I've never read LOTR. Will I like the movie(s)?

[BigT]

Well, to me, while Sam is willing to sacrifice his life, Frodo actually sacrifices his soul. I’ve been through at least some of the emotional and spiritual turmoil Frodo goes through, and I would say it’s far harder than the mostly physical things Sam did. And Frodo was perfectly willing to give the ring to Gandalf after holding it, while Sam seemed hesitant to part with it to give it back to Frodo. (As I’ve already mentionedy, I’ve only seen the movies. Maybe it’s different in the books.)

Anyways, I don’t think it is really fair to compare what Frodo and Sam did, as neither had the other’s task or motivation. Maybe Sam would have been a better ringbearer, maybe not. Even if I assume that Sam was more pure of heart than Frodo, perhaps that wouldn’t have been a good quality in a ringbearer. Sam’s good heart may have made him more naive to the ring’s power.

[Hello_Again]

@choie

But seriously. Reading your quote, I’m a little confused again. I thoght Arwen gave up her immortality. So why is she living such a ridiculously long life after Aragorn finally dies (and as I understand it, he lives a pretty long life himself anyway)?
.

I am not sure where you get that she lived a really long time after Aragorn died from that quote. Arwen laid down and died in the year after Aragorn. She left Minas Tirith, spent a summer and fall in Lothlorien (all empty and depressing), and then she “laid down to rest” in the sense that you “put your cat to sleep.” The Big Sleep.

[Chronos]

Well, to me, while Sam is willing to sacrifice his life, Frodo actually sacrifices his soul. I’ve been through at least some of the emotional and spiritual turmoil Frodo goes through, and I would say it’s far harder than the mostly physical things Sam did. And Frodo was perfectly willing to give the ring to Gandalf after holding it, while Sam seemed hesitant to part with it to give it back to Frodo. (As I’ve already mentionedy, I’ve only seen the movies. Maybe it’s different in the books.)

Quite the opposite. Bilbo and Frodo only ever gave up the Ring after cajoling, intimidating, and pleading. Sam, though, the moment Frodo wakes up and asks for it back, gives it back immediately, making him the only being in all of Middle-Earth to ever give up the Ring without duress.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@mbh

…Rather than growing old and feeble, a Dunedain king would hand the crown to his son, and then give up the ghost right then and there. Arwen’s death fits perfectly into both the Elven and the Numenorean traditions.

As does Aragorn’s. It is a mark of the great character and selflessness of the best kings in Tolkien’s legendarium that they (like George Washington) surrender power at the appropriate time, rather than hang onto it until old and enfeebled to the detriment of their realms.

[Oy]

I think the Ring itself has little to no power over Sam, because Sam has no desire for power himself. While wearing the Ring, which in the books he does briefly to evade the orcs that seize Frodo, Sam is plied by the Ring with visions of power in which he conquers all and creates a garden to cover the world, but he dismisses them almost immediately as inherently wrong for him. Thus, when Frodo demands the Ring back, Sam hesitates very briefly only because he is reluctant to burden Frodo with it again. Frodo and Bilbo are wealthy and therefore accustomed to some degree of power; at the very least they lack Sam’s humility. But, that said, a lack of ambition for power is supposedly the very reason why a hobbit was able to bear the ring without succumbing entirely to it, when great lords of Men and Elves could not.

[John_DiFool]

@Chronos

Quite the opposite. Bilbo and Frodo only ever gave up the Ring after cajoling, intimidating, and pleading. Sam, though, the moment Frodo wakes up and asks for it back, gives it back immediately, making him the only being in all of Middle-Earth to ever give up the Ring without duress.

[cough]Tom Bombadil[/cough]

[Grey]

Colour me unimpressed by Sam’s ability to give up the ring after a 1.5 days when compared to Frodo’s possession of +18 years. The last 10 months or so knowingly being pursued by those that would take it from him and so help drive the possessive grip the ring seems to exert.

[choie]

Gosh, TWDuke and other staunch (and justifiable) Frodo-defenders, I didn’t mean to give the impression that I wanted Frodo to jump on a steed and use Sting to slash Saruman’s throat or anything – I certainly don’t mind that he’s not that type of hero. I agree and admire his staunchness in pushing forward despite the obvious burden that was being placed on him both physically and psychically. I just feel that it would’ve been nice to see a little less of Frodo repeatedly stumbling and getting knocked over and gasping for pain and clutching his chest and looking terrified/haunted throughout the eight or so hours of the trilogy. Maybe that’s all Tolkien gave Jackson (and by extension, Elijah Wood) to work with, I dunno. But as long as Jackson was tweaking some characters, I wouldn’t have minded a little less emphasis on Frodo’s utter vulnerabilty and reliance on others to save his tiny hobbit tuchas, and maybe toss in a few more opportunities for Frodo to protect himself a wee bit. Or even if that would betray the source material and intention for the character, allow Frodo to express his determination and frustration and goals in dialogue, so we get some sense of why he’s doing all this.

Hello Again, I just misread the passage as saying that “there is her grave when the world is changed and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten…” yadda yadda. I thought she went into a kind of trance or some such, dying only when memories of her were gone. I have no idea why I thought that would make sense, but who the hell knows with these elves.

But am I reading correctly elsewhere? Someone said Aragorn is supposed to be eighty during LOTR? So do humans in Middle Earth have a really slow metabolism or is eighty still considered an old guy?

Anyway, as far as the difference between Frodo giving up the ring by tossing Gollum in, vs. Gollum falling in on his own but it’s still kinda Frodo’s indirect accomplishment because he was too noble to let Sam kill Gollum… okay, I can buy that. I don’t think that kind of fortune is all that rare in fiction – I’m pretty sure Lewis uses it in the Narnia books at some point (probably during The Magician’s Nephew) and Jane Austen uses the “your success was all due to your own merit” trope quite a lot – but I think it would read better than it filmed, and possibly I feel that way because of my aforementioned belief that Frodo didn’t really get enough chance to shine as a character.

But I’ve only seen the films once and the books not at all, so I’m sure this comes across as a shallow analysis. My apologies, I don’t mean to sound too nitpicky. Still loved the films and am planning on spending another 10 hours with 'em once I get the EE disks!

[Tamerlane]

@choie

My apologies, I don’t mean to sound too nitpicky.

Oh, heavens no! A nitpicky Tolkien fan! How positively beastly!

Good grief, don’t apologize :). The movies/books are in part meant to elicit debate - that’s half the fun. If everyone agreed on Boromir’s essential character of whether ( whisper it! ) Balrogs have wings, the world would be a sadder place.

Personally I’m very much enjoying your enthusiasm as a new convert to one of the the geekiest of all geekdoms :p.

[Tamerlane]

@choie

But am I reading correctly elsewhere? Someone said Aragorn is supposed to be eighty during LOTR? So do humans in Middle Earth have a really slow metabolism or is eighty still considered an old guy?

As above, it’s his ( much diluted ) elven blood. If he were a normal man yes, he’d be old. But the Dunedain ( Aragorn’s folk ) have a supernatural tinge that seems to arrest aging after a certain point. They basically live two or three times as long as normal men and remain in their youthful prime almost up to the point they croak. They’re functionally natural born superheroes.

ETA: Think of the things you could accomplish if you had over 150 years lived as if you were a physically near-perfect 25. If you were a swordsman for example ( say, like Aragorn ), you’d be one serious badass after decades of training and experience.

[BigT]

@John_DiFool

[cough]Tom Bombadil[/cough]

Exactly my point about Sam maybe being too good hearted to carry the Ring. Bombadil couldn’t carry the ring because it was so unimportant to him that he would lose it, right? The Ring doesn’t like being held by people it can’t manipulate at least somewhat. If the Ring could not have converted Frodo, it would have left him, just like it did Gollum.

@Oy

…when Frodo demands the Ring back, Sam hesitates very briefly only because he is reluctant to burden Frodo with it again. Frodo and Bilbo are wealthy and therefore accustomed to some degree of power; at the very least they lack Sam’s humility. But, that said, a lack of ambition for power is supposedly the very reason why a hobbit was able to bear the ring without succumbing entirely to it, when great lords of Men and Elves could not.

Ah. I hadn’t thought about that being the reason Sam hesitated. That’s actually more consistent with his character. And I don’t think it’s a lack of ambition in hobbits, but that the ambition is so small that any manipulations can be easily dismissed, ala Sam.

The way I see it, then, is that, Frodo overcame more than Sam did, but Sam overcame completely, while Frodo failed at the very end. In other words, while Sam got a 7 out of 7, Frodo got a 7 out of 10. (Yeah, I know a C isn’t a failing grade, but it is considered “average”, which is what Frodo’s failure really was. At the end, he succumbed like an average inhabitant of Middle Earth.)

[John_DiFool]

@choie

I just feel that it would’ve been nice to see a little less of Frodo repeatedly stumbling and getting knocked over and gasping for pain and clutching his chest and looking terrified/haunted throughout the eight or so hours of the trilogy. Maybe that’s all Tolkien gave Jackson (and by extension, Elijah Wood) to work with, I dunno. But as long as Jackson was tweaking some characters, I wouldn’t have minded a little less emphasis on Frodo’s utter vulnerabilty and reliance on others to save his tiny hobbit tuchas, and maybe toss in a few more opportunities for Frodo to protect himself a wee bit. Or even if that would betray the source material and intention for the character, allow Frodo to express his determination and frustration and goals in dialogue, so we get some sense of why he’s doing all this.

In the book, Frodo himself challenged the Nazgul at the fords (that river where they end up drowned-well their current physical manifestations at least), and not Glorfindel (or Arwen). PJ had already decided that the Morgul blade made Frodo near-comatose, so that wouldn’t have worked in the film (he wanted to show just how debilitating the wound was). Note I am just reporting the facts, and don’t really think Frodo is a “wimp” in the films; I’m already on record about how daunting all the decisions and compromises that PJ had to make and if looked at in that light what he did was an incredible accomplishment. Doesn’t mean I still don’t find some choices he made baffling, but there’s also the other side of the coin to consider too (Virtues of Omission, as opposed to Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission-can you imagine Orlando Bloom squealing, “AAiieee! A Balrog is come!” in the Mines of Moria?).

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Frodo also showed his mettle in stopping and subduing Gollum the night they finally met face to face. Frodo is undeniably a hero - he never entirely healed of the wound from the Morgul-blade, and carrying the Ring all that time was a tremendous torment to him. He willingly took on an awful task with very little expectation of ever seeing his beloved Shire again. He failed at the very end, but just about anyone would have done so too - many, long before Frodo did. Not every hero rides a white horse and woos the heroine.

[Oy]

[QUOTE=BigT]
Exactly my point about Sam maybe being too good hearted to carry the Ring. Bombadil couldn’t carry the ring because it was so unimportant to him that he would lose it, right? The Ring doesn’t like being held by people it can’t manipulate at least somewhat. If the Ring could not have converted Frodo, it would have left him, just like it did Gollum.
[/QUOTE]

That’s an interesting point, and one I hadn’t thought of. If you’re interested enough in LoTR to know and retain this much about Bombadil, why haven’t you read the books yet?

[QUOTE=BigT]
Ah. I hadn’t thought about that being the reason Sam hesitated. That’s actually more consistent with his character. And I don’t think it’s a lack of ambition in hobbits, but that the ambition is so small that any manipulations can be easily dismissed, ala Sam.
[/QUOTE]

Don’t get me wrong. A reluctance to give the Ring back to Frodo was in part generated by the Ring itself. The Ring was highly opportunistic, or perhaps fertile would be the better word to use. It used what it could, and in Sam’s case, that meant love and concern for his master.

[QUOTE=BigT]
The way I see it, then, is that, Frodo overcame more than Sam did, but Sam overcame completely, while Frodo failed at the very end. In other words, while Sam got a 7 out of 7, Frodo got a 7 out of 10. (Yeah, I know a C isn’t a failing grade, but it is considered “average”, which is what Frodo’s failure really was. At the end, he succumbed like an average inhabitant of Middle Earth.)
[/QUOTE]

That’s not a bad analogy. More was required of Frodo than of Sam. And, I suppose, that’s what I resent a bit, because it would never occur to anyone (including Sam himself) to demand Great Things from Sam, because he was just a gardener and talked funny. Yet I question whether even Aragorn could have got got Frodo to Oroduin as Sam did; certainly Frodo himself would have failed within a few days of leaving the rest of the Fellowship. If Emyn Muil didn’t killed him, the Dead Marshes certainly would have, what with Frodo always going off into trances and such.

Speaking of the Dead Marshes, the scene in the movie in which Gollum tries the hobbits’ food and can’t eat it, then talks insinuatingly to Frodo about the Ring, at which point Frodo bats him away, saying “Don’t touch me!” Perhaps this is only in the EE of the movies; I don’t know because I didn’t see the theatrical version. But the despair in Gollum’s face after he is swatted away, the desolation in the entire shot at that point, to me is one of the most moving moments in any of the pictures. Gollum is just so wretched. It’s one of those emotional things that film gets across more movingly than print.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me so glad that Jackson et al made these movies. I could have happily lived the rest of my life without seeing trolls beating the crap out of people, but to actually witness the glorious, hopeless last charge of the Rohirrim at Pelennor Fields, to hear them shouting “Death!” as Theoden King leads them into a battle that they have little reason to believe they will survive, but is the right thing to do - that’s stuff that, no matter how effectively written, never comes across quite as movingly in books as in well-executed film. The ‘hot’ medium vs. the ‘cool’ medium, I guess.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@John_DiFool

can you imagine Orlando Bloom squealing, “AAiieee! A Balrog is come!” in the Mines of Moria?).

Yes. Yes I can.

[DesertDog]

@Tamerlane

Oh, heavens no! A nitpicky Tolkien fan! How positively beastly!

Good grief, don’t apologize :). The movies/books are in part meant to elicit debate - that’s half the fun. If everyone agreed on Boromir’s essential character of whether ( whisper it! ) Balrogs have wings, the world would be a sadder place.

Personally I’m very much enjoying your enthusiasm as a new convert to one of the the geekiest of all geekdoms :p.

Pssst. Think it’s time to introduce choie to the whole Balrog/wings thing?

Seriously, I’ve got a whole section of bookmarks labeled “Tolkien” with eighteen links in it, and I consider myself a dabbler. Here are a few:

The Encyclopedia of Arda
Nifty because it has a movie-goer’s guide with the differences between the movie and the book.

The Thain’s Book
Not as extensive as Arda, but it has indexes making it easier if you want to find, say, the name of the pony lent by Theoden to Merry (Stybba).

Fellowship of the Wordsmiths
Sindarin rolls off of the tongue a lot smoother than Klingon. There’s a whole section on what is heard and seen in the movie.

A Tengwar transcriber
Not a translator but even English just looks so damn pretty dressed up in JRR’s invented alphabet.

And finally, The Very Secret Diaries
The source of “pervy hobbit-fancier” you might have noticed in a post or two. Best read from top to bottom.

Hope you haven’t anything planned for the weekend.

[well_he_s_back]

DesertDog - those are some good choices. I’d add Lord of the Rings on Prime News and Info - The One Ring .net since the OP liked the movies and that site is the best for focus on the films.
Also, after the OP reads the LOTR books, he or she can then appreciate the classic brilliance that was the Straight Dope’s “what if someone else had written the LOTR?” thread.

[Wendell_Wagner]

And then join the Mythopoeic Society:

http://www.mythsoc.org/

If you’re actually interesting in Elvish languages, these people do it more accurately than any other:

http://www.elvish.org/

[DSYoungEsq]

Don’t forget the much more even-handed treatment of the history of Middle-Earth found at Sauron’s Blog.

[choie]

@Oy

Speaking of the Dead Marshes, the scene in the movie in which Gollum tries the hobbits’ food and can’t eat it, then talks insinuatingly to Frodo about the Ring, at which point Frodo bats him away, saying “Don’t touch me!” Perhaps this is only in the EE of the movies; I don’t know because I didn’t see the theatrical version. But the despair in Gollum’s face after he is swatted away, the desolation in the entire shot at that point, to me is one of the most moving moments in any of the pictures. Gollum is just so wretched. It’s one of those emotional things that film gets across more movingly than print.

I agree completely (well, about the marvel that is Gollum’s ‘performance’ as a CGI creature. I’ve mentioned before how moved I was by the character in TTT; sometimes it was actually hard to watch the agonized expressions on his face and the piteous strained speech. I’m not sure if that particular scene was in the theatrical version, but there were several others like it, as I recall.

Happily I’ve received the super-special platinum collection of all the films and extras ($35 from Amazon!) so I’ll be able to dig into the feast at last. I’ll even re-watch LOTR, even though I’ve already inadvertently seen the EE. I have no doubt I’ll get even more out of the viewing a second time.

@Tamerlane

Good grief, don’t apologize :). The movies/books are in part meant to elicit debate - that’s half the fun. If everyone agreed on Boromir’s essential character of whether ( whisper it! ) Balrogs have wings, the world would be a sadder place.

Personally I’m very much enjoying your enthusiasm as a new convert to one of the the geekiest of all geekdoms :p.

Thanks, Tamerlane. This has been a real treat so far. I do feel like I’ve well and truly gone down the rabbit hole. I dipped my feet in with Douglas Adams and Doctor Who (the original version) back in college, then Star Trek, and now I’m in with D&D (through Order of the Stick) and Lord of the Rings. There’s no going back now. Where else is there to go? Maybe Terry Pratchett, I dunno.

@DesertDog

Pssst. Think it’s time to introduce choie to the whole Balrog/wings thing?

Heh. Did the Balrog have wings in the movie? Is that a big bone of contention? If it did, it does make me wonder why a creature living in an underground cave would have wings. And for that matter, why something with wings didn’t just fly rather than crashing downwards.

Thanks for all those links, DesertDog! Actually I’ve already read the Very Secret Diaries earlier this week. It was pretty funny, albeit falls into the typical slash motif of “hey everyone’s gay.” (I didn’t realize it was by Cassandra Clare. She’s somewhat notorious in Fandom Wank history!)

@well_he_s_back

DesertDog - those are some good choices. I’d add Lord of the Rings & Tolkien News - TheOneRing.net Fan Community since the OP liked the movies and that site is the best for focus on the films.
Also, after the OP reads the LOTR books, he or she can then appreciate the classic brilliance that was the Straight Dope’s “what if someone else had written the LOTR?” thread.

She. And yes, I look forward to that very much! Maybe we should do a read-through of LOTR chapter by chapter. Have we ever done threads like that?