Current Events > One ring to rule them all... and in the darkness, rule them

(+) Yeah! (+)

Shadow of Mordor/War were both pretty good. War had slightly better DLC, though.

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Originally The Hobbit was its own thing, then later on Tolkien decided to create TLOTR and linked the two.

The Hobbit movies do use parts of other works set in Middle Earth to link it to TLOTR even more but this was only the movies where it changed and expanded on things.

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Demigod_Elessar posted...

Agreed 100%. Over the past 17 years, I have not managed to witness another movie that gave me the feelings I had when I witnessed The Ride of the Rohirrim and Pelennor Fields for the first time in theater. Just one continuous lump in my throat for the entire hour finale of that movie.

You have Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to thank for successfully storyboarding an unfilmable book series, and Howard Shore for his remarkable score.

Same here. The Ride of the Rohirrim is my favorite scene in all of cinema.
Everyone in the project, from the director and the actors to the set designers and sound mixers and everyone in between, gave 100% to these movies, and it shows.
Howard Shore in particular.
Just like the movies, I doubt there will ever be a film score better than this one. It's absolutely amazing.

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saspa posted...

Is it true that orcs used to be elves?

It's never stated how Melkor made the orcs. One theory is that he made them by using elves and another is that he despised the elves and made his own twisted version out of mud iirc. The same with dragons, it's not known if they where once another species of lizard or something new created by Melkor.

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harley2280 posted...

If I remember correctly the ring was originally just a magic ring with absolutely nothing special about it.

????

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Jerry_Hellyeah posted...

????

just an invisibility ring, not Sauron's Ring

Yeah, Tolkien had no intention to ever create The Lord of the Rings. It was only after The Hobbit's critical and financial success, that his publishers pressured him into writing a sequel. They wanted it to be another children's story regarding Bilbo. Tolkien decided to make it darker and more mature, for adults, with Bilbo's nephew being the main character instead. The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he worked on The Lord of the Rings from 1937-1949.

Tolkien then added more back story to events from The Hobbit, for The Lord of the Rings. So this is why Gollum's invisibility ring became the One Ring, etc.
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Demigod_Elessar posted...

Yeah, Tolkien had no intention to ever create The Lord of the Rings. It was only after The Hobbit's critical and financial success, that his publishers pressured him into writing a sequel. They wanted it to be another children's story regarding Bilbo. Tolkien decided to make it darker and more mature, for adults, starting Bilbo's nephew instead. The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he worked on The Lord of the Rings from 1937-1949.

Tolkien went back and added more back story to events from The Hobbit, for The Lord of the Rings. So this is why Gollum's invisibility ring became the One Ring, etc.

Don't forget it was also a super convenient way to push his made up language. Tolkien was a linguist.
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harley2280 posted...

Demigod_Elessar posted...

Yeah, Tolkien had no intention to ever create The Lord of the Rings. It was only after The Hobbit's critical and financial success, that his publishers pressured him into writing a sequel. They wanted it to be another children's story regarding Bilbo. Tolkien decided to make it darker and more mature, for adults, starting Bilbo's nephew instead. The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he worked on The Lord of the Rings from 1937-1949.

Tolkien went back and added more back story to events from The Hobbit, for The Lord of the Rings. So this is why Gollum's invisibility ring became the One Ring, etc.

Don't forget it was also a super convenient way to push his made up language. Tolkien was a linguist.

Definitely. You could argue that Tolkien's Silmarillion and earliest works were made just to give a history to the many languages he created. The Lord of the Rings was just a freak accident that occured and turned out to become one of the most popular book/fictional series in history.
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Demigod_Elessar posted...

harley2280 posted...

Demigod_Elessar posted...

Yeah, Tolkien had no intention to ever create The Lord of the Rings. It was only after The Hobbit's critical and financial success, that his publishers pressured him into writing a sequel. They wanted it to be another children's story regarding Bilbo. Tolkien decided to make it darker and more mature, for adults, starting Bilbo's nephew instead. The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he worked on The Lord of the Rings from 1937-1949.

Tolkien went back and added more back story to events from The Hobbit, for The Lord of the Rings. So this is why Gollum's invisibility ring became the One Ring, etc.

Don't forget it was also a super convenient way to push his made up language. Tolkien was a linguist.

Definitely. You could argue that Tolkien created The Silmarillion just to give a history to the many languages he created. The Lord of the Rings was just a freak accident that occured and turned out to become one of the most popular book/fictional series in history.

Which is honestly fascinating. It's really the grandfather of modern fantasy and it's influence runs incredibly deep.

Which is why even though I don't really enjoy it I respect it for what it is. My two favorite series (Dark Tower & The Second Apocalypse) draw heavily from it's influence.
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The Silmarillion was made after Tolkien's death, put together from notes by his son

saspa posted...

Now that sounds like an interesting prequel idea compared to those hobbit movies. I think I'd watch movies about the age during that dude.

There are some truly epic moments in the Silmarillion. Amazing speeches laid down by Gods. Genuinely interesting characters that if they were fully fleshed out in narrative form would rival the characters in LOTR. Problem is though that it isn't confined to a short time period like LOTR. The majority of it is spread out over a period of 500 or so years and then a period before that where time doesn't even really matter.

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Spoilers for Sil
Most of the good guys die, only the gods save them in the end, doesn't have a happy end

Fingolfin vs Melkor is one of the most bad ass scenes in anything.

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harley2280 posted...

But also Tolkien is a terrible story teller. I respect what Lotr did for the genre, and it deserves the praise it gets, but Tolkien has no understanding of pacing, or of showing not telling. He's the absolute king of exposition dumping.

Still an incredibly talented person though.

saspa posted...

Is the book even really a prequel that sets up the trilogy? I thought the complaint was that the prequel movies desperately tried to set it up so that the events of the hobbit lead to lotr, and like most prequels it was blah.

From what I was told, the hobbit was always a children's book and it was only later that the author conceived of lotr and decided to tie in some elements from the hobbit, namely the protagonist bilbo and the ring being the one ring.

Yeah. The explanation was something like that the version everyone read before was altered by Bilbo to omit/alter certain details

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Pandamonic posted...

Same here. The Ride of the Rohirrim is my favorite scene in all of cinema.
Everyone in the project, from the director and the actors to the set designers and sound mixers and everyone in between, gave 100% to these movies, and it shows.
Howard Shore in particular.
Just like the movies, I doubt there will ever be a film score better than this one. It's absolutely amazing.

LOTR is one of those movies that if someone says its bad, phoned in or lazy you can in ediately dismiss every5ibg they say,

If they didnt enjoy it or have critiques sure but if they try and say it was lazy...fuck them.

Those movies had incredible amounts of time, money poured into them, physical hardship endured and creative passionate talent onboard with a variety of craftsmen, artists, etc. making beautiful sets, props, costumes, scor3s etc.

LOTR was probably the single most ambitious film project of its time. Very few film/tv projects have come close or matched it since if any in sheer quantity and varietys of talent involved as well as scope(not just in terms of budget and time)

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pikachupwnage posted...

If they didnt enjoy it or have critiques sure but if they try and say it was lazy...fuck them.

Yeah I don't personally enjoy them, but to say they're lazy movies is just crazy. I a lot of love went into them, and I understand why a lot of people like them.
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I remember hearing about the two men who were apart of the costume/clothing department on set, and their only job for the entire 3+ year production of the movies were to link single pieces of chainmail together, by hand. That's all they did, every day, for the duration of the shoot. Think it was announced that by the end, the two of them had hand crafted over 180 pieces of mail armor and had rubbed away their fingerprints.

So much love, realism, and detail went into making those movies. Peter Jackson said in an interview once that they wanted to create the films as if they were historical pieces, not fantasy.
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One of my favorite pieces of behind-the-scenes-lore is that a year or so before they started filming the scenes in Hobbiton, they had this farmland on which they actually grew hedges and gardens etc., just so it would feel like an actual location by the time they started filming there, and not just a set.

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Seitar posted...

Filthy casuals it's: Ash nazg durbatulk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakutulk,agh burzum-ishi krimpatul

/sarcasm

Psssh.

You're barely attracting the Eye of Sauron with that.

https://i.imgur.com/CcOXh4P.png
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The LOTR movies in extended format are straight up the best movies ever to drink light beer to. Might be a peak human experience.

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Seitar posted...

Filthy casuals it's: Ash nazg durbatulk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakutulk,agh burzum-ishi krimpatul

/sarcasm

Psssh.

You're barely attracting the Eye of Sauron with that.

https://i.imgur.com/EBBxWtE.jpg
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Seitar posted...

It's never stated how Melkor made the orcs. One theory is that he made them by using elves and another is that he despised the elves and made his own twisted version out of mud iirc. The same with dragons, it's not known if they where once another species of lizard or something new created by Melkor.

I'm playing through Shadow of War right now and in the appendices they state that dragons existed, while drakes are the screwed up version that sauron or whoever did to try to make more dragons.
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saspa posted...

I'm playing through Shadow of War right now and in the appendices they state that dragons existed, while drakes are the screwed up version that sauron or whoever did to try to make more dragons.

The games takes several liberties with the source material.

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pikachupwnage posted...

LOTR is one of those movies that if someone says its bad, phoned in or lazy you can in ediately dismiss every5ibg they say,

If they didnt enjoy it or have critiques sure but if they try and say it was lazy...fuck them.

Those movies had incredible amounts of time, money poured into them, physical hardship endured and creative passionate talent onboard with a variety of craftsmen, artists, etc. making beautiful sets, props, costumes, scor3s etc.

LOTR was probably the single most ambitious film project of its time. Very few film/tv projects have come close or matched it since if any in sheer quantity and varietys of talent involved as well as scope(not just in terms of budget and time)

20 years later many feel it was lightning in a bottle with these movies.
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saspa posted...

20 years later many feel it was lightning in a bottle with these movies.

But do not read and audiobooks to long.

Plus many techniques developed for the LOTR films are now taken for granted.

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CobraGT posted...

But do not read and audiobooks to long.

A lot of opinions in this topic and this is the only bad one.
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Everytime i see this topic title my mind replays Gandalf giving that intense quote and then the whole scene just going pffffbbbttttt as he blows the rhyme and repeats himself and its funny in my head.

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CanuckCowboy posted...

Everytime i see this topic title my mind replays Gandalf giving that intense quote and then the whole scene just going pffffbbbttttt as he blows the rhyme and repeats himself and its funny in my head.

What scene is this?

harley2280 posted...

A lot of opinions in this topic and this is the only bad one.

Good for you if you read it or listened to the audio books. Did you?

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CobraGT posted...

harley2280 posted...

A lot of opinions in this topic and this is the only bad one.

Good for you if you read it or listened to the audio books. Did you?

I have read the books. Everyone who is interested in high fantasy should. They're classics and a lot of fantasy authors draws very heavily on Tolkien.
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I want to try as well:

Nani he Ghara Mordor
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Super Legolas ruined the hobbit for me. There were other problems of course but my god I hated Legolas in it

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The black speech of mordor.

Only sauron himself speaks it? If his own orc followers can't even speak it, seems like a failed attempt at installing a new language
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My boyfriend just proposed to me on New Years with the One Ring, with my favorite quote from the series engraved around it in Elvish. Literally best thing ever, he knows me so well.

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This is why Disney needs to remember that it's sleeping on Chronicles of Prydain.

Questionmarktarius posted...

This is why Disney needs to remember that it's sleeping on Chronicles of Prydain.

Oh wow someone else who knows this series!

I actually read that entire series last year during the lockdown. They're short kids books but I fondly remember them from my childhood and never got to finish the series back then so went on a nostalgia reading session.

That being said... Disney already botched it once, so... not sure I'd want them doing it again?
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saspa posted...

Disney already botched it once

...over 35 years ago.
Also most of the animators defected to Don Bluth during production, including Don Bluth.

Plus it's funny you mention Disney because Lion Witch Wardrobe was Disney's well known desperate attempt at doing the next lotr. They tried so so hard at it lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYcGFLgJ8Uo

The "epic" music, trying to do one liners... god it really makes one laugh so hard.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

...over 35 years ago.
Also most of the animators defected to Don Bluth during production, including Don Bluth.

Hmm... To be fair, the modern Disney that did wreck it ralph, zootopia, and most of all moana, is a Disney that I like a lot more than 80s Disney.

I wonder if the series can be done well. narnia books didn't seem that well suited to the silver screen.
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saspa posted...

I wonder if the series can be done well.

if they try for five films, maybe.
Squishing it all into one was the mistake they made in the late 70s that finally farted out a film in 1985.

Questionmarktarius posted...

if they try for five films, maybe.
Squishing it all into one was the mistake they made in the late 70s that finally farted out a film in 1985.

Five films for the first book? (The Lion the witch and the wardrobe)

Questionmarktarius posted...

if they try for five films, maybe.
Squishing it all into one was the mistake they made in the late 70s that finally farted out a film in 1985.

Maybe... You think there's enough material for each book to be its own movie? Taran Wanderer was a favorite of mine especially how it fits into the story overall but not sure if a movie can be presented well
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saspa posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

if they try for five films, maybe.
Squishing it all into one was the mistake they made in the late 70s that finally farted out a film in 1985.

Maybe... You think there's enough material for each book to be its own movie? Taran Wanderer was a favorite of mine especially how it fits into the story overall but not sure if a movie can be presented well

I think a limited series would be the best bet for Chronicles. Each book can have 1-3 episodes. Kinda how Netflix did a series of unfortunate events.
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saspa posted...

The black speech of mordor.

Only sauron himself speaks it? If his own orc followers can't even speak it, seems like a failed attempt at installing a new language

it was a unifying language of Mordor