[Eurytus]

Ok Essex, now that we are in more legitimate surroundings let us continue. But first I would like to pull just one phrase out of your post.

Fine, well Tolkien’s lotr then, comes CLOSE to flawless for me.

Now THAT I have no problem with. My original post was in response to people saying it WAS perfect and I have serious doubts that anything can be. But there we go let’s continue.

I don’t understand your point. The story starts in the shire (i.e. middle England). It then moves on to the broader world, where the language of the characters changes. What’s the problem with this? And yes I’ve read the return of the shadow. It shows the work tolkien did to make this story as perfect as possible. 10 years with numerous re-writes.

My point can really be isolated to just the character of Aragorn who best illustrates this. Now in the FOTR he speaks in a way that is different to the Hobbits, that’s true, but it is still not too anachronistic. By ROTK he is spouting out Lo’s left, right and centre and speaking like he has swallowed the Old Testament. Now for a major character to change his speech patterns so much, well…. why? Is he trying to impress his new friends? Whatever it makes for a jarring disconnect between the FOTR and ROTK. Like it or not his speech changes too much to be believable.

Good point. But the trolls were not altogether evil. The orcs are. I hate to hear them with my kind of accent!

Your view is understandable in much the same way as Hollywood’s love of bad guys having a British Accent is tiresome. But like I say, I can see where they were coming from.

Perhaps Cockney rhyming slang would have been even better. Just think, when they were complaining about having nothing to eat they could have said, “I’m bloody Hank Marvin”.

1/ Merry and Pippin. In the film they (out of the most ridiculous of coincidences) happen to ‘bump’ into Frodo and decide to follow him!!!!!!!! The biggest case of dumbing down in the entire film, really. In the book, they set up a conspiracy and explain their situation fully to Frodo in Crickhowell. In the council of Elrond they just run up and say the line ‘tie me up in a sack’ and Elrond then let’s them go. In the book the motivation for them to be allowed to go are explained by Gandalf to Elrond through FRIENDSHIP.

As you say, it all boils down to friendship. I do not doubt that anyone would see that Merry and Pippin are Frodo’s friends in the film. And it did not need any long explanation to accomplish. It is brought out through how they interact with each other.

2/ Legolas. He turned up at the council of Elrond to apologise for the woodelves letting Gollum escape. This is motivation for legolas to earn some redemption for their mistake.
3/ gimli, son of gloin, whose father’s company’s trip through the mountains help get them into this situation in the first place! Also, he was sent to find an answer to sauron’s asking for details on the ring bearer and putting pressure on his people in the north. Helping to get rid of the ring was a perfect anecdote to this.

Is this much better than the film? I wouldn’t think so. In the film it is pretty clear that both Legolas and Gimli are portrayed as spokespeople for their races. As such this would seem a reasonable reason to take part in the quest.

Whilst I disagree to some extent with the first point. Great characters can effectively do very little in terms of plot and still make a story interesting.
BUT NOT IMPORTANT

I would argue that what makes a story interesting is the only thing of real importance. If it isn’t interesting then who cares?

They are not paper thin. We feel for these characters. Just because we don’t see what they are thinking internally in their heads doesn’t mean they are paper-thin!

Don’t think we are ever going to see eye to eye on this issue. For my part I just cannot see how Legolas can be seen as anything other than paper-thin. Let’s put it this way, had Dungeons and Dragons been out at that point Legolas would have been the archetypal Elven Archer. He has no real personality of his own.

Music and literature are two different mediums. You are using one to try and justify your position on another.

The same principles apply. Does not my statement, “take away one note and there would be diminishment, take away a phrase and the structure would fall.” Apply to a perfect book. I think it does. That would be what it would take for a book to be PERFECT. Change one word and there would be diminishment.

Because he was the lieutenant of Morgoth. He is willing to enslave the whole of middle earth because it was not set to the designs of his master. He wants to destroy all that was created because his master, who was thrown down by the powers that be who created middle earth.

All of which really boils down to “because he’s evil”. LOTR’s success has unfortunately produced a whole lot of these ‘Evil/Dark Lords’ in Fantasy literature and I think that the genre is the worse for them. Besides which I do not know if Sauron did want to destroy everything. Not according to the Mouth he didn’t. Seemed more like he wanted ‘control’ to me.

No they don’t! This was a power play. He pretended to be ‘scared’ as you put it as this was his plan for their downfall. And it worked perfectly!!!!!!!!

But it does not change the fact that he did not need his Ring to defeat his most powerful of enemies.

It still took the last alliance (or penultimate as Jackson no doubt calls it) 7 years to oust sauron from barad-dur, with the deaths of the 2 main protagonists to boot! Doesn’t appear to avail him? I think it does!

There is no indication that Sauron needed the Ring for this. Did the Ring help him during the siege? It’s doubtful. The Ring seems more of a convenient plot device than anything else.

What this is showing, is that the ring is not altogether powerful. Tom Bombadil shows this perfectly in the book, and this is why he is such an important character.

In my opinion you could have shown this without having a character who is basically a joke.

Why? You have your shades of grey perfectly written by Sam’s thoughts on the (easterling?) who falls near his feet in ithilien. These people drawn into battle are not purely evil, but the orcs where created as a killing machine specifically for the purpose of evil.

Sam’s thoughts last a couple of lines. I am afraid that against this you have some rather dubious traits. People with purer blood living for longer. And the evil races being predominantly ‘dark’ skinned.

Much like questions were not asked when the native Americans were being thrown out of their land in the USA, for example. These things happen. It’s called the survival of the fittest. It happens all over the world and will continue forever unfortunately. This part of Tolkien’s history, is therefore TRUE TO LIFE. It deals with the morality of the point by showing in some cases it is inevitable that these things happen.

Yes but Tolkien never presents us with any moral questions in this regard. The Dunlendings are portrayed as evil and the Rohirrim are portrayed as quite without their rights to slaughter them for daring to try and take back their homeland.
If we are talking about survival of the fittest then why is Sauron’s cause any less legitimate than say Gondor’s. If you look at what the Mouth proposed then how is that any less harsh than when the Numenoreans fled Numenor and took realms in Arnor and Gondor. I am sure the respective natives were damn pleased. So why is Sauron’s cause and desire to command the land any less valid?

Losses other than Frodo’s
1/ sam – loses his beloved master
2/ pippin and merry to a lesser extent lose their friend and cousin.
3/ the hobbits lose their INNOCENCE
4/ Bilbo has lost his ring!
4/ gimli ‘loses’ Galadriel
5/ arwen loses her father
6/ Elrond loses his daughter
7/ Galadriel, for a time, loses her husband
8/ the elves finally now lose middle earth (i.e. lorien will fade, rivendell probably) and have to return to the west.
9/ Gandalf will no longer see the shire and the hobbits, which he loved.
10/ eowyn and eomer lose their uncle who was a ‘father’ to them
11/ merry loses theoden who was a ‘father’ to him.
12/ Faramir loses a brother and a father.
13/ Gollum loses his life!
14/ faramir, eowyn and merry almost die.
15/ Boromir loses his life
16/ wormtounge loses his pitiful life
17/ saruman is not allowed back to the west
18/ denethor goes mad and kills himself.
There are gains to go with these losses, but nearly all of the characters suffer in one form or another.

So basically you have come up with 3 deaths and some people leaving Middle Earth. I am sorry but compared to real warfare these ‘losses’ are ludicrously lightweight. Who comes back to find their children slaughtered, 1,000’s of people massacred for racial reasons, their womenfolk raped, ethnic enmity set in place that will poison the future for hundreds of years? These are the real consequences of war. See WWI, WWII or the Crusades. See the wars of conquest fought in Latin America. Some of the things that go on boggle the mind. Admit it or not the LOTR is horribly clean and nice in comparison.

Legolas pines for the sea and is suffering for it. Gimli pines for his love of Galadriel and suffers for it.

With respect you could make this clear on a single piece of A4 and they are in a 1,000 page book!!
I’ve seen BoyBand profiles with more depth. Likes cars, doesn’t like Italian food, would like to visit Bermuda. That’s probably more depth than Legolas has right there!

Boromir was far too simple in the film. I.e. a baddie from the first scene.

WHAT!! Sorry, I can’t even debate that point as it is, in my view, so wrong as to be beyond discussion. In fact you have it reversed. In the Book he is a pantomime villain. He hardly gets a redeeming mention from any of the major characters until he is dead. If you can’t see that the film showed the two halves of his nature better than I guess there is not point discussing it. His scene with Aragorn in Lorien, with Frodo before entering Lorien, telling Aragorn that the Hobbits needed more time after Gandalf fell……Yeah, classic baddie behaviour.

He was vital in two areas. 1/ for showing that the ring is not all powerful. 2/ for saving the hobbits at the barrow, and enabling merry to get the sword which helps destroy the witch king, which in turn helps save Minas Tirith.

Both of these functions could have been dealt with by other means. Indeed it is plain that the ring is not all powerful. If it was then Frodo could have put it on and kicked Sauron’s arse. Of course he can’t because the ring gives power only to the measure of it’s bearer.

As to the sword. Why is getting it from the barrow any more valid than from Lorien. Does it really add that much apart from one sentence about it’s maker being glad to know its eventual use. Is this worth adding 45 minutes to the film for? And a fool in yellow boots?

But this is the book, not a 3 hour dumbed down movie. So he just keeps on running with no sustenance or rest does he? This is true to life.

Within a couple of days march from Bagend he stops in 4 ‘safe havens’. Yes I’d call it too much. Just start the damn quest already. Next he’ll be going back for his keys.

But this was a battle of the whole of middle earth! Please don’t think that one group of people (i.e. the Americans in independence day) can save the planet!!!!!! This is not Hollywood. The Eagles were an intrinsic part of the plot of the books. They were not a coincidence. They were part of Middle-earth.

I didn’t say that one group had to win it. But when you have effectively unstoppable forces (the Ents, Huorns and Deadmen) taking care of plenty of your foes then you have a case of Deux ex Machina. In takes away from what the heroes should be accomplishing on their own.

PS (separate to this conversation) The old jibe ‘just give the ring to gwaihir and let him drop it in the crack of doom’ does not work. He was a Maia I believe? He would have been tempted just as Gandalf etc would have been to take the ring for his own.

Even Tolkien recognised this to be a weak point. And since it is the bearer of the ring that is tempted why didn’t Gwahir simply carry Frodo and drop HIM down the mouth of Mount Doom?

This is a style of writing Tolkien was basing the books on tales of old, and was building a legend/mythology for Britain (that does not have one).

I’m not going to belabour the point but this was the Silmarillion NOT the LOTR. The LOTR was a sequel to the Hobbit first and foremost which is why the publishers would not publish the Silmarillion at the time. They wanted a sequel NOT a mythology.

I believe this was done purposefully by Tolkien, and reading the history of middle earth series shows this.

Actually I think that reading the HOME series shows many instances of Lucas syndrome (making it up as you go along) and clearly shows that Tolkien lost control of the book and it changed DESPITE his intentions not because of them.

Ok, it is near flawless, and the best book ever written.

Could agree with the first part but not nearly the second. Straight of the top of my head I could pick several of Dicken’s novels that supersede LOTR. Not to mention some Tolstoy. Or the Catcher in the Rye. Or A Clockwork Orange.

I stated that the films have been dumbed down.

touches like the boys and old men being taken from their families in TTT prior to Helms Deep that add so much. As already stated Boromir is far superior in the film. And of course the lack of “Hey, Merry Dol Dollo” or whatever. Might as well have Gimli start singing “Hey, Ho. Hey, Ho. It’s off to work we go.” as put that in.