Tolkien's Middle-Earth: He was just Beorn this way

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Tolkien's Middle-Earth: He was just Beorn this way

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

SHISHKABOB posted:

He certainly got surrounded by Balrogs, and Gothmog lopped his head off? Or that might be someone else. But yeah it's not unlikely that he killed some Balrogs, I guess.

IIRC Feanor was talking to his sons at his death, he didn't have his head chopped off. IIRC he basically charged ahead alone, got ambushed by a ton of Balrogs, took a bunch of them down but he got burned to death because he was surrounded by things that are on fire.

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NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

Not just the War of Wrath, there have been multiple large and small apocalypses in Middle-Earth. The fall of Eregion, the sinking of Numenor, Moria, the collapse of Arnor and (slower but no less apocalyptic, I think) of Gondor. Even Smaug caused Dale to be a post-apocalyptic sort of area.

The War of the Last Alliance effectively depopulated a big chunk of the region we're familiar with - removed the Noldor as a serious player. The whole history of Middle-Earth is a long series of events that cause advanced societies to revert to subsistence states. It's why the founding of the Reunited Kingdom at the end of LotR is such a big deal and a huge part of the theme of mourning the loss of better elder days.

EDIT: VV Yeah I had forgotten about the Great Plague, too, thanks. VV

An important thing to remember is that most historical countries have been pretty heavily populated. Not as much as in the modern world, but if you got on a road and walked for five miles in either direction you'd find a town. Middle Earth is an abandoned world by comparison.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 00:48

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

To a certain extent he probably just didn't think about how medieval societies actually organize themselves, but if you take it as a deliberate part of the setting then it does make Middle Earth a lonely and inhospitable place. This fits in well with the rest of the setting.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 01:45

NovemberMike: Dec 28, 2008

Vavrek posted:

And short! Something which stood out to me when returning to The Lord of the Rings after a long absence, during which I'd watched the films, is how few characters are considered Big People. When there's high snow drifts to carve a path through, it's just Aragorn and Boromir who handle it, while Gandalf is a haggard and bent old man and Legolas is merely an elf, probably not much taller than Gimli. (If that?)* McKellan and Mortensen are both, according to IMDb, 5'11". (Bloom as well, apparently.)

The films did brilliant work with perspectives, but didn't take the extra step of figuring out everyone's relative heights. (As I recall, Rhys-Davies was just simply a head taller than all the Hobbit-actors, so they could use the same scaling factor for everyone.)

* I know elves are allegedly tall, but I never notice any description of their appearance beyond "fair" and "beautiful" and "elvish" in general, with "strange-looking" for Legolas and "just like my beautiful wife" for ~~Luthien~~ Arwen.

IIRC Tolkien was pretty explicit about character heights in his letters. Aragorn was a nearly pure blooded Numenorean and was supposed to be 6'6"+, most elves were quite tall, I think Elrond was 7' or taller and some of the older elves like Feanor and Fingolfin were signficantly taller than that.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 00:18

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