Thursday, 25 June 2015

lord of the rings - Why is Orthanc so indestructible?

The implication is that it's made of some kind of heavy volcanic rock;




For the main wall of the City was of great height and marvellous
thickness, built ere the power and craft of Númenor waned in exile;
and its outward face was like to the Tower of Orthanc, hard and dark
and smooth, unconquerable by steel or fire, unbreakable except by some
convulsion that would rend the very earth on which it stood.
- Return of the King




and




They came now to the foot of Orthanc. It was black, and the rock
gleamed as if it were wet. The many faces of the stone had sharp edges
as though they had been newly chiselled. A few scorings. and small
flake-like splinters near the base, were all the marks that it bore of
the fury of the Ents. - The Two Towers





As far as the movies are concerned, according to the LOTR "Making of" Appendices, the production crew proceeded on the assumption that the tower was comprised of obsidian, a substance that has long been considered (however erroneously) to be unbreakable:




According to Richard Taylor, the painting of Alan Lee made it look as
if the tower walls were chipped out of black obsidian (a kind of
volcanic glass). In the FOTR Appendices he explains how the miniature
technicians of Weta built up their model by carving every single
element out of micro-crystalline wax. Eventually, the 13feet high
movie tower was cast into resin with the aid of a massive silicon
mould.


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