Lurtz
From the One Wiki to Rule Them All, the Lord of the Rings Encyclopedia.
Lurtz in The Fellowship of the Ring.
- "Saruman: Whom do you serve?"
"Lurtz: Saruman!" - —Saruman and Lurtz
Lurtz was the first of Saruman's Uruk-hai to be bred, and led them into battle against the Fellowship at Amon Hen. Lurtz also appeared to be the largest Uruk-hai. In the movie, Boromir is killed by Lurtz, who shoots him with three arrows, where, in the book, he is killed by numerous uruk-hai archers on orders from Ugluk. Aragorn then intervenes, and after a brief and brutal fight, decapitates him. In the book, Uglúk was the leader of the orc-band from the beginning.
The name "Lurtz" may have been derived by Jackson and his co-writers from the style of Tolkien's orkish language, specifically the name Lugburtz, but it also sounds similar to Lurch from The Addams Family.
Lurtz' name is never spoken aloud in the film, and is only known from the franchise and credits. Despite some initial fears that he was an entirely new character, he really wasn't much different from other generic orc leaders already present in the book.
[edit] Trivia
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- Lurtz does not appear in the book. He is a character created specifically for the movie. He was played by New Zealand actor Lawrence Makoare. Such was the size of Lawrence, that he did not have to wear the extensive amounts of padding as the other uruk-hai actors did, needing only the minimum to give him the features of an uruk-hai warrior.
- The character of Lurtz is one of the playable "heroes" in the computer game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth.
- During the fight scene between Lurtz and Aragorn, there was a part where Lurtz threw Aragorn's elvish knife, which Aragorn had embedded in the uruk-hai's leg previously in the fight, at Aragorn where Aragorn is forced to deflect the knife with his sword. This, however, was not meant to happen in the script. In the original script, the knife was meant to hit the tree behind Aragorn but due to the restricted vision caused by the Lurtz mask, Lawrence Makoare, Lurtz's actor, missed his target and threw the knife directly at Viggo Mortensen, Aragorn's actor, who was narrowly capable of deflecting the oncoming knife before it made contact with him.
