writing-for-an-assignment

[writing-for-an-assignment]

Costumes & Worldbuilding in LOTR Films

At this point in time, The Lord of the Rings is a series that needs no introduction. Spanning two film sagas, 32 videogames, two animated features, 4 separate radio adaptations, and countless parodies and merchandise, the Lord of the Rings is essentially the Magna Carta of the fantasy genre. Peter Jackson’s film trilogy is also one of the rare book-to-movie adaptations that successfully convey worldbuilding without info-dumping dialogue. This post will examine how the costuming decisions in Peter Jackson’s trilogy developed the setting as much as the songs and dialogue used in the book. (Note: The Hobbit series will not be included as it is not a faithful adaptation of the source material and was made separately from the 2000s trilogy with different intentions in mind).

All images are from The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King

First of all, every character’s clothing color reveals their culture’s moral alignment. All elves have at least one white, silver, or golden accessory and never wear black. The darkest shade any elf is seen to wear is purple, as shown below.

The dwarves silver mail and have earthy tones in their clothing while humans have dark to earthy colors. Humans also have black accents in their outfits, reflecting Galadriel’s statement that “the hearts of men are easily corrupted.” It can be inferred that Aragorn wears all black to symbolize how his ancestor’s failure to destroy the ring was the epitome of moral corruption. Hobbits wear earthy colors that are brighter than dwarves or humans, representing how they are the least likely to succumb to the Ring’s influence out of all other species. Looking at the images below, one can actually discern each individual’s species based on clothing style & color palette alone.

Wizards wear clothing based on their culture’s hierarchy, with the chief wizard, Saruman, wearing pure white and Gandalf wearing light grey, but all wizards are meant to be morally aligned with good as shown in how Gandalf was horrified by Saruman’s betrayal and could not comprehend Saruman's motivation.

All those allied with Sauron (with the exception of Saruman) have black clothing and armor, with no other colors

Secondly, Each culture has distinct armor and clothing styles. Elven armor is made of curved metal strips in golden hues while dwarves and humans have traditional medieval armor. However, the dwarves alone have heavily engraved, bulky helmets while humans have helmets closer in design to ancient Greek helmets. Dwarves also only use weapons that require more raw strength to wield (Gimli only wields an axe and the weaponry in Moria seems to be primarily staffs, maces, etc.) Humans use either spears or swords and have different armor styles for each human culture. The Rohirrim wear leather armor and are cavalrymen, who use lances, while the Gondorians are traditional knights with swords. The Uruk Hai wear jagged black armor that seems to be poorly forged and the orcs and goblins generally don’t wear armor at all.

Third, wardrobe changes reveal character development. Galadriel's wardrobe changes in her “Dark Lady” scene, and Aragorn has very different clothing colors from when he is introduced as the ominous Strider to the king of Gondor.

In my opinion, the costuming department when above and beyond their job description. Accomplishing worldbuilding in a way that is both visually appealing and unique for each culture is hard to do well. For purpose of length, I will end my post here.