Pajiba

Tom Bombadil is The Man. I understand why they left him out of the movie, sort of, but it was something I kept looking for, some little reference I never got to see.

I like the movies, but I think they stand separately from the books. I think my lists would match up pretty close to yours, although I wish the movies had made Merry and Pippin get taller because of the Ent draughts.

I remember haaaating these books. I pushed myself through them when i was about 11. Loved the hobbit and the movies though, and I'm a big fan of fantasy in general. After this review I'm considering going back to this series to give it another shot.

Kudos!

Just some random thoughts from a LOTR's fan:

1. It's not 3 books. It's one novel divided into 6 books, and published in 3 parts. It came out during WWII, and the publisher didn't think people would cough up alot of money for a huge novel in a new style (fantasy), so the publisher split it into 3 parts and the publisher gave each third a title.

2. If you get the extended version of the movie, it includes Merry and Pippin growing because of drinking ent draughts. It also includes Merry and Pippin getting kidnapped by a tree, only it's Treebeard that saves them, and not Tom Bombadil.

3. Frodo is 50 when he sets out with the ring. As much as I like Elijah Wood, he was just toooo young for the part.

4. The Scouring of the Shire. It was the whole point of the ending. The Shire wasn't spared. The hobbits had to fight some more. SPOILERS . . . Saruman and Wormtongue were freaking living in Bag End. No wonder Christopher Lee was pissed off about not being in the last movie.

5. Viggo Mortensen is pretty.

While I'm just now starting to get into the fantasy genre, the LOTR movies practically guaranteed that I'll not willing slog through the books. The first film is still so excruciatingly boring for me that I haven't watched it since the day that Two Towers was released, and while I really dug certain parts of the 2nd & 3rd films they also just dragged a little too much for me. I do acknowledge that I may just be to impatient to appreciate the work. It is encouraging to know that Liv Tyler's horrific work/character in the film trilogy has no place in the literature.

Quick question for seige or anybody else who knows it: At any point in the books, does Tolkien address the often joked about question if that massive eagle thing saved Gandalf from the tower and saved Frodo from the lava of Mount Doom, why didn't they just ride said giant eagle thing to Mordor and drop the ring into the fire?

It's a nitpicky question I know, but I'd be interested to hear any insight from the books.

CleverJohnny: I've always thought it was because the eagles would have taken the rings too...

I always thought they sent the hobbits to Mordor because they could sneak in unnnoticed. A huge eagle flying towards Saruman's eye doesn't sound like a good idea to me...

Love the movies and love the books, but they have become two wholly different versions of the same story. Sort of like myths/fables as they are passed down through generations. Like Fredo said.

A combination of Amy's and Sofia's reasons are what I believe to be the answer to the "fly the eagles straight into Mordor" question. Also, one was the king of eagles, so maybe he had more important things to watch out for. Like dragons, demons, etc.

I actually enjoyed LOTR much more after I read The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales. All that stuff about getting started, and winding actually means something. Yet, I don't really know how you make that story into a movie. Jackson & company did a good job, perhaps as good as could be.

I especially don't know how you put Tom Bombadil into the narrative. The whole story lives in the middle of a much larger web of powers and goals and consequences. Bombadil, the Ents, the Eagles, and Shelob are at least as entangled with the surrounding story as with the tale being told. It's the hobbit's role & task to bear the fate of this age, and eventually to free the shire, or not.

If you want crazy-making things about the story - how about releasing the army of the dead? Who says "Fight for us this day?" Fight for us this campaign or this war. Bring the army of the dead with you to Mordor.

I'm a huge fan of the books (first read them as a kid, re-read them every year) and followed every bit of the movie-making process with anxiety. So I will offer this for the Arwen-haters: it could have been worse. Initially, they were going to have her show up at Helm's Deep with the other elves (who should NOT have been there, EITHER, huge peeve of mine) and fight alongside Aragorn. Somewhere on the internets (too lazy to look), there's a shot of her in armor on horseback doing that very thing. Luckily, Liv Tyler didn't think that it fit the (reinvented) character, and Jackson agreed, so they went with the more subdued version in the film. Just imagine...

I second everything Mrcreosote said. The books are about the hobbits and their quest and Battle of the Shire was the climax of that story. To leave it out of the movies was unforgivable.

BWeaves: Frodo was supposed to be young. 50 for a hobbit is more like 25 (give or take) for us. Bilbo was, like, 80 years older than him.

I was 13 when I first read LOTR and was completely smitten with Strider/Aragorn for almost a year. I was TOTALLY gunning for him to hook up with Eowyn (sp? too lazy to check). She was the only cool chick in the entire series. And then Aragorn pusses out and marries Arwen. I discovered this by sneaking a peak ahead in the Return of the King. Pissed me off so much, I never finished reading it. Seriously, my little twee heart was broken when I found out they didn't end up together - instead he married some fancy elven babe. I'm actually grateful for the movies for showing that Aragorn/Arwen had a relationship, as opposed to him being a total dick and prancing off to be king with his elven princess and leaving Eowyn behind.

Also, it can never be said too often: Viggo Mortensen is pretty.

I read these books about 12 years ago, and haven't read them since.

I have, however, listened to them on CD (Rob Inglis narrates). Listening to this story is absolutely amazing; it transforms the way you look at the novels. You get to hear the lyrical qualities of Tolkien's writing, and oh! is it beautiful.

Just to put it up front, I'm a huge fan of both books and movies. Huge. I grew up with the books -- at one point they were all I wanted for Chriestmas from my relatives coming from the States -- and the movies filled my heart with joy.

"Also, one was the king of eagles, so maybe he had more important things to watch out for. Like dragons, demons, etc."

--MORE IMPORTANT than the end of the greatest evil that world had ever know? Well, that AGE of that world, as they put it.

But yeah, it bothered me too about the Eagles, as a kid. In a sense, the movies helped answer that question (as they did clarify so many things about the books, I felt.)

The answer is, yeah: fly a couple of giant Eagles into the heart of Mordor, and even IF the Nazgul aren't around to slap them right out of the sky (remember that the army, including the Nazgul, were smoke by the time the Eagles did their thing)... even if the Nazgul weren't there, the Eagle riders would have been sensed, and met at the Mount Doom entry with about a thousand Orcs.

I'd have to agree that Tolkien was a better idea-haver than a writer per se. But that's not too far removed from, say, H.P Lovecraft. Both had entire worlds they wanted to share, one awful, one beautiful. They could have been better writers (or maybe editors)... but they definitely deserve to stand head-and-shoulders above the rest for the strength of their ideas.

On a separate note: the expanded role of Arwen didn't bother me that much. If you look at the book, that part of hers (rescuing the hobbits and Aragorn in the Wild) was done by another character named Glorfindel, an Elf-Lord who, really, never did anything else in the book. So I was okay with using the opportunity to lay some screen time and gravitas on Arwen, who, after all, is the ultimate reason Aragorn is doing almost anything. So, I was fine with that. (As an illustrative point -- literally, I now realize -- in Ralph Bakshi's animated film the rescue was given to Legolas to do, just to, I guess, give it to SOMEONE who you were gonna see more than once.)

Perhaps surprisingly, what bothered me more was the presence of the Elves at Helms Deep. They rode in out of nowhere, with admittedly great timing, and it made for some very cool movie moments. But in the book, it's just Men. The three Fellowship members, and the rest are the men of Rohan. Tolkein even mentions it briefly in the books. (although, if I remember correctly, the passagecomes later on in book 3, when the Rohan men are met by Aragorn's fellow Rangers); Gimli says "Why didn't WE wish for some of our kinfolk?" And Legolas says sadly "They would not have come. They have no need to ride to war. War marches already on their own lands."

But if there's one thing in the Movie trilogy that really bothered me, it was this, above all:

The Men, particularly their leaders, come across looking really bad.

Let me explain. In the first movie, the Men were amazingly human -- flawed, brave, everything. To this day Boromir -- who I despised in the books, as only a kid can -- is perhaps my favorite character in the movies, and its all for that one scene in Lorien where he talks about his father's rule.

But the leader of Rohan, bewitched but kindly and kingly in the book, became a whiner in the movies. And the Steward of Gondor, a stern but commanding presence in the book, became an obvious madman in the movie. How could he have anyone's respect? I still hate Jon Noble's performance in that movie; it is only in Fringe that I have some to like him, and believe that in LOTR he was either misdirected or miscast. I like Noble's work in Fringe a lot, but it took a long time to get over that hurdle.

I though it a real pity that both these leaders, real leaders in the books, particularly Theoden of Rohan, came across as such cardboard cutouts in the films.