The Good and The Bad - a Quick Look at the Movies

[Lush]

Cockroaches/orcs do inspire, if only in a sick twisted way that has you staying up 'till dawn with weapons drawn.

The fighting man's Aragorn rather than the thinking man's Aragorn.

Really? Because I see no inherent contradiction between the two. I see him, in both the book and the film, as a very intelligent, thoughtful man, who's got to do what he's got to do. I mean, war is disgusting, even when the conflict is pretty much straightforward, those orcs still cry out when they die. And friends betray. In the film, Aragorn's tears at Boromir's death and then the subsequent cheerfulness - it really says a lot about him right there. I think his face was pretty much the perfect canvas, not for a mere character sketch, but more like a character Sistine Chapel. I think a lot of what Tolkien put into the character is crystallized there for the audience.

Yes, very much the very model of a thoroughly modern major general.

*Random anecdotal information from the life of Lush, skip if not interested*

My granddad was a major general. I only wish he had been born in Middle Earth rather than the USSR, when a military man was not simply discouraged from pursuing his intellectual goals and useful hobbies (such as healing, and my grandfather was a healer), but literally forbidden. I don't want to harsh too much on the USSR, it was home, it was ours, and I don't think my granddad wasted his life. I think he would have been happier, though, if he was allowed to do more prior to his retirement.

My mom has tried readingLotR, but she always stops. Aragorn reminds of her dad. She says that watching the movies is easier, because at the very least, Viggo doesn't look like Pyotr.