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| 25 new of 153 responses total. |
furs
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response 50 of 153:
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Feb 7 11:10 UTC 2006 |
I love when you guys geek on on LOTR. It's so HOT.
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kingjon
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response 51 of 153:
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Feb 7 11:14 UTC 2006 |
Oh, that they would make a movie out of _Place of the Lion_!
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jep
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response 52 of 153:
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Feb 7 13:31 UTC 2006 |
But there was no conflict at all in what you're calling "The Scouring
of the Shire". Frodo and friends laugh off Saruman and Wormtongue and
their militant organization, and dismiss them with no difficulty.
The rest of the story is a real struggle, from the time the 4 hobbits
leave the Shire to take the Ring to Rivendell, up until Gollum
foolishly slips into the fire in Mount Doom to destroy the ring. Once
the ring is destroyed, they hop on the nearest convenient airline (the
eagles) and reappear in Gondor, then they stroll home, then spend a
leisurely afternoon restoring Hobbiton to it's rightful state, then
Frodo, Bilbo and the Elves leave on their farewell vacation cruise.
Really, the hobbits are extraneous in the whole LOTR story. They don't
matter in the world, except that Aragorn thinks they're cool and
Galdalf likes to hang out with them. No one else had ever heard of
them, or ever would. Frodo lugs the ring to Mordor because Elrond says
he can, for no apparent reason except that he already had had it for a
while. It turns out well but it wasn't a very logical strategy.
The story wasn't logical in any number of ways. Elrond never should
have included Boromir, who very plainly thought the ring ought to go to
him and/or his father. Why send Legolas instead of Glorfindel or
Elrond himself, neither of whom could be intimidated by Ringwraiths?
(Or both?) Gimli was the only dwarf handy if you had to have one, but
why did you have to have one? If you're going to have 9 companions,
why have 4 hobbits? Even assuming Frodo had to go, why not have 3
*useful* members instead?
If I was Elrond, assuming I had to have Frodo and eight others, I'd
have gone with him, and Glorfindel, I'd have recruited Tom Bombadil,
Aragorn would have gone, Gandalf was useful, I'd have asked Radagast
(another wizard), and a couple more powerful elves living in
Rivendell. Or maybe Galadriel could have been picked up on the way.
I'd have Radagast summon up some eagles, I'd have flown into Mordor and
had Frodo drop the ring into the volcano from overhead, and then gone
home, or at least to Gondor to crown Aragorn and get my daughter Arwen
married off. Hobbiton would be safe, Minas Ithil wouldn't be
deforested, Gondor wouldn't have been ransacked, Boromir and Eomer
would be alive, Denethor wouldn't have gone insane, and everyone could
have been home for the weekend. Some good things might not have
happened like Eowyn meeting Faramir, Merry and Pippin meeting
Treebeard, and what's his name the king of the Rohan being cured of his
senility, but really, Elrond didn't plan for those things to happen
anyway.
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jadecat
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response 53 of 153:
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Feb 7 13:43 UTC 2006 |
Eh, Tom's a bit distractable...
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jep
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response 54 of 153:
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Feb 7 14:00 UTC 2006 |
Not for a short mission such as the one I described.
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kingjon
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response 55 of 153:
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Feb 7 14:13 UTC 2006 |
In other words, Tolkien is likely to have considered the *internal* conflicts
more important than the macrocosmic ones.
Reminders: they didn't leave the Shire "to take the Ring to Rivendell" -- they
left the Shire to get away from the Black Riders. Frodo takes the Ring because
he's the only one to volunteer (after an hour or so of silence, if I read it
correctly) -- Aragorn, Gandalf, and everyone else (except Boromir, as it turns
out later) knew that they were not fit to take it *to its destruction* (and
Tolkien frames the requirement that it be destroyed rather than used in a
perfectly logical manner, IMO).
I will admit that there's a bit of deus ex machina in getting Frodo and Sam out
of Mordor after the Ring is destroyed -- but again, all that isn't as
important, and I don't think it was all that much, because Gandalf had his
discussion with the King of the Eagles, but before that the Eagles weren't
very available.
I'll agree with you on one other thing here, at least in part -- the hobbits
are extraneous in the *cosmology*. He invented them for _The Hobbit_, and then
tied it in.
Bombadil was more than distractible -- he wouldn't have even agreed. When they
were discussing possible alternatives, his distractability was an issue if *all
the free peoples of the world begged him* to take the Ring.
I'm not sure Boromir's staying alive would have been a good thing.
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bru
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response 56 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:02 UTC 2006 |
and just who was tom Bombadil? the ring, and apparently all evil, had
absolutely no effect in him, and he cared not to be involved in the world of
politics at all. He had a complete affinity with nature. Who was he? What
was he? Why was he included in the novel?
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jadecat
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response 57 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:09 UTC 2006 |
To show that some things/people weren't corrupted at all by the ring?
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jep
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response 58 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:15 UTC 2006 |
Tolkien said in one of his notes that one of his goals in writing LOTR
was to write a long story. It seems to me he'd have had a better story
if it were a little bit shorter. There is a lot of extraneous material
which doesn't contribute much to the story, as we have discussed here.
I wonder how much Tolkien's 3 volume story has contributed to the
concept of the modern fantasy trilogy. It seems possible a lot of
other trilogies would also have been 2 volumes if Tolkien had meandered
a bit less.
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kingjon
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response 59 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:32 UTC 2006 |
Re #56: Bombadil *is* an anomoly (sp?). Tolkien said (to loosely paraphrase)
that he just appeared, and he didn't fit into the cosmology at all (while the
hobbits were made to fit).
Re #58: The "extraneous material" that "we have discussed", as I said, is in my
opinion the *most important* part of the work.
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jep
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response 60 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:45 UTC 2006 |
Yes, I understand that, but I explained how it is extraneous and not a
central part of the story. (No conflict... remember?)
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jadecat
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response 61 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:47 UTC 2006 |
See that's where my viewpoint as a historian comes in. I LOVE all that
extraneous material. That's what history is made up of- not just the big
events, but the little things that happen along the way.
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kingjon
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response 62 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:47 UTC 2006 |
And I explained how what you thought was the central part of the story was
itself extraneous, while what you thought was extraneous was central. Here I'm
not so much objecting to your view as to your statement that "we discussed
that" your view.
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kingjon
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response 63 of 153:
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Feb 7 16:47 UTC 2006 |
61 slipped.
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tod
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response 64 of 153:
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Feb 7 17:04 UTC 2006 |
re #50
You know what they say about Hobbits: Big feet, big...
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jep
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response 65 of 153:
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Feb 7 17:55 UTC 2006 |
re resp:62: Well, I find it defensible that they glossed over that part
of the book. I'd have had a hard time if they'd omitted Boromir,
Galadriel, Eowyn, Treebeard, Faramir, Moria, or the Palantir. And I'd
have walked out if they left out Gondor, Minas Ithil, Rivendell, the
orcs, or Mordor. It'd have been nice if they had make 6 movies for the
6 books of the story, but given the splendid job they did with the 3
movies they did make, I am well satisfied with them.
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kingjon
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response 66 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:03 UTC 2006 |
On a superficial level I'm satisfied. On the thematic level -- that is, if I
wanted someone to understand the work but for some reason couldn't get them to
read the books -- I am highly unsatisfied; it looked like the director (or
screenwriter, or whoever) looked at the text and said "You could get a good
story out of this."
If I had a TV and a DVD player and a day to look over them I would come up with
what I think they did badly. I think their cuts might have been for the most
part defensible; it's just that they *added* all sorts of things all over the
place. (Battles that weren't in the text, for instance -- including that
memorable scene of Aragorn getting kissed by his horse.)
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jep
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response 67 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:25 UTC 2006 |
The movies weren't perfect, for sure. What they were, was *good*. I
had no expectation of that, and so I was very, very pleasantly
surprised by them.
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kingjon
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response 68 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:30 UTC 2006 |
As I was saying -- in and of themselves, they were perhaps good movies, but
since they were deliberate adaptations of one three-volume novel (or of a
trilogy, depending on how you look at it) I had the hope that they would be a
faithful rendering of the spirit of the original. They were not so.
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jep
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response 69 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:49 UTC 2006 |
I have seen a lot of movies based on books that I've read. Very few of
them were more faithful to the book than the three Lord of the Rings
movies. I agree there were some differences -- and that some of those
were pretty faithless and pretty pointless. However, my impression was
that the movie was very close to the books; as close as it could have
been.
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tod
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response 70 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:53 UTC 2006 |
Remember when Liv Tyler played that elf chick? Hot!
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kingjon
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response 71 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:55 UTC 2006 |
Like I said, it looked to me like whoever was doing the adaptation said "This
could be a good story if ..." and just decided to keep the name. The other
possibility I've thought of is that the adapter didn't actually read the text
in its entirety but worked from something like Clif's Notes (which I've never
used, so I can't say whether that's realistic) -- because the point-by-point
*plot* corresponds quite well, but the themes and character development are
totally off.
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tod
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response 72 of 153:
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Feb 7 18:56 UTC 2006 |
There is nothing realistic about LOTR, Cliff Notes nor otherwise. Settle
down.
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jep
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response 73 of 153:
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Feb 7 19:41 UTC 2006 |
re resp:71: Just curious, but did you see the recent Chronicles of
Narnia movie, and have you read the book? What was your impression of
how those two compared?
We certainly had very different impressions of the LOTR books and
movies.
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kingjon
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response 74 of 153:
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Feb 7 19:48 UTC 2006 |
Haven't seen the Narnia movie. My one impression -- a promotional "still" in a
review in the newspaper -- wasn't a good sign (there was *not* light coming
from the wardrobe as Lucy opened it) but my brother, who did see it, said that
wasn't actually from the film itself.
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