OK, I know this is going to result it hate-outrage. But Lord of the Rings pretty much sucks. The books are long winded and so up themselves you can almost smell the s**t-stains.
The Movies aren't much better (which is actually what burned me out) - and I prefer Sword and Sorcery (Conan and Thongor) over the novels, and pretty much any Fantasy/Science Fantasy over the Movies (STAR WARS RULES, the... original Trilogy comes first though).
In all the Middle Earth Stories - Tolkien's good guys are white and noble - and the bad guys are black, slanty-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate and a psychologically undeveloped horde - bigotry at its best.
In the Movies – Check the percentage of protagonists in Fellowship who are white: 100%
Meanwhile the black-skinned antagonists and their black crow spies and their black glass seeing ball inhabit their black towers and perform black magic. One would have to be blind to miss the symbolism.
Only Saruman is white, and even he is abusing the other races and treating them like slaves to reach his goal.
The Movie continuity guys are crap, In the massive Mt. Doom battle scene at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, a DVD pause reveals at least half a dozen of the 50,000 Orc Warrior extras are wearing modern tennis shoes.
Re – the ACTUAL PLOT of Lord of the Rings. Why TF didn't they take horses on their quest?( Or even more practically, why didn't Gandalf's giant flying bird friend haul them to Mordor if it was THAT bloody important, at the end the Giant Eagles rescued Frodo and Sam in no time flat – if its so damn important to destroy the ring why risk it ON FOOT OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME) – HEY LOOK OUT FELLOWSHIP - ALL methods of transportation have been swallowed by the “Dark Lord of the Plot Hole”!
Every time Frodo or Bilbo went invisible with the ring he should have also gone BLIND. Your eyes cannot function unless light is reflected off the cornea. If light passes through it (as must be the case with invisibility) sight is no longer possible. D’OH!
I read somewhere that US students are being forced to read some novelization of the movies in their literature classes. UTTERLY Ridiculous! Hollywood wins again
OK – RANT OVER!
The Movies aren't much better (which is actually what burned me out) - and I prefer Sword and Sorcery (Conan and Thongor) over the novels, and pretty much any Fantasy/Science Fantasy over the Movies (STAR WARS RULES, the... original Trilogy comes first though).
In all the Middle Earth Stories - Tolkien's good guys are white and noble - and the bad guys are black, slanty-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate and a psychologically undeveloped horde - bigotry at its best.
In the Movies – Check the percentage of protagonists in Fellowship who are white: 100%
Meanwhile the black-skinned antagonists and their black crow spies and their black glass seeing ball inhabit their black towers and perform black magic. One would have to be blind to miss the symbolism.
Only Saruman is white, and even he is abusing the other races and treating them like slaves to reach his goal.
The Movie continuity guys are crap, In the massive Mt. Doom battle scene at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, a DVD pause reveals at least half a dozen of the 50,000 Orc Warrior extras are wearing modern tennis shoes.
Re – the ACTUAL PLOT of Lord of the Rings. Why TF didn't they take horses on their quest?( Or even more practically, why didn't Gandalf's giant flying bird friend haul them to Mordor if it was THAT bloody important, at the end the Giant Eagles rescued Frodo and Sam in no time flat – if its so damn important to destroy the ring why risk it ON FOOT OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME) – HEY LOOK OUT FELLOWSHIP - ALL methods of transportation have been swallowed by the “Dark Lord of the Plot Hole”!
Every time Frodo or Bilbo went invisible with the ring he should have also gone BLIND. Your eyes cannot function unless light is reflected off the cornea. If light passes through it (as must be the case with invisibility) sight is no longer possible. D’OH!
I read somewhere that US students are being forced to read some novelization of the movies in their literature classes. UTTERLY Ridiculous! Hollywood wins again
OK – RANT OVER!
Not sure if you are being serious or not, but hey whatever.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to most of your questions is simple. Things happened the way they did because JRRT needed the Hobbits, the every man, to be the reason for victory. The story is not about a great war or kings or great wizards. That is the background to the real story of the everyday man (the quintessential "British" man) winning the day.
And you black vs. white comparison, while certainly has some merit, is not 100% accurate. There were "other races" help. After all there were elves, dwarves, hobbits and men. Plus there is Prince Imrahil whose description always seemed modeled on the people of the Middle East.
The biggest gripe I have is the lack strong female characters in the book. Sure in the movies they pumped up Arwen and Éowyn, but they were not so in the books.
The ring and being able to see. Dude you either accept it as a plot device or move on. That is the least issue in terms of magic.
OMG so, the Books are Sexist too . . . .
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the time period of which these were written. For the time they are about standard of normal. I'm not saying that it is right, but it was right for the time. Trying to take a book that was written in the mid 20th century and apply ideals from the early 21st just isn't going to work.
ReplyDeleteAlso a small rant in response.
Why can't people read a story and just enjoy it for what it is? A story. Why do people always have to over analyze everything?
@ Tordek - that doesn't wash with me - considering quite a few of my Favourite Fantasy Novels were written BEFORE Lord of the Rings (the Solomon Kane stories, most of the original Conan stories were written before 1935, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books were written in the 1920's) so that REALLY isn't where I am coming from.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest gripe is that Tolkien just isn't that good of a writer. For instance, everybody in the book talks with the same prose-like speech and idioms. You can't tell who is talking until you get to the 'said Frodo/Aragorn/whoever' part. He's like the George Lucas of literature. He's a great world-builder but an awful script writer. Tolkien gets props for being the grand-daddy of modern fantasy, but that's about it.
ReplyDelete@Brian, Lucas baffles me - the original trilogy were so well planned out and executed. Yet the newer movies, that had an advantage with better special effects, a wider choice of actors - just came over so weak. Its scary. Tolkien is the Grand-Daddy of HIGH FANTASY - I will yield that much LoL!
ReplyDelete@Doctor Warlock interestingly enough the reason the original trilogy was good was because there were people stopping lucas from doing all the stuff he wanted to do and making changes, he had full control of the newer movies and we know how they turned out
ReplyDelete