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Runcible Cat posted:Denethor, I think, suspects (correctly) that Gandalf wants to bring back the line of kings, which would shunt him and his adored heir down the status ladder to actual Steward instead of effective ruler (and possibly not even that if a new king decides he doesn't want a hereditary Steward). Even more than that, Gandalf knows that Denethor suspects that he wants to bring back the kings and is using the death of Boromir as an excuse to do it, which is why he orders Pippin not to mention Aragorn during their interview with the steward. (Pippin inevitably does). After hearing Pippin’s tale Denethor more than just suspects, too, he’s basically certain of it and drops a very pointed hint about it when he dismisses the two of them, “the rule of Gondor is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again.” Denethor is a proud man who doesn’t accept being told how to do his job, but Gandalf also doesn’t really give him much advice. In the interview, he lets him know that Isengard is defeated and Theoden is on his way, but Denethor dismisses this as stuff he already knew. Right before he sends them away for the day there’s a really terse and weird exchange between him and G where he openly, if politely, accuses G of using him to his own ends and giving or withholding his advice without regard for the benefit of Gondor and G responds by politely saying he doesn’t give a gently caress if Gondor should perish as long as Sauron doesn’t conquer the entire world. e: honestly rereading these scenes makes me want to strangle Pippin. What a dope. “Denethor turned to Gandalf, asking questions about the Rohirrim and their policies, and the position of Éomer, the king’s nephew.” Pippin to himself: “gee that sure is weird, how does he know anything about Rohan when it is far away?” skasion fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Feb 14, 2018 |
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Feb 14, 2018 20:55
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axeil posted:I've been reading the Hobbit and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've never read it before and my only experience was the films but it's really eye opening. Enjoy it! Having been on my Tolkien film and book binge as of late, it's a fun exercise. I still think that, despite its faults, the LOTR trilogy are some of the finest films out there, and probably the best adaptations Hollywood could ever put out. Seeing the rush job that the production company put the film crew on, while also mandating they create MORE content, gives such a painful "what could have been" feeling. Jackson may be guilty of CG bloat, but you can tell the care he and his crew put into these films.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:07
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Chieves posted:Enjoy it! Having been on my Tolkien film and book binge as of late, it's a fun exercise. I still think that, despite its faults, the LOTR trilogy are some of the finest films out there, and probably the best adaptations Hollywood could ever put out. Seeing the rush job that the production company put the film crew on, while also mandating they create MORE content, gives such a painful "what could have been" feeling. Jackson may be guilty of CG bloat, but you can tell the care he and his crew put into these films. I've been watching the Maple Edit of The Hobbit as well and it's amazing how the editor's editing gets more and more extreme as you go. An Unexpected Journey is pretty much intact minus the Radagast/White Council stuff. Meanwhile, The Desolation of Smaug cuts a ton out like the romance sub-plot, CGI silliness in the barrel ride, Dol Guldur, the political stuff in Lake Town and the Dwarves melting gold on Smaug. I haven't seen the last 1.5 hours of the film yet so no idea what gets cut out of The Battle of Five Armies but I'm guessing it's going to be a lot.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:56
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Runcible Cat posted:Saruman considers himself Gandalf's superior (and so does Gandalf up until their big confrontation), but he's always been twitchy about it since that ambiguous Valar remark before the wizards left Valinor. I think he'd have issues with Gandalf however Gandalf behaved because he's got a thing about status and having to be the wizard in charge, which may feed into the idea he seems to get that he can steer and manage Sauron. That's a good point as well. Iirc Denethor even points out that Gandalf never cared as much for Boromir because Boromir was strong and willful and didn't heed Gandalf. Faramir however did like Gandalf which was yet another point of contention between Denethor and Faramir and by extension Denethor and Gandalf.
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Feb 14, 2018 22:12
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axeil posted:Meanwhile, The Desolation of Smaug cuts a ton out like the romance sub-plot, CGI silliness in the barrel ride, Dol Guldur, the political stuff in Lake Town and the Dwarves melting gold on Smaug. Sounds like the cut stuff would make for a better movie than the things left behind.
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Feb 14, 2018 22:56
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sassassin posted:Sounds like the cut stuff would make for a better movie than the things left behind. Funny enough, the editor still thought the Dul Guldur stuff was interesting and cut that into a separate 75 minute film. It works much better.
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Feb 14, 2018 23:36
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axeil posted:Funny enough, the editor still thought the Dul Guldur stuff was interesting and cut that into a separate 75 minute film. It works much better. Really? Is that available somewhere?
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Feb 15, 2018 00:01
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axeil posted:I've been reading the Hobbit and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've never read it before and my only experience was the films but it's really eye opening.  We want to hear your HOT THOUGHTS.
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Feb 15, 2018 00:57
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Live read! Live read!
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Feb 15, 2018 01:02
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I've spent the last week or so reading this thread in entirety and decided that it is now cool to be a Tolkien nerd again. Thank you, goons. I will do a reread of the Hobbit and the LotR once I've finished whatever book in the Malazan series I'm currently on. fake edit: it's The Bonehunters
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Feb 15, 2018 20:51
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Don't be a nerd. Be a normal adult with many interests who can appreciate literature with perspective.
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Feb 15, 2018 20:52
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euphronius posted:Don't be a nerd. Be a normal adult with many interests who can appreciate literature with perspective. I'm figuratively 11 years old.
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Feb 15, 2018 21:04
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Marijuana posted:I've spent the last week or so reading this thread in entirety and decided that it is now cool to be a Tolkien nerd again. I'm not sure "tolkien nerd" is even a thing any more. Tolkien is as mainstream now as the Simpsons. The other day I saw a photoshop of the Ring as a Tide Pod and I realized the movies came out almost two decades ago.
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Feb 15, 2018 21:14
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I think it’s still meaningful to distinguish “read the Silmarillion and all the appendices and HoME” from “liked the movies and plan to get around to reading the LotR and Hobbit”
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Feb 15, 2018 21:21
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Data Graham posted:I think it’s still meaningful to distinguish “read the Silmarillion and all the appendices and HoME” from “liked the movies and plan to get around to reading the LotR and Hobbit” "I have memorized the names of the all the Vala and can even translate some Elven" vs. "I had a poster of Orlando Bloom on my wall as a teen."
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Feb 15, 2018 21:25
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Marijuana posted:"I have memorized the names of the all the Vala and can even translate some Elven" vs. "I had a poster of Orlando Bloom on my wall as a teen." Are you a Colbert or a Franco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMvMeI1kugY
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Feb 16, 2018 00:51
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^Speaking of which, I found this : The Cartographers of Tolkien's Middle-earth A family tree of the maps of Arda, with pre-Tolkien influences! (British WWI maps along others, I should have known) Surprised at how Fonstad's line ends up quickly. Also MERP and LOTRO on the same branch, guess it is appropriate.
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Feb 17, 2018 19:22
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Radio! posted:Are you a Colbert or a Franco I love this!
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Feb 18, 2018 18:27
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Marijuana posted:I love this!  of course.
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Feb 18, 2018 18:40
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So, uh, who else just ended up down an hour-long YouTube rabbit hole of Stephen Colbert LOTR clips
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Feb 18, 2018 20:55
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I recently finished up a reread of the Fellowship and about 25% of Two Towers (up to The Palantir). These books are so fun. I'm really struck by how much of a superior writer Tolkien was compared to the authors who followed in his footsteps. Dune, A Song of Ice and Fire, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Wheel of Time, etc. seem so trashy to me, now. Lord of the Rings is a concise, tight story compared to those multi-million word series.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:15
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Marijuana posted:I recently finished up a reread of the Fellowship and about 25% of Two Towers (up to The Palantir). These books are so fun. I'm really struck by how much of a superior writer Tolkien was compared to the authors who followed in his footsteps. Dune, A Song of Ice and Fire, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Wheel of Time, etc. seem so trashy to me, now. Lord of the Rings is a concise, tight story compared to those multi-million word series. Tolkien had a real job, so it’s not like he had any impetus to spin poo poo out forever writing The Revenge of the Bride of the Lord of the Rings, Vol. 8. I find Eddison appealing for similar reason.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:37
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Marijuana posted:I recently finished up a reread of the Fellowship and about 25% of Two Towers (up to The Palantir). These books are so fun. I'm really struck by how much of a superior writer Tolkien was compared to the authors who followed in his footsteps. Dune, A Song of Ice and Fire, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Wheel of Time, etc. seem so trashy to me, now. Lord of the Rings is a concise, tight story compared to those multi-million word series. Don't group Dune in with the rest of those.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:41
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Pham Nuwen posted:Don't group Dune in with the rest of those. Dune is a decent book and a good example of how to tell a self-contained fantasy story, but he is contrasting with Dune as a series, which is at best entertainingly insane window dressing on an agonizingly simple restatement of the thesis of the original book, and at worst/mostly just a really depressing cash-in.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:49
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Those subsequent series, what I can’t really imagine is that the authors spent any significant time editing/reworking/rethinking, let alone completely tossing out whole half-written drafts and starting over from scratch, over and over again. Seems like in the modern era there is always a pressure to produce to a schedule, and authors feel like it’s a weakness to not get it right the first time. Which is hilarious knowing how hard the publisher was hammering on Tolkien to turn in his poo poo already.
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Mar 16, 2018 19:57
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The poetry and prose is especially good and way above the standards of fantasy
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Mar 16, 2018 20:14
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Tolkien was a linguist and a lover of language. He made a few conlangs for fun. He understood that languages depends on culture, which depends on history. You can't really understand English without knowing about the King James Bible, for instance. Most of what he wrote was the backstory for Elvish, and remained unpublished until after his death. However, all that practice gave the stuff that he actually did publish an unparalleled depth and a unique idiom. It's very distinctive as a result. In particular his use of language is unsurprisingly masterful. First rule of reading Tolkien is don't skip the poetry. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Mar 16, 2018 |
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Mar 16, 2018 20:17
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I mean the above is not news to anyone in this thread, but — I still remember the moment of wide-eyed wonder I experienced as someone who already knew the books well by middle school, then took an AP English class that — without directly mentioning Tolkien at all — explained how Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse works and suddenly the Rohirrim and their poetry snapped into sharp focus in my head.
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Mar 16, 2018 20:43
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Data Graham posted:I mean the above is not news to anyone in this thread, but — I still remember the moment of wide-eyed wonder I experienced as someone who already knew the books well by middle school, then took an AP English class that — without directly mentioning Tolkien at all — explained how Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse works and suddenly the Rohirrim and their poetry snapped into sharp focus in my head. My dad told me about the connection after I read the Hobbit in third grade and so the next book I tried to read was John Gardner's Grendel. I'm still not sure.if that worked out or not.
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Mar 16, 2018 20:45
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That's one good thing if the infinite Tolkien professor LOTR read through : we do every single line of poetry
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Mar 16, 2018 20:52
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euphronius posted:The poetry and prose is especially good and way above the standards of fantasy I tried to sing a lot of the poems out loud and found that it really helps to nail the rythm. No, I'm not embarrassed to admit that.
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Mar 17, 2018 16:37
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Not surprising. Most poetry is written to be spoken rather than read.
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Mar 17, 2018 17:35
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Ynglaur posted:Not surprising. Most poetry is written to be spoken rather than read. Well, most anglo-saxon poetry anyway
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Mar 17, 2018 17:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, most anglo-saxon poetry anyway Touche. (I'm a cretinous monolinguist.)
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Mar 17, 2018 17:38
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Speaking of Tolkien's poetry, I just discovered that Clamavi De Profundis, the acapella group who did an excellent full-length rendition of The Song of the Misty Mountains back when the movie first came out, has kept at it. Their Song of Durin has nearly six million views so I'm clearly behind the times on this, but for anyone like me who also missed it: holy poo poo their Song of Durin is beautiful, please check it out. Tolkien's poetry really was meant to be heard, not read.
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Mar 17, 2018 20:25
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It's a longer version than the previous one they had up, too. They've got a few other songs I like, but that one is the best.
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Mar 20, 2018 18:56
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Is LOTR podcast # 51 gone or did he forget to post it ?
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Mar 20, 2018 19:01
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euphronius posted:Is LOTR podcast # 51 gone or did he forget to post it ? It’s on YouTube. He also uploads there more promptly than to the podcast most of the time
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Mar 20, 2018 19:33
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Started reading through the ROTK appendix for the first time last week. The history of Arnor and its Three Kingdoms Era was really quite interesting! You get the feeling that Eriador in that time period's a very rich place, filled with interaction and conflict between elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, orcs, whoever. Certainly more flavorful than Gondor, which just squats invincibly in the south, occasionally murdering themselves in fits of dumbass race panic. I liked the very Inuit-esque folk who helped out Arvedui as well. I get the feeling that Tolkien found igloos very quaint; they certainly seem like something that's up his alley.
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Mar 26, 2018 02:18
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I need to read the Lord of the Rings again. And the Silmarillion. And Beren and Luthien, which is my favorite.
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Mar 26, 2018 02:41
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