In Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), there is a scene (starting around 02:17:52 in the Extended edition) showing the Rohan coalition leaving camp to head towards Minas Tirith. Then, the movie cuts to
- Minas Tirith where the battle rages and the Steward is proceeding through the funeral of the alive Faramir
- Cirith Ungol where Sam and Frodo are struggling against Shelob
In the scenes, I noticed
- It's already morning at the Rohan's camp, but still dark at Minas Tirith, and also dark at Cirith Ungol
- Edoras is west of Minas Tirith itself west of Cirith Ungol. Therefore, I'm guessing that Rohan's camp is somewhere between Edoras and Minas Tirith and so the camp itself must also be west of Minas Tirith. Indeed, the camp location appears to be Dunharrow which in fact is very much west of Minas Tirith. See map.
- The arrival of the Rohan's forces coincided with the sunrise in Minas Tirith
So my questions are:
- Are there enough distances between these three places to show such time differences? The darkness of Cirith Ungol may be due to the evil cloud of Sauron but there is definitely some time difference between the Rohan's camp location and Minas Tirith?
- Does the sun in Middle Earth rise on the West? For if it rose from the East like in the real world, Minas Tirith should get its morning first.