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Old 09-05-2007, 11:22 AM   #60
Sauron the White
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 903
Sauron the White has just left Hobbiton.
Alatar -- none of that changes the physical demands of supplying the muscles with glycogen. The greatest car in the world, product of the best enginering, design and manufacturing, cannot travel without gasoline. A car designed to travel with a top speed of 100 mph cannot go 200 mph no matter who is pushing down on the pedals.

Running has little to do with motivation or urgency. It has a great deal to me with the mechanics of the human body and the physical laws which govern it.

To a world used to comic books, superheroes, Chinese fighters who can balance on 200 foot pine tree limbs, and other fantasies, perhaps the run of the Three Hunters is believable.

My point is a simple one.

Many Tolkien book purists take great delight in bashing the Jackson films for every little thing they can think of that defies rigid logic. This Denethor plunge is but one example. On the previous page, Knight of Gondor uses several film stills to show just how far this distance is and concludes he could not make that run in less than three minutes. He concludes it would be impossible. And everybody piles on posting humorous witicisms about what a horses *** Peter Jackson is for showing it like this.

But when it comes to their precious book - the True Believers march in lockstep and will trot out any number of hoops and jump through them when challenged.
At that time, creative thinking, imaginative reasoning and plain old fashioned "its a fantasy for heavens sake" take over.

I see this as hypocrisy.

I could tell you about cases of people catching on fire and running several blocks to get help. I personaly know of a six year old girl whose dress caught on fire and she ran four blocks to her house causing burns on a majority of her body and nearly died. It happened. Its real. It occured here in the real world. And she was not a Numenorean or Elve or anyone with special powers.

I could tell you about the monks in Asia who burned themselves alive and amazingly kept their composure, not crying out or even twitching for sevral minutes while they were consumed. That took a will power and physical control that seems to defy logic and reason. It happened. Its real. It occured here in the real world. And they were not Numenoreans or Elves or anyone with special powers.

The point is this, in the film, yes we see several other scenes of the aproach to the tombs of the kings and can calculate how far it is, the number of stairs, degree of inclines, etc. Knight of Gondor showed this completely in his series of still on page one of this very thread. But in the film we see Denethor catching on fire, running out of the crypt and then a few seconds on the rampway before he takes the plunge.

I think this is called "willing suspension of disbelief". It is evident in films beyond LOTR. And it is evident in the LOTR book also.

Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Lets just remember that.
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