Underwhelmed by Tolkien

[baxus]

On one side we have "we'll trust secrecy rather than strength of armies" approach with small Fellowship instead of mustering armies in order to avoid attention from Sauron and Saruman and on the other you have an Elvish army marching across the land to show up where they are needed.

It just insults viewers intelligence.

[mankytoes]

13 hours ago, Jo498 said:

There is actually quite a bit of grey morality in the old epics although this is somewhat misleading as some of them really are Beyond (Before) Good and Evil. Who is good/bad in the Iliad? The Trojans are in some sense the guilty party but Hector is mostly a positive figure (Paris admittedly isn't). Achilles is the greatest warrior but he is moody, he has no problems with lots of Greeks dying because he sulkingly withdrew from battle. His grievance is justified (Agamemnon took his girl because he had to give his own mistress back to end the plague) but he is certainly overreacting. And so on.

I wonder which was the first fantasy epic with limited and changing 3rd person pov?

In Greek and Roman stuff, even the Gods tend to be very morally ambiguous. I always find the most interesting one is how Romans seem like villains in their own origin myth- Romulus kills his brother, and then the early Romans abduct a load of women so they have wives. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

But this is just sloppy in the movies, isn't it? We see the elves riding or marching and it is not implied that they have some magic travelling system.

(I am not mod, but again, I don't think we should turn this into another thread about how bad the movies are.)

It creates the same problem that rapid transit does for GoT.  It tightens the story but makes the world in which the story exists seem much smaller.  It is much easier to convey acope and space with literature than it is in visual media.

[baxus]

Let's not forget that the whole point of Fellowship instead of an army is to get to Mordor undetected.

I mean, if an army of Elves can come from Lorien to Helm's Deep undetected then why not send them to Mount Doom in the first place? Especially at the speed they had to be moving and military prowess they displayed in the battle at Helm's Deep.

[Jo498]

Yes, it makes no sense and I completely share the criticism. The main reason is probably to give the Elves some more screen time. Which is not a very good reason, I think. Nobody who didn't know the books would have missed the Elven detachment at Helm's Deep etc.

AFAIK Tolkien is quite meticulous about travel times (and generally the passage of time) in LotR which might be one reason why Fellowship seems boring to some readers. And the rather "empty" world of both Hobbit and LotR with days and weeks of travel in the wilderness between "islands" of civilization may not be historically very plausible but it is consistent and travel would take a lot of time even with more villages and towns in the empty landscape.

(There has been a lot of criticism against the feasibility of feeding Minas Tirith but the travels of the Fellowship, the Ride of the Rohirrim etc. are all plausibly paced, AFAIK.)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, baxus said:

Let's not forget that the whole point of Fellowship instead of an army is to get to Mordor undetected.

I mean, if an army of Elves can come from Lorien to Helm's Deep undetected then why not send them to Mount Doom in the first place? Especially at the speed they had to be moving and military prowess they displayed in the battle at Helm's Deep.

What prowess?  They were all killed.

[baxus]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What prowess?  They were all killed.

First of all, if all of them were killed it happened offscreen. Their leader was one of the very few killed on screen.

Second, they were facing impossible odds and still won the day, didn't they?  

[Corvinus85]

30 minutes ago, baxus said:

First of all, if all of them were killed it happened offscreen. Their leader was one of the very few killed on screen.

Second, they were facing impossible odds and still won the day, didn't they?  

No, the elves were rubbish. There's scenes were you see those Uruk-hai that jump off the ladders cutting down elves left and right, and Gimli and Legolas have to solve the situation. They were good archers, but that's about it. All the elves did was provide some delay, but the end result was the same, as if you had Eomer and Rohirrim soldiers in there just like in the book.

And it's a little sad really, because there was the opportunity to actually show the Lorien elves in action, if Jackson really wanted to, in Fellowship. I believe they even filmed the scenes when the goblins come chasing after the Fellowship in Lothlorien, only to be mowed down by the elves, but all that got cut from the film; not even the extended edition has it.

[baxus]

I guess I need to brush up on LotR movies then.

Will wait until they're traditionally broadcast on TV around New Year.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 9/13/2018 at 5:48 AM, The hairy bear said:

Tolkien was trying to create an English national mythology by emulating the old epic poems and the norse sagas.

Not quite. The stories that eventually became The Silmarillion were initially intended as a connected body of story that younger Tolkien wanted to dedicate to England. He moved away from that in the 1920s.

The Lord of the Rings was never intended as a mythology for England. It was intended as a sequel to The Hobbit that became the sequel to The Silmarillion - which means it occupies this bizarre grey-area of an Epic Romance dressed up as a mid-twentieth century novel, a case of form diverging from substance.

[Spring Bass]

The part of FOTR where they travel from Bag End to Bree is usually the "drag" part that stops more than a few readers, but I found I enjoyed it a lot more when I re-read Lord of the Rings again. There's a building tension to it after their first near-encounter with one of the Ringwraiths, which doesn't let up until they get some relief at Tom Bombadil's. It just worked for me. 

Also, reading it against after reading The Silmarillion was good. You really notice some of the continuities of theme. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

The Black Riders hunting them until Bree feels very much like the Thirty Nine Steps - a shame the Buchanesque chase gets cut short by Tom Bombadil.

[aceluby]

10 hours ago, Summer Bass said:

Also, reading it against after reading The Silmarillion was good. You really notice some of the continuities of theme. 

I've always had a hard time starting the Silmarillion, is it something I should try to push through?

[The Marquis de Leech]

54 minutes ago, aceluby said:

I've always had a hard time starting the Silmarillion, is it something I should try to push through?

Definitely.

Push through the Music and the Valaquenta. Think of it as a textbook. Once you hit the Revolt of the Noldor, the story becomes a recognisable story. 

Failing that, you can read along with this primer:

https://www.tor.com/series/the-silmarillion-primer/

[Spring Bass]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

I've always had a hard time starting the Silmarillion, is it something I should try to push through?

Thirded what others have said. I'd recommend reading it aloud at first, which really helped me get into it (standing at first while doing that helps too - I know that sounds silly, but it does).

[Corvinus85]

I skipped the Music when I read the Silmarillion. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I skipped the Music when I read the Silmarillion. 

As long as you go back and read it at the end. It's not light reading, but it's important reading - it's Tolkien dealing with the Problem of Evil.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 9/14/2018 at 1:10 AM, All Souls Bass said:

The part of FOTR where they travel from Bag End to Bree is usually the "drag" part that stops more than a few readers, but I found I enjoyed it a lot more when I re-read Lord of the Rings again. There's a building tension to it after their first near-encounter with one of the Ringwraiths, which doesn't let up until they get some relief at Tom Bombadil's. It just worked for me. 

Also, reading it against after reading The Silmarillion was good. You really notice some of the continuities of theme. 

My first time through I found that part a tad dull.  It has grown on me in my myriad re-reads.

[Tears of Lys]

On ‎9‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 1:10 AM, All Souls Bass said:

The part of FOTR where they travel from Bag End to Bree is usually the "drag" part that stops more than a few readers, but I found I enjoyed it a lot more when I re-read Lord of the Rings again. There's a building tension to it after their first near-encounter with one of the Ringwraiths, which doesn't let up until they get some relief at Tom Bombadil's. It just worked for me. 

Also, reading it against after reading The Silmarillion was good. You really notice some of the continuities of theme. 

 I found this was the part that began to **really** pique my interest.  That's where they encounter Old Man Willow.  And the tone of the story takes a decided turn in the Tom Bombadil section when they have the adventure with the Wights.  I must admit I was even glad to see ol' Tom show up again!  (Although, I was happy to see him bounce away again.)

 

 

[Kalbear]

When I read Tom's part I gave him the voice of Barney.