Greentext

Suck them all off, got it!

Person wielding vacuum cleaner when countering this threat: "lol skill issue"

It does make a ton of thematic sense that the counter to a purely magical threat is a technological weapon.

Cinema, not literature. In the books the undead army is way less OP than in the movie adaptation. Their only weapon is fear, and they do not liberate minas tirith, but only scare the mercenaries off their black sail ships. Aragon uses the boats to quick travel to minas tirith with his elf and half elven friends and fresh troops from the south.

Yes! The answer is “you can't, and that's the point.”

Man, even games don't need to operate according to the rules of game balance. Just look at [current hot live service game's most recent update]!

"A story is not a machine that does what you tell it. A story is a beast with a life of its own. You can create it, shape it, but as the story grows, it starts wanting things of its own. Change one thing, and you set off a chain reaction of events that spreads through the whole thing. The characters have to be true to themselves. The events need to follow a logic that fits the story. A single flaw and the magic is gone. The story dies. - Alan Wake" - Sam Lake

Established rules and constraints must be consistent throughout the story, otherwise nerds on the internet with nothing better to do will call you a hack. See: the new Star Wars. Force healing, my ass.

Book version. In the movie version they absolutely can cause physical harm. A ghost sword and Aragorn's even stop each other, iirc.

Psychological warfare sure is ... funny, isn't it?

You ever hear about this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

For Iraq War 1, the US wanted to develop the ability to project a giant hologram either into or from the sky... of the prophet Mohammed... who would tell the Iraqi forces to stand down, presumably via spec ops placed speaker arrays.... or... something.

... They later realized that no one has any idea what Mohammed looks like.

... Because depictions of him....are widely viewed as heresy by many (most? basically all?) Muslims.

Oh and of course... they did not know how to build a hologram projector in the early 90s, either.

We do apparently know how to do at least something like that now, though.

https://idstch.com/technology/photonics/3-d-holograms-will-be-employed-for-battlefield-intelligence-military-planning-and-explosives-disposal/

The irony is that they can’t

Pretty sure I saw a bunch of these guys sucking people's souls out or whatever, during the battle, at least in the movie.

From the book, its ambiguous. Per Legolas to the hobbits, following the battle:

Faint cries I heard, and dim horns blowing, and a murmur as of countless far voices: it was like the echo of some forgotten battle in the Dark Years long ago. Pale swords were drawn; but I know not whether their blades would still bite, for the Dead needed no longer any weapon but fear

A lot of Tolkien's storytelling involves this kind of Word of Mouth recounting, such that it's hard to know whether you're getting real High Magic or just mythology passed down second hand.

However you slice it, I'd describe "literally scares you to death" as physical harm.

Aiyoyoyu

We need a bigger trap!

Opportunity for LotR x Ghostbusters brainrot

And Sauron didn't have a few?

Two actually. Sauron and Sarumon are the same class of being. Balrogs are too, but iirc they're more on Morgoth's side

I ain't afraid of no bed!

I'm my experience, simply refusing to acknowledge the supernatural has made such entities incapable of properly manifesting 100% of the time.

"I ain't afraid of no ghost"