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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Shibawanko posted:

I always thought Tolkien and metal were a poor match.
I think a lot of the harmony is kind of accidental and is a development from Led Zeppelin's randomly-Tolkienesque songs.

HIJK posted:

The Silmarillion mostly deals with abstract concepts like the Valar creating the earth along with Eru. Even if that could get put down there's a lot of religious packaging to go along with it. I'm not sure that any studio today could portray that well.
I'd say the real challenge would be making it look novel, though the song metaphor is substantially different from 'beard god gestures everything into being'.

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Runcible Cat
May 28, 2007

Ignoring this post

Time for this again?

The Most Metal Deaths in Middle-earth, Ranked

Mr. Neutron
Sep 15, 2012

~I'M THE BEST~

quote:

Still, the Song of Fingolfin remains the greatest metal song yet unsung.

Well, actually...

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
Russians have one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84xJweX8XM8

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
15 year old me thought that Blind Guardian was really cool and I'll keep those thoughts pure by not relistening.

Mr. Neutron
Sep 15, 2012

~I'M THE BEST~

chaos rhames posted:

15 year old me thought that Blind Guardian was really cool and I'll keep those thoughts pure by not relistening.

I´m 31 and it´s one of the few remaining bands from my high shool days I still listen to and like. YMMV.

9-Volt Assault
Jan 27, 2007

Beter twee tetten in de hand dan tien op de vlucht.

chaos rhames posted:

15 year old me thought that Blind Guardian was really cool and I'll keep those thoughts pure by not relistening.

They are still cool and good.

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER
Time Stood Still at the Iron Hill is just a good name for a song.

EricD
Sep 1, 2016

TildeATH posted:

Are we going to get a big budget silmarillion any time soon? Or better, an inverted hobbit so it's a fun hour and a half children's version?

Doubtful. Christopher Tolkien still owns the rights to the Silmarillion, and he thoroughly disliked the film versions of LoTR (Haven't heard what he thought of the Hobbit yet). With some justice, I think. I mean the Lord of the Rings films are good movies, but they are so removed from Tolkien that in a way we got Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings instead of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I say that as someone for whom Fellowship was his favourite of the movie trilogy. The Hobbit films were pretty dire as a whole, even further removed from the spirit and style of Tolkien's original story and not even good as standalone movies to boot. Frankly, I'd rather Hollywood not take on any of the stories from the Silmarillion. They would inevitably gently caress them up. The tales in the Silmarillion are too heavy, too grim in the original sense, too dour and depressing even if they are beautiful. Any movie studio would try to make a typical fantasy-action flick out of them, and would suck all the spirit that makes them so special right out of it. Personally I don't want to see any films based on the Silmarillion, for the Silmarillion's sake.

Cartouche
Jan 4, 2011

Just checking in to say that books are awesome and talk of the films is bad.

Have read TLotR more times than I recall since I was about 12. Never felt the need or desire to watch Jackson's films. JRR imprinted images just fine in my mind.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

They are good movies, and just because they have a title in common doesn't mean they are in some way competing for your affections.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



A fair viewpoint.

I know that growing up I always dreamed of there being a definitive, beyond-reproach film version of the story, though I don't think I could tell you why. I guess somehow I thought more forms of media would help to introduce more people to it, is part of it (the nerd impulse to get other people into the things I like is strong in me, and I could never get my brother into it just by reading).

I was thinking about this today, actually. A friend of mine (who I've definitely mentioned before) has been rattling on for years about the Wheel of Time, taking any opportunity (as he did again this weekend) to segue the conversation into how much he enjoys that series and by contrast how much he hates LotR. Along with the "Jordan was actually in war, so his battles actually feel real, unlike some people" that I've talked about already, another point was "Jordan wasn't afraid to have ablative characters, like here's one guy you've been following along with the whole time and whoops, he just got his eye gouged out! Or this other guy, let's blow his hand off! And you'd think they're going to reset it somehow, but they don't!"

And I decided not to say something snarky like "Yeah, nothing like that ever happened to Frodo". Because even though at his goading I went and read the whole drat WoT series earlier this year, and even though I have a million negative things to say about it and counterexamples to his accusations about Tolkien (one of which was "It's just the same old cliché elves and dragons and unicorns and poo poo"), I realize that the more important thing to take from the conversation is that all he's trying to do here is get me into his world. And I can respect that. This is him showing a chink in his armor, allowing himself to be an obsessive nerd about something potentially embarrassing for a macho-man type to be into. I'm not about to start laying into him about it.

I'm not even going to take issue with one of his favorite hobby-horses about LotR, which is "the loving Eagles". To him, the Eagles were a huge and inexcusable deus ex machina. "Really, Tolkien? You could have written this better." Now, the fact that he brings this up every single time tells me that you know what, I don't think he's actually read the books. Not all of them. I think he's seen the movies. And/or watched Youtube videos talking poo poo about them. Because the movies certainly have their weaknesses, and the structure and pacing of the final third of RotK is certainly not above criticism. But while it's a huge and in-your-face feature of the movie, it barely registers as a plot point in the book (the Eagles' rescue takes place mostly off-screen, and let's be frank, it's not about plot at that moment anyway—it's about a series of emotionally evocative mental images, the sudden and ragged release of tension that had been built up over the course of hundreds of pages leading up to that point). After the Ring has gone into the Fire, we're not worried that Frodo won't make it; we're as resigned as he is to him dying there—and given how the rest of the story afterwards goes for him, in some ways it might have been a mercy. It's not that critical a piece of the story, ultimately, for the Eagles or anyone to have saved Frodo and Sam. Not knowing whether they live or die is just another, rather minor piece of how we're supposed to feel as the Tower falls and the world is delivered. Sure, Tolkien could have invented a more "plausible" way to save them, and anyone who thinks he wasn't capable of it is a moron—but it really wasn't necessary for the drama of that moment. Texturally it's a vanishingly small piece of the text. And to latch onto that one unlikely rescue as a criticism is to extrapolate from the questionable directorial choices in the movie, not to bring into question the plausibility or quality of the story as presented in the book. What it tells me is that he's complaining about something the Internet doesn't like about something Peter Jackson did.

And that's his prerogative, is what I'm getting around to saying. People want different things from the stories they read. Sometimes you want a story to have every little plot thread neatly tied up, in an artful and thematically appropriate way if you can get it. Sometimes you want atmosphere. Sometimes you want spectacle. Sometimes you want character development. And sometimes, for some people, you want a portrait of psychotic messianic megalomania for your Everyman protagonist. That works for some people.

And sometimes some people want to see a story like LotR on the big screen, to see images like Orthanc or the Dead Marshes or the Argonath, or even unassuming little scenes like that one loving gorgeous back-alley scene in Minas Tirith where Gandalf sits down to take a breather between some barrels next to a stable, made real and visible. Until I saw those things all I had were various calendars, and I always wanted more and better.

Sometimes I feel like I would have liked to have been able to be satisfied with the books alone, though. Because even as good as the movies are, they aren't perfect, and they miss badly in a few key ways, and they aren't a foolproof means for getting someone into the story who isn't already a fan. Nothing is that platonically ideal. Sometimes I wonder whether it might have been better to leave well enough alone, and relegate the movies forever to the world of the "unfilmable".

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Really, it's all just art inspiring further art.

sunday at work
Apr 6, 2011

"Man is the animal that thinks something is wrong."
It always bothered me that they changed the Argonath in the movies. Anyone who hadn't read the books wouldn't know what they were supposed to look like.

Radio!
Mar 15, 2008

Look at that post.

Data Graham posted:

Sometimes I wonder whether it might have been better to leave well enough alone, and relegate the movies forever to the world of the "unfilmable".

As someone who got into the books because of the movies, I have to disagree. LotR are my favorite books of all time, and I only have that because 11-year-old-me loved the movies so much I became determined to power through the first ~100 pages of the Fellowship no matter how boring it was (ironically I love that section now).

I think you have to look at it like any adaptation or reboot of a thing you love- a new take on a thing doesn't diminish the value or meaning of the original thing. It's the same way female Ghostbusters don't actually ruin anyone's childhood. You can enjoy both in different ways.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Yeah, I mean it's only sometimes that I wonder that :v: I think it's a good thing the movies exist, and that would be the case even if they were terrible.

webmeister
Jan 31, 2007

The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

Data Graham posted:

I was thinking about this today, actually. A friend of mine (who I've definitely mentioned before) has been rattling on for years about the Wheel of Time, taking any opportunity (as he did again this weekend) to segue the conversation into how much he enjoys that series and by contrast how much he hates LotR. Along with the "Jordan was actually in war, so his battles actually feel real, unlike some people" that I've talked about already, another point was "Jordan wasn't afraid to have ablative characters, like here's one guy you've been following along with the whole time and whoops, he just got his eye gouged out! Or this other guy, let's blow his hand off! And you'd think they're going to reset it somehow, but they don't!"

And I decided not to say something snarky like "Yeah, nothing like that ever happened to Frodo". Because even though at his goading I went and read the whole drat WoT series earlier this year, and even though I have a million negative things to say about it and counterexamples to his accusations about Tolkien (one of which was "It's just the same old cliché elves and dragons and unicorns and poo poo"), I realize that the more important thing to take from the conversation is that all he's trying to do here is get me into his world. And I can respect that. This is him showing a chink in his armor, allowing himself to be an obsessive nerd about something potentially embarrassing for a macho-man type to be into. I'm not about to start laying into him about it.

Your friend sounds like kind of a moron to be honest. Genuinely - why does he think one set of battles is more realistic than the other? It's not like he's been in a faux-medieval battle to judge! And criticising someone who essentially invented a genre for being unoriginal and cliche, really? That honestly makes no sense.

Tolkien definitely isn't perfect and neither is LOTR, but in another context those arguments would basically just be console warrior bullshit and derided as such.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



I know, and isn't it maddening? But I made it an exercise in biting my tongue.

If what you want out of a battle scene is realism and tactics and so on, I a) can name way better examples of it than WoT, and b) imagine you're not reading fantasy for anywhere near the same reasons I would be.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal
The biggest battle in the trilogy is won by the rightful king returning with a ghost army overcoming their curse on stolen pirate ships. I know it's reductive but fantasy novels could do with more stuff like that in their battles instead of sargeant glossary filler dying anticlimactically.

TildeATH
Oct 21, 2010

by Lowtax

Bongo Bill posted:

Really, it's all just art inspiring further art.

Yeah, the movies are fine.

Unlike the Hobbit movies, which actively damage the world they inhabit and which should be suppressed for the good of mankind.

Cartouche
Jan 4, 2011

While I think it might be good that movies draw people to read the series who otherwise would not have, I cannot help that going into the reading with a minds blank slate is best for the imagery.

Back in the late 70s when I first picked up my sisters copy of The Two Towers (I had no idea it wasnt a stand alone book... I eventually sorted it out and read them in order :) ), I had said blank slate, and an impressionable early teen mind, and damned if I am not eternally grateful. Read the books about a dozen times in the years prior to the movies being a blip on the radar. Those who went from movie to books, how much influence over the mental imagery there must be.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Though by the same token, how many people read through LotR burdened with mental images based on the Brothers Hildebrandt covers?

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Would it have been a mistake to have Frodo and Sam die on Mount Doom? Apart from making the LotR sadder, would it thematically or in terms of morality diminished the story?

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
It would mean Frodo and Sam wouldn't be present at the Scouring of the Shire, for one. Not in the movies, but kind of a big deal in the books.

Mr. Neutron
Sep 15, 2012

~I'M THE BEST~

Bongo Bill posted:

They are good movies, and just because they have a title in common doesn't mean they are in some way competing for your affections.

This. They are modern Hollywood epics made for the ´common´ viewer yet it´s blatantly obvious both Jackon and the other screenwriters were huge fans of the books and tried to treat them with as much respect as they could.

Also:

Data Graham posted:

Along with the "Jordan was actually in war, so his battles actually feel real, unlike some people"

Tolkien served in the Brtish army in WW1 and was wounded in the Battle of Somme in 1916.


Data Graham posted:

his accusations about Tolkien (one of which was "It's just the same old cliché elves and dragons and unicorns and poo poo")

Tolkien literally invented the genre of modern (or high) fantasy as we know it today. It was not a cliché in the 1930s.

Data Graham posted:

"the loving Eagles". To him, the Eagles were a huge and inexcusable deus ex machina. "Really, Tolkien? You could have written this better."

They really are not, though, granted, you need to read the Silmarilion and his letter no. 210 to understand why. I never understood why the Jackson movies didn´t provide at least some of this information. To the outside viewer it really looks like a plot hole.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Mr. Neutron posted:

Tolkien served in the Brtish army in WW1 and was wounded in the Battle of Somme in 1916.

Tolkien literally invented the genre of modern (or high) fantasy as we know it today. It was not a cliché in the 1930s.

I've made these points repeatedly; they don't seem to stick.

I think he thinks "shot dudes from a helicopter in 'Nam" inherently translates to being von friggin Clausewitz, but if all you did is stand in a trench and get a foot infection you ain't poo poo.

webmeister
Jan 31, 2007

The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Would it have been a mistake to have Frodo and Sam die on Mount Doom? Apart from making the LotR sadder, would it thematically or in terms of morality diminished the story?

Frodo essentially dies on Mount Doom anyway, he doesn't really do anything afterwards aside from making Sam his heir and going to the Havens (which is an allegory for death).

Sam dying I think would be a mistake, his journey is about development, growth and self-discovery and I think thematically his death wouldn't make sense. Though he does die at the end of the appendices so

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
Frodo does actually have one major role after Mount Doom. It's only mentioned in one sentence near the end of the Scouring, but he was basically doing warcrime prevention duty during and immediately after the Scouring by calming down revenge-bent hobbits.

Cartouche
Jan 4, 2011

webmeister posted:

Though he does die at the end of the appendices so

Dunno if I agree about what you are calling allegory for death.

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER

webmeister posted:

Frodo essentially dies on Mount Doom anyway, he doesn't really do anything afterwards aside from making Sam his heir and going to the Havens (which is an allegory for death).

Sam dying I think would be a mistake, his journey is about development, growth and self-discovery and I think thematically his death wouldn't make sense. Though he does die at the end of the appendices so

After a long, fulfilling life of scholarly work (Sam works on the Red Book, right?) and peaceful political leadership.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

my dad posted:

Frodo does actually have one major role after Mount Doom. It's only mentioned in one sentence near the end of the Scouring, but he was basically doing warcrime prevention duty during and immediately after the Scouring by calming down revenge-bent hobbits.

Exactly. He pleads for mercy for Saruman, and this saves the Shire in an entirely different way than Sam, Merry, and Pippin did.

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER
Frodo pleading for mercy has always rubbed me the wrong way. Not the mercy part - being willing to forgive the wretched is a major part of his character - but HOW he does it. He says something like 'Saruman is a very rare and chosen kind of person and we don't have the right to kill him, as he was appointed by powers greater than us,' which is partially true, Saruman being a Maiar and all, but Saruman abandoned his divine mission and his mandate when he turned against the free people of Middle Earth. Gandalf broke his staff with pure will, after all, showing just how far Saruman had fallen. I don't like his argument that the hobbits don't have a right to enact what they see as justice. This is a man who has been oppressing and murdering throughout the Shire out of nothing but spite, for goodness sake.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



It has echoes of typical Victorian classism / revolutionary French royalism, doesn't it? "You peons are not qualified to judge me!" "That's right, we're not. You answer to a higher power."

If it had been written a few decades later, or from an American viewpoint, he probably would have the hobbits bring him down purely out of Mel Gibson style populist righteousness.

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER
Agreed! That's why it bothers me. Turn Saruman over to the White Council, sure, but don't couch it in terms like 'right to judge.'

webmeister
Jan 31, 2007

The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

VanSandman posted:

After a long, fulfilling life of scholarly work (Sam works on the Red Book, right?) and peaceful political leadership.

Well yeah but that's what I mean - he wouldn't have accomplished any of that if not for his experiences with Frodo, and as a fitting conclusion to his story it makes more sense thematically than having them die together on Mount Doom.

I've always understood the whole "ship into Valinor" thing for mortals as an allegory for death and the journey to heaven/the afterlife, is that not the case? And in the movie they even give Frodo's internal description of Valinor ("far green country under a swift sunrise") to Gandalf, who uses it to describe death to Pippin during the siege of Minas Tirith.

Mr. Neutron
Sep 15, 2012

~I'M THE BEST~

VanSandman posted:

Agreed! That's why it bothers me. Turn Saruman over to the White Council, sure, but don't couch it in terms like 'right to judge.'

That´s not what he does though. He spares Saruman because he believes nothing, including him, is beyond redemption, however unlikely it may seem.

quote:

"No, Sam!" said Frodo. "Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it."

webmeister posted:

I've always understood the whole "ship into Valinor" thing for mortals as an allegory for death and the journey to heaven/the afterlife, is that not the case? And in the movie they even give Frodo's internal description of Valinor ("far green country under a swift sunrise") to Gandalf, who uses it to describe death to Pippin during the siege of Minas Tirith.

No, Valinor was a real island, the seat of the Valar and most of the elves. Though after the second age it was made impossible to get to via regular means for mortals, save for special circumstances.

SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe

Data Graham posted:

I've made these points repeatedly; they don't seem to stick.

I think he thinks "shot dudes from a helicopter in 'Nam" inherently translates to being von friggin Clausewitz, but if all you did is stand in a trench and get a foot infection you ain't poo poo.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Would it have been a mistake to have Frodo and Sam die on Mount Doom? Apart from making the LotR sadder, would it thematically or in terms of morality diminished the story?

Yes, it would have, relating to the first quote. Note that The Hobbit is also known as There and Back Again. War is something that people fantasize about. Tolstoy has written a lot about this. Western European cultures have young men encouraged to join the army as a glamorous, heroic, honorable, etc. thing to do in life. This is from the early modern era. World War 1, the Great War, changed the face of war in Europe. So many young men went off to war and died horribly. Murdered en masse by the churning machine. Tolkien experienced this, as did all of the societies who took part. War "lost its charm", if you will.

The "adventure" that Frodo and gang are sent off on is like The War. I'm not calling it an allegory, but there are clear themes of going off to war, coming back to "normal life", reacclimatizing. A great book which deals with this same topic is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. It's an American story about the Vietnam war, so the wheel of time guy might enjoy it in that respect.

War is bad. If you want a look at a modern war, research what is happening to the people of Syria. Frodo cannot live in the Shire after what he experienced. The pain of his wound forever haunts him. He leaves for the undying lands. This is the most significant part of the story for me. I love fantasy and sci fi adventure stories, but the question "what happens after" has always been there. How do you live life after going through something like the lord of the rings? Frodo can't, he simply couldn't manage.

webmeister
Jan 31, 2007

The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm.

Mr. Neutron posted:

No, Valinor was a real island, the seat of the Valar and most of the elves. Though after the second age it was made impossible to get to via regular means for mortals, save for special circumstances.

Yeah I know that it physically exists but was removed from Arda after the attempted invasion by Numenor. But I mean in an allegorical sense, it's a one-way trip to a heavenly place. I don't think any mortal ever returned?

Mr. Neutron
Sep 15, 2012

~I'M THE BEST~
It may seem like that to a mortal, sure, but it was just a regular island inhabited by many elves (and Valar, though I remember from Silmarillion they hardly ever communicated with anyone). It was ´blessed´, yes, but it was not afterlife, neither an allegory of it. Also don´t forget not even Valar had the power to remove the Gift of Man - Frodo and Bilbo (and Gimli?) eventually died there.

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SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Data Graham posted:

I've made these points repeatedly; they don't seem to stick.

I think he thinks "shot dudes from a helicopter in 'Nam" inherently translates to being von friggin Clausewitz, but if all you did is stand in a trench and get a foot infection you ain't poo poo.

Tbh, it sounds like your friend just needs a good trolling. Laser focus on Jordan dying before finishing the series-that's where I'd start. Also that the only author he ever 'inspired' was Terry Goodkind.

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