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The J.R.R Tolkien Discussion Thread


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In ROTK Gandalf worries about Frodo's and Sam having taken the pass of Cirith Ungol.

Ungol obviously referencing Ungoliant..... Hmmm never caught that one.

And Necromancer obviously references necromancy. ;)

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Me too actually.

That's a brilliant picture above, is it Ted Nasmith? Love the flaming blade.

That's Angus McBride. Oddly enough, I too thought it was by Ted Nasmith, at first.

By the way, that makes me think that McBride is probably the only guy who depicted the White Council assault on Dol Guldur.

WC_Dol_Guldur-AMcBride.jpg

whoah, that saruman looks exactly like gandalf the white in the films.

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Cool pic. It's a shame we won't get to see Saruman take part in the expulsion of Sauron from Dol Guldur in the film version due to Christopher Lee's health. Then again, they might work into the films that Saruman opposed them entering Dol Guldur and therefore refuses to take part. It's cool that Radagast is supposed to to take part in it. It's too bad he wasn't written into the White Council scene.

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In ROTK Gandalf worries about Frodo's and Sam having taken the pass of Cirith Ungol.

Ungol obviously referencing Ungoliant..... Hmmm never caught that one.

Ungol means spider in Sindarin. Ungoliant means dark spider.

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But did he write ROTK first and come up with the legend of Ungoliant later? Or did he already have Ungoliant in mind when he wrote ROTK had Shelob and Cirith Ungol?

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Yes, even though The Sil was published decades after LOTR a lot of it's stories and concepts already existed, though Tolkien spend the rest of his life fine-tuning them. I always got the idea he was far more fascinated and personally attached to The Elder Days then he was too the end of the Third Age.

At one point he had hoped that LOTR and the Sil would be published together. But his publisher forbade it. I wonder if he would have been able to finish it if he had been allowed to.

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Just finished my centennial reading of The Lord Of The Rings. Amazed that after ten times it can still move me, distract my attention, be intrigued by it's prose, and that i can still gain some hope from it.

Most of all, amazing that I still read new things that never caught my attention.

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Of course! What kind of a question is that?

BTW A centennial reading would imply you read it once every 100 years. So I dunno what you meant to say.

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Of course! What kind of a question is that?

This post made me think that maybe you didn't read it.

So wait, in the film version, after the Witch King breaks Gandalf's staff, he only then leaves because he hears the call of the Rohirrum on the plain. Are you saying in the book, it isn't the Witch King that leaves their duel, but Gandalf? What does the Witch King do while Gandalf runs upstairs to help Faramir, just go about attacking the city with no one opposing him?

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What's the deal with the 2 statues Sam has to sneak by to get into the tower that Frodo's being held in? I remember the statues being a bigger deal in the book and the animated version than in PJ's film. I wonder if the full scene was filmed and still not restored or not filmed at all.

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What's the deal with the 2 statues Sam has to sneak by to get into the tower that Frodo's being held in? I remember the statues being a bigger deal in the book and the animated version than in PJ's film. I wonder if the full scene was filmed and still not restored or not filmed at all.

The ROTK video game had a short bit of an homage to that, you can see a statue turn and look at Sam I think.

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The guardians sound an alarm as soon as he passes them. The film seems to have a rather brutal cut there, and I've always wondered why they'd show them so bluntly only to completely ignore them the next second. I was hoping for a missing scene to show up in the EE, but of course it didn't.

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I wish he had just put everything back into the EE, or whatever he deemed "unworthy" he released in a bonus "delete scenes" feature. Though I suppose this way he has fodder for a future expanded expanded edition of the films :P

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He hated the Paths Of The Dead part of the book, so did his own thing.

Not much Tolkien there.

What is in your opinion the one part in any of the films were PJ absolutely nails Tolkien?

For me its gotta be FOTR, Moria. The scene starting with Gollum, Gandalf's soliloquy about fate and pity and ending with the reveal of the Dwarrowdelf.

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It shows that he didn't like the Paths of the Dead part of the book - Tolkien's version shits on Jacko's vanilla take on it. I remember really wanting to see Aragorn and his dead host howling their way through the settlements and hamlets along the way to Pelennor, but again Jackson disappointed.

The Moria sequence is excellent though, along with countless other moments. For me there are many Tolkienesque highlights in the trilogy, hence why it was so successful methinks. Jackson nails it more than he fails, that's for sure.

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If JRRT hadn't written The Lord of the Rings, GL would have had one less inspirational source for his magnum opus saga, and for all we know, JW would have been drawn into the Star Trek series instead, and we'd all still be here.

I take comfort in the fact knowing that I have described exactly one alternate universe that is spinning away out there, somewhere.

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