Goofs

During the final battle in front of the gates of Mordor the entire army of Gondor and Rohan are on horses. But when the war begins the horses are nowhere to be seen.

When Pippin takes the seeing stone from Gandalf's sleeping arms, he replaces it with a pitcher. This pitcher is absent when Gandalf wakes up.

When Gandalf is speaking with Denethor, the end of his cloak alternates between clean and mud soaked.

After Frodo wakes up in Minas Tirith, Merry and Pippin stand in the doorway. Their height reaches the middle of the ornate door carving in the close-up, but in their next wide shot running in, they are considerably lower. When Legolas and Aragorn walk in, also in a close-up, their height is just a bit higher on the carving than the two Hobbits' heights were. Then when Sam stands in the doorway his height also reaches the center of the carving.

Through the course of the movie, Frodo's face is very dirty. When unconscious in the spider web, it has become totally clean. But once he is freed of the spider web, it is dirty again.

Denethor is holding Boromir's split horn when Gandalf and Pippin arrive at Gondor. But Faramir had Boromir's split horn in The Two Towers and hadn't yet returned to Gondor.

Frodo and Sam escape Mount Doom while it erupts, but lands safely on a rock just as the lava surrounds it only a couple of metres below them and lies there to wait for death satisfied their mission is complete and Middle-Earth is safe. From their distance from the lava pool, which is well over 1,000°C, both should have immediately begun burning. Realistically, no one should have been able to enter the volcano itself because the ambient temperature would be hazardously high even standing high above the magma pool.

When Denathor is completely covered in fire and running to his death, he wouldn't have been able to run that very long distance covered in that much fire.

When the Gondorian signal-beacons are lit to warn Rohan of the war, they all burst into flames, but there is no smoke visible from any of them: not likely from a wooden bonfire, however clean-burning.

When Elrond gives Aragorn the re-forged sword, Aragorn unsheathes it, holding both the sword and scabbard, but the length of that blade would make it physically impossible for him to do that, given the length of his arms.

In theatrical cut, when Pippin informs Gandalf that Denethor is about to burn Faramir alive Gandalf has his staff in his right hand. But when they arrive at the Tomb of the Stewards, the staff is gone and Gandalf has take a spear from one of the soldiers at the door to use as a weapon in attacking Denethor. This is considered a continuity error. But in fact, there is a scene in between which is cut from theatrical release but restored in special edition in which Gandalf's staff is broken by the Witch King during their encounter.

If Bilbo ages rapidly without the Ring, why hasn't Gollum suffered the same effect?

Ring bearers do not begin aging until the One ring is destroyed. Had Gollum not fallen into the lava, he would have rapidly turned to dust when the ring was destroyed.

Sauron is established to be alerted when someone uses the One Ring, however, he clearly isn't when Sam uses it to hide at the Cirith Ungol tower.

Sam does have possession of the ring at this point but there is nothing to indicate that he actually uses it.

The troll attempting to break the door down while Gandalf talks about death is using a blacksmith's plate forming hammer. Not a weapon of war, these are used for forming bar stock into sheets. The plate forming hammer is common in many of the book illustrations, especially concerning the dwarves.

While it may not be a weapon of war, during a war, combatants will use whatever is available to them.

Odo Proudfoot, named Everard in the film, died 15 years before the War of the Ring yet still resides in Hobbiton when the four Hobbits return from the war.

A movie based on a book is not required to follow the story of a book. The scriptwriters and director have artistic license to deviate from the source material.

Near the beginning, as the camera flies towards Rohan the smoke can be seen pouring back into the chimneys rather than out of them.

Orlando Bloom's eyes are brown, but as Legolas, his eyes are changed to blue using CGI. In close-up outside the Black Gates, his eyes are CGI blue, but in a shot immediately following with Gandalf in the foreground and Legolas in the near background, his eyes are clearly brown.

At the beginning of the film, Gandalf confronts Saruman at Orthanc. Saruman is standing on the top-most platform of Orthanc 500 feet above the ground, while Gandalf and his party are standing very close to the bottom of the tower. It is clear from the elevated camera angles that those on the ground would have to be looking almost straight up to be able to see Saruman, and Saruman would have to be leaning out over the edge looking nearly straight down to be able to see those on the ground. Thus the entire scene is logistically impossible as depicted. The actors on the ground are not looking up nearly high enough to see Saruman, and when Legolas shoots his bow he is not aiming high enough to reach the top of the tower. Saruman is not close enough to the edge to even be visible from the base of the tower, and Wormtongue is even further back than Saruman, yet he is somehow shot by Legolas from below. Finally, it would not be possible for them to hear and speak to one another at that distance. It would be like standing on top of a 50 story building (Orthanc is 500 feet tall) casually talking to someone on the ground. That is why in the book, Saruman and Wormtongue speak to Gandalf from a window above the entrance, instead of from the top of the tower.

After Gorbag says, "You touch it, and I'll stick this blade in your gut", Shagrat and Gorbag start to fight. A few shots later there's a close-up of Gorbag being bald - he's not wearing his hairpiece/wig in this shot-as he's being pushed towards the right of the screen by Shagrat, just before falling into the hole! (On the Extended Edition DVD Director/Writer commentary, writer Philippa Boyens actually admits that his wig falls off!)

In a quick shot of Gandalf holding Pippin while riding Shadowfax in front of the Black Gate, the face of Billy Boyd's double's can be seen.

The Orc commander orders the archers to "fire" their arrows. This sense of the word originated when fire was used to ignite explosive weapons, e.g., to discharge artillery or firearm, and was extended later to discharge of any missile, e.g., arrow.

When Elrond comes to give the newly re-forged Narsil to Aragorn, a gust of wind suddenly blows up, knocking over a suit of armor in the background. The armor makes no noise as it crashes however.

As Aragorn pleads with the Dead Men of Dunharrow to join him in exchange for their release from the curse, his dialogue is visibly not matched up to what he's saying in the short wide shot.

At the end, as the camera pulls in toward the round yellow door of the house, a stage light can be seen reflected in the window to the left of the door.

After Pippin draws his sword, the next shot is of Orcs running to the right of the screen. As that shot opens, click five or six frames in and two crewmembers are seen between the Orcs on the right of the screen, click a few more times and more crew members are visible in the middle, between the Orcs.

During the scene where Faramir rides out to Osgiliath, on the order of Denethor, one of the horses nearest the camera can be seen to have a bright green towel/flannel under its saddle - possibly used in place of, or in addition to, a saddle pad or numnah, to ensure a better saddle fit.

When Denethor catches fire, he is in the Hallows of Minas Tirith, yet he plummets off the prow of the city, which is "... about a mile..." away. Peter Jackson admitted this in the DVD commentary.

In the scene where Frodo and Sam encounter and fight with Gollum on the slopes leading to Mount Doom, Frodo starts running towards the entrance to the Crack of Doom. Not only are they on top of an erupting volcano, but they are also in Mordor, which as both the books and films would have us believe, is a arid, barren, and totally dry location. However, as Frodo runs up the hill, there is clearly trickling water in the background, indicating a large stream.

When Gandalf rides out, using the light of his staff to ward off the fell beasts so Faramir's team can get back to Minas Tirith, Pippin is on the horse with him, even though there would have been no reason to bring him along. The reason is that this scene was originally filmed to coincide with Gandalf and Pippin's arrival at Minas Tirith, but it was pushed further back as the story evolved.

There is no stairway or other form of entry to the roof of Orthanc. This is most evident in the extended edition of ROTK: Grima's sudden appearance behind Saruman when moments before an all revealing overhead shot didn't show him or any means for him to get there.

When Faramir tells Gandalf and Pippin he has seen Frodo "not two days" earlier, Gandalf and Pippin have been riding for at least three days from Rohan to reach Minas Tirith, not counting the day before at Rohan and the day they spent at Minas. According to the "The Two Towers", Faramir met with Frodo and Sam before all this happened, so at least 4 days earlier, maybe 5 days.

Frodo was wearing his mithril shirt when stung by Shelob, and the stinger shouldn't have been able to penetrate it. This was demonstrated when the shirt protected him from a troll trying to skewer him with a spear in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

At the end of the film Minas Tirith, which had sustained significant damage after being besieged by Sauron's army, is shown as fully rebuilt. Such restoration work would take many years. Given that the time frame for the entire trilogy is 13 months (as indicated in the film) it is not credible that the city could be rebuilt within such a short space of time.

In the Extended Edition, "Cair Andros" is mispronounced. ("Cair" should rhyme with "wire", not "fair".)

Gandalf says that Sauron has not yet revealed his deadliest weapon, the Witch-King of Angmar. In his very next sentence, however, he says that this character stabbed Frodo on Weathertop. Frodo also later refers to the injury he received there, again referring to the location as Weathertop. However, nobody identifies it by that name in the first film. Aragorn only says that it was once the watch tower of Amon Sul.

As Frodo enters Shelob's lair with Gollum, Frodo can be seen visibly favoring his right foot, but in the next shot, he is walking normally.