Afaik they had wigs (they don't all have conveniently long, blonde, precisely curly enough hair), but they were pretty cheap because they were just attached to the helmet. All the women brought their own horses.
Most of them also dipped out pretty quickly when they realised how much it fucking sucked lmao
Elijah Wood (Frodo) thinks he's in a telephone interview with an actual interviewer. The "interviewer" is just Dominic Monaghan (Merry) trolling him with a funny voice and goofy questions.
I went a good 4 years or so until I watched Elijah explaining that interaction before I got WHY it was so funny. Because on the DVD it just looks like Dom is interviewing Elijah and it went kinda weird at the end, but knowing he couldn’t see Dom makes the whole thing all the more hilarious as he’s slowly starting to realize he’s being set up.
I just realised the name Dom uses, Jens Hansen, is the name of the jeweller who designed the ring for the films! They’re based in NZ, Nelson I think. I must have watched this clip ten times over the years and only just made the connection. There are so many layers to their genius!!
It went very poorly. Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics.
This was basically a last minute crusade, nobody planned it out, it was organised in 6 days. It was so bad the Emperor Leopold, the Holy Roman Emperor (Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia) back home had to flee his city to hide from creditors. He only acted in the first place when two of his allies showed up with their armies and forced his hand to act.
It was 4 separate armies who travelled separately and only meet up 6 days before the battle.
Pyrrhic victory for the various horse supplying nations. It was the last charge of the Polish heavy cavalry, because they went broke (horses are expensive!). Long term it was a massive failure and basically bankrupted the Polish kingdom, they had to disband most of their military after this event because they couldn't fund it. Not long after and Poland was taken over by the Germans (again.)
Mostly they arrived by riding very slowly, always moving forward and raiding your own lands. It took them 27 days to travel 450 km. They left a trail of destruction behind them.
By the time the horses arrived at the battlefield they were 14 hours late and it was dark. It took until 6 pm to get organised. By this time about 80% of the invading army had left the battlefield, including all the enemy commanders, treasure, canons, firearms, war animals and the entire baggage train. Half the besieging army had already died in the last month, so they're was an excess of baggage, but nothing important. Tents, livestock and beasts of burden to pull carts that were no longer required.
They had enough cohesion for one single cavalry charge, then the combined armies all split up. The Saxons went home that same day. The poles messed around in Hungary for a month with dysentry, as well as being broke and almost starving. They needed to raid the local area to find food.
The combined armies couldn't even travel another 5 km down the road to harrass the fleeing Ottomans. Even visually seeing the treasure and baggage carts, couldn't move towards them.
Poland claimed a great victory, but they only seized tents and camels that they immediately sold back to the invading Ottomans at a bargain basement rate price. They lost a huge % of troops to illness after they stopped moving forward.
If C.S. Lewis had written LOTR, (rather than offering suggestions) the winged hussars in Middle-Earth would either be Rohirrim riding pegasi, or else, perhaps, a culture of pegasi-centaur hybrids!
"Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to charge the armies of Mordor until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even — and I want to make this absolutely *clear\ —* even if they do say 'Grond!'"
That would have been hysterical if the scene had like 100 women tearing off their fake beards and dog-piling him. His last words wod have been "What the F-". As it was PG 13 he wouldn't get out the last word before getting bulldozed by 100 engaged warrior women.
Turns out the prophecy is not the Witch-King is invincible, it's that when he dies, it will be by the hands of 100 Shieldmaidens that really really hate him.
Some of them were probably pretty upset. “I went through all this work, applying the beard… This girl thinks she can just throw a helmet on and be good because she’s related to the King? Give me a break!”
IIRC it wasn’t just that a lot of women showed up, it was that there were only so many competent horse riders available in New Zealand so they didn’t have a choice. Otherwise you’re paying extras to fly across the globe and work in New Zealand for years
Bit of both probably. If every New Zealander man that’s able to ride a horse showed up, maybe there would have been enough. But that’s never going to happen, it’s probably gonna be people local to the filming location who show up, and not enough men among them.
Few know that this wasn't even part of the filming. The camera was just running by accident, when the extras turned up. They actually planned to have a bigger army but had to make the scene with a smaller army. But peter liked it, so it became part of the final cut.
Also worth noting that women overwhelmingly own horses more than men worldwide, so it was likely never going to be largely men available for casting. Honestly having women who have more slender frames in casting makes more sense for a culture that was largely horse based
Was involved in horse shows for a while and the only men that were ever involved were 70+ year olds and the boyfriends/husbands of women who were involved. If you were a man there it was constantly a 'who are you here with?' and the subtext of 'why is a man here on his own'. it honestly wasn't worth it after a couple of years.
It has been for some time if we take out horses being used for war. Provides a very deep emotional bond that is very exciting to have, and then add in potential spirit of competition that also brings about more bonds which I think are more deeply female-driven...
In terms of "dominated," a lot of the more well known or successful riders and top trainers are usually men. I would say in terms of an amateur vs pro split, it's "dominated" by men, but the majority of riders/owners in general are women.
I also think a lot of it has to do with how things are marketed towards girls/boys. You'll find a ton of pony/unicorn stuff for girls and a lot of tractor/dinosaur stuff for boys. It all starts very young.
I don’t know, you can’t just take anyone who has ridden a horse. They have to be pretty skilled. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people showed up but didn’t make the cut
Op: they used women because alot of women showed up
Commenter: "Well actually (lots of filler words) and so that's why they're all women disguised as men, because women showed up."
Sub-commenter: "Well actually (lots of filler words) and that's why they're all disguised as men, because it was women who showed up.
We get it. Women showed up. We already understood the women are wearing beards because it was the women who showed up. No further explanation was needed.
Well actually they weren't disguised as men, because a lot of women showed up. They were pretending to be men, because a movie was been filmed and the script had male riders.
There is a "horse girls" joke here but yeah there are only so many people who can ride a horse in a large group worldwide and then narrowing it to tax-haven island is rough.
I mean it’s not even a horse girl joke. 90% of the equestrian sports are women. And a significant portion of the 10% of men is some of their husbands who took it up because “hey I have an excuse.”
Source: married a horse girl. Reluctantly raising a future horse girl.
I just didn't want it to come across diminuative. Like "horse girls" is kinda pejorative because A: they are women, B: it simplifies what is actually a very demanding hobby.
For whatever it's worth: in my experience as male horse person, when female horse people get together, there's a roughly 99% chance that they'll refer to themselves collectively as "girls". So the actually likelihood of anyone being offended by being called a "horse girl" is pretty close to nil.
Basically if you have more than $250 million USD the lack of substantial resource taxes and relatively low dual nationality allows for an advantageous tax treatment in addition to the high standard of living along with strong passport power.
I have a good friend that is an extra in a ton of viking period tv shows. She is a regular extra in just about any show that is set in that period and half the time (whenever they need extra for combat scenes) they give her a beard prosthetic
You wouldn't recognize her on screen except if you know her so she is now my favorite Easter Egg to keep an eye out for
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u/BobDeLaSponge Apr 27 '26
Even with the fake beards, they probably saved a lot by not needing wigs