[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
In Bored of the Rings, the Eagles which rescue Frito have “Deus Ex Machina Airlines” emblazoned on their sides. 
[/QUOTE]
To be a bit of a pedant,* there’s only one (Gwanho), who utters these deathless words to the True King:
. . . and use those paper bags. That’s what they’re there for, mac.
*about BoTR???!!!???
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Ok, I am sorry. It was just a suggestion as the book has some truly great parts. Fingolfin fighting Melkor is probably my favorite but I think Beren and Luthien would have the widest audience and ties into Aragorn and Arwen.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve often thought that if they’re going to make Tolkien a movie franchise, they got to do Beren and Lúthien’s story. Imagine the possibilities. Thingol’s enmity and his sending Beren off on a doomed quest for Lúthien’s bride price. Lúthien’s fighting her way to Beren’s rescue and then the two of them in Angband, Morgoth’s fortress. Morgoth himself, under whom the mighty Sauron was a mere lieutenant. Carcharoth and Beren, and later, Huan. Lúthien’s sacrifice to save Beren, the first of elf kind to become mortal. Maybe after The Hobbit.
If I’d had a daughter, I’d have named her Lúthien.
[QUOTE=DesertDog]
I’ve often thought that if they’re going to make Tolkien a movie franchise, they got to do Beren and Lúthien’s story. Imagine the possibilities. Thingol’s enmity and his sending Beren off on a doomed quest for Lúthien’s bride price. Lúthien’s fighting her way to Beren’s rescue and then the two of them in Angband, Morgoth’s fortress. Morgoth himself, under whom the mighty Sauron was a mere lieutenant. Carcharoth and Beren, and later, Huan. Lúthien’s sacrifice to save Beren, the first of elf kind to become mortal. Maybe after The Hobbit.
[/QUOTE]
If we’re lucky, the general public will compare it favorably to Eragon .
[QUOTE=OttoDaFe]
To be a bit of a pedant,* there’s only one (Gwanho), who utters these deathless words to the True King:
. . . and use those paper bags. That’s what they’re there for, mac.
*about BoTR???!!!???
[/QUOTE]
Pedantry II: That’s “Gwahno”.
[QUOTE=Scumpup]
There was a wide-spread rumor at the time that The One Ring was originally a part of Sauron’s Arab Strap. Aragorn found this sufficiently oogie that he didn’t even want to touch the ring, knowing where it had been, much less actually use it.
[/QUOTE]
Make that a Prince Albert, and you’re almost there. These were stories designed by Tolkien to be folklore and legend for Britain–so none of this Infidel crap for Aragorn!
WTH are these? They sound Star Trek-ky.
[QUOTE=DesertDog]
I’ve often thought that if they’re going to make Tolkien a movie franchise, they got to do Beren and Lúthien’s story. Imagine the possibilities. Thingol’s enmity and his sending Beren off on a doomed quest for Lúthien’s bride price. Lúthien’s fighting her way to Beren’s rescue and then the two of them in Angband, Morgoth’s fortress. Morgoth himself, under whom the mighty Sauron was a mere lieutenant. Carcharoth and Beren, and later, Huan. Lúthien’s sacrifice to save Beren, the first of elf kind to become mortal. Maybe after The Hobbit.
[/QUOTE]
I would love to see it, but I would love to see HBO work with the BBC to produce a long mini-series of the Silmarillion.
I thought about it, but I decided it was a bit much. Of course my wife and I instead chose a variant of a name from a CSN song that everyone thinks is based on King Arthur. (Especially as I have always been a big fan of the tales of King Arthur and his knights.)
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
WTH are these? They sound Star Trek-ky.
[/QUOTE]
That stumped me at first too, then I realized it was a misspelling of a scientology term.
Jim
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
WTH are these? They sound Star Trek-ky.
[/QUOTE]
Midichlorians. They’re from the Star Wars universe. And they’re a pretty lame concept there, too. IMHO.
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]
But the knowledge of the rings was not widely disseminated by the elves in the know. The three were dispersed among the most powerful Eldar, and not wielded. They didn’t talk much about the matter, as far as can be gleaned from JRRT’s writings. And while all this was going on, the men of the West lived in Numenor.
So Isildur could well have been expected to be ignorant regarding the matter of so much of Sauron’s power being tied up in his jewelry. He apparently knew just enough to cut the ring from Sauron, but beyond that?
Isildur had been widely respected in his lifetime. He rescued a fruit from the White Tree in the King’s Court in Numenor, right from under Sauron’s nose, thus preserving the tree for the Dunedain. He led a contingent of faithful away from the wreck of Numenor, and with his brother founded the realm of Gondor and Osgiliath, its chief city. He personally founded Minas Ithil in Ithilien.
So he was a pretty stand-up guy. While the ring could have seduced him, I still suspect he was mainly ignorant of its true nature.
[/QUOTE]
Isildur may not have understood the full potential of the Ring, true (but please note my response was to the concept posited that the elf-lords didn’t know what the Ring did 
). But Elrond certainly knew what it did, and would have known that men had been swayed before by the rings that the Gift Giver had handed out. So I am certain he told Isildur sufficient when he urged him to toss the Ring into the fires of Orodruin to apprise Isildur of the Ring’s likely ability to corrupt any who might try to use it, or danger to the world if it remained around.
Personally, I’ve always considered Isildur a fore-runner of Boromir: fearless and proud, convinced in the rightness of what they do, destined to lead and knowing it. Contrast his sire, Elendil, who is much less all about himself: he leads because it’s his job and he happens to be good at it, but doesn’t really act all that proudly and self-enamoured about it. Isildur doesn’t destroy the Ring for two reasons. First, he thinks he deserves some recompense for losing his brother and father (among others), and isn’t likely to get any from the elves that remain after the battle. Second, he just doesn’t think it possible that he’d be unable to properly control and govern the Ring. He might even be correct, for look how quickly the Ring deserts him, which I think shows the Ring quickly sized him up as someone who would be difficult to control.
But I do not for a single minute think that Isildur took the Ring because he was ignorant of its potential.
ETA: And remember, there’s this silly piece of doggerel around talking about the whole thing:
Three rings for elven kings under the sky,
Seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone. etc. Not very enigmatic, that.
Could someone very briefly explain how possessing the ring gives the bearer the power to do anything besides turn invisible? What was the potential that Isildur wished to exploit?
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Now, that’s a book I must read!
[/QUOTE]
Well worth the read!
“Aiee! cried Legolam. A Thesaurus!!”
“Maim! roared the monster. Mangle, mutilate, crush. See: HARM.” 
[QUOTE=Scumpup]
Could someone very briefly explain how possessing the ring gives the bearer the power to do anything besides turn invisible? What was the potential that Isildur wished to exploit?
[/QUOTE]
This is from FAQ of the Rings. A most useful site.
DS, I can’t disagree with you much, but I’m still not sure that Elrond was all that forthcoming with Isildur. Perhaps he shared his knowledge with Elendil, perhaps not. He certainly might have just expected to be obeyed when he said “Don’t touch that! Oh now you’ve gone and picked it up!! Throw it away! Now! There’s a good Atani…”
And we don’t really know when that doggerel was authored, or widely distributed, do we? 
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
WTH are these? They sound Star Trek-ky.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
That stumped me at first too, then I realized it was a misspelling of a scientology term.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan]
Midichlorians. They’re from the Star Wars universe. And they’re a pretty lame concept there, too. IMHO.
[/QUOTE]
Qadgop got it. Talk about a joke that fell flat! The idea was that just as Lucas took the magic out of Star Wars and The Force by introducing a definite, biological explination for The Force, maybe we could science away the meaning and significance of Aragorn’s resistance to the ring, haha! I guess it just goes to show that one might be a Tolkien geek without necessarily dipping one’s toes in other forms of geekery.
[QUOTE=Eonwe]
Qadgop got it. Talk about a joke that fell flat! The idea was that just as Lucas took the magic out of Star Wars and The Force by introducing a definite, biological explination for The Force, maybe we could science away the meaning and significance of Aragorn’s resistance to the ring, haha! I guess it just goes to show that one might be a Tolkien geek without necessarily dipping one’s toes in other forms of geekery.
[/QUOTE]
That’s okay, my joke fell flat to. I was comparing a dumb Lucas idea to Thetans.
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
I would love to see it, but I would love to see HBO work with the BBC to produce a long mini-series of the Silmarillion.
[/QUOTE]
I’d second that and maybe the trilogy as well. With a mini-series there would be time to get more of the good bits in. I mean, I like the Jackson-directed movies as movies, but couldn’t help but notice almost all the best dialog was lifted from JRR.
[QUOTE=DesertDog]
I’d second that and maybe the trilogy as well. With a mini-series there would be time to get more of the good bits in. I mean, I like the Jackson-directed movies as movies, but couldn’t help but notice almost all the best dialog was lifted from JRR.
[/QUOTE]
Peter Jackson has been criticized for changing plot elements for the movies. (I understand why he had to make changes–but agree that he may not always have made the right ones.)
Now, he’s being criticized for not changing Tolkien’s words!
Poor guy can’t win…
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
Peter Jackson has been criticized for changing plot elements for the movies. (I understand why he had to make changes–but agree that he may not always have made the right ones.)
Now, he’s being criticized for not changing Tolkien’s words!
Poor guy can’t win…
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I wasn’t meaning that as a criticism. In a similar vein, whole pages of The Maltese Falcon were taken directly from Hammett, but it still took Huston’s skills to get them to the screen in a fitting manner.
Thus, the reason for the unresolvable feelings many of us have about the movies: wonderful, almost masterful direction in so many ways, the settings, the staging, the pacing, combined with the repeatedly unnecessary changes to plot and dialogue. The movies make a Tolkein lover schizophrenic. :eek:
A roller coaster, eh?
I liked the movies, probably because I am not a hard core walking Tolkien encyclopedia.
[QUOTE=DiggitCamara]
If I remember it correctly, in the book Aragorn himself wasn’t quite sure why the Nazgul had left at first. When he saw they had wounded Frodo he saw they thought they had him and just had to wait one or two days more for the Ring and the shard of the dagger to do their dirty work. As creatures of fear and darkness, they would have preferred to bring Frodo under their command that way.
[/QUOTE]
It always seemed to me that it wasn’t so much that he defeated them as that he drove them off. At first they were facing Sam, Frodo, Pippin, and Merry, four small humanoids with little to no combat training, at a psychological disadvantage (Would you want to fight these huge evil ghostly things?), and far weaker than the Nazgul. They stick Frodo, which would have been all they needed to do had he not gotten medical attention, and then this ranger comes out, wielding a sword and a torch, and generally being much more annoying to deal with. “Fuck fighting this guy, we’ve done what we came to do, and he can’t fix it anyway!”
Someday I will finish reading the books; I just can’t stand Tolkien’s verbosity.