long after does it?

I haven't seen it yet, but it's OK because I've watched the first two and have no idea who Gondor or Rohan are.

Gondor and Rohan are the Kingdoms of Men, not actual people.

 

[In Search of Username]

Sheer force of numbers.

Which, incidentally, means the orcs must do a lot of breeding.

Ew.

 

[Winthrop]

It makes perfect sense, you just need to read it in the context of movie plot dynamics.

Ahhh... lulz, no. Again, reading the graph, not his text, it says something like:

One ninja presents a threat of one (the metric of threat is not specified, but one must assume that one threat is quite high given the context)

However, less than one ninja (maybe a ninja gimp) is even more threatening, what's more, the graph indicates that this thrend extends, so the more gimped the ninja is, the more threatening. And assuming the graph is continuous, having no ninjas is infinitely threatening.

Having the X axis starting at 1 would be much closer to his text, still kinda wrong, but whatev. It's not important, but I do mind stuff that is incorrect.

What percentage of people that you know have died with 0 ninjas around? 100% I bet. That sounds infinitely threatening in my opinion. I'm joking of course. The graph bothers me as well. I decided that the number of Ninjas given is actually in hundreds and that a threat of one is fairly low.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

The Orcs are simply not a credible threat. If a small band of people can take on and kill an entire battalion of them, how are they even a threat to an actual army? Even when they outnumber the good guys 10 to one, they still get slaughtered.

I just saw the Hobbit and it suffered from this "stormtrooper syndrome" just as badly as LOTR did.

well, ever heard of the inverse ninja law?

"The difficulty of killing a single ninja is inversely proportional to the total number of ninjas one is trying to kill at the same time, such that one ninja is almost impossible to get rid of, Two ninjas are difficult, but two hundred ninjas are easily batted aside."

or the Principle of Evil Marksmanship:
[quote]
The Principle of Evil Marksmanship states that, during a fight scene, antagonists in a work of fiction will be as incompetent as the plot demands, despite prior characterization or reputation. For example, marksmen in action films are often very bad shots and almost never harm the main characters. They are generally only capable of hitting a target if the target is either of no value to the plot or if his death will advance the plot. The term first appeared in film critic Roger Ebert's 1980 book "Little Movie Glossary",[1] and had been submitted by Jim Murphy of New York. It was defined as:
The bad guys are always lousy shots in the movies. Three villains with Uzis will go after the hero, spraying thousands of rounds which miss him, after which he picks them off with a handgun.
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_Evil_Marksmanship[/quote]

This is also known as Conservation of Ninjitsu in TV Tropes lingo. More bad guys=cannon fodder. Single bad guy=Boss fight time.

 

[MrGalactus]

When not fighting major characters they have a better success rate. They also would've taken out all of Gondor and Rohan's suicide attack if not for the destroying of the ring... That doesn't need spoliers this long after does it?

I haven't seen it yet, but it's OK because I've watched the first two and have no idea who Gondor or Rohan are.

Gondor and Rohan are the Kingdoms of Men, not actual people.

Whuh? Then why aren't they called people place names like...Barnsley, or...Piddington?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The Orcs are simply not a credible threat. If a small band of people can take on and kill an entire battalion of them, how are they even a threat to an actual army? Even when they outnumber the good guys 10 to one, they still get slaughtered.

I just saw the Hobbit and it suffered from this "stormtrooper syndrome" just as badly as LOTR did.

What they lack in cunning, good quality weapons, and fighting abilities they make up in NUMBERS. The ork and goblin birth rates far surpass the races of elves, dwarves, and men, allowing them to literally dig up more troops when needed. Against our heroes, with plot armor and being the best of the best, orks don't pose much of a threat. However, agains the regular troops of Gondor, Rohan, and other free people of Middle Earth, Orks are more than enough of a danger. Outnumbered 100 to 1, and most men do not have a chance to stand against Mordor.

Of the major battles in the series, the one by the river, the city of the Dwarves, Helms Deep, Gondor, and the Black Gate, all of them were, or nearly were a victory for the Orks. In the river they managed to capture two of the hobbits (which was their main objective in the first place, the only problem was that it was the WRONG hobbits), the dwarves were all dead by the time the fellowship got into the tunnels, Helms deep was reduced to a dozen or so defenders and saved by perfectly timed reinforcements, Gondor was only saved by the arrival of an army of ghosts, and the Black gate would of been a loss had Frodo not thrown the ring into the volcano.

So, that is one tactical retreat, a victory, and three near victories that were only stopped by outside forces. Most bad guy armies in other works of fictions cannot show that many on screen success rates.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The only other thing was the flashback when the uprooted Erebor Dwarves tried to retake Moria...

Sorry, i still cant believe that they seriously thought that was a good idea.

... And the Dwarves were being demolished until Thorin relieved thier leader of an arm.

You think it was bad in the film? That's nothing compared to the books. Thror didn't bring an army with him, he walked into Moria on his own and got decapitated for it.

Thrain led the Dwarves during the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs, only to disappear during the fighting

Spoiler: Spoilers of a potential plot point in the next Hobbit Movie

And he ended up in the dungeons of Dol Guldur, insane from the Enemy's torture. He was the one who gave Gandalf the key and map to the Lonely Mountain.

As for the Orcs:

The Orcs are incredibly dangerous warriors. Not only do they outnumber the Free Peoples by thousands to one, but in the films, they use actual military tactics. As well, they absolutely ripped through anyone not in the main cast. Haldir didn't last long against the Uruk-Hai, did he? The Wargs slaughtered over half of Theoden's company during the raid on the caravan, and the Morgul Orcs utterly curbstomped Minas Tirith.

 

[Terminal Blue]

snip

That's a legitimate and detailed analysis of the quote. However..

As I've repeatedly said in every single post I've made here because the message doesn't seem to have gone though, I don't think Tolkien was a racist. If I was suggesting that he believed that Asians were inherently ugly, I would have no problem calling him a racist. That isn't what I think he is saying at all.

So you have this fantasy setting, and in this fantasy setting good and evil are not abstract human concepts but literal truths handed down from the good and evil beings which created the world. I genuinely don't believe that Tolkien imagined the dynamics here as anything more than a simple battle between good and evil. I don't think it's an allegory for a race war or a clash of civilizations or anything else its disturbing number of far-right fans have sought to present it as.

My issue here is not that I believe that Tolkien was trying to tell us that Asians were ugly, or that North Europeans are good and noble. That's not the level on which I'm bothered. I'm bothered because these concepts which are so integral to the setting, this idea of good and evil and evil as literal things which can be carried in a person's blood and passed on to their children (which in and of itself is a pretty scary idea) but what marks them out is a kind of beauty or ugliness which is unusually racially specific. That's the issue I have.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

What I found interesting in The Hobbit, as compared to the Lord of the Rings movies, was how LONG it takes some of the dwarves to kill the Orcs. Where Gimili was cutting them down left and right no problem, it was taking two or three dwarves to kill one Orc. It took THREE of them to kill the rider that Kili shot and knocked down. Goblins on the other hand were a piece of cake. Dropping left and right.

Tolkien said (or maybe it was my English Professor) that the Orcs are there simply as fodder. He needed a disposable bad guy army. And I think there are a huge threat--if you're not one of the main characters. Look at all the fight scenes in Lord of the Rings where it's just random good guys verses the Orcs. The good guys get thrashed. The elves get slaughtered at Helm's Deep (granted, not Orcs, but still), Faramir's company gets murdered when the Orcs cross the water, and nearly every scene in the battle of Gondor shows the Orcs over running the soldiers and bashing their heads in. It's actually rather one sided, to the point where, if the good guys didn't have their plot armor, they would have been toast in a moment.

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

Because the movies are not the books... and orcs for the most part are berserking barbarians on PCP.