About the Frodo and Sam in Osgiliath Sewers pictures.
Simon wrote, “Interested to read MattForce’s comments on the picture. If anyone looks in the ‘photograph guide to the Two Towers’ book, they will see these pictures at the end with text that reads something like, ‘After Faramir decides to let them go, he shows Frodo and Sam a secret way out of the city’
On the other hand, Jolyon writes to argue with this:
“When I saw these pictures on TORN, the first question that leaped to mind was: “Why are Frodo and Sam alone?”
“They were brought to Osgiliath as captives of Faramir and his men and left with Gollum, so this didn’t make sense.
“Then I started thinking, where else do Frodo and Sam walk alone through a tunnel? The answer of course is “on their way to Shelob’s Lair”, when Gollum deserts them.
“There were orc-built passageways intended to avoid her lair, but these were intersected by all of her tunnels. The book describes the passage that Frodo and Sam initially enter as high and wide, with smooth walls and an even floor, suggesting a tunnel fashioned by orcs (“as orc-like a place as ever there could be”). This would seem to describe what we see in the photo’s quite well.
“The only problem with this is that in the pictures that we know show Shelobs Lair, the walls are very definitely cavern-like. Very rough and irregular. But this might only be the condition of the walls in that part of the tunnels that Shelob has made her home.
“Why these pictures would appear in a book about The Towers is a bit of a mystery, although it could be explained if there was some question during production over how far Frodo and Sam would get toward Shelob before the end of the second film. Perhaps it was being considered at one point to have the film leave them in the tunnels, with the final decision coming too late to alter the content of the book prior to publication.”
Robert writes: The Italian Tolkien Society (ITS) is organising an 18-day tour of New Zealand. The trip will be between March and April of 2004. [