The difference is that Numenor had to order their armor from Amazon
The people involved in The Good One know historical armor, and how it’s supposed to fit, while also knowing how to blend in the fantasy elements that make them pop
The New One just wants to look pretty, while clearly having vastly underestimated the needed budget to make good costumes.
Honestly, I think I’ve seen some repainted Spirit Halloween stuff.
Granted, a good prop/costume department can make anything cheap look good. I’ve seen a lot of plumbing parts attached to Sci fi guns. (some ship guns are literally entirely plumbing parts with vfx lasers done in post)
I’d love to see a total breakdown of the expenses. I’d wager the costume department is one of the lowest on the list.
LPT: If you want armor that allows proper motion, you need sliding joints, or narrow areas with less protection. The chest piece should not be flat across the bottom, nor should it come down to your waist. You can’t bend properly with the one on the right. Range of motion on the arms is also severely limited, which makes combat basically a death sentence for you since you literally can’t move your arms to block high.
Boromir on the other hand, everything allows for greater range of motion. The chest piece flares out once it goes a little past the ribcage, which while probably wouldn’t win you any yoga competitions, allows you to bend and ride a horse. The pauldrons are oversized to cover the thinner shoulder straps, so the arms can rotate up properly, and the armor around all the joints slides nicely over itself.
Once you know how to make GOOD armor, you start realizing a lot of modern movies just clearly have no consideration for it. It’s all about what looks cool to the average person.
Skallagrim on youtube has some breakdowns of historic accuracy in movies, but he usually focuses on the combat itself. Though every point I’ve brought up comes up in one way or another during combat.
*to the average person
I regret to inform you that a great many people find it “cool”, including a lot of the people I know who are huge fans of the Peter Jackson films.
Im not sure I’d say anywhere near half the people who have seen it would say it’s “cool” but unfortunately the average person doesn’t really know much about what makes good armor. I don’t fault them for it, but I do fault the show for it.
Boromir is infinitely cooler even without the armor.
Regardless, you know someone looked at that thing, and said to themselves “yeah, this is good. This is correct.” which is just… Unfortunate.
One on the right is more accurate based on my museum tours. Can’t hate on either imo
I’m genuinely curious, do you happen to recall what museums you may have seen similar designs at? I’m interested to see when their estimated age was and from what regions, because I can totally see people making armor like that, it’s just not as effective as actual combat armor as what’s on the left.
I’ve seen some pretty wildly impractical armors, and weapons over the years.
All of the metal ages all had wonky weapon designs at the starts, as we were still figuring out how to work things, how to kill each other, and how to use the new shiny stuff to our advantage.
And don’t get me started on ceremonial outfits/weapons… Those are just… No. Just no.
Granted, a good prop/costume department can make anything cheap look good.
Yes, but good prop departments aren’t cheap.
Also, fully agree on the difference between actual armor and crappy lookalikes. I’ve seen and worn plenty of shitty larp armor to know how incredibly annoying they are. I also own a historical replica, and you can do everything in it (except sit on a chair with a backrest).
Also the pecs fairing out on the right would guide a blade in, while the left flairs out in the center to be convex everywhere and guide a blade away. It’s the same concept as tank armor. Convex armor allows an incoming object to slide away instead of having no where else to go and all the energy coming in.
OTOH a gambeson under an ill fitting breastplate was pretty good armor for most people for a couple thousand years. To this day getting armor to fit right and be used correctly is a struggle. Including orders to wear pieces that severely restrict movement. But that kind of realism kind of misses the point of fantasy as a genre.
Most of the costumes in the show are very, very good tbf. It’s something they generally did well. Same goes for the props.
I also wouldn’t really compare heavy “in battle” armour against some more casual armour that he wore off-duty.
E: Here is Elendil’s battle armour, which is probably a more apt comparison to Boromir’s heavy armour.
Both look really cheap, and are badly designed, especially when compared to lotr.
For example look at the angles on the chest.
Boromir’s armour is angled to deflect incoming strikes. So if someone tries to stab him in the chest, the strike will slide off. It makes sense, and is the basis of good, functional armour throughout history.
Now look at these other two. You can aim for the heart, miss and hit the ribs, and the tip will still slide and go under the pec. It directs all strikes towards your heart instead of away from it.
It matches breastplates from hoplites, though. It makes sense if we think LOTR = Middle Ages and ROP = Ancient Rome.
The costumes are good, but the armor in the show is all over the place.
According to this blog post by a military historian, that “scale” armor you linked is the worst of a bad bunch:
Perhaps the worst offender (which unfortunately gets a lot of screentime) is the odd Númenórean scale armor. Now scale armor was not necessarily a bad idea here (it could make for an interesting visual motif connecting the seafaring Númenóreans with fish-scales, for instance), but there are two immediate problems with this armor. First, it doesn’t seem structured like scale armor. The strong cording around the edges and rigid spaulders make it look like rigid armor made to look like it is composed of scales. The effect is only increased because the backing is shaped to give it pectoral muscles (and chests for women, which is doubly silly). But that’s not how historical scale armor hangs on the body.
Scale armor is [supposed to be] a lot more flexible (with the downside that the very flexibility of the scales means that a strike from below can pass beneath them and through the armor) and would thus hang and shape to the body. This armor does not do that. Instead as noted what this looks like are solid plates that are made to look like they are made out of scales. And that’s also not a terrible idea except that the actors are then also wearing scale-armor-print shirts underneath the armor which makes it clear that we’re to understand a flexible scale armor covering the whole of the upper body, which this clearly isn’t.
What on earth is this armor made out of? The queen’s armor looks like it might be bronze, albeit less well polished than I’d expect for royalty, but everyone else’s scale armor is made of this dull off-white material that looks like plastic or pressed foam, presumably because it is plastic or pressed foam. Surely this stuff should be made of iron?
You also get the bonus factor from it being made by skilled Numenorean smiths who had access to techniques used by the Noldor and whatnot. Maybe it was mithril or something too. Dunno, but it’s not a huge ask to suspend disbelief on this one.
It looks cheap and poorly made, though. With this budget, they could have just made scale armor that actually looks like scale armor. Especially for prominent characters.
If you want to read a military historian’s long take on Rings of Power armor, here you go. Spoiler: he’s not a fan, although he did like most of the armor in the LotR trilogy (elsewhere on his blog).
The virgin vs chad meme template update we didn’t know we needed
