5 December 2012
It has been a very long time since I have written anything on Opuss. Too long, perhaps. Anyway, I'm back now. Or I am for this piece, at least.
Now, I think I have made it clear before in previous Opusses that I am rather excited about the Hobbit, which I will be seeing a week on Saturday. I have also recently seen a series of six short clips from the film (about a minute each), one of which shows a brief attack from some "Warg Scouts" as Thorin Oakenshield (played by Richard Armitage of Robin Hood and Spooks) says.
Now, we are acquainted with the Warg. We met them in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. They were the vicious hyena creatures, one of which dragged Aragorn of a cliff and almost killed him. However, Peter Jackson (director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) was not happy with their design. They did not correlate with the book's description of them being particularly large, cunning and evil wolves. There were no hyenas mentioned. So, for The Hobbit, Peter Jackson has changed their appearance quite dramatically. They are no longer hyena ish, but much more wolf like. They are actually pretty impressive.
Now, I must admit I was rather partial to our hyena Warg. I am also very excited by our new, wolf Warg. However, it is difficult to imagine them in the same universe as being exactly the same, but the director wished to change the look. I have therefore come up with a brief explanation for their difference in appearance.
The Wargs we meet in The Hobbit dwell just to the eastern side of the Misty Mountains. The are wild, Northern Wargs. However, the Wargs in the south, in Isengard and Rohan, have a different appearance. Many have been bred in the caverns of Isengard, and so are deformed and unnatural. Others are otherwise separated from their northern cousins. Fangorn Forest has stood between them, Lothlorien, several rivers and about 300 miles. How they came to be separated we do not know. Probably an act of Sauron (the necromancer) or Morgoth earlier. So, the hyena Wargs as seen in The Two Towers are Southern Wargs and the wolf Wargs as seen in The Hobbit are Northern Wargs.
I hope this has cleared some stuff up. This is just a personal view. I may have made an error somewhere, but Wargs have little mention in the books, so this, I feel, is as valid as any explanation.
A Treatise On Wargs • Opuss № I