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An alternative take on Tom Bombadil
A quote from the speculative piece: “Tom Bombadil is the master” Goldberry says. And his subjects are black huorns and barrow wights.
I like that one, but the older one here still amuses as well.
Hopefully this one will be better than the first one.
Dunno. I tent not to take seriously opinions of people who watched a movie based on a book without previously or afterwards reading said book.
I tried. Oh God I tried. I could not manage to slog through LOTR in book form. I barely managed to finish the first book, made it about thirty pages into Two Towers, and finally just put the thing aside. I was done.
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Tolkien's style is highly descriptive and evocative. He savors words and wordplay. His prose is littered with subtle inflections, connotations and inferences where words play against other words and everything ties back to a deeper connection that has some symbolic meaning.
It is a style that is poorly suited to the modern fifteen-second attention span world.
Which is a real damn shame.
Yeah I missed that boat. I didn't even hear of Tolkien until I was in my twenties.
I couldn't tell you why I didn't like it. Nor what specifically about it bothered me. But it was the reading equivalent of walking through waist-deep mud for me.
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I suppose it's a taste thing. I find Tolkien's writing to be magical. His descriptions of characters, items and events is, to me, like savoring a rich multi-course meal with layers upon layers of meaning.
I first read LotR when I was about 14. Of course I was also at that time reading "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", "Ulysses" and other great classics of literature like "Moby Dick" or "Great Expectations." I suppose many people would find most, if not all, of those books equally stilted and difficult to wade through.
But not me. All of these books are written by wordsmiths whose every word has a meaning and a reason for its use and placement. Tolkien in particular would use words with symbolic importance deliberately to evoke a sort of dual story experience. The first story was the action taking place on the page, but the deeper symbolic story was the one he was really working hard to paint. He has a rhythm and pace to his story telling that is part of the story itself. It is rare to go a page, or even a paragraph, without encountering some fragment of his larger morality tale and piecing those fragments together into the epic story of which "LotR" is only a small part is one of the real joys of reading the book to me.
Reading Tolkien is very difficult; his style isn't easy, and it can feel like a chore to wade through it all.
Reading is one thing, but once you've read it the whole construct of his world and history is in your mind, and then it's amazing!
Yeah, I will agree wholeheartedly that Tolkien was an AMAZING worldbuilder. A much better one than a writer, IMO.
I think I enjoy reading about his world and its history more than any of the particular stories set in it.
OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
What's wrong with it? I love "JourneyQuest."
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Cool, a kickass female character because its 2013 now and I'm excited to be surprised by a new character.
Tolkien was entirely too descriptive for my tastes. I don't need a hundred year history of a stretch of road. I need to know what cool thing is happening on it now. If it's nothing then let's abridge that.
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OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
Not sure what you are saying ...
Evangeline Lilly is a really good actress so she will do a great job. She's beautiful and looks good in the role and her character sounds interesting. She looked great in the trailer!
I don't have any problem with the addition of her character as long as it fits in well with the story.
Cool, a kickass female character because its 2013 now and I'm excited to be surprised by a new character.
Tolkien was entirely too descriptive for my tastes. I don't need a hundred year history of a stretch of road. I need to know what cool thing is happening on it now. If it's nothing then let's abridge that.
Well, you are seriously under-estimating the timeline of Tolkien's descriptive asides. He generally provides eons worth of descriptive exposition, not a mere human lifespan.
I don't "need" it either. But then again I don't "need" any fantasy story. I read them because I enjoy them. And, yes, I do enjoy the extensive descriptive exposition that Tolkien provides.
An example that stands out in my memory is when the Fellowship is traveling through a wild land Legalos takes a moment to listen to the land after Aragorn mentions that he heard that elves once lived there. This is the relevant quote from the book:
'That is true,' said Legolas. `But the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them: Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago.'
That is just one example of how Tolkien paints this amazing picture of a world where even the rocks and stone have a story to tell, and Legalos can hear that story, and it is a story that is so ancient and has retreated so far into the past that only the stones are able to remember it. Legalos himself is centuries old already, and even to his perspective this is an ancient story fading into the realm of myth and mystery.
Sure, it means nothing to the immediate story.
But then LotR is hardly ever really about the immediate story. This is a point that Tolkien made several times in his interviews and his writings, and he explicitly stated it several times in the book itself. As Frodo and Sam are sitting in the volcanic aftermath of Mt. Doom, Frodo and Sam talk about how their part was just a small part in a much larger story.
This was actually a major goal of Tolkien's work, to create this much larger story that overlaid and provided the context for the immediate story. I hesitate to say it, but overlooking that aspect of the book, or considering it to be extraneous, seems to me to be missing out on one of the most sublime and compelling aspects of the book. In fact I would say that ignoring or avoiding that deeper story absolutely and completely misses the whole point of the book.
I've known of Tauriel since the unveiling of the 2013 Lego kits, and been curious about her character since then. But as a Tolkien fan, I'm much more skeptical about Legolas' implication in Desolation of Smaug than that of a new character like Tauriel. I hope he (Legolas) won't be introduced simply as a love interest to Tauriel's character (although that wouldn't be as bad as Tauriel being simply Legolas' love interest).
I'm very curious (and rather cautious) about how Peter Jackson will develop on the Sylvan Elves.
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OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
I guess no one here shots a bow. First off the way it is held. Yould not hold the bow that way no matter who you are and draw the way she is. Next, while holding the bow with your Left arm and drawing with the right arm, the arrow would NOT go over the outside and the thump, but would be on the inside resting on the meaty part that connects to the index finger.
If we continue to her it is SO photoshop/green screen. You can see how she does not blend in properly with the background. Anyone that has done editing can see it as plan as day.
When I saw the trailer and I saw her jump I had to cringe, It looks worse than many games of today.
But anyway, shoot a bow like she is. No matter how good you are, you'll either miss BAD or hurt yourself.
*watches Iceni's entire post well float over his head*
... okay, I'll take your word for it...
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Here This is what I am referring to, compare
Or Front on
THIS is how it should be, not the way Lily is holding it in the photo
Yeah I don't notice an appreciable difference. It's not an immersion breaker for me regardless.
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Yeah I don't notice an appreciable difference. It's not an immersion breaker for me regardless.
WOW it's as simple to see as a Driver driving an English car in England and a driver driving an American car in America. You notice right away which side the steering wheel is on.
To me it was as easy to spot as the nose on my face when I look in a mirror, But then again I shoot bows. I also have fenced, done SCA, done stage fighting with staves, swords and shields and thrown tomahawks.
It is as noticable as a laugh track in a TV comedy sitcom and some find that annoying. I find this annoying because it is ALL wrong and I expect more from PJ
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It's perhaps highly noticable to the initiated, but to the un-initiated, not so much.
Yep, what he said. I've held a bow all of twice in my life, and never fired one.
She's like Butch Cassidy!
Or was it the Sundance Kid? Which one missed when he aimed and hit when he simply drew? Its been ages since i've seen that movie.
It is also possible that it's a promotional photo taken before she actually learned how to use a bow? (I guess I'm asking IC if she was bothered by the the dwarven archery in the first movie.)
LOL, a couple of points.
First of all, I cannot begin to tell you the number of things I find hilarious in Hollywood movies when I watch actors doing things in character that I actually do for real. Things like shooting guns, shooting bows, riding horses, using telescopes, taking photos, playing golf... Whatever.
I have seen entire sports related movies where the main character is attempting to do sports things in such incompetent ways that I have to turn my head and snort every time they are portrayed on field. In fact this is so bad in Hollywood that instead of noting bad examples of sports portrayals in the movies, it is far, far easier to note the very, very few movies and actors who portrayed their sporting activities in any convincing way at all. Here's my list:
1. Burt Reynolds in "The Longest Yard." The guy actually knows how to throw a football. Even his footwork is relatively accurate.
2. Kevin Costner in "Tin Cup" (and to a lesser extent in other athlete movies). There is a real difference between a professional golfer's swing and the vast majority of amateur swings. Costner actually looks like a pro golfer. Contrast him with the ludicrous attempts at swinging a golf club by Don Johnson in that same movie to see what I mean.
3. Brad Pitt in "A River Runs Through It." Yes, Brad Pitt. Casting a fly rod is not really all that difficult to do, but I have rarely, RARELY seen even a commercial on TV with a fisherman whose cast would do much but scare the local trout population into the next county. Brad Pitt had the rhythm, timing and mechanics down to the point that I BELIEVED he was a fly fisherman.
That's about it. So to knock Evangeline here for how she holds a bow is pretty silly.
Besides, it's not Evangeline. It's Tauriel. She's an elf, and elf women don't shoot a bow the same way as a human does. Everyone knows that.
OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
...is she aiming with her boob?
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OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
Elves are not humans, they could use bows differently. Arrows are added in post processing as CGI anyway. So blame Weta digital, not Evangeline, who probably never held a bow before in her life.
I have been training swordfighting for the past 7-8 years. Not fencing with a foil, but with a 4 feet long 5 pounds heavy greatsword. It's called swordfighting because it's not sportly, we are taught how best to maim or seriously harm our opponent. And when i see people fight with swords in movies, i cringe. Except for Viggo who did it very very well. Oh and Nicojal Coster. He did it well too.
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OK Fan boys and girls... Look at this picture in this link and tell me WHAT is wrong? yes it is loaded with WRONG
Elves are not humans, they could use bows differently. Arrows are added in post processing as CGI anyway. So blame Weta digital, not Evangeline, who probably never held a bow before in her life.
I have been training swordfighting for the past 7-8 years. Not fencing with a foil, but with a 4 feet long 5 pounds heavy greatsword. It's called swordfighting because it's not sportly, we are taught how best to maim or seriously harm our opponent. And when i see people fight with swords in movies, i cringe. Except for Viggo who did it very very well. Oh and Nicojal Coster. He did it well too.
All true, but it should be easier to train someone to pose correctly with a bow, than to actually (stage) sword fight. Or any of the other sports examples given earlier.
It's much more static. Unlike swordfighting, you're not interacting with someone else. You just have to hold the bow right and pull it back to the right place.
Interesting about the CGI arrows. You're probably right these days, though I never thought of it.I wouldn't blame her, but the CGI people and/or whoever was in charge of showing her how to use the bow.
Though without attention being called to the picture, I would never have noticed it. Even less on-screen with all the action and flashy cutting.
Legolas' arrows in LOTR were CGI too. And that was 12 years ago.
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Here This is what I am referring to, compare
Or Front on
THIS is how it should be, not the way Lily is holding it in the photo
Try having any type of a physics degree and then watching 99% of science fiction.
Sometimes you just got to let stuff go...
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I noticed it as soon as I gave the picture a once-over. It jumped out at me.
It also happens when I notice men or women with their jackets buttoned up like a member of the other gender.
Some things just jump out at you, and I suspect different things jump out for different people.
I remember during a particularly boring maths lesson the teacher was trying to think of a real-world example to illustrate how the turning forces in the diagram could match real life. He said that a car was pulling up to a roundabout and turned right into it and the forces were going this way. 'Wrong way', I mumbled under my breath. He heard me and looked from me to the blackboard to me and back again, wondering which line of force in the diagram was pointing the wrong way. '...he's going the wrong way round the roundabout...'. 'Oh...well, it's a Frenchman going round a French roundabout...'
An alternative take on Tom Bombadil
A quote from the speculative piece: “Tom Bombadil is the master” Goldberry says. And his subjects are black huorns and barrow wights.
What an awesome piece!
Elves are not humans, they could use bows differently.
To be fair, this guy is also doing it "all wrong", but it seems to work for him. Also, he makes Legolas cry.
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Suppose the Kyudo practitioners are all wrong too then? Apparently the traditional Korean style is also wrong, boy there's a lot of wrong folks in need of some learning!
Lucky all these seasoned SCA and Ren-faire people are here to set it all straight, because thats just like real life :)
Seems 'the right way' is very much a matter of taste and opinion.
Suppose the Kyudo practitioners are all wrong too then?
Ditto on Yabusame Riders. Granted - they are wearing gloves, so maybe that doesn't count. Maybe elven hands are just naturally coarse enough to take the strain.
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On the other hand, a lot of it was, in my opinion, some really bad choices by Jackson and the other writers when they did make some changes. I don't particularly trust Jackson to make good changes - in the first LotR film he largely got it right, but in the subsequent films he largely got it wrong. That said, I enjoyed the first Hobbit movie but then I didn't have massive expectations, and there was stuff that niggled. And it was pretty cheesy in parts.
Yeah, I think the choices made in adapting the Two Towers and Return of the King were a really mixed bag, particularly compared to Fellowship of the Ring which, while including major changes, hit the right tone with most them. A lot of people, of course, complain about how Faramir is portrayed in the Two Towers, risking the ring by hauling the hobbits to Osgiliath while in the book he shows a lot more discipline in refusing the temptation of the ring when Sam spills the beans - much more akin to Galadriel's fairly light-hearted one in the book and a lot less angsty. I also gripe a bit at the treatment of the ent decision to go to war. While I suppose it was meant to give the hobbits a stronger protagonism, it diminishes the moral deliberations of the ents and, particularly Treebeard.
While the visuals are all top notch and the pacing usually quite good, I just wish his characterizations and tones were more consistent. I'd be a lot more satisfied.