Don’t read too much into this, either. When Irish immigrants sailed to the New World, that was generally regarded as equivalent to death, too. Most likely, they would never see any of their family or friends or their homeland again. It was not uncommon to hold an “American wake” for the emmigrant on the night before departure, with all the trappings of the wake held for a dead man.
Of course, Tolkien was also a staunch Catholic, and in his worldview, death itself wasn’t really equivalent to death, either. It’s not to be considered as an end, but as a transition or new beginning. And just because nobody knows what happens afterwards does not mean that we should fear it.
I must have the slash version of Fellowship. I’m re-reading the trilogy and read this today:
Gandalf walks up to Pippin at Bilbo’s birthday party. “So, Peregrin Took, are you enjoying yourself? Are you happy?”
“Happy?” replies Pippin. “I’m f*cking Merry!”
Yeah, it’s too bad Tolkien didn’t have any more action in the end of the book. Like, oh, I don’t know. Maybe they could have had Saruman take over the Shire and ruin it, to show the cost to the hobbits of their quest. And maybe the hobbits kick butt and take names on their own, thus having a fun battle scene showing the hobbit’s growth.
We could call it… hmmm The Tidying Up of the Shire. Nah. That would be silly.
Dad, I think your missing Menocchio’s point. He means that Jackson didnt have the time to show the end of the book in the film, whereas Tolkien had the time to add on an extra chapter or so, he knew he wouldnt lose his readers, but after 3.4 hours of a movie already, Jackson knew hed be pushing it to include another hour of picture…
Actually, had he cut out a half hour of slow motio good byes he could have easily fit in the Scouring of the Shire. But the rumor is that Peter Jackson never liked that part of the story and so didn’t film it, even for the extended version.
No, to do the Scouring right, he would have needed more than a half hour. And no it was never filmed and will not be in the Extended Version. We will however see Saruman’s final fall. As for the idea that Jackson did not like the Scouring in the book, I have never heard that until you just posted it.
Despite what you may have heard, the extended version will include the scouring of the Shire, with a surprising twist. Merry and Pippin will appear to be losing the battle until the arrival of Radagast the Brown, Glorfindel and Tom Bombadil. That’s absolutely true, by which I mean false.
Like a passage over a sundering sea to a fair shore behind a veil of silver grey…
Not sure if you’re kidding or not, but that is just plain wrong. The only “extraneous” bit I can think of was the reuniting of the Fellowship in Minas Tirith, and that couldn’t have lasted more than two or three minutes at the most. The other endings are absolutely essential if the main characters are to get any closure at all (and even so, we still miss out on the exits of Legolas, Gimli, Eowyn, and Faramir). Methinks you’re not giving Jackson enough credit here. Paring what amounts to nearly half of a novel down to twenty minutes of screentime is a near-impossible task; that Jackson managed to do it without having it feel unbearably rushed is a monumental accomplishment, even disregarding the rest of the three films.
IMO, Jackson should have cut out the whole Smeagol/Gollum preface, the entire scene with Frodo waking in bed and the fellowship coming in to see him, and the bar and wedding scenes in the Shire. (The Smeagol/Gollum preface was nice, but, if it had to be in the trilogy, it was in the wrong film.) They all seemed like little appendices which truly weren’t essential to the story and just dragged the final ending of the film on further. For a book, this would be fine. For a film, it didn’t work. (I’m a big fan of the books, but I’m also a big fan of film.)
That was a long two or three minutes. Did the whole scene have to be in slo-mo, really? When your movies is three hours already…
I can understand the arguments here, and I wonder if it’s not just the way the endings were put together. Whether essential or not, it felt like several of the last scenes were intended to be the last one- and then we’d fade into a different one. The scenes may have been necessary, but the film was still going a long time after all the drama had gone out, so it kind of dragged.
I disagree. I thought the scouring was much more important for closure than l slow motion Sam and family. In fact, Sam and his family is almost UNimportant without the scouring. Minus the scouring, the people of Hobbiton are completely ignorant of the entire war. Sam, Merry, and Pippin are not heros to them, just odd hobbits with strange tales. They could have done the scouring perfectly well in 20 minutes, bumped up to 30 for the extended version.
And the whole trip to the grey haven seemed to take forever. The point could have been made in much less time. Or maybe it just seemed like forever cause the Big Gulp Pepsi was trying to work it’s way out.
This was PJ misquoting JRRT. Said passage was not about the transition which occurs at death, but passage into the blessed realm, while still quite alive bodily.
It’s an elvish thing. The only mortals to get to do it were Bilbo, Frodo, Sam (probably), Gimli (probably) and Tuor (only maybe, and if so it was because he was judged to be elvish despite his human birth) and sort of by Beren (he went dead, came back alive, probably didn’t get to do much sight-seeing in Valinor, IMHO). Oh, and Earendil, who was undecided about whether he was man or elf at the time. Ditto for Elwing who was probably pretty sure she was elvish but hadn’t announced it formally before the Powers until then. I’m not sure about Bill the Pony.
Sigh. I know that. From my own previous post: “Frodo’s physical death lies ahead, but the departure from the Grey Havens is a ‘pre-death’, in which he must say goodbye forever to the world he knows.” But implicitly in the text of LOTR and explicitly in other writings, Tolkien links it to dying, so for cactus waltz to suggest it is a metaphor for death is much more in line with the author’s stated intent than to try to cast it as equivalent to sailing from Ireland to America or going to some kind of luxury health resort.
I knew you knew that! You’ve more than demonstrated your credentials as a student of JRRT.
My point, which I wasn’t coherent enough to actually make, was that I felt said passage was inappropriate to apply to Pippin, as he didn’t get to make the special “purgatory” voyage to Valinor. For him, it’ll just be “die, spirit goes to Mandos, then wanders off only Eru knows where”.
Once again I got distracted. This time by my own list-making of who among mortals actually journeyed physically to and/or from Valinor or Tol Eressea.
It should be clarified, for those who aren’t familiar with the details of the Silmarillion, that the only thing that states that Tuor actually went to Valinor is elvish legend. Tolkien never really unequivocally states that he ended up in the West after he and Idril sailed off in Eärrámë.
The Elves did consider Tuor to be an Elf, in bearing and manner more than in body. Whether that consideration extended to the Valar is questionable, however.
That said, I always liked Tuor more than Túrin, anyway. Túrin was the classic Drama Queen…
Thanks for clearing that up. I’ll unruffle my feathers now.
The exchange could go something like this on the Extended Edition DVDs:
GANDALF: No, Pippin, the journey doesn’t end here. There is another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world is pulled back, and all turns to silver glass – and then you see it."
PIPPIN: “What?”
GANDALF: “White shores – and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
PIPPIN: “Well, that isn’t so bad.”
GANDALF: “No. No, it isn’t. Did I mention you’ll be slammed into spirit prison for an indefinite amount of time immediately upon your arrival, before meeting your ultimate, unknowable fate? Now go out and fight bravely, little hobbit! Fight, fight, fight!”
[Cut To Eowyn/Witch-King Face-Off]
I also think the last few scenes could have been edited together differently to keep more momentum going through the end. My wild guess is that Jackson wanted people mometarily to think the story was ending, so non-book-readers would be more surprised by the actual ending and fans of the book would be unnerved and then relieved.
Although I believe all the “endings” (with the exception of the brief weddings scenes) were essential to the story, I think audiences in general would have been more forgiving of the lengthy denouement if they were more convinced of Frodo’s predicament. In the book, we see him tormented by physical and psychic wounds. In the film, we get a voice-over about “picking up the threads” and see him rub his shoulder as if he has an old football injury, possibly making the journey West seem more like a treat to some than a necessity.
Thanks for clearing that up. I’ll unruffle my feathers now.
The exchange could go something like this on the Extended Edition DVDs:
GANDALF: No, Pippin, the journey doesn’t end here. There is another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world is pulled back, and all turns to silver glass – and then you see it."
PIPPIN: “What?”
GANDALF: “White shores – and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
PIPPIN: “Well, that isn’t so bad.”
GANDALF: “No. No, it isn’t. Did I mention you’ll be slammed into spirit prison for an indefinite amount of time immediately upon your arrival, before meeting your ultimate, unknowable fate? Now go out and fight bravely, little hobbit! Fight, fight, fight!”
[Cut To Eowyn/Witch-King Face-Off]
I also think the last few scenes could have been edited together differently to keep more momentum going through the end. My wild guess is that Jackson wanted people mometarily to think the story was ending, so non-book-readers would be more surprised by the actual ending and fans of the book would be unnerved and then relieved.
Although I believe all the “endings” (with the exception of the brief weddings scenes) were essential to the story, I think audiences in general would have been more forgiving of the lengthy denouement if they were more convinced of Frodo’s predicament. In the book, we see him tormented by physical and psychic wounds. In the film, we get a voice-over about “picking up the threads” and see him rub his shoulder as if he has an old football injury, possibly making the journey West seem more like a treat to some than a necessity.
Oops, I should have attributed the second block of quoted text to Marley23. Also, to clarify, by the odd term “weddings scenes” I meant the shots of Rosie and Sam getting married. I think we could have mentally filled that in between seeing Sam get up to talk to Rosie in the tavern and watching them go into the hobbit hole together at the end with the little hobbitings.
