Corrected entry: In the scene on Mount Doom, as Frodo runs in through the doorway, Sting (his sword) is visible at his belt. However,Sam has been carrying Sting since the Shelob scene.
Corrected entry: Wasn't it nice of Shelob to clean all that dirt off Frodo's face when she stung him and wrapped him in web (he has a clean face when Sam unwraps him). It was a bit mean of those orcs in Cirith Ungol to put it all back on again.
Correction: The dirt on his face my have come off with the sticky spiderweb. Orcs aren't known to be clean and would have thrown him on a dirty surface when moving him and removing his clothes.
Corrected entry: There is a sort of fly by shooting over Minas Tirith and the square on top of Gondor with the old tree on it...at the end of the square you can see a sort of fence to prevent from falling from the edge...when Denethor II lights himself he runs over the square and jumps from it....where's the fence?
Correction: Earlier in the film, if you look closely, you can see a small gap at the very end of the walls.
Corrected entry: When the Nazgul flies past the orcs marching from the evil castle-like building by the stairs to Mordor, it flies very close to the orcs, with its beast flapping its mighty wings, probably creating large gusts of wind. Yet none of the torches being carried even flicker or blow.
Correction: The Nazgul are high above the orcs, considering the orcs are marching, the wind from the beast would have a negligible effect on the torches which are already being disturbed by the marching of the orcs.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Elijah Wood is lying in bed after being rescued from Mt. Doom when the Fellowship greet him, in one shot you can see a lipstick print on his chin area as if someone kissed him between takes and they didn't notice. It is very faint but if you look hard you can see it.
Correction: Well, he certainly is adorable, but I rather doubt that's lipstick. Notice how he had cuts and dirt smudges all over his face when he was taken from Mordor, and while they did clean him up a bit in Gondor, he still had the wounds. So it's probably just a scab or a scrape or something.
Corrected entry: When Smeagol is becoming Gollum, he is in a cave and takes a fish out of the water. As he eats it, we see he has almost no teeth left. But when we see him as Gollum later, especially when he's talking to himself in the pond's water, he has MANY more teeth in his mouth then he had originally lost.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film, when the underwater shot shows Deagol being dragged along by the fish he's caught, Deagol projects no shadow onto the bottom of the river.
Correction: The sun could be at any angle, as we never see it, and if it was close to the horizon, the sun wouldn't project his shadow right under him. Also, water bends light, so the shadow might be somewhere else even if the sun is directly overhead. Furthermore, there were many trees around, which would shade the area and make shadows much harder to see.
Corrected entry: In the scene right after Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas jump of the ship, Legolas and Gimli continue their game of who kills the most orcs. There is a shot of Legolas where he shoots an arrow and says, "15" he makes the move to grab another arrow and shoots, but there is no arrow in his hand or in the bow when he shoots it and says, "16."
Correction: Legolas does fire 2 arrows. But I doubt they are visible to the human eye in the theatre. The 16th arrow is only captured by the film in 1 or 2 frames, but is definitely there.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Pippin is about to climb up and light the beacon in Minas Tirith, it is quite obviously daylight. The next scene is of the orcs arriving in ships at Osgiliath, and it is night. We see Osgiliath several times in daylight and it is never that dark. But the next scene of Pippin lighting the beacon it is day again. It would never have taken that long for him to get up that tower.
Correction: The ships arrive before Gandalf tells Pippin to light the beacons. It is just dawn when Gandalf sends Pippin up the tower. When they cut back to Osgiliath the orcs are fighting the Rangers and if you look at the sky it is getting lighter, the movie simply just goes back a few minutes before the sun rises. So this is not a mistake.
Corrected entry: When the orcs are attacking Minas Tirith, we see them loading their catapults with heavy rocks, which they've towed there on wagons. They are able to both haul them and load them with the aid of huge Cave Trolls. After they've begun their attack on the city, the guards of Minas Tirith retaliate by launching very large sections of fallen masonry back at the orcs. These are shown to be enormous and often kill about a dozen orcs in one shot. Clearly, these chunks of stone would weigh several tons. So how did the men of Minas Tirith load them onto the catapults?
Correction: The warfare of Middle Earth is much like that of medieval warfare. They used to fire huge stones from their catapults as well, and they sure didn't have cave/mountain trolls with them. All they had was horses and men, the same as the Gondorian soldiers. So, it is quite possible; especially with the use of block/tackle/other simple machines.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Pippin climbs the beacon of Minas Tirith, the shot from below shows a sentry patrolling the little bridge to the beacon. When Pippin arrives on the wood pile and looks in the direction of the bridge, the sentry is gone, and a man in a completely different uniform is sitting on the ground. The man who joins him later is not the sentry either.
Correction: The entire scene in the movie is not in 'real time', it would take Pippin much longer to actually climb to the top. Therefore, it is reasonable that the locations and identities of sentries in various shots would change during the duration of Pippin's climb.
Corrected entry: Just after Frodo has destroyed the ring, he and Sam are lying on a large rock surrounded by lava and discussing the shire. In the shots looking down on them talking, there is water, in the top right corner, running between the slabs of rock they are lying on.
Correction: Uh, no. What you MAY be talking about is the white hot lava combined with the shimmering heat waves. That shot was probably completely digital, so I doubt the filmmakers would put in such a big mistake.
Corrected entry: When Frodo has been trapped in the spider's web, he escapes from it, and you see that he is all wrapped in it. Then he hits a large rock, and suddenly almost all the web is gone.
Correction: Watch closely as Frodo exits the tunnel, he grabs & pulls the strands of web almost completely off. There are still some strands around his shoulders.
Corrected entry: When Frodo is in the tower, the camera pans from his hips up. If you look closely at his pant line, you can see the rim of his underwear. You can even see Hanes written on it.
Correction: These are not modern undergarments. They are period undergarments that are held up with either buttons or ties, not elastic. (I looked specifically for this after hearing "you can see his underwear" rumors).
Corrected entry: At the end of the movie, when Sam and Frodo are helping Bilbo down to the dock where the elves are waiting, Frodo is on Bilbo's right, which means that Frodo is holding onto Bilbo with his left hand, the one that Gollum bit the finger off. Yet the finger is completely intact.
Correction: Look closely; his index finger is shorter than it should be & has some scarring.
Corrected entry: When Denethor has set himself on fire he runs from the room and outside before throwing himself from the tower, from the view he would have had to run quite a distance, maybe even half a mile. This is impossible, he is drenched in oil and blazing, he would be dead before he made it that far.
Correction: Denethor had adrenaline rushing through his veins so he did have the power to run the distance.
Corrected entry: If you look closely at the black gates when they are first shown, you can see that this shot was filmed in the dry delta or bed of a river, the strange thing is that there are no tracks other than the ones made by the horses. There should be plenty of traffic going through there.
Correction: Mordor is a land of poisonous fume and ash. New fallen ash or wind blowing the ash around could account for the missing footprints of marching armies.
Corrected entry: In the end of the scene where Frodo has been wrapped in the web by the spider, Frodo is supposed to be frozen in a coma-like state, with his eyes fixed wide open and straight ahead. In the final shot, you can see Frodo's eye (from Frodo's point of view, his right eye) move slightly to look sideways.
Correction: I found this on stupidring.com: Watch carefully - when Sam adjusts Frodo's head ("don't go where I can't follow"), his eyes move slightly. Elijah Wood might have been looking at something to keep his eyes still, but when his head was passively moved, his eyes continued to fixate on whatever it was he was looking at. Don't know whether or not PJ and Elijah were aware of this, but this is precisely how a comatose (but not dead) person's eyes often work; if you turn the head from side to side, the eyes continue to look straight ahead as if tracking a stationary object as the head moves. The phenomenon is referred to as "Doll's eyes" (old-fashioned dolls had eyes weighted to behave this way). Frodo in that scene was NOT dead, so the eye movement was quite appropriate.
Corrected entry: As the Riders of Rohan are preparing to charge into the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, King Theoden gives a rallying speech to his troops. All throughout this scene, Theoden holds his sword with his right hand. But in every other fighting sequence (and in 'The Two Towers') Theoden shows his capabilities as a LEFT-handed swordsman. I read an interview where Bernard Hill explained that the image was flipped for that scene, but it does cause a continuity problem.
Correction: Theoden carries the sword in his right hand so he can touch his riders' spear tips before the battle. Otherwise, he'd be crossing over. When you see him slashing at an Orc soon after, he is doing it left-handed.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Sam and Frodo are on the rock surrounded by lava on the side of Mount Doom, and have finished talking about the Shire and so on, Frodo's left hand comes up to comfort Sam just before the scene cuts away to the next. When it does you see his whole finger in the shot, none of it missing, no blood or anything like that.
Correction: The only person we see run into the doorway on Mt Doom is Sam, not Frodo.