In the book, Boromir is the only Man at the Council of Elrond, IIRC. He nearly drowned fording a flooded river to make his way to Rivendell, so you know it’s not an easy trip.
In the movie, however, he’s flanked by two older dudes with even bigger beards than his. They pointedly don’t look at Aragorn after Legolas says Aragorn is Isildur’s Heir and Boromir gives Aragorn the brush-off. Shortly afterwards, they get involved in the shouting match with the Elves and the Dwarves over the One Ring.
Who do you think the other two Men were? Counselors of Denethor, sent along to keep an eye on Boromir? Tourists from Dol Amroth who dropped by to gawk at Arwen? Do you think they were from Gondor, Rohan, Rhun, or somewhere else entirely?
I was wondering the same thing this very day. When Boromir leaves Gondor in the extended version of Two Towers, he appears to be heading out alone. Maybe they’re hitchhikers he picked up on the way?
I thought I recalled some folks from Laketown and Dale at the Council of Elrond (book version). And I thought I remembered some commentary from theonering.net about extras being hired for the Council scene to play guys from Dale.
But you have missed the fact that the “Fellowship of the Ring” transitions from the Hobbit style “Fairy Story” to the dark rich full Epic the rest of the story.
The Long awaited Party through Bree is still a Fairy Tale and it is with the meeting of Strider that the story becomes an “Epic”. So Tom and Old Man Willow do fit the “Fairy Story” portion.
JRRT carried off the feat of transitioning “Fairy Story” to “Epic” and I’m of the opinion that he barely managed it. I don’t think anybody could carry it off in a movie.
I’d have done lots of things different than PJ. Gandalf got too wussy at the end, about sending Frodo to his doom, and seemed close to despair in the throne room in Gondor with Aragorn et al. Denethor should have been shown with the palantir, thus explaining his bizarre behavior. The head orc leading the attack on Minas Tirith had waaaay too much makeup, and shouldn’t have been crippled. etc. etc.
Even so, I’m undyingly grateful for PJ taking up the task of putting the movie together, and showing his vision of what LOTR was. Hell, I’m even grateful to Ralph Bakshi for his version, and to those cartoon versions of “The Hobbit” & “ROTK” for showing me other perspectives on the fantasy.
Anything that makes me consider the tale in new ways is a plus to me. Otherwise it would be a closed chapter to shelve and forget about, not a continuing study of a complex creation.
I liked the Hobbit, I hated ROTK, was unhappy with Bakshi and his rotoscope.
I thought PJ made useless changes to the movie, but I was largely joking about the missing parts. To make the movie I want to see would take at least 18 hours not 9+. I thought PJ’s RotK was the best of the 3 and I enjoyed it the most.
Perhaps so, depending upon semantics, but I’t unlikely I’d have read The Hobbit without first The Lord of the Rings.
Forgive me, but even in LOTR, Bombadil was so goofy I wondered what a strange character was doing in the tale.
The barrow wraiths were good, the death like Hobbits with their cutlery if fairy tale was also fantastic like Lord Dusany. I hope that doesn’t offend you; a mean it as a high compliment.
But fairy tale or not, I just can’t fit Bombadil in there.
The Hobbit has it’s moments, Bored of the Rings aside. The riddle, the underground, Wizards, battles, dragons; this isn’t my Father’s Hansel and Gretel.
I was careful to stress “Fairy Story” not fairy tale, this had to do with some famous writings of Tolkien on the “Fairy Story” and legends and myths. I have not read it in years but one excellent essay is included in “The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays”. It is called “On Fairy Stories”
As examples of Fairy Stories he mentions George MacDonald’s “The Giant’s Heart” & the Egyptian D’Orsigny papyrus; “The Tale of the Two Brothers”. I will not do his essay justice but to try and summarize it. A Fairy Story is one where we are asked to believe in the magical and it must be presented as real. It should have a folklore feel to it. It should be presented as if by a Storyteller more than modern author. Basically a Fairy Story is a magical story closer to the old mostly lost oral traditions.
BTW, I read “Bored of the Rings” a long time ago and I enjoyed it much. I doubt I would enjoy it as much today but who knows I still love “Animal House”
I read that many years ago and do not remember it.
Er, what are we arguing about? I can accept magic, but the best term I can find for Bombadil is “goofy”.
Can you explain WTF was going on in Leaf By Niggle? Did he lose the fight against conformity, did he win them over?
I didn’t think I was arguing, I was just providing way too much data. Sorry.
Bombadil was an enigma. Even Tolkien did not know much about Tom. His place in the story could be descibed as a light hearted interlude and the fact that Tolkien was a lover of Finnish myths, where Tom probably belonged.
If you can’t tell, I liked Tom. I’ve been known to sing Ho! Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo!
By water, wood and hill, by the reed and willow,
By fire, sun and moon, harken now and hear us!
Come, Tom Bombadil, for our need is near us!
when worried. My version of whistling past a graveyard.
I think my point was probably lost. I was just explaining that Tom did fit the early part of the book as it was not yet in the “Epic” mode and still in the simpler “Fairy Story” mode.
Leaf by Niggle: oof. I have to wait for the clarity of the morning to attempt to do that one justice. This would be one very light explaination for it. It is the best I can do at this late hour.
In a way it was about Tolkien himself. The Lord of the Rings was the Leaf, the Tree was the Silmarillion that he would never complete. There was always too much competing for his time and he wasn’t focused enough to realize his life’s work.
The makeup on that Orc was actually a nod to the look of the aliens in Bad Taste, PJ’s first movie, a hilarious {and so cheap it was virtually home-made} splatter-fest which managed to perfectly nail the Kiwi character: upon seeing their Ford Capri blown up, one character dead-pans “Told you we should have got a Holden.” I agree it was overdone, though: such an in-joke shouldn’t have had so much screen time - a brief cameo would have been nice.
While I understand your point and it usually doesn’t work. Tolkien merged the 2 so flawlessly that few people notice unless it is pointed out.
Of course I am extremely biased, I think the LoTR is the best book ever written.
Nonsense. All who read the book are consistently left wondering about the whole Tom Bombadil episode: what it shows about the ring, how it helps the development of the characters (Frodo in particular), and why it ever made it past any editing stage? I was confused by it as a 13-year-old in 1973; nothing I’ve heard from anyone who has read it since makes me feel any different about it.
Bombadil bears no actual relationship to the rest of the mythos that Tolkein made up for his Middle-Earth. Tolkein himself never successfully fit Bombadil into that mythos, despite obviously recognizing the anamoly Bombadil represents. The differnce between the totally “fantasy” aspect of Bombadil and the Barrow-downs episode, and the somewhat more gripping and real story that begins in Bree, is at best, jarring, even to most fanbois.
Are you kidding? Everyone gets hung up on the Bombadil section. It’s got to be the number one complaint about the books. Almost every time I see someone recommending the books to a non-fantasy reader, there’s always a caveat about Tom. “Just skim that part, it gets better afterwards.” I can appreciate that Tolkien loved the character too much to cut him out, but really, he had no more business being in the book of The Fellowship of the Rings than he did in the movie. It’s arguably the biggest flaw in an already pretty badly flawed (although still great) book.
