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I think the landscape should have been to look more populated once they reach Rohan (at least the valley near Helm's Deep, it's supposed to be full of farms) and especially Minas Tirith. Might even have made for strong imagery, showing all the orcs burning everything around the Hornburg and Minas Tirith.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:50
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Lorien was probably my biggest gripe. I don't mind the design that Jackson & co came up with, but the way Tolkien describes the city and its occupants, I expected something very different. I'd also pictured Bree as a small village rather than the densely packed down we got. Though I understand why they designed it that way!
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Sep 7, 2016 17:57
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Kassad posted:I think the landscape should have been to look more populated once they reach Rohan (at least the valley near Helm's Deep, it's supposed to be full of farms) and especially Minas Tirith. Might even have made for strong imagery, showing all the orcs burning everything around the Hornburg and Minas Tirith. I wanted to see some oasts and garners, folds and byres, ricks, cots, and trees 
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Sep 7, 2016 18:04
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webmeister posted:I'd also pictured Bree as a small village rather than the densely packed down we got. Though I understand why they designed it that way! Bree is a walled town in the books on an important-ish cross roads and those tend to be densely packed by nature. Only so much room inside the walls, you know? And everyone wants to be inside the walls. So, the Bree depicted in the movies is pretty close to what I had imagined.
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Sep 7, 2016 18:04
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I gotta say I'm not even mad about having seen the movies first because their version of Orthanc is a million times better than anything I would have come up with. I think we've talked about it in this thread in the past, but how many of you have played Lord of the Rings Online? I'd be curious to see what you guys think of those depictions of Middle-Earth as well.
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Sep 7, 2016 18:31
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Radio! posted:I gotta say I'm not even mad about having seen the movies first because their version of Orthanc is a million times better than anything I would have come up with. I played LOTRO quite a bit and I thought its depictions were pretty good. I enjoyed just wandering around quite a bit. I never played anything past Rivendell though. I also read LOTR way before the movies - originally in junior high school in the early 90's. Overall I liked the movies, although I remember reading one time that someone thought they did too many sweeping far-off helicopter camera shots which remove you from the viewpoint of the Fellowship. I kind of agreed with that, it would have been better to see everything from a person's point of view, like when Aragorn tells the hobbits about Weathertop as they're walking up to it.
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Sep 7, 2016 19:49
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MadDogMike posted:More to the point, Tolkien was in WORLD WAR I, pretty sure if that doesn't make you "qualified" to write about battle nothing does. I would just like to point out that this is not a very good argument because he was a signals officer. He did go into the trenches with his men and was present on the multiple occasions when his battalion was ordered to attack something, but his job was to sit in a dugout and send and receive messages. Never went over the top, never had to repel an enemy attack, never saw a German except as prisoners, never fired his weapon in anger.
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Sep 7, 2016 20:09
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Trin Tragula posted:I would just like to point out that this is not a very good argument because he was a signals officer. He did go into the trenches with his men and was present on the multiple occasions when his battalion was ordered to attack something, but his job was to sit in a dugout and send and receive messages. Never went over the top, never had to repel an enemy attack, never saw a German except as prisoners, never fired his weapon in anger. Yeah. But by the same token being the guy who fires his weapon all the time doesn't make one a tactical or strategic master. I mean, I guess I should get clarification on whether the guy in question was saying that Jordan's military experience makes him better able to create plausible battle tactics, or whether he was saying it makes him better able to convey the feeling of being in the midst of action. But in either case I can probably name better examples of the craft. (I don't think it was the former, though. One battle in WoT is basically just a quotation of Hannibal at Cannae, and all that proves is that the author is a History Channel nerd.)
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Sep 7, 2016 20:24
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The mumakil were awesome. I just thought they were war elephants but never thought to make them giant elephant AT-ATs.
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Sep 7, 2016 21:51
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Tolkien isn't trying to evoke realistic warfare half the time though. Middle-Earth is fundamentally a heroic setting about individuals carving their names into legend. Sure, there are moments where the traumatic images of war are represented well (i.e The Dead Marshes, the PTSD that Frodo suffers). But on the flip-side you've got Legolas and Gimli chuckling about the dozens of Uruks they've gutted while the battle's still going on. That variety contributes to the work instead of detracting imo. And if realism means you can't shoot down a pteranodon from two miles away with one bow-shot at night, realism can stay the hell out
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Sep 7, 2016 21:52
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Yeah, totally; and as I said earlier, people read for different reasons. If what you want is T&A, you're not going to get much of that in Tolkien either, and there's plenty of other places to get your fill (and if you settle on Jordan it doesn't necessarily mean you're into spankings, but it sure makes me suspect it  ).I doubt anyone contemporaneous would have thought to fault a swords-and-sorcery epic for not feeling enough like a realistic battlefield journal, but goalposts move over time too. And for my money what I enjoy is the history and the linguistic landscape, which I know isn't most people's cup of tea, popular though LotR is for plenty of other reasons.
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Sep 7, 2016 22:28
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To get back to visual gripes for a second: one of the nerdier ones I have is whenever characters are depicted in plate armor. Lord of the Rings borrows a lot from Northern European and Arthurian mythology, where the armor situation was universally variations on chainmail. So hauberks, byrnies, coats and shirts of mail, etc. That's carried over very well into how the books describe armor; there's hardly a cuirass or vambrace in sight. Obviously that's limiting for an artist. Adding plate or scale into the mix lends visual variety, and can make silhouettes that communicate more information about a character. It opens up expressive designs like Sauron's or the Uruks' that we get in the movies. So I understand why they'd make the change. It's just, you know, that puts LOTR one step closer to the fantasy genre at large . Anyways, the one depiction I know of that keeps Tolkien's "rule" here is The One Ring RPG (which is excellent for a whole host of reasons). It's...authentic, in a way that's minor but which I still really appreciate.
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Sep 8, 2016 18:56
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Data Graham posted:Yeah. But by the same token being the guy who fires his weapon all the time doesn't make one a tactical or strategic master. Glen Cook was a forward observer in Vietnam and I think that very much shows through in his depictions of battles both large and small scale and the interactions between soldiers in the middle of it. Even though he is writing mostly fantasy battles with swords and sorcery it still feels right.
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Sep 8, 2016 19:28
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Bendigeidfran posted:So to folks who read LOTR before watching the movies: what looked different from how you imagined them? Whether that be the clothes, the landscape, how scary the orcs were, the Golden Hall in Edoras, etc. Elves weren't well hung at all in the movies.
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Sep 8, 2016 20:59
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Trin Tragula posted:I would just like to point out that this is not a very good argument because he was a signals officer. He did go into the trenches with his men and was present on the multiple occasions when his battalion was ordered to attack something, but his job was to sit in a dugout and send and receive messages. Never went over the top, never had to repel an enemy attack, never saw a German except as prisoners, never fired his weapon in anger. I can't really comment on the visuals from the films, but I'd say that Moria was greatly improved in my head by the film version, while most of the rest was pretty indifferent. It's still a shame we didn't get Bowie as Elrond, though.
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Sep 8, 2016 21:11
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Not that I can imagine even him being much better than Weaving. I took part in any number of "what would your dream LOTR cast be?" discussions on Usenet back in the 90s (you know, the obvious "Sean Connery as Gandalf lol" stuff), and while the films turned out to have a lot of people I'd never otherwise heard of or wouldn't otherwise have considered, they sure turned out to be inspired choices by and large.
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Sep 8, 2016 21:36
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Has anyone done an estimation of the size of ME based on the traveling times in LotR extrapolated from Tolkein's maps? I always get the impression that ME is pretty small. Can anyone give an estimate of distances? Angland to Ormal can't be greater than 1,000 miles. That sounds a fair size but isn't the idea that ME is the entire landmass of the world? http://aidanmoher.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/A_Map_of_Middle-earth_and_the_Undying_Lands_color.jpeg
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Sep 8, 2016 23:13
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ME is just Europe, man. The other continents still exist.
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 23:17
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End Of Worlds posted:ME is just Europe, man. The other continents still exist. Oh, ok. I guess I haven't read enough non-LotR Tolkein to get that.
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Sep 8, 2016 23:19
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Oh, ok. I guess I haven't read enough non-LotR Tolkein to get that. It makes more sense when you see it overlaid:  The Shire is in the West Midlands. e: and in the prologue he writes 'The Third Age of Middle-earth [is] now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed' chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 23:22
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Ok. So Shire to Mount Doom is West Midlands to Sicily. That is about what I figured. Thanks. 
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Sep 8, 2016 23:50
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The Atlas of Middle Earth actually has day by day estimates of the entire journey. I'll have to dig out my copy to see exactly what the author thinks the actual size is. IIRC the author is a cartographer.
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Sep 8, 2016 23:57
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Interrupting distance-chat to post this because holy poo poo. Warning: extremely NSFW (dildos). You'll see why I linked it here starting on page 4. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785918&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
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Sep 9, 2016 03:11
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Radio! posted:Interrupting distance-chat to post this because holy poo poo. I believe this is the post Radio is referencing, if anyone cares to review it without having to plow through a few pages of dildo chat: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3785918&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post463511251 eta: God help me Red Dad Redemption fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 03:28
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That post resulted in a rainbow elf dildo with acorn nuts, by the way.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:34
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Regarding the battle stuff, I feel like Aragorn et al's battle scenes represent the heroic saga-ish ideal of combat, while Sam & Frodo's agonising plod through the hostile hellscape of Mordor represents the actuality of fighting in WW1. As for the visuals, my only gripe is, as others have noted, the lack of agriculture in Gondor. Moria, Minas Tirith, Barad Dur etc are all just magnificent.
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Sep 9, 2016 05:06
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Trin Tragula posted:I would just like to point out that this is not a very good argument because he was a signals officer. He did go into the trenches with his men and was present on the multiple occasions when his battalion was ordered to attack something, but his job was to sit in a dugout and send and receive messages. Never went over the top, never had to repel an enemy attack, never saw a German except as prisoners, never fired his weapon in anger. On the other hand he lost a lot of friends who did do those things, I'm guessing even in the trenches he saw more dead people than most of us hopefully will, and one of the things limiting his service was getting really ill if memory serves. I'm willing to give him partial credit at least. As for things looking like you expected, the one version of illustrated LOTR that I have was done by Alan Lee, so somewhat fewer surprises for me honestly;).
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Sep 9, 2016 13:40
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the elf vagoo post is an outstanding work of scholarship and merits publication in a peer-reviewed journal
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Sep 9, 2016 13:57
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End Of Worlds posted:the elf vagoo post is an outstanding work of scholarship and merits publication in a peer-reviewed journal
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Sep 9, 2016 18:33
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If that post isn't gold mined we shouldn't have a gold mine at all.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:30
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"Hey, the Tolkien thread is aware of your puntl post and still respects you!" "THERE'S A TOLKIEN THREAD???"
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Sep 9, 2016 19:43
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Elise I read and enjoyed your posts in the health horror stories thread (at least that's what I think it was) please never stop writing, even if your eventual book is about elf dongs I'll read it all Also that's not how you use begs the question
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Sep 9, 2016 19:45
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elise the great posted:"Hey, the Tolkien thread is aware of your puntl post and still respects you!" add some citations to that post and submit it to the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts it's interdisciplinary, humanities scholars love that poo poo e: i'm actually semi-serious. if nothing else, it would be worth it just to receive a rejection letter from the journal in which someone with a PhD is forced to lay out, point by point, why they have chosen not to publish your article on the physiology of elven vaginas. also, i guarantee that thing would get forwarded between academic medievalists under the table for the rest of time. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 19:50
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This thread welcomes you, elise You bow to no one
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Sep 9, 2016 19:50
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Data Graham posted:This thread welcomes you, elise Now tell us your thoughts on a Game of Thrones-like Silmarillion series full of elf-on-elf incest. Elfcest?
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Sep 9, 2016 19:52
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Whoa mate Turambar and nienor niniel were human
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Sep 9, 2016 19:54
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my dad posted:That post resulted in a rainbow elf dildo with acorn nuts, by the way. god bless america
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Sep 9, 2016 19:54
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Honestly the real question now is half-elves: does their junk change if they choose the doom of Man.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:56
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euphronius posted:Whoa mate Turambar and nienor niniel were human Don't be one of those grogs who's always complaining when the new version drifts a little from the source material.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:57
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Ffff come on guys, incest is canon. Like... boring levels of canon. Seriously you guys have no idea how many dumb loving hypotheses and historiographical analyses are constantly rattling around in my head about the Tolkien legendarium. Sadly I am forced to keep them to myself because people either a) don't care or b) are genuine Tolkien Scholars who froth at the lips whenever I start talking. There's another option but it's even worse: c) they really liked the Hobbit movies. About a year ago I got thrown out of a pub for fighting with the loremaster for Shadows of Mordor, who I met through a mutual friend, about the nature and function of the Eagles. I am THE WORST FAN but either way I'm gonna backread this thread from the beginning before I start gargling my own trash theories where humans can see.
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Sep 9, 2016 19:58
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