Peter Clinch <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:Phil Cook said:There used to be an observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis (admittedly only 1400m asl but a
pretty inhospitable none the less) which was supplied using ponies to carry food and fuel up.
There is no technical reason why you couldn't have a manned post on a mountain. All you need to
do is be selective about which mountain you build your lighthouse on.
While further remembering that "nothing is impossible for the man that doesn't have to do it
himself"...
The shots reminded me of an old (probably apocryphal, unless the friend was really young) story
about one of Alexander's buddies suggesting a particularly inaccessible plateau as a site for a base
because no one could get to you up there, and Alexander having to point out that well, yes, no one
could get up to you there, which would make it kind of pointless as a command post as well as
expensive to maintain...
The big problem with the peaks shown in the film is that some of them, at least, were the kind you
need crampons to ascend (from what I've read) and didn't have any heavy sort of shelters, like
Andean observatories or Tibetan lamaseries, visible on them - the people just seemd to be sitting
under awnings next to piles of wood. BIG piles of wood. I've helped stack firewood, and um, yes I'm
not a rugged outdoors type, but regardless a cord of wood isn't something *I'd* like to carry up a
mile or more on my back. Up ropes. And after all this is an AU with a technology level mostly
equivalent to late Imperial Rome or Renaissance, so no helicopters or generators or anything to
help, in the context of the films.
In the books, the fires are set on beacon *hills*, of course, and given how much of the countryside
can be seen from White Horse Hill in Uffington, you don't in my personal experience *need* a
mountain to have a) an impressive dramatic height at all or b) to be seen from a great distance. (I
found the bare, steep feeling of that and Dragon Hill to be very disturbing, much more so than
greater heights covered with trees that I was used to at home - it felt as if I were standing on a
wave that was somehow frozen in mid-roll, and might keep turning over at any instant.)
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:If it is unbelievable scenes you are after how about the Rohirim attacking down that steep slope
in The Two Towers?
Somewhat gobsmacking having a cavalry charge down a scree slope, my mind was thoroughly blown by
that one.
As was, I think, everyone with any familiarity with horses! But that's the wonder of Photoshop - you
can just rotate the layers 20 degrees and ignore the fact that any run like that down a ski-slope
into *pikes* would result in shish-kebabs at the bottom of the hill ... or cut-and-paste a huge oxy-
acetylin flame onto the top of an Alp, without worrying about the problems of lighting cold cordwood
in a low-oxygen zone in high winds and that it would (according to what I've read about fire hazards
in observatories in Chile) once caught, burn low and smokily...
Quoted message said:But of course in land of fantastic heroes and magic you only have to pay so much heed to reality.
Unfortunately, that wasn't *supposed* to be the case with LOTR - it was written to be very
*plausible* not just in the Aristotelian sense of fantastic/supernatural fiction, but also to be
very workable in an ordinary sense; yes, there are certain "impossibles" but aside from things like
telepathy and Atlantis and Mysterious Constructs of the Ancients and the effects of Immortals out of
mythology having carried on wars throughout the ages, it's all quite mundane: horses have to rest
and eat, people have to rest and eat, miles are real miles and magic doesn't make everything easier
or possible. One of the reasons I was so disappointed, it was just another typical movie with no
regard for practicalities.
Quoted message said:I heard someone write off one of the Harry Potter movies thus: "it was totally unrealistic, there
was a ginger kid with 2 friends!" ;-)
Pete.
Hee hee! Like *rich scientists* in movies, all those mad codgers who don't have to worry about how
much equipment costs or keeping it fixed...trying to think if I've *ever* met one in RL.
bellatrys
