1. The Witch-king Of Angmar's Real Face
From: The Return of the King
In the movie: In the film, the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgûl, the leader of the Ringwraiths, is specified by a special, spikey, open-faced helmet over his dark cowl. Its pointy, sharp, and totally scary. In the battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Witch-kings beast slays King Théoden and his horse, but cant escape the scene before Théodens niece, owyn, shows up. With the help of Merry, owyn ultimately wins the fight and undoes him by shoving her sword into the open part of the helm and into the blackness of his face. The Witch-kings helmet crumbles around him like a crushed soda can and he is defeated.
In the book: While the film follows the sequence of events perfectly, it deviates in its visual representation of the Witch-king quite a lot. After slaying Théodens horse, owyn is given her first clear view of this Witch-king. In the words of Tolkien: A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgûl." The Lord of the Nazgûl and the horse maiden do battle until: "with her last strength she drove her sword between crown and mantle, as the great shoulders bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards." After that, the crown rolls away, and there is nothing to the wraith except its cloak upon the ground. Then there is a cry that went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind that was never heard again in that age of this world.
Why It Would Have Been Awesome: Peter Jacksons Witch-king is pretty cool and scary, yes, but Tolkiens description of this non-face demon is much more unsettling. Admittedly, its a lot easier for an audience to accept a floating crown in the air in writing than on screen, with such a visual being in danger of looking silly. But if done right, Tolkiens Witch-king, with his floating crown and eyes, could have been one of the most haunting images from the movies. As humans, we tend to find things unnatural to our universe and understanding of disturbing and uncomfortable. Red-eyed villains creep us out, as do people with no mouths, or eyes. Exorcism movies have scared people for years by bending peoples bodies in ways that arent natural to us. The Headless Horseman continues to scare because of his missing cranium. The "eyeless" Pale Man from Pans Labyrinth is one of the most eerie monsters of the past decade. Pete Jacksons Witch-King was pretty cool, sure, but Tolkiens faceless lord taps into a much deeper, physiological, human fear. Not only is this headless thing moving, but it is talking with no mouth. And seeing as it has no head, we can only imagine that its entire body, and the entire bodies of all the Ringwraiths, is made of complete nothingness. We can only imagine what kind of evil could be responsible for such a disembodied, ghostly entity. Sadly, a much-less scary Witch-king is featured on screen, meaning that this ghoulish fiend lives on only in our imaginations. Unfortunate.
Painting courtesy of deviantart user HasaniClaxton