: No he wasn't. He was playing a game of secondary creation, one which he couldn't carry out to the fullest. Tolkien states quite clearly in the prologue to the Lord of the Rings what his intention was: to write a really long, gripping tale. No more. The history, the depth, the meticulous detail: all that is part of Tolkien's brilliance in making the secondary creation believable. But in the end, it's ancillary to the story and the language, which is where the real beauty of the Lord of the Rings is found--not in discussing what kind of armor the Rohirrim wore.

But this is the big difference here. The movies will have to show some kind of armor. Movies have different needs than books. I agree that the armor worn by the Rohirrim is not as important as their deeds, and their words in the book. But to engage in the creative act of making a movies, someone will have to decide what armor they wore. I view the question of accents as the same. Decisions must be made to translate what is written to the screen. Color, size, texture. Facial expressions, weaponry, lighting, etc. etc. All of these elements may have been unnecessary to Tolkien when he wrote the books. But to put together amovie that is more than just a reading of the book, someone has to make decisions about these issues.