Tom B doesn’t fit the swashbuckling vision that Jackson had for the films, which made them great for the screen. Too many endless battle scenes. Glad I have only seen my dvds and can just ffwd theough them.
To say the books are better means a lot, though, because I really liked the movies A LOT. Casting, costuming, locations, sets, artwork, cinematography were all stellar.
There are numerous characters in the stories who act as messiah types, or who exhibit the traits of a messiah.such types are literary as well as specific to Jesus.
The racial framework was nicely inverted by Ursula Le Guin in A Wizard of Earthsea, in which it is the blond white people who are the savage outsiders.
Just out of curiosity, does Tom Bombadil make any appearance or he even mentioned anywhere at all in the Silmarillion? I don’t recall that he was, but then again, it’s been decades since I read that.
It just occurred to me this morning that, for somebody as ancient and powerful as he was - we otherwise know almost nothing about him beyond what they discussed of him in Elrond’s council. Maybe he’s kind of like a ‘Melchizedek’ figure - somebody of significance, but who comes and goes without much fanfare and no known lineage?
I’ve never read the Silmarillion and have only looked at a couple of YouTube videos concerning Tom Bombadil but my sense of him is that he is so open to God and dead to the world in regard to his own identity that he truly is not as moved by what goes on with the human and human-like races as we tend to be. Somewhat like the brown wizard that cares more about non human animals, I think Tom sees all the world - including trees and stones - from a God like perspective in which there are no main characters or bit parts. All is of interest. So a plot line to suit human tastes wouldn’t intersect with Tom a great deal. In our own eyes, we are the apple of God’s eye but how do we seem to God? Perhaps Tom knows.
He does not appear in the Silmarillion proper (i.e. about the Silmarils) or The Music of the Ainur (creation), but I have not read all of Tolkien’s writings about the first age. Tom Bombadil would seem to be either a Maia or some sort of personification of nature.
Very true. If an are interested in a long discussion on that, Richard Beck’s blog on Experimental Theology has 50 plus entries. Sort of fun to read through them. The first couple gives you a good flavor.
I like the 4hr extended editions and to embrace a gender stereotype, maybe being a male, I am more predisposed to absolutely adore the epic battle scenes. They are so well done. Helms Deep was intense and completely outdone in RotK which is a feat in and of itself.
Yes, I feel the movies are so well done they rival the books, which I have read 5 times or so. Usually the books are better but I think the movie rivals them here and exceeds them in a few places.
Yes. Christian theology has clearly influenced his work. I can find Jesus in Gandalf, I can even find Jesus in Frodo baring the ring (sin)/carrying his cross (ring) and him not wanting to go to Mount Doom but doing so (Gethsemane) and so on. There is nothing wrong with this at all. It is not incorrect in the least. To say Tolkien intentionally tried to write a story where Gandalf is an allegorical Jesus would be incorrect per his own words. But in literary criticism/analysis, whatever thoughts a fictional book evokes it evokes, and many a pattern seeking human has made this very same connection.
Maybe it has been too long since I last renewed my man card but I found them tiresome though gave them a well-done for execution. To leave them out would have been to misrepresent the books. Maybe we should just be glad Jackson didn’t elect to give the LOTR movies The 300 treatment.
Though I mostly read horror , or watch it, I occasionally jump into other genre and those tend to be fantasy and science fiction. I’m not to big into action, romance or comedy though I enjoy elements of them in stories.
I just started watching finally the power of the rings or whatever the LOTR tv series is called. It’s really good. Looks big budget. I mostly lean towards high fantasy. It will be a bit before I get back to LOTR books though. Few weeks or months. Probably the latter. Starting with pre-Tolkien fantasy. So 1900-1930s at first. Always wanted to go through L Frank Baum’s work. Seen on hoopla they have the complete oz collection as a audiobook. Just shy of 71 hours. So I’m starting there. Then perhaps the metal monster of 1920s. Then maybe the Allan Quatermain series. Especially “she and Allan” and then the Zimiamvian series including “The Worm Ouroboros”.
I really enjoyed 300 and the sequel but would not have wanted LotR to go in that direction at all. I think the first 300 is a masterpiece.
For LotR, the epic battle scenes were the bread and butter that ultimately secured funding for everything else. Costumes, sets, actors etc. The typical audience member doesn’t care if the wood elves have clothing that slightly off from the books or not. Instead, the typical audience member was put off by the 17 different endings in RotK. I read the books numerous times and even I was like this is enough
Good points. I may have posted this in the past, but in my junior English class, we learned that the pagan Britons didn’t like the idea of a Messiah who died, as it seemed so weak to them. Thus, in the “Dream of the Rood (Cross),” by Caedmon, one of the earlier Christians, he portrays Christ gripping the cross eagerly, as a warrior going to fight. It’s kind of how the message of the cross is foolishness–to be last being first.
They weren’t alone! Nobody likes the idea of a weak Messiah as demonstrated by the time honored line of historical heresies where Jesus gets a makeover (a complete replacement actually … Giving the phrase substitutionary atonement a whole new meaning!) where cross-bearing Jesus gets replaced by a machine-gun brandishing personage. Peter’s initial blunder still remains alive and well even today as would-be disciples react to Jesus with “surely not that! …” earning us the same rebuke that Peter got … “Get behind me, Satan” if we’ve even remained close enough to the real Jesus to hear any such rebuke at all. The demonically violent power-mongers are oh-so-much more attractive to affluent Christians today. They glitter and promise us the world for our prostrated worship, and we’ve proven at least as gullible as the original disciples in that we will worship just about anything as long as it’s shiny and dangerous to our enemies.
Tom Holland’s “Dominion” hammers home this theme, though I took it quite a bit farther in the above paragraph than I think he did.
That certainly does twist it. He sweat blood not because he was a coward but because of the mystical and terrible separation from the Godhead he would have to endure, he who spend long hours at night communing with God. He braved the cross for the joy set before him, in anticipation beyond it.
I don’t know that they are associated with character traits in Le Guin, in fact. The locals, who are no moral exemplars themselves, perceive raiders invading their villages as alien, not surprisingly, (This happens early in the book, by the way, so this isn’t much of a spoiler.) One of the marks of their outsider status is that they look different. I suspect Le Guin assigned the pigmentations precisely because there’s such a history of treating whiteness as the norm and darker skins as threatening.
