"If Middle-Earth Were Real, These Exquisite Shots..." Topic

… Would Be Its Vacation Brochure.

"While Westeros is making a run for it, JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth is still the undisputed champ of fantasy worlds beloved by cartographers. Several projects over the years have tried to map the land of Lord of the Rings—some great, some unrealized. Now, however, the most ambitious among them has joined forces with a videogame middleware company to transcend simple drawings and create the most stunning shots thus far…"
Full article here.
link

Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

Hardly enough to whet your appetite. It needs more, much more. We'll wait, I guess….

Thanks!

They do look great! I wish they had included some landmark shots. Helms Deep or Minus Tirith or something.

The one thing about the LOTR is age. Every where the party went was the ruins of old kingdoms. You couldn't go anyway without tripping over a stone wall or broken statue. You got the feeling that where there was once giants and legends, now there was just decay and the end of greatness.

Like the people who lived in Italy or France in the 9th century, you could look around and see Arches and Aqueducts and ruins of something greater. This is one reason the Peter Jacksons New Zealand is not Middle Earth, no ruins no sense of age. Game of Thrones films in Europe and by using the old castles and towns, you get the feeling of great age.

Good point Doug.

That's a bit overstated I think: ruins are always where civilization was, otherwise the land is uninhabited and pristine. Middle Earth had both, and the movies show both….

Shouldn't that be "making a run AT it"?

That is the point of middle earth. It is the Third age. Thousands and Thousands of years of occupation. From ancient Elvish and Dwarfish kingdoms to more recent human kingdoms. There are old roads every where. Roads so old that ancient growth forest have swallowed them up. No where was really pristine. Find a spot on the map that wasn't occupied at one point.

The great Evil ones made deserts out of every thing the good people of Middle Earth ever made. They could not build great kingdoms or grand works, only mockeries. Power corrupted them so that nothing they touched could flourish or grow except in twisted ways.

There was despair, decay and hopelessness every. People had given up. Just look at what they found in Rohan or in the Citadel with the Stewart. The Fellowship is nothing but a travel log of a trip from one ruined kingdom to the next. The Two Towers is a guide book on the ruins of the last great kingdoms of man, Rohan and Gondor. Just listen when you read as Tolkien describes the land they travel across.

The only people left with hope, where the hobbits of the Shire. They had been shielded by the Rangers. The only people who could spread that hope and tell the rest of the world not to give up, but to keep fighting where hobbits.