Owl post? Gandalf was, afterall, a wizard. Oh wait, he used a butterfly at one point.
For some of them, it was revenge.
Gondor used to hold Imperial suzerainty over Haradwaith and parts of the East. Just because your former colonial masters have a touch of the old Elvish does not make them automatically nice guys. “Precious stones for children’s playthings” didn’t come off the back of a mutualistic equitable trading arrangement, I’d wager. The words “tribute and plunder” comes to mind.
“Ship Kings” of any sort were never historically guys you’d want to have popping up in your neighbourhood. Ask the Carib, the monks at Lindisfarne, or the Egyptians under Ramesses III. You might say the Corsairs and Easterlings had it coming, for not just submitting to their racial superiors. Oh, and the piracy and wainriding. 
Well, we know how permanent losing things in the river turns out to be…
Si
Yeah, but the palantiri were never self-aware or evil the way the Ring was. And there is a difference between the shallows of the Gladden Fields and the deep run of the Anduin at Osgiliath.
You’d think eventually Middle-Earth would invest in some divers. The Ring of Power, the palantiri, the freaking Silmaril – all lost in water.
Judging from the movie, does anyone here not think that Gondor has just the most incompetent royal guards in the world?
When Denethor was going nuts at the beginning of the Battle of Pelennor fields and raving about running, Gandalf, in full view of everybody, knocked him out with his staff and ordered everyone to their posts.
In the crypt, as Denethor was able to burn Faramir, Gandalf charges in on a horse, steals the spear out of the hands of a guard who practically just gave it to him, then knocks their ruler into the fire where he screams and jumps to his death. All without one guard saying so much as an “Excuse me…”
Add to that that they had to be told to shoot the critters moving the big towers and not just wasting arrows at the towers themselves.
I assume it had something to do with the proximity to Mordor - the long term affects the Palantir had on Denethor and his leadership abilities, etc that really caused the Gondoran’s to pretty much be settled on defeat and not thinking clearly.
YogSosoth - you must realize neither of those incidents with Denethor & the guards that you mentioned happened that way in the books. So don’t blame incompetent guards. Blame Peter Jackson & his increasingly messy movies.
eta - Simster - That was, again, a Peter Jackson screw-up, not a “real” Gondorian screw-up. A quick re-read of Book 5 (1st half of Return of the King) should clear things up.
I agree a re-read is in order - something I have been considering of late. I keep wanting to read some of the other works around this as well -
Hate - Hate - HATE how Denethor was handled in the movies. He was a great hero in the books, even if one whose time had passed but had no one to replace him yet, and whose strength had been strained too far one time too many.
The movie version was essentially crushed in spirit, but who had kept resistance against Sauron in a slow, burning war he could not win, and done so for decades. He was very nearly Aragorn’s equal, and while he thought Gandalf’s judgement faulty (and ridiculously optimistic), he put that aside and worked with the Big G to try and defend Gondor. He made mistakes, but they were mistakes that were far more reasonable and a lot more necessary in the books.
For example, he did send out Faramir and that didn’t go well. However, it wasn’t a blind charge of mounted knights against a prepared position (have no idea what Peter Jackson was thinking there). He correctly understood that letting Sauron get an army across the river was bad news, and may well be certain doom. Likewise, he used the Palatiri, but because he desperately needed information and couldn’t get it any other way. There’s a huge change from how strong he was when the books introduced him, to how weak he grew in such a short time as the tragedies piled up. He was a man who refused to admit weakness, knowing that doing so could be fatal, and finally had nothing left to help him carry on. It’s a true Tragedy - a heroic figure who comes to an unjustified bad end because of a relatively minor character flaw.
I’d also point out that some other people could have done far better him than they did, although that lay in the past and not in the books themselves.
Movie Faramir is also, sadly, a weak, pathetic shadow of the wise and powerful character in the books. For some unknown reason, Jackson chose to depict him as Denethor saw him, not how he was.
Pretty much all the humans in the movies were portrayed as much more flawed than they were in the books. I guess Jackson just wanted to bring them more into line with the postmodern cynical view of human nature; maybe he was afraid that viewers would find old-style heroes corny.
There’s just something about his treatment of Faramir that bugged me. In the books, he’s basically the epitome of what’s good about humanity, without the remoteness and, frankly, foreignness of Aragorn, that to a large extent comes from his decent from Elves and Gods as well as Men. Boromir recognised his brother as the greater of the two, and it’s a measure of the damage done to Denethor that he didn’t - I have no doubt that in his right mind Denethor would have seen him as he was.
Also, Faramir wasn’t tempted by the ring - the only person (apart from Bombadil) for whom that’s even remotely true.
I agree with most here, and most long-time Tolkien fans, that the choices Jackson made for the films were often not those I’d have made.
But the movies are not the books. While the books may inform our understanding or appreciation of the movies to some extent, if we’re watching a movie and it emerges that its text conflicts with the book’s–the movie’s is the one that’s relevant. Jackson’s depiction of any of these points, in its own context, is not a screw-up. It may be an artistic choice we don’t like, but it’s not wrong.
Personally, I like simster’s interpretation, WRT the movies, of the mindset of Gondor’s soldiers. Barring some other explanation in the movies, it works.
I should read the books again, I last read them 10 years ago when the movies came out. It will let me find that perfect paragraph, a paragraph I read from either FotR or RotK that I felt was simply perfect. Maybe it was just my imagination, maybe it really doesn’t exist, but if I read it again, I’ll know
My only explanation for the change in movie vs book Faramir is that to compress all the nuances, Peter Jackson needed to make it more black and white. There couldn’t be any human (other than Aragorn) that could not be swayed by the ring. Aragorn had to be clearly superior to all other humans.
The book is a bit more nuanced, and although Faramir ends up being a steward with control of another city (but subject to Aragorn), he was very much almost his equal. Which is exactly what Aragorn needed, how could he have an incompetent second in command? He needed the very best.
If anything, Peter Jackson made it less black and white by turning Faramir into a more real human. In any case, I think his motivation (I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it mentioned in an interview but I could be mistaken) was that the viewers needed to be shown the power of the ring. We’re supposed to believe that the ring is dangerous yet we’re constantly encountering examples of people who aren’t in the least bit fazed by it. Gandalf can resist it, Aragorn can resist it, Faramir can resist it, Galadriel doesn’t take it, Gimli and Legolas don’t conspire to take it… shit. Guess it isn’t all that dangerous after all. I think the story of Lord of the Rings would be much improved by far more examples of people being swayed into betrayal by the ring, and I mean during the actual fucking story, not examples of people we’re told were corrupted by it in the past.
LOTR is as black and white as Star Wars.
Well, Gollum is a good example (he lies and double crosses and come on, became Gollum). And both Bilbo and Frodo are corrupted (and at the end Frodo betrays everyone). Boromir is another human that is corrupted (and betrays the fellowship). In the book, it seems it took Galadriel a good amount of willpower to decline the ring.
Most other races other than humans and hobbits appear to be a bit more resistant to the ring powers, especially if they don’t see the ring.
“There is a power of another sort in the Shire.” --Gandalf.
Well, the Ring would have gotten all of them given enough time.
Boromir had the fewest defenses and still held out for months, and when he did break was able to recover quickly. It’s unclear if anyone could have willingly given it up with more than a passing acquaintence to it. Gandalf was able to toss it with nothing more than a touch. Galadriel explicitly didn’t take it, and Aragorn realized he couldn’t hold out forever, either, and so avoided it. But that’s why the Fellowship broke up, more or less - Frodo realized that he was going to get them all killed, either by Sauron’s minions or by each other, and that killing over the Ring would be B.A.D.
Actually, humans really get the short straw. Every race, including Hobbits, has more inherent awesome sauce.