shout out to Karl Urban as Eomer for giving one of the most heart wrenching cries ever produced in cinematic history where you can essentially feel the anguish and shock that he is going through to find that his sister was on the battlefield, and is now injured, presumably dead. words cannot describe his pain.
Think about this for a moment. To him, she was never supposed to be there. She rode out of Rohan in secret with him, while he thought he’d left her – really the only family he has left – safely at home to lead the people.
They also changed his shooting schedule after this shot to add him to some of the scenes where Eowyn was in the House of Healing. They’d expected something more downplayed – shocked, and upset, but fairly stoic, like a stereotypical fantasy hero man – but they said when they saw this display of emotion, they couldn’t imagine him not being there watching over her heal.
One thing that really makes me mad about the movies is that half of the best speeches are stolen from Eomer in the books. Théoden’s warcry of “Death!” at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was actually made by Eomer after he found out that Théoden had died and he was now in command. He was also smart and charming, but overall the Eomer of the books was emotional and very much listened to his heart over anything else.
Karl Urban is a phenomenal actor, and I really feel like he understood the character of Eomer as he was represented in the books. And I love that.
All of this, and I also adore it because it gives the necessary emotional context for the scene where he tells Eowyn she shouldn’t go to war. It’s not because she’s a woman and her place is at the hearth, it’s because she’s his sister and he cannot bear the thought of her in battle. And this is why.
Book!Éomer has some wonderful scenes that the movie didn’t really do justice to. Tolkien makes him the viewpoint character at the climax of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, when the black sails of the Corsairs of Umbar appear coming up the Anduin.
Stern now was Éomer’s mood, and his mind clear again. He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.
