Lord of the Rings

It's not some sort of prophetic moment, but the fact that the film Fellowship ends on Frodo remembering the exchange with Gandalf re "I wish none of this had happened" etc., shortly after it was clear the 21st century wasn't going to be like the 1990s (in American terms, at least) is one of those things that resonates a lot year after year now.

Woof, eddings

Luckily by the time i was 15 the wheel of time was already three books in and i never looked back

yes yes but in the films aragorn gets to kiss a horse

Barrow Downs:

http://i.imgur.com/hR3QfWW.jpg

The road goes ever on:

http://i.imgur.com/GbFMoqg.jpg

I love this thread.

We're about an hour or so into "Two Towers." So far my kid (13) likes it better than the first one and yeah, so far I wouldn't change a frame. Gollum fx hold up, as do the sort of surreal puppets/stop-motion/whatever is going on with the tree people.

It's cheating, since this is actually New Zealand, but here is an enormous hawk on a funny looking rock in front of snow-capped mountains, clouded in mist:

https://i.imgur.com/bIOOXlV.jpg

Josh is peter jackson imo

Anyway while we're doing all this, legal Twitter is on one:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eswamv9U0AAp0c6?format=jpg&name=large

Inspired by this thread, I just read The Hobbit for the first time in 30+ years. What a great little book! I’m sure Tolkien had his regrets, like the characterization & names of the trolls & a couple of tonal blips, but otherwise it’s pretty unimpeachable. There are episodes and passages of genuine menace & genuine wonder. The shift to a less immediate narrative voice after Smaug gets pissed off & leaves is probably its biggest flaw, but it’s not a fatal one.

Jackson ought to be sued for the violence he inflicted on its integrity.

Now: on to LOTR proper.

Hobbit is pretty magnificent

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry? I don’t think I’ve ever skipped it, from my first reading at age 10 or so til now, but I never remember, from reading to reading, that it’s how the book begins. Does the way the preamble winds from an explanation of hobbits, thru a little dissertation on the origins of pipe-weed, and the (perhaps necessary) recounting of how Bilbo got the ring from Gollum, & then bangs on for some pages about the various history-books that were derived from Bilbo & Frodo’s writings & then presumably used as source material for LOTR itself actually add anything, or set us up properly for what’s to come? Or is it an authorial indulgence? On re-reading I enjoy it as a bit of suspense, knowing I’m about to be plunged into a fully absorbing story, but on first reading do people just skip it? Is it a weeding-out tactic (if you can’t hack this you’re not gonna make it to the third volume, sonny)?

I wonder what the Dwarves cocks are like
― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, November 15, 2001 8:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

xp it is a hobbit writing like a hobbit, wrapped up in local affairs, stuffy, finicky

Tolkien's tonal shifts arent random accident imo, even if i wouldn't claim they were planned, but he is a master storyteller and storytellers change voice instinctively as required

What do y’all think about how LOTR starts with an extended bit of pedantry?

I don't think there's a sentence wasted in the early chapters, it's a masterful piece of worldbuilding that humanises (hobbitises?) its subjects by grounding the descriptive passages very firmly within the hobbits' society. One of the most egregious pieces of writing advice you see nowadays is to begin a story with 'action', which all too often means some kind of violent conflict. Tolkien's 'action' is to draw the reader into an unfamiliar world by examining the minutiae of his characters' lives, thus laying a solid foundation for the story to come.

We're talking about the "Prologue," right? I don't personally consider it essential to a complete reading of the book. I've read LOTR 8 or 9 times and the "Prologue" many fewer times.

otoh, it's very important to make sure the reader has all the information on pipeweed

The Prologue is key and always a lovely treat, for the reasons outlined above. Heck, the film even had a brief nod to it in the extended version.

And yes The Hobbit still works in its own right. I do find it interesting that he attempted an early sixties rewrite to make it tonally more like LOTR but after a couple of chapters a friend read it and said that while it was good it just wasn’t The Hobbit — he took it as a sign and abandoned it. Some things you shouldn’t mess with.

We started the third (extended) film last night. Stand by what I said, wouldn't change a thing ... about the first two. This one, though, a few things irked pretty immediately, but mostly the Extra Evil One-Eyed Orc, which the film clearly tries to elevate to Big Bad status, no doubt because in the (theatrical) version there is no follow-up with Christopher Lee and Sauron is still just a big eye. Extra Evil Orc annoyed me the very first time I saw the movie, in fact.

Even so, for being the most over-stuffed, relatively speaking, there were a couple of really striking, iconic scenes I was reminded of, like Liv Tyler seeing her son in the future, or the gross king feasting like a monster during the hobbit hymn scene. My daughter keeps asking questions that I am not qualified to answer, like how Gandolf can apparently die and come back but not Christopher Lee, or why Sauron can't just make another ring, or what even *are* the rings, anyway? What can the One Ring even do besides turn you invisible? I know these things have answers, and some of them are pretty convoluted, but it's kind of a testament to the writing and acting that the focus remains on the characters, and the magic and the ring specifically is almost a MacGuffin. There's a lot of weeping and whining, but as has been said it's really largely Sam's story, and Sean Astin sells it pretty well.

It’s a smart question she asks because there’s no true answer. The protean nature of the Ring is what is truly key about it. The only specifically ‘magic’ thing it does is invisibility and even then the result is, per the book, something that makes you feel horribly and uniquely visible. Beyond that, everything scales, though the book makes this clearer by example than the movie.

Gandalf won his industrial tribunal and was reinstated, whereas Saruman was bang to rights, is how I break it down

The ring is kind of like Blairite "third way" centrism, once you've pretended to be all things to all people and it turns out you're a sinister control freak and not actually anything anyone likes at all, you can't just fool them the same way again a couple of years later

Also, Sauron put his will, anger, power into the ring, linking himself to the ring, so that without it he is diminished, with it, his power is magnified, and with it destroyed, so he is.

it's a remote control for all the other rings, is how i break it down to an extent

Yes, that too.

little bit too drunk to fully parse the last 50 posts, but:

patricia mckillip's riddlemaster is better. laurel has my back

― mookieproof, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 4:15 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

u get me. New McKillip is good, but old McKillip is magic.

Gandalf was considered fit for upcycling by the powers that sing the world

We can only presume that Saruman was fit for the skip only

Note that in corporal death Gandalf was revealed as a strong being of purity

Saruman melted immediately into the semblance of a corpse long dead iirc

Standard enough christian message on the caretaking of one's soul, really

i remember when reading as a teenager i was kind of obsessed with the wizard judo belts.

is there a specific section that deals with that or is it all just inferential?

cos reading it now, i just think yeah radagast is brown because of the trees and nature and stuff. not because he's still learning.

Yeah i reckon assignation not grade

The Blue Wizards do not feature in the narrative of Tolkien's works; they are said to have journeyed far into the east after their arrival in Middle-earth, and serve as agitators or missionaries in enemy occupied lands. Their ultimate fates are unknown.

Saruman's a traitor, Radagast's a simpleton, the Blues are off god knows where. Gandalf is like the only Maiar doing his job.

Work colleagues thread

the relationship of the ring to power isn't that it has it. it is it.

a shot in the first movie i like (tho could respect others finding a lil on the nose) is the hisperidian image of the quarreling (suddenly racist) council reflected in the inert surface of the ring. it's the distress caused by this image that seems to make up frodo's mind to take on the burden to destroy it. immediately the council, on the volcanic point of fission, fuses into fellowship. i don't read this as the ring's malign influence literally casting a spell of discord. yet its influence is there.

when we see people covet the ring we don't necessarily understand what they would physically do with it. possibly they don't either. (possibly gandalf does.) yet we understand that they all have problems they know it would solve. instead of weeping and whining and swallowing loss, they would sweep aside obstacles like sauron in the movie prologue, absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

in this sense it is a macguffin-- but the word macguffin only refers to a role an object plays in a story. the ring, in addition to (irl) being a macguffin, is (in middle-earth) literally power. no less and (more crucially?) no more. the limits of power are indicated to frodo in the gandalf line fizzles quotes upthread-- "can you give it to them?"-- and in a line i think is in the same conversation: "he hates and loves the ring, as he hates and loves himself". this is why, in the places where you would expect the story to put demonstrations of the ring's abilities, we really only see people's desires. often, the desires seem to make them angry. one exception is (again) gandalf, the world's wisest man. he seems frightened.

on those few occasions when we do see someone (always a hobbit iirc?) put on the ring, what they desire is to disappear. (to keep their nose out of trouble, so no trouble will come to them.) yet instead-- in the context that matters-- they appear. the ring is a trap disguised as an escape. the only person for whom it isn't a trap is the person whose desire is a world made-- like the ring-- coterminous with himself. the only effective strategy against him is fusion and renunciation. it's difficult because renouncing the possibility of exerting your will unimpeded can even for a hobbit be like cutting off a part of the self. but if you're not sauron, or final-stage gollum, it's not very much of the self. it is a strange thing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.

Lovely post.

these are background themes tho obv. as correctly indicated above this is mostly a book about going for walks.

when we see people covet the ring we don't necessarily understand what they would physically do with it. possibly they don't either. (possibly gandalf does.) yet we understand that they all have problems they know it would solve. instead of weeping and whining and swallowing loss, they would sweep aside obstacles like sauron in the movie prologue, absurdly hurling elves around mordor.

This is one the greatest scenes, to 7 yo PBKR, in the Rankin-Bass animated ROTK: Samwise the Strong. They to a great job of illustrating how great the temptation must be to use the ring and how great the spirit it takes to resist it.

great

lol yes i almost linked to that! memorable for me as well. tho i can't say i remember the melody, whereas i doubt i'll ever be free of "when there's a whip there's a way". similar theme i suppose.

Same hear, actually.

It's funny, in some way, Sam resists the ring more completely than Frodo ever and ultimately does, though Sam (a) hasn't had to bear the ring for so long as Frodo, and (b) isn't required to resist at the moment of the ring's ultimate destruction.

The one ring has a mind of its own, it decides its fate, it wants to be possessed, it's why it abandoned Gollom when he was skulking in his cave for decades... even the ring's size shapeshifts to its owner (Sauron, Isuldur, Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo).

re: motivation in dlh's post, I had to recall Galadriel's temptation rejection:

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

“I pass the test”, she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.”

Tolkien is pretty explicit here that her temptation was indeed related to its power. And to refuse it was beyond noble.

the melodramatic elf version of

A spasm of anger passed swiftly over the hobbit's face again. Suddenly it gave way to a look of relief and a laugh.

'Well, that's that,' he said. 'Now I'm off!'

(jackson movie has bilbo say "i've thought of an ending for my book!" here, which isn't bad either. of course in both book and movie he has his most gifable "spasm of anger" yet to come.)

Actual unprompted quote from my daughter as we finished the third movie: "Wait, how many endings are there? This is like 'Clue: The Movie'!"

Probably would be best ending with the "you bow down to no one" line, but the rest of the stuff is fine. It's like the final side of "Sandinista!" Necessary? Nah. But I'm glad to have it all the same.

Off to google "coterminous."

i was remembering this by jonathan schell about nixon i post on ilx whenever i can find an excuse (sadly idk if this is a clemenza-attracting thread)

Had he remained in power much longer, he would surely have put an end to such disruptions once and for all. Then no unexpected sights would have offended his gaze... His communion with himself would have continued uninterrupted, and the world he saw would have become co-extensive with his thought processes. There would have been only the sound of the programmed enemies and the sound of the surrogates praising him in words of his own devising. And, at the center, a perfect closed circle, in which he talked to his tapes and his tapes talked to him.

—only i misremembered co-extensive as coterminous, thus, gotta say, improving both passages, which both involve circles. anyway, that’s what the ring does imo

(just don’t google “hisperidian”, which is 1. made up 2. spelled wrong and 3. possibly about the wrong apples.)

Xxp

hat tip parenting for yr daughter pulling that reference

Please don’t encourage him with this stuff, he does it on so many threads.

It's funny, in some way, Sam resists the ring more completely than Frodo ever and ultimately does, though Sam (a) hasn't had to bear the ring for so long as Frodo, and (b) isn't required to resist at the moment of the ring's ultimate destruction.

"you bow down to no one"

The single most tin-eared jackson/boyenism moment in the movies

'Praise them with great praise"/translation of same is perfect, quasi-biblical and elegant. The entire sequence is dreamlike, relief, you can pretty much feel our reader's eye pulling back as the narration becomes at once more distant, slightly formal, back to a descriptive tone more akin the mathom house book we originally picked up discussing hobbits and pipeweed

Its a sequence well-earned, our hobbits back central amongst the great and powerful and still a wonder to them, as we get probably the real ending of the war ("too many endings" is as much a criticism of later life as it is a narrative that tries to situate war relative to the lives that carry on afterwards)

Jackson hadnt the patience nor ear so he had a softlit gurning circle of closeups of our leads as viggo (who upon becoming king seems to have turned into a simpleton- and mrs mac cannot abide the sight of him *clean*) speaks to them like they were children.

Not having it.

Xp sam "alone" or sam "only"?

Also dlh that post was as good as a pint, post more pls

xp yeah only is probably better

and Mrs mac is otm, he’s only a ride when he’s filthy

D. D. B. Tolkien nest pas

isn't it funny that aragorn's appeal diminished by like maybe 15% when he took a shower. imagine being horny for him for three movies then by the end of the third, he takes a bath and you go.. oh... erm...

— MARS 18TH (@solosclark) May 14, 2020