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Description and origin
As described, the fell beast's wing structure resembles a bat's (top) more than a pterodactyl's (bottom)
"...it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was...."[1] A few paragraphs later it is said to attack with "beak and claw".[1] It and the others that served the Nazgûl as steeds were taken by Sauron who raised them in such a way that they grew to an unnatural size. This most closely resembles a very large hairless pterosaur-like animal, although their wing structure is more like that of a bat. Tolkien once wrote that he "did not intend the steed of the Witch-king to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl'", while acknowledging that it was "obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much" to the "new ... mythology of the 'Prehistoric'", and might even be "a last survivor of older geological eras."[2] The differences in the beast's anatomy from pterodactyls or any other species of pterosaur makes it doubtful he intended the fell beast to belong to any group of real creatures. Some have called the fell beasts dragons.[3] However, dragons are already well established in Tolkien's writings (see Smaug, Glaurung and Ancalagon). It is likely that, had Tolkien intended fell beasts to be considered dragons, he would have just called them dragons.
Appearances in the bookIn The Fellowship of the Ring, at the River Anduin, Legolas shoots one down in the night as it approaches them. In The Two Towers Gollum sees the Witch-king and his mount while guiding Frodo and Sam, and refers to the Ringwraiths as "Wraiths on wings". In The Return of the King the Witch-king shot a black dart at Snowmane, the steed of king Théoden, while riding upon a fell beast. The horse crushed Théoden as it fell. Dernhelm (who soon revealed herself as Éowyn) defended the dying Théoden by standing between the Witch-king and the King of Rohan. She killed the fell beast, then challenged and defeated the Witch-king with the help of Meriadoc Brandybuck. All of the remaining Nazgûl were mounted on fell beasts at the Battle of the Morannon, and were suddenly dispatched to Orodruin by Sauron in response to the imminent destruction of the One Ring. The beasts are presumably destroyed along with their riders in the resulting eruption of Mount Doom. In adaptations1978 cartoonIn Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, one of the Nazgûl (possibly the Witch-king, for he carries a mace), is shown riding a fell beast. However, Bakshi's film only covers events up to the Battle of the Hornburg, so that is the last we see of the fell beasts and their riders. 1980 TV specialIn the Rankin-Bass 1980 animated version of The Return of the King, the Nazgûl ride winged horses, although the Nazgûl Lord does ride a bird like creature when he confronts Éowyn. Live-action moviesImage:Fellbeast.jpg The Witch-king's fell beast from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King In Peter Jackson's film trilogy based on The Lord of the Rings, the fell beasts are depicted as being pterosaur-like creatures, and all nine Nazgûl are visible onscreen riding them. Their features in the movies are in most cases similar to that of actual species of pterosaur with three major differences: The bone structure of their wings, which are much more bat-like than pterosaur-like; their size, as no known pterosaur was as large as the fell beasts in the movies;.[citation needed] and their facial anatomy, as they lack the elongated jaw of pterosaurs. These differences are likely attributable simply to the fact that it had to serve as a believable mount for the Nazgûl and the production team wanted the fell beasts to be physically capable of flying if they actually existed.[citation needed] This necessitated having the wingspan of a Jumbo Jet, or approximately 65 meters. The decision to use a bat-like wing structure was based on the fact that the pterosaurs wing support (an extremely long fourth finger) would be far too weak to support the weight of a wing that large, as the largest known pterosaurs believed to be capable of flight have been found with wingspans of up to only 18 meters..[citation needed] The film version of the beasts differ from Tolkien's description in that they do not have beaks. In the audio commentary, it is rather definitively stated that the design of the fell beasts was based largely on illustrations by the popular Middle-earth artist John Howe. Although the mistake is never made in the films, the actors on the commentary tracks sometimes refer to the fell beast as a Nazgûl; this is incorrect. The fell beast is the creature that the nine Nazgûl ride, and the mistake probably arose because fell beasts are always seen with a Nazgûl atop them, and because ambiguous references are made to them that could apply either to the Ringwraith or the Fell Beast. Billy Boyd does refer to them correctly. Similar creatures in other imaginative worksSome of the random encounters found in various early Final Fantasy games bear a striking resemblance to the fell beasts. This is likely due to the fact that Yoshitaka Amano, the character designer of the first six games, is a fan of Tolkien. The design was used for the Roc-class Fiends in Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2. The Wyvern Rider and Wyvern Lord classes in the Fire Emblem series of games resemble the fell beast as well. Other creatures of fantasy fiction, such as the featherless birds (which are mentioned in the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Last Battle) and the leatherblaka (from the Inherance trilogy) are also similar to the fell beast. References
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