Uruk-hai archery from Lord of the Rings

A reader of mine (should I call them fans, I don't know?) asked me to make a blog post of Lurtz from the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Naturally I got interested, since this was one of my favourite movies when I was growing up. Can't believe it's almost been two decades from it! Lurtz is the leader of the Uruk-hai, the "super orcs" created by Saruman in Isengard. He is not in the books of Tolkien, so he's invented for the movie. In Lord of the Rings book Boromir is killed by orc archers, "pierced by many arrows".

The scene is very powerful, the last stand of Boromir against countless Uruk-hai horde. Lurtz, their leader was more fearsome than Azog from the later CGI-ruined Hobbit-trilogy for sure. I want to make several points about his archery though:

1. Reverse grip. There is very little evidence that this style was ever used historically anywhere in the World. There are no added benefits of reversing the Mediterranean grip like this.

2. The reverse grip has lead Lurtz to cant his bow, but this is in limits of reason, so it's not a mistake. What is though, is that the back of the bow has a clear edge on it. Bow backs should be (near) flat since that makes them structurally stronger. A wooden selfbow is made from a split tree trunk so that the back of the bow is made from the outer layer of wood, and belly from the inside. The bow is planed so that the back is formed of a single grain, and not sawn cross-grain, since that would make it weaker. Making a bow with a triangular shape like this would make the single grain back of the bow very thin.

 Longbow cross sections. The back of the bow (pointing outwards of the archer) is on top of these pictures. As you can see, the back is always pretty flat.

Composite recurve bows are also pretty flat on their backs since it's easier to glue flat pieces together and there would be no added benefit of this kind of edge on the bow. Some composite bows however turn towards this trriangular back shape near the end of their limbs, in the siyahs. That makes those parts less bendy, which is a desired effect there, but not in the lower limbs on the bow. Lurtz's bow is triangular everywhere on its back. I guess orcish things have to be black and edgy, like their souls (if they have those).

Cross sections of a limb of a composite recurve bow. The limb is more or less flat (to make it more bendy) until the siyah (left in the picture) which is triangular to make it bend less. It wouldn't be a really good idea to make the whole bow triangular on its back.

3. Our poor fallen hero Boromir is redeeming himself here, making the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of the hobbits Merry and Pippin from the orcs. He continued fighting after Lurtz shot two arrows straight to his upper body. The third one dropped him to his knees. Is this believable?

The first arrow struck to the upper left pectoralis major muscle (big chest muscle), behind which at this spot is the left lung. A human will die of arrow punctured lung if not given medical treatment, but the death doesn't come immediately, it can take minutes up to half an hour maybe. The second arrow struck Boromir to his lower left abdomen, where there are intestines. Punctured guts will also lead to death without treatment, but not in an instant. Boromir continues fighting exhausted even after these two shots.

Panting breath results from the punctured lung, and he only uses the right hand for swordfighting, except for one powerful blow where he uses both hands. The first arrow to the left chest muscle have probably made moving the left arm difficult and painful. The third arrow drops Boromir on his knees again for the last time. This shot hits straight in the middle of his torso, where the stomach and liver are. This is also a deadly shot, but it will take awhile for him to die. All and all I think the death of Boromir is depicted fairly realistically, the weariness and woundings are really taking a toll on him and finally he collapses. Beautifully filmed and painfully sad at the same time.

Something I want to say about the armour though. Boromir is wearing a mail shirt (a 'chain' before a 'mail' is completely redundant) under his sleeveless leather coat and short-sleeved fabric tunic. Those garments over the top of the mail shirt are not armour, just clothes, since they wouldn't provide much protection from weapons. But the mail shirt (of which we can only see sleeves from under the tunic) is real armour, and capable of protecting its wearer from arrows pretty effectively. A widely spread misconception regarding mail is that it's good against slashing attacks, but weak against puncturing hits, such as thrusts and arrow hits. This is not entirely true. While mail protected obviously better against cutting attacks (like all armours were), an expensive good quality mail (which all historical mail was, unlike most modern mail used in reenactment) did stand a chance against arrows too. Only specifically designed "mail piercer" arrowtips of long bodkin type (needle bodkins) shot from powerful bows could penetrate it.

Arrows Lurtz are using do not seem to be (long) bodkins, as shown on the right.

Lurtz's arrowtips are not shown in focus to the camera at all, but they seem to be like "standard" arrowheads of leaf shape, generally quite small, which is good. But they do not seem to be bodkins, at least long ones. Would those penetrate mail armour? Probably not. And Lurtz's arrows struck something like halfway through Boromir, his armour and clothes and all. Lurtz is supposed to be an exceptionally strong warrior, even for an Uruk-hai, so maybe his bow is super strong?

But then again we see in close-up shots that Boromir's chest skin is showing between the lapels of his tunic, and that indicates that there is no mail underneath the torso (another possibility is that his mail shirt also has a wide neck hole). And in fact in the costume of actor Sean Bean there are only mail sleeves attached in his undertunic (done for saving production time of course).

Boromir's costume only included mail sleeves sewn onto an undershirt, instead of a full mail armour. On the right an example of European 16th century arming doublet with sewn on mail sleeves. This would have been worn under full plate armour, and the breast and backplates would have covered the parts were there are no mail in this arming doublet.

While this was done historically in the 15th century and later when plate armour was used by knights and men-at-arms, the pieces of mail that were sewn to an arming doublet were used at those points were there were no plates, such as armpits and inside of elbows. Those who didn't have plate armour, had mail shirts covering their torso and arms. Since Boromir doesn't have any plate armour with him on the travel with the Fellowship, it is reasonable to suggest that he should have an entire mail shirt under his outer garments, and not just sewn on sleeves. Since nobody would use mail (or any armour) to protect the arms before the torso.

Lurtz is shown here executing the last deadly shot, which he ultimately fails due to Aragorn's interruption. This is the first time we see his bow fully. And it is indeed an interesting piece of weaponry. The general shape of the bow is strange, like an inverted recurve bow, without the siyahs though. But this shape of bows are known from a few places and times in World history, ancient Egypt and the Near East coming to mind first. It's a perfectly functional design for a bow, yet a peculiar one. Suits the orcs well I think, since it's so different than the bows of the elves or men of Middle Earth. However, some things I consider mistakes here.

On left, a recurve bow of Turkish early modern period form, on right an angular bow of ancient Egyptian form of the Bronze Age. The orcish bow resembles a mix of these two.

4. This Uruk-hai bow has two blades attached to over and under its handle. This is stupid, since nobody would use a bow as a hitting weapon. Not even the orcs. There are some pretty stupid things said about the Uruk-hai and orcs in general in the supplementary material to the trilogy of films by Peter Jackson. I remember reading as a child from the book "Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare" that the boots Uruk-hai are using were nailed to their feet! why on Middle Earth would anybody do that? It would make their walking painful, probably causing severe effects due to bleeding etc. Even though the Uruk-hai apparently don't feel pain it would still be very counterintuitive and idiotic thing to do. Why not just walk without boots then, since the purpose of boots is to protect the feet?

The same kind of thinking applies to other design about the orcs, everything have to be crudely made, look very worn out (even though it's shining new), everything is very angular and spikey, and looks painful to wear. This is true for the bow too, which have the weird angle at its back which I talked about earlier. It also has these blades that are never even used in the movie. Since they're useless. It's like a knuckle duster in a sword fight, that means an obvious loss. Lurtz picks up a sword after Aragorn falls him down since even the moviemakers realised it would look stupid if he fought with using the bladed bow as a knuckle duster, and it would be too easy for Aragorn to win against that.

5. This bow makes a very creeky sound when drawn. This would be a design mistake applied to orcish bows specifically if it wouldn't be a mistake applied to all bows in historical films! Bows do not make a creeking sound when drawn. If they do, they are probably somehow broken and in danger of snapping or splitting at some point in near future. And don't tell me this is an old bow, since it's brand new, like everything the Uruks have, as well as themselves.

What else is good about this picture is that Lurtz has a hip quiver! Not the ubiquitous back quiver that Legolas has. And everybody else in movies. But nobody in real World Middle Ages, the obvious inspiration behind Middle Earth.