One SEVERELY underrated moment in the Fellowship of the Ring, one of my favorite subtle moments in the film, is Aragorn’s reaction to Weathertop.
First the Hobbits/Aragorn travel out of Bree and into a barren wilderness. After struggling for days through barren plains and disgusting marshes full of so much nothing, they arrive here:
A bare, melancholy landscape in the middle of nowhere. The music is bleak and lonely.
There is nothing around except a pile of broken ruins on a far hill.
Aragorn’s reaction is to say, basically to himself: “this was once the great watch tower of Amon Sûl .”
And you realize that the lifeless landscapes these characters have been journeying through for the past few days used to be part of a beautiful, vibrant kingdom that no longer exists.
And that Aragorn understands that, and feels that loss, but the hobbits don’t.
Then they set up camp on Weathertop. The hobbits all put their things down and start to relax….but Aragorn stands up, and walks away.
Then he stands on the edge of Weathertop, and looks out over he landscape:
It actually took me a while to notice that you can see his silhouette under the overhang, against the clouds:
And while this moment is tiny, it reminds me of a moment in the book. When Aragorn and co. arrive at Weathertop in the book…..Aragorn suggests they all look out over the top, so that they can see the same view the ancient kings saw when they used Weathertop as a watch tower.
And that’s what I feel like Aragorn is doing in this little moment– surveying the horizon the way the ancient kings used to do before everything fell apart.
And I love that because…. there’s a recurring thing in the films where Aragorn comes across symbols of his kingdom, but the symbols are always decayed or broken. The most obvious example of this is Narsil, the Sword that Was Broken. (And Aragorn’s character arc in the films is about learning that his kingdom, though it seems hopelessly broken, is not beyond repair.)
And I think Weathertop is another, more subtle, example of that.
also, if you don’t know the books, like… this is foreshadowing that HE is a king… literally watching over the kingdom from atop the ancient Weathertop.
YES and it’s also like:
Aragorn is a king in exile.
The Nazgul were once “great kings of men.”
Weathertop was once a watchtower that belonged to a fallen ancient kingdom–a kingdom that a man like any of them might’ve ruled.
Aragorn the King of Gondor goes to Weathertop as “Strider.” And nine great kings of men go to Weathertop as Ringwraiths.
So Aragorn, a king who has wandered for so long in disguise that he’s beginning to lose his sense of identity….and the Ringwraiths, kings who have already utterly lost their identity…….battle in an ancient watchtower of the King, a watchtower that has become ruins/is also losing its identity.
It’s like the line from the books: “all that is gold does not glitter.”
On the surface, the battle at Weathertop is a Ranger defending the hobbits from a group of monsters in the abandoned ruins of an old hill.
But underneath the surface, it’s a battle of kings–the destined King of Gondor battling these ancient corrupted kings in the ruins of their fallen kingdom.
The Kings have finally returned to Weathertop, but they’re all as faded as Weathertop itself.
