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PS yes, read The Hobbit.
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Feb 9, 2018 22:33
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euphronius posted:Faramir was tempted in the book. Probably, but not very much. He's wise enough to know that he would be unable to master the Ring, and that using the enemy's weapons against him is dangerous. Given enough time or proximity to the Ring, he would eventually have succumbed, I believe. axeil posted:There aren't action sequences/battle scenes in the book like the big battle at the end or the escape from Goblintown? Not trolling, I'm legitimately asking. e: Read the Hobbit since its so quick, but if you liked poring over the maps of Middle Earth, you'll like the Silmarillion. Its good.
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Feb 9, 2018 22:34
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axeil posted:
It's about 300 pages all told, in fairly straightforward prose -- it was written as a children's book after all. I'm a fast reader and all but still, yeah, it's just waaaaaay to little material for what they made of it. I'd rather have seen a Scouring of the Shire film. =(
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Feb 9, 2018 22:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's about 300 pages all told, in fairly straightforward prose -- it was written as a children's book after all. I'm a fast reader and all but still, yeah, it's just waaaaaay to little material for what they made of it. Ugh. Me too. I really, really liked that part of the book because the whole time you have the hobbits going "well this is all hosed up but at least The Shire will be there when we get back!" And then it turns out Saruman's gone off and made it into a hellish wasteland. It's a nice coda that shows how much the hobbits have grown that they have to fight off Saruman all on their own and succeed at doing so but at the same time showing that the whole world really was affected by Sauron/Saruman's evil. A nice way of showing the reader why all the people who wanted to slink away and hide since Sauron/Saurman wouldn't come after us (like Theoden under Wormtongue) were wrong.
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Feb 9, 2018 22:38
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Ravenfood posted:In the book that sequence is roughly "and they took off running into the dark, with Orcrist and Glamdring biting into any goblins that didn't immediately flee. Bilbo slipped and fell. (riddles in the Dark happens and Bilbo rejoins the Dwarves." The dwarves told him briefly of their escape." Its maybe a page. The really irritating thing - well, another among many irritating things, but whatever - is that they replaced a perfectly good, tense and scary action sequence after they escape the caves (fifteen birds in five fir-trees!) with a generic fighty-fighty-macho-rarr scene with none of the cool buildup, which also managed to gently caress up how come Sting got its name in the first place. If Bilbo killed a wolf with it first he'd've called it Fang!
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Feb 9, 2018 22:45
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Well I ordered a copy of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Children of Hurin. I had some Amazon cash lying around so figured this was a good use. Excited to read them!
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Feb 9, 2018 23:04
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I always took the thing with the Ring that it promised you Greatness and had the ability to help you reach it; the problem being that being Great is consistently portrayed as, at best, a necessary evil throughout these books. Runcible Cat posted:The really irritating thing - well, another among many irritating things, but whatever - is that they replaced a perfectly good, tense and scary action sequence after they escape the caves (fifteen birds in five fir-trees!) with a generic fighty-fighty-macho-rarr scene with none of the cool buildup, which also managed to gently caress up how come Sting got its name in the first place. If Bilbo killed a wolf with it first he'd've called it Fang!
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Feb 9, 2018 23:19
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my bony fealty posted:The Silmarillion gets a "arghh this is hard to read" reputation but it's really not too bad. The hardest part is the Ainulindalë in the beginning, it's quite a good story that I think turns people off since it's very religious & abstract. The Quenta Silmarillion proper is really exciting and metal as gently caress, don't let the formal writing fool ya. This gets posted a lot but deservedly so. http://www.evanpalmercomics.com/#/ainulindale/
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Feb 9, 2018 23:19
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Turin Turambar is my favorite story. Tell us what your think.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:19
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The Silmarillion reads something like the juicy parts of the Old Testament.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:24
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axeil posted:Well I ordered a copy of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Children of Hurin. I had some Amazon cash lying around so figured this was a good use. Excited to read them! If you get sucked in and want more, Unfinished Tales is where you want to head next.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:26
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Runcible Cat posted:He's way more powerful than Sauron. And Sauron, by the Third Age, is a near-total wreck - he got splatted when Numenor fell on him at the end of the Second Age, and then the whole "losing the Ring he'd stored most of his power in" thing is why he's never much of a physical presence in LotR. Tolkien actually said, interestingly enough, that Sauron at the end of the Second Age was more powerful than Morgoth at the end of the First: Morgoth had spent his strength in marring Arda, he had let so much of his essence pass into the world that it had permanently diminished him from the greatest of created beings to a figure who, for example, could be lulled into sleep by an elvish song or permanently wounded by an elvish sword. Sauron had also let his power pass out of himself into the Ring, but while he wielded the Ring, had not lost it the same way as Morgoth. Mind you, he could still, with the Ring, be embarrassed by Ar-Pharazon’s army before the fall of Numenor or be fought to a standstill by an elf and a particularly swole man after it, so maybe we should take Tolkien’s commentary with a grain of salt here.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:00
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I found Sauron's Blog from earlier in this thread. It's amazing 
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Feb 10, 2018 00:12
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skasion posted:Tolkien actually said, interestingly enough, that Sauron at the end of the Second Age was more powerful than Morgoth at the end of the First: Morgoth had spent his strength in marring Arda, he had let so much of his essence pass into the world that it had permanently diminished him from the greatest of created beings to a figure who, for example, could be lulled into sleep by an elvish song or permanently wounded by an elvish sword. Sauron had also let his power pass out of himself into the Ring, but while he wielded the Ring, had not lost it the same way as Morgoth. Mind you, he could still, with the Ring, be embarrassed by Ar-Pharazon’s army before the fall of Numenor or be fought to a standstill by an elf and a particularly swole man after it, so maybe we should take Tolkien’s commentary with a grain of salt here. Something that Corey Olsen's stuff helped crystallize to me is that Morgoth's motivations throughout the Silmarillion are all about being petty. He's just such a bitter, small person inside all the monstrous trappings; he's just fuming and scheming to get back at the people he thinks wronged him, who slighted him by not acknowledging him as King from the outset. Whereas Sauron was always a much more patient type, much more clinical and calculating, currying favor and giving gifts and playing the devil-on-the-shoulder, willing to play a super long game in service of actual control and lordship of the Earth. Sauron wanted to actually be King; Morgoth just wanted to gently caress up the world out of spite.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:15
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skasion posted:Tolkien actually said, interestingly enough, that Sauron at the end of the Second Age was more powerful than Morgoth at the end of the First: Morgoth had spent his strength in marring Arda, he had let so much of his essence pass into the world that it had permanently diminished him from the greatest of created beings to a figure who, for example, could be lulled into sleep by an elvish song or permanently wounded by an elvish sword. Sauron had also let his power pass out of himself into the Ring, but while he wielded the Ring, had not lost it the same way as Morgoth. Mind you, he could still, with the Ring, be embarrassed by Ar-Pharazon’s army before the fall of Numenor or be fought to a standstill by an elf and a particularly swole man after it, so maybe we should take Tolkien’s commentary with a grain of salt here. e: Also as mentioned, Sauron is much smarter about how he uses his power.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok HOO BOOYY Hobbit opinions INCOMING: The problems with the Hobbit films were the silly, cartoonish look of them and the bad scriptwriting. I'm one of the few who thinks splitting the book into three films was not a problem at all if they were done right. They could have ended the first film by arriving at Lake Town, the second film could have consisted of only Lake Town, Smaug (and his death), and the third film could have been the battle of the five armies and the white council attack on Sauron. Imagine if they got a good scriptwriter to draft the riddle scenes - and modify/add to them for adaptation of course - Bilbo had with Smaug in the Mountain; in addition, imagine if Smaug, the Lonely Mountain, and the films as a whole had a gritty, more realistic aesthetic instead of a fairy tale looking one. The riddle scenes and dialogue Bilbo had with Smaug could have potentially been one of the most memorable moments in film if it was written and shot right. The Hobbit films aren't nearly as bad as another franchise's prequels, but they were definitely a missed opportunity. Jackson admitted he hosed them up due to lack of prep allowed by the studio, so I don't hold him to it that much.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:21
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Also the source material is not as good and not as good for adaptation.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:23
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viral spiral posted:The problems with the Hobbit films were the silly, cartoonish look of them and the bad scriptwriting. I'm one of the few who thinks splitting the book into three films was not a problem at all if they were done right. They could have ended the first film by arriving at Lake Town, the second film could have consisted of only Lake Town, Smaug (and his death), and the third film could have been the battle of the five armies and the white council attack on Sauron. Ehh, I'm not sure that argument holds because if you posit a sufficiently gifted scriptwriter anything is excellent; just raise Tolkien from the dead and have him fill in with more new adventures, etc. I agree that the overstretching is not the primary problem though. A thirty minute barrel riding action sequence isn't bad, it's just unnecessary and gratuitous, but ok, whatever. Making it "The Action Thorin Story, As Observed by Bilbo, Plus Hot Elf Babes and Legolas on a Sick Board" is actually bad though, not just an excess to be left on the cutting room floor.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:29
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viral spiral posted:... Nothing that is bad about those movies would have been improved with more prep time. Spending more time getting ready to make a movie about the battle of the five armies wouldn't do anything to make that movie less of a shallow, meaningless action sequence that misses the point of The Hobbit. The real problem with the hobbit movies is that they completly ignore the message of the book. Bilbo Baggins does not, and never would leap out of a tree to stab an orc to death. That isn't his strength. That isn't why Gandalf choses to bring him along. Gandalf brings him because of things like a few pages later where he uses his wits to get everyone into Beorn's house, a scene that isn't in the movie.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:53
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I think the audiobook version of the Hobbit is about 3.5 hours which goes to show those movies are way too long. And could've been done so well. It's a really charming story. Another actual battle mentioned in the book is the one with the spiders in Mirkwood and it's a great scene where Bilbo properly toughens up and takes full advantage of his ring.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:17
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Ravenfood posted:That's specifically saying that at the absolute height of Sauron's power, he did in fact surpass Morgoth at the absolute nadir of his power, which doesn't say much about their relative strengths. But "power" is always an interesting thing; even near the height of Morgoth's power he's able to be wounded by Fingolfin and loses the ability to shapeshift while Sauron still can; and I think that's because of how much power Morgoth is throwing into trying to control Arda himself. He wants to control Arda in a spiritual sense, not in a mundane one Sauron. Kings may rule over the lands, but Creation is God's. Morgoth is trying to usurp that control, and it has necessarily diminished him. Sauron can't even begin to try, and so under certain situations Sauron probably could have defeated Morgoth, but that doesn't reflect how they were overall. That's like saying I could kick the Rock's rear end just because I fought him while he was on his deathbed and I was at the prime of my health. Height of Morgoth’s power is way before he fights Fingolfin, back when he set up Hell and trashed the gods’ entire paradise at Almaren and sent them running scared to Valinor and literally was king of the whole world. Everything he does in the War of the Jewels proper is the act of someone who has already fallen most of the way from his original greatness and is reduced to tyrannizing only the northwesternmost fragment of his former realm from his own former border outpost.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:27
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The fact that the Hobbit movies ended up missing the point of the source material is not what's wrong with them. There's nothing that requires an adaptation to be anything like what inspired it. Brands are an illusion. Even for those who are fully on board with the idea of an anti-Tolkienian action romp through ersatz Warhammer, sort of a cynical and hostile caricature of the earlier Lord of the Rings films, these movies got problems. Individual scenes are campy spectacle that did land fairly often as such, and those ones I liked, but the ones that didn't were an undifferentiated mass of dwarves Scooby Dooing around the set piece, which is even more of a problem when they last for so long. The moments in between the action sequences, in which characters can do more than just allude to their single trait, tended to be arbitrary and simplistic, diminishing any challenge the characters might face (except for Thorin, who I think actually managed to be associated with some gravitas). The points at which original two scripts were cut into three movies, meanwhile, left us with one movie with no ending, one with no beginning, and one suffering from tonal and thematic disagreement with itself. I wanted to like those movies, and the production had all the ingredients needed to come together into something good. But all that talent and all those resources were gathered in service of something that was less "a story" and more "some things that happened." I still call it a shame that HFR didn't take off, though in hindsight maybe 48 was the wrong number of frames per second. At least try for 60!
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Feb 10, 2018 02:25
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skasion posted:Height of Morgoth’s power is way before he fights Fingolfin, back when he set up Hell and trashed the gods’ entire paradise at Almaren and sent them running scared to Valinor and literally was king of the whole world. Everything he does in the War of the Jewels proper is the act of someone who has already fallen most of the way from his original greatness and is reduced to tyrannizing only the northwesternmost fragment of his former realm from his own former border outpost.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:58
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Bongo Bill posted:The fact that the Hobbit movies ended up missing the point of the source material is not what's wrong with them. There's nothing that requires an adaptation to be anything like what inspired it. Brands are an illusion. If only there had been some kind of story they could have adapted, something with a point on which they could have hung all the exciting things that happened.
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Feb 10, 2018 03:33
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sunday at work posted:If only there had been some kind of story they could have adapted, something with a point on which they could have hung all the exciting things that happened. The problem is not that it didn't have the specific story of the book with the same title, but that it didn't have much of a story at all, not even an original one. People come up with original stories for movies all the time. If they had done that, the movie would've been good even though it differed from the source material.
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Feb 10, 2018 03:37
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Bongo Bill posted:The Silmarillion reads something like the juicy parts of the Old Testament. Hell yes.
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Feb 10, 2018 03:56
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Data Graham posted:Something that Corey Olsen's stuff helped crystallize to me is that Morgoth's motivations throughout the Silmarillion are all about being petty. He's just such a bitter, small person inside all the monstrous trappings; he's just fuming and scheming to get back at the people he thinks wronged him, who slighted him by not acknowledging him as King from the outset. Whereas Sauron was always a much more patient type, much more clinical and calculating, currying favor and giving gifts and playing the devil-on-the-shoulder, willing to play a super long game in service of actual control and lordship of the Earth. Sauron wanted to actually be King; Morgoth just wanted to gently caress up the world out of spite. Yeah, Melkor fucks himself over more than anyone else ever could. And he just Keeps. On. Doing. It. Every time. You'd think there'd be a point where he'd look at his situation and maybe reflect a bit, but nope. Too much of The Little Engine That Could spirit when he's actually The Dark Lord That Really, Really Can't. Ed: You can see why the Valar leave him alone for so long; they're just watching thinking that at some point he's got to stop punching himself in the face to own Iluvatar. euphronius posted:Also the source material is not as good and not as good for adaptation. The source material is a kids' book. It's basically We're Going On A Bear Hunt except with a dragon. It'd make a fine kids' movie, it's just a poo poo source for an Epic Trilogy Where A Humble Hobbit Earns The Manly Respect Of Dwarves For Being Manly. Even Tolkien gave up writing his grimmed-up LotR-compatible version of the Hobbit because he decided it didn't work; if he couldn't make it work no-one could. Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 11:04
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euphronius posted:Turin Turambar is my favorite story. As a finn Turin is also my favourite story because its just Tolkien adapting the story of Kullervo into his little fantasy world.
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Feb 10, 2018 11:34
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The Fall of Gondolin is the best Silmarillion story, and the version in that book isn't even the best one in print.
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Feb 10, 2018 15:08
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Runcible Cat posted:Yeah, Melkor fucks himself over more than anyone else ever could. And he just Keeps. On. Doing. It. Every time. You'd think there'd be a point where he'd look at his situation and maybe reflect a bit, but nope. Too much of The Little Engine That Could spirit when he's actually The Dark Lord That Really, Really Can't. The 1960 Hobbit is hilariously humanizing of Tolkien. “Hmm yes, surely I can redo this better now after 30 years and untold success” *writes a few chapters, shows them to a friend* Friend: “um... it’s ... nice” *gives up in a slough of despond*  E: come to think of it there’s some parallel there with Jackson and the Hobbit movies E2: wait, that’s exactly what you said 
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Feb 10, 2018 15:11
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Wikipedia posted:Tolkien had used "gnome" in his earlier writing to refer to the second kindred of the High Elves—the Noldor (or "Deep Elves")—thinking "gnome", derived from the Greek gnosis (knowledge), was a good name for the wisest of the elves. However, because of its common denotation of a garden gnome, derived from the 16th-century Paracelsus, Tolkien abandoned the term. How delightfully nerdy
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Feb 10, 2018 15:23
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Wonder too if the Nomes in Oz figured into it.
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Feb 10, 2018 15:42
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^^^I doubt it, the Nomes predate everything Tolkien ever wrote but he was still using the term off and on well into the writing of LotR.sassassin posted:The Fall of Gondolin is the best Silmarillion story, and the version in that book isn't even the best one in print. This, Chris should have published the Lost Tales version and let continuity go hang. ROG OF THE HAMMER being cut out of the Silmarillion is a crime against art. skasion fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 15:45
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The Hobbit cartoon from 1977 packs more fun and soul into 90 minutes than the new trilogy does in, what, loving 8 hours? It's also a far more faithful adaptation. Hell, the 10-minute translation+adaptation I did for a group project in high school Japanese ( ) was more faithful to the source.
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Feb 10, 2018 17:16
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The drunk green elves are the highlight of Tolkien cinema
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Feb 10, 2018 18:29
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skasion posted:^^^I doubt it, the Nomes predate everything Tolkien ever wrote but he was still using the term off and on well into the writing of LotR. I wonder though. We know he was self-conscious of other media that was coming out at the same time as his stuff and muddying the waters; he never forgave Disney for bringing out their Seven Dwarfs right when he was trying to lay claim to dwarves. And Oz would have been having its resurgence in interest right around then too, what with the movie in 1939; it isn't too much to imagine suddenly everyone was buying the Oz books and reading about Nomes and he went "fffuuuuuuu"
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Feb 10, 2018 18:30
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Data Graham posted:I wonder though. We know he was self-conscious of other media that was coming out at the same time as his stuff and muddying the waters; he never forgave Disney for bringing out their Seven Dwarfs right when he was trying to lay claim to dwarves. And Oz would have been having its resurgence in interest right around then too, what with the movie in 1939; it isn't too much to imagine suddenly everyone was buying the Oz books and reading about Nomes and he went "fffuuuuuuu" The Oz books came out a lot earlier I think; the Nomes make their first appearance with Ruggedo in Ozma of Oz, in 1907; the first Oz book was published 1900, in America. Tolkien was born 1892, so he probably missed the Oz books -- they'd be like Pokemon were for me, kids stuff that came out right when he was too old for it. (I could be wrong, I've never seen Tolkien mention Oz in the letters that I remember). Alternatively, it could be that when Tolkien decided not to use the word "gnome" because of the connotation "derived from Paracelsus", that he was thinking precisely of the Oz "Nomes." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 18:35
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I don't think Tolkien was aware of America at all.
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Feb 10, 2018 19:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Oz books came out a lot earlier I think; the Nomes make their first appearance with Ruggedo in Ozma of Oz, in 1907; the first Oz book was published 1900, in America. Tolkien was born 1892, so he probably missed the Oz books -- they'd be like Pokemon were for me, kids stuff that came out right when he was too old for it. (I could be wrong, I've never seen Tolkien mention Oz in the letters that I remember). Were they even published in the UK then? The only Oz books I remember seeing as a child in the 70s were the first two, where the Nomes don't make an appearance; I don't think Oz has ever been very big over here. I've had a quick google but can't find first-publication-in-the-UK dates...
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Feb 10, 2018 19:02
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Runcible Cat posted:Were they even published in the UK then? The only Oz books I remember seeing as a child in the 70s were the first two, where the Nomes don't make an appearance; I don't think Oz has ever been very big over here. That I don't know. Even in America the other Oz books aren't generally known today, but I think they were popular "at the time" -- my house growing up had a bunch of remaindered library copies of various 1930's editions of various Oz titles, so they were in fairly common American circulation at least then. Today all but the first seem mostly forgotten.
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Feb 10, 2018 19:05
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