Well my dad saw FOTR in theaters when it came out. The next day he’s telling me in the car ‘oh you wouldn’t like it, it’s very scary and it’s got all these monsters’
So naturally when he bought the dvd he put it on during dinner.
Now Fellowship is a kickass movie right? 10 year old me was very intrigued. I got to about the Nazgul before I was like NOPE. And I went to the bathroom first which is on the same side of the house as my dad’s legendary tv and sound system that can make the house shake(And he loves blasting it) So I’m taking a moment in the bathroom when the wizard fight happens. Now…imagine your 10, and hearing just the audio of that scene with no context. Here’s a link to refresh your memory
So I nope-d all the way to my dads office since my room was too close to that noise and the office was on the other side of the house. My dad was on the phone at this point with his girlfriend when I came in there to hide and he asked me”What’s the problem, THE GIANT SPIDERS AREN’T UNTIL THE NEXT MOVIE” at which point I nope-d myself into eternity and watched Disney for 3 hours in my dads office.
The next day when it was nice and bright out and my dad was too busy to walk in and crank the volume up on the tv I asked my sister to finish the movie with me because I was and have always been a curious little shit. I asked her to tell me when to shut my eyes and also told her she was not allowed to leave the room until the movie was over. We got to the end and I was hooked. It took many rewatchings before I could get through that movie with my eyes open and the dead marshes scene in Two Towers was a struggle when I saw it in theaters but thats how I first experienced Lord of the Rings and found a lifelong obsession
Aww, that’s adorable!
I always think people whose age I don’t know are older than me. I was 16 when Fellowship was in theatres, I’d read the Silmarillion, the Hobbit, and LotR several times prior to watching the films, and was mainly concerned with whether or not one Hugo Weaving would make a good Elrond (answer: he made the best Elrond) and how much screen time Liv Tyler had managed to grab from whoever would have been playing Glorfindel (answer: all the screen time. All of his scenes that were in the film, she grabbed, except the one she was always going to be in as well).
I’m not quite sure LotR would have scared 10 year old me, who studied historical torture techniques out of curiosity in her spare time because why not, might be useful in a pub quiz some 20 years down the road.
And I assume everybody on tumblr is younger than me unless otherwise indicated so lol. Hugo Weaving was the best tho. And were you said at the lack of Glorfindel? because in retrospect I am just pleased theres more screentime for ladies in such a male dominated film.
But yeah, I think the extent of my horror was a bit of an outlier, as I said I was a sensitive kid who got freaked out by the penguin in Wallace and Gromit
I’m not big on horror, but I do like psychological thrillers and stuff, and I really liked the Alien films when I first saw them (Ripley FTW).
Hugo Weaving was the best. I still maintain Elrond’s eyebrows could take on Thranduíl’s eyebrows and quirk them into submission any day (potentially with the aid of some elfy magic or potions, Thrandy doesn’t have too much of that, and we know Elrond does).
I wasn’t sad at there not being loads of Glorfindel as such, nor do I mind the other expanded Arwen scenes. I would have been pleased as punch if all Glorfindel did was turn up to get Frodo to Rivendell (or at least go with Arwen to fight off any approaching ringwraiths, that would have worked perfectly), and then, once in Rivendell, sit/stand near Elrond, looking all blond and majestic and stuff (which he only does at the end of RotK, he’s probably the blond elf next to Elrond when Arwen’s doing her “surprise bf, it is I, gf, soon to be wife” thing).
I think having Arwen do every single thing involved in getting Frodo to Rivendell mainly bugs me because they could so easily have both shown Arwen being capable of action, and shown Glorfindel being his superelf self. In the books, he’s the one Elrond sends to get Frodo safely to Rivendell because he’s the strongest warrior Elrond has (probably the strongest elven warrior in Middle Earth), he’s confronted the Witch-King of Angmar (aka the leader of the ringwraiths), who fled when faced with potential battle with Glorfindel, and he’s single-handedly killed a balrog. You know Chuck Norris jokes? Elves probably have Glorfindel jokes.
I really like that they expanded Arwen from “Elrond’s daughter who marries Aragorn, but we don’t know anything about her other than she’s super pretty”, and I know the whole thing probably reads a lot differently if you don’t know all sorts of random bollocks about blond elves, but Elrond sending Glorfindel shows how deadly serious the situation is, and how lethal the task of retreiving one injured hobbit actually is when that hobbit is being chased by ringwraiths.
It’s a bit like how in the MCU, Peggy Carter can hold her own in a fight, is definitely a force to be reckoned with, and I love that we got more Peggy Carter in the MCU than just First Avenger. But if the first you see of Peggy Carter is that she can take on Johann Schmidt on her own, yes, she seems like a good fighter, but Schmidt seems like less of a formidable opponent than he actually is (the Worf effect, basically).
If Johann Schmidt is on his way, you’re not going to send Peggy Carter out alone, and risk her being swiftly and brutally killed, if you can send post-serum Steve Rogers with her.
Yes I have a lot of feels when it comes to Elrond and Glorfindel.
I think Elrond can use his eyebrows more majestically, but Thranduil would win if it came down to size(Thranduil in the films makes me sad because the Hobbit movies are awful and I love Lee Pace)
As for Glorfindel I have read the books but it’s been awhile. I remember him taking Frodo to Rivendell and not much else so HUH I will remember that Glorfindel is Chuck Norris and thank you for putting that image in my head its a funny one.
I think, eyebrow wise, Thranduil values thickness and bushiness over quirkability, while Elrond values sleekness and quirkability over thickness. And I suspect neither would ever concede that it’s a case of personal taste, it’d be all “well my eyebrows are clearly superior what are you talking about you know nothing Thorin Oakenshield”. Because they’re both elves.
I’ve actually still not seen Battle of Five Armies (I was really ill when it came out, then my friend who I’ve always watched them with was even more ill, and then it wasn’t in cinemas anymore), just the trailers and that, but yeah. I still like the first two, but I do feel they could have been handled better. The acting’s still good though, I was worried about Martin Freeman as Bilbo, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. And everyone who could reprise roles from LotR did, which I also liked.
Americans have Chuck Norris jokes, the Aussies have Steve Irwin jokes, the Norwegians have Lars Monsen jokes, the elves have Glorfindel jokes. They vary slightly in how they’re focused, but they’re basically the same type of joke.
“Chuck Norris never wears steel toe boots, they make his roundhouse kicks softer”
“Steve Irwin once defeated Chuck Norris by smacking him in the face with a baby crocodile”
“Lars Monsen was once woken up by a bear that got into his tent and ate all his food. This really pissed Lars Monsen off, so he ate the bear”
“Glorfindel is the only elf to have killed a balrog. He used three of his fancy hair clips and his hair still looked immaculate afterwards”
Well I forgot I queued this wHOOPS.
So…I hated The Hobbit movies with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. A big part of that is probably because discovering the LOTR movies was like a religious experience for me as a kid. It changed the way I view media and it was my first fandom. Im pretty sure LOTR was a big reason I was inspired to study film. And the flaws of the film have nothing to do with the actors (Although they reduced Richard Armitage to bland, moody, and beardy when I know he’s capable of more) The problems with the film are all the writing and directing.
Fun fact, Jackson and co had a lot of fights with the studios and producers and there was lots of pushbacks and compromises and honestly after watching the hobbit I suspect all that collaboration is what made the movies better. With The Hobbit Jackson did a George Lucas in that I suspect based on his previous success everybody around him became yes men. “What if we had 30 MINUTES OF MOUNTAINS HITTING EACH OTHER” “Yes that sounds great,” “WHAT IF WE MADE THE GOBLIN KINGS FACE LOOK LIKE BALLS” “Awesome idea Mr. Jackson.” Now part of it is the new studios (MGM made The Hobbit happen when LOTR was with New Line Cinema I believe) and the studios were the major force behind 3 movies. Even 2 would have been more bearable but I suspect a lot of is still Jacksons fault because 3 90 minute movies could have worked like 2, 2 hour movies could have worked but instead we got 3, 3 hour movies and thats ridiculous because the hobbit never had enough story for more than one tidy movie and busting it out to three made them plodding and terrible.
You can feel the writers grasping at straws trying to make all these Lord of the Rings equivalent conflicts with the gold sickness thats a lot like being fucked with by The Ring or that one orc thats important because reasons or actually pulling out Suaron and shit? The Hobbit was never about that like LOTR was and the fact that they tried while simultaneously trying to pull more slapsticky humor ‘for the kids’ made the movies a tonal wreck. (Very reminiscent of Phantom Menace, no? The parallels are endless) And by the time they got to wasting Evangeline Lilly on a romantic sub plot with The Hot Dwarf ™ making Legolas her creepy jealous stalker I was so over these movies. I dont blame the actors for any of it though. Martin Freeman turns out a great performance and so does Ian McKellan but they are buried beneath a terrible
I think the worst part is how over 3 movies LOTR managed to make a main cast of 9 and it’s many side characters interesting unique and likable whereas the drawfs in this movie could be interchangeable with Snow White. They mostly can be described with single adjectives like The Cute One, The Hot One, The Friendly One, The Moody One, The Wise One, The Deaf One, etc…I mean by the time we get to The Hot One’s Cousin I don’t care and when I don’t care it renders all of the stakes in the film inert because I wouldn’t care if 75% of the cast fell off a cliff 5 minutes into the movie (I like one who ‘hates green food’ the one with the funny hat and Bilbo and Gandalf. And it speaks volumes that despite reading the book I can’t remember the names of half the characters but I can rattle off every character from Lord of the Rings with ease)
As to the rest I agree with the eyebrows and your thesis about Chuck Norris and his equivalents is amazing
Nobody’s going to deny that, as it’s conventionally depicted, Middle-Earth – the setting of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – is awfully monochrome. In art, basically everybody is drawn as white, and all major depictions in film have used white actors.
When this state of affairs is questioned, the defences typically revolve around “accuracy”, which can mean one of two things: fidelity to the source material, and the internal consistency of the setting. Being concerned primarily with languages and mythology, Tolkien left few clear descriptions of what the peoples of Middle-Earth actually look like, so in this case, arguments in favour of the status quo more often rest on setting consistency.
Of course, we need hold ourselves neither to fidelity nor to consistency – the author’s dead, and we can do what we want. However, what if I told you that there’s a reasonable argument to be made from that very standpoint of setting consistency that Aragorn – the one character you’d most expect to be depicted as a white dude – really ought to be portrayed as Middle Eastern and/or North African?
First, consider the framing device of Tolkien’s work. The central conceit of The Lord of the Rings – one retroactively extended to The Hobbit, and thereafter to later works – is that Tolkien himself is not the story’s author, but a mere translator of writings left behind by Bilbo, Frodo and other major characters. Similarly, Middle-Earth itself is positioned not as a fictional realm, but as the actual prehistory of our own world. As such, the languages and mythologies that Tolkien created were intended not merely to resemble their modern counterparts, but to stand as plausible ancestors for them.
Now, Aragorn is the king of a tribe or nation of people called the Dúnedain. Let’s take a closer look at them in the context of that prehistoric connection.
If the Dúnedain were meant to be the forebears of Western Europeans, we’d expect their language, Adûnaic, to exhibit signs of Germanic (or possibly Italic) derivation – but that’s not what we actually see. Instead, both the phonology and the general word-structure of Adûnaic seem to be of primarily Semitic derivation, i.e., the predominant language family throughout the Middle East and much of North Africa. Indeed, while relatively little Adûnaic vocabulary is present in Tolkien’s extant writings, some of the words we do know seem to be borrowed directly from classical Hebrew – a curious choice if the “men of the West” were intended to represent the ancestors of the Germanic peoples.
Additionally, the Dúnedain are descended from the survivors of the lost island of Númenor, which Tolkien had intended as an explicit analogue of Atlantis. Alone, this doesn’t give us much to go on – unless one happens to know that, in the legendarium from which Tolkien drew his inspirations, the Kingdoms of Egypt were alleged to be remnant colonies of Atlantis. This connection is explicitly reflected in the strong Egyptian influence upon Tolkien’s descriptions of Númenorean funereal customs. We thus have both linguistic and cultural/mythological ties linking the survivors of Númenor to North Africa.
Now, I’m not going to claim that Tolkien actually envisioned the Dúnedain as North African; he was almost certainly picturing white folks. However, when modern fans argue that Aragorn and his kin must be depicted as white as a matter of setting consistency, rather than one of mere authorial preference, strong arguments can be made that this need not be the case; i.e., that depicting the Dúnedain in a manner that would be racialised as Middle Eastern and/or North African by modern standards is, in fact, entirely consistent with the source material, ethnolinguistically speaking. Furthermore, whether they agreed with these arguments or not, any serious Tolkien scholar would at least be aware of them.
In other words, if some dude claims that obviously everyone in Tolkien is white and acts like the very notion of depicting them otherwise is some outlandish novelty, you’ve got yourself a fake geek boy.
(As an aside, if we turn our consideration to the Easterlings, the human allies of Sauron who have traditionally been depicted in art as Middle Eastern on no stronger evidence than the fact that they’re baddies from the East, a similar process of analysis suggests that they’d more reasonably be racialised as Slavic in modern terms. Taken together with the preceding discussion, an argument can be made that not only is the conventional racialisation of Tolkien’s human nations in contemporary art unsupported by the source material, we may well have it precisely backwards!)
THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^
also just a reminder that when we first meet Aragorn in Fellowship he’s described as ‘dark’
that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.
(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)
but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.
it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.
and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.
(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)
but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.
someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.
I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.
That’s not completely true.
There is a reason why it had to be Frodo and not anyone else, and there is something special about him. And there is something special about Hobbits.
All the strongest Men, Elves and Dwarves, who might seem like better choices for this task, are so mighty that they also pose too great a risk when they fail. The ring magnifies a person to the greatest extent possible; for someone who is already very powerful and filled with great purpose, the magnitude of their inversion would make them horribly dangerous. Aragorn with the ring, for instance, would succeed in ruling Gondor, but would turn it into another Mordor. Hobbits are small people with limited scope. Gollum becomes a force for evil, but only in the smallest ways. Hobbits like food and home; an inversion of that is a dark hovel under a mountain and cannibalism, but not global domination and destruction.
Hobbits are special because they are small, and their reach is short. But there is a quiet strength of character to them that makes Frodo the perfect ring-bearer.
Bilbo proves it first. He’s the only ring-bearer who held the ring for any significant length of time who was able to give it away by choice. How is that possible? All the strongest Men, Elves, and Dwarves were incapable of such a feat. Bilbo proves that a Hobbit can hold to a mission to abandon this ring long enough to do it.
But Frodo is like Gollum in the end. Like Gollum, like Bilbo, Frodo’s desire for the ring never dies, and he can’t complete the mission to destroy it on his own. What would have made even a step on that journey impossible for someone like Galadriel or Gandalf only stopped Frodo on the precipice, though.
So if it had to be a Hobbit, why did it have to be Frodo?
Frodo is not a young hobbit. He is the middle-aged, monied patron, the benevolent leader of a small group of adventurous young Hobbits willing to explore the boundaries of the Shire. If any Hobbit is going to take on a dangerous task, it had to be him. He wouldn’t hand over that burden to a young cousin, nor to his servant. He could have handed it back to Bilbo, but this problem is his inheritance. It’s his moral responsibility to take it himself.
And that is why it has to be Frodo who takes the ring to Mordor.
let’s stop seeing sex as the biggest thing you can do to show someone you love them
everyone knows that the real way to show someone you love them is to find them a really cool rock. not a diamond. just a neat rock that you think they will enjoy
Not a rock THE ARKENSTONE
Why just one rock Why not three Why not the silmarils
