The Hobbit

[Lilith]

yeah the filter only catches the specific word in its list, not variations of it. there are good reasons for this: if you're posting about exile 3 you want to be able to talk about cockroaches. but it also makes the filter a bit useless

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Originally Posted By: Dire Hobbit

If I remember right the two missing wizards didn't die, they just went off the map to other lands?

They went further east, I believe, or maybe it was one east and one south.

From my own battered, yellowing copy of the Silmarillion:

Quote:

Of these Curunír was the eldest and came first, and after him came Mithrandir and Radagast, and others of the Istari who went into the east of Middle-earth, and do not come into these tales.

Huh, I always thought they went south. In any case, I also just checked a copy of Unfinished Tales that I forgot I had. It appears that the blue wizards come to Middle-earth, head east, and disappear.

[Rowen]

I think it was the Silmarillion that had a part devoted to the creation of world. I've always enjoyed Tolkien's creation more then Lewis's. The idea of the music's order and chaos being woven together into a single harmonized song always fascinated me.

[Erebus the Black]

Direct quote (The Hobbit 4th edition, unwin paperbacks 1988 reprint, p. 278): "It was in this way that he learned where Gandalf had been to; for he overheard the words of the wizard to Elrond. It appeared that Gandalf had been to a great council of the whit wizards, masters of lore and good magic; and that they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood."

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: House of S

an Istari

*cough*that's the plural*cough*

Huh, that's interesting. Referring to Sauron as a "necromancer" kind of dates that quote, mind you. In an OOC perspective, this was before the Hobbit was even set in Middle-Earth; in an IC perspective we can probably reconcile it with Bilbo being an unreliable narrator at that point as he's repeating what he overheard without really knowing the background. This was before Bilbo spent half a century studying lore.

[Juan Carlo]

Originally Posted By: Rowen Remembers

I've always enjoyed Tolkien's creation more then Lewis's.

Me too.

Lewis' is a boring, straight up, rip off of the Bible. Whereas Tolkien's creation is nearly as strange as anything William Blake has ever written--what with all its demiurges and lesser emanations and what not. It even flirts with a type of Gnosticism at times (which would give Lewis a conniption fit).

[Erebus the Black]

Another interesting quote:

"They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and he lay beneath a blanket and shook from head to toe. When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and

tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang."

Is there another mentioning of stone giants anywhere else in the other books?

[Erebus the Black]

Another interesting point is that at the beginning of the book there is a short explanation about the language and runes used in the book, which states (among other things) that the meaning of the word orc is goblin in English (or hobgoblins for the larger specimens) and that orc is what the hobbits call them, however, other than in the name of the sword "Orcrist", the word 'orc' is never used in the book, orcs are always referred to as goblin. Why do you think they needed that explanation then?

[Actaeon]

I just returned from the first film. It was fairly decent. Several plot points were tweaked for better or for worse, and the action scenes are both overly frequent and somewhat tedious, but the tone struck a good balance between the darkness of the Lord of the Rings and the somewhat playful nature of the book. You get the sense of classic fantasy world with cracks beginning to appear in it- a foreboding that is laid on a little thick but works well to tie everything together.

 

Also, I've come to accept the logic of splitting it into three films. There's not good break in the middle, but there are good places for thirds. I think, however, that you could easily cut half an hour off this one, and while the second should be great, the Battle of Five Armies is likely to go on forever. I almost feel like I just sat through the extended edition, and the special DVD edition should be a shorter cut.

 

Anyway, that's just about the end of my unsolicited review. I cautiously recommend that the Tolkien fans among you go see it. Be prepared for a few dull moments, a few ridiculous ones, and a healthy smattering of spine tingling awesome.

[The Reverend]

What format did you see it in?

[Student of Trinity]

I agree that Lewis isn't in Tolkien's league, at whatever exactly it is that Tolkien did, but I don't think it's because there's anything particularly wrong with Lewis. His stuff is fine for what it is, it just isn't Tolkien. About Gnosticism I don't know, though, because I think Tolkien was a good deal more conniption-prone than Lewis ever was. He was a really conservative Roman Catholic, and religion apart, pretty insufferably reactionary in most of his views. Moreover a lot of that did indeed seep into LOTR, if you look carefully for it. Some of it is trivial detail that you only pick up from those pedantic appendices, like specifying that Sauron fell on a March 25th — the Catholic Feast of the Annunciation. Other bits are more blatant, like the roles of female characters.

 

The Lord of the Rings survives as a great epic, not because Tolkien wasn't a fanatical religious bigot, but in spite of the fact that he was exactly that. Lewis, in comparison, was a much more down-to-earth guy. He just didn't have an epic in him.

[Alorael at Large]

He was, however, a conservative Catholic who created a pantheon with one supreme God but a lot of other beings who can really only be described as gods running around. Maybe the Trinity gets you used to such ideas? It's a strange thing.

 

—Alorael, who has some problems with the theological implications of Elves. They really can't be saved; That's not the gift they were given. But what kind of loving God makes creations who are neither saved nor damned but ultimately, maybe, just annihilated? Tolkien had some token efforts at averting that grim fate but he never seemed to quite solve that snarl himself.

[The Loquacious Lord Grimm]

He was, however, a conservative Catholic who created a pantheon with one supreme God but a lot of other beings who can really only be described as gods running around. Maybe the Trinity gets you used to such ideas? It's a strange thing.

 

Consider this: there is a theory that has cycled through Christian thinking for... centuries at least, that suggests that many ancient gods may have had their origins in actual spirits: angels, as we understand them. The more aggressive or vile ones would obviously be fallen angels or demons (Think about Sauron's history, for example, or the Balrogs), the benign or benevolent ones would possibly be either other fallen angels who had chosen to usurp God's authority but still be caring, or regular angels still fighting on God's side. Hence YHWH's self-proclaimed title, "The Most High God".

I would not be surprised at all (and it had been so long since I'd read the Silmarillion when I was introduced to this theory that I didn't make a connection until just now), if the higher figureheads from Tolkien's pantheon were merely Tolkien's incorporation of this idea.

 

Of course, said theory is based on snippets of text and apocryphal references, and the same logic might conclude that they were all, in fact, aliens, but it's still fun to think about.

 

---

The Silent Assassin has been cycling through his wardrobe of Speedos and kimonos all day, underneath the safety equipment for the labs, of course.

It has just now occurred to me that it's casual Friday. Fail?

[Student of Trinity]

Tolkien's Valar would seem to have been angels quite precisely. Their nature and roles fit traditional depictions of angels, and Tolkien implies in a few places throughout his work that Middle Earth is in fact our world, in some distant prehistoric time. Tolkien believed in angels, at least in some sense, and he would probably not have felt it consistent to invent a kind of cosmic supernatural being for Middle Earth that he did not believe also existed in the real world. I'm not sure if that means he believed in dragons. But I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

 

Tolkien may well also have been quite open to theological speculation, though. That's one of the things that firm faith in the Catholic Magisterium often brings: the pressure to be right is off the individual believer, since there are only a few actual dogmas, and very traditional Catholics can be as open-minded about theory as they are strict about practice. I believe I recall some letter of Tolkien's in which he speculated that guardian angels (assigned to every person) were in some sense aspects of God. Yeah, maybe that is getting a bit Gnostic.

 

I'm not sure it's accurate to say that Tolkien's elves were doomed to be annihilated without hope of salvation. Those who die seem to flit to a sort of terrestrial afterlife in 'the Halls of Mandos'. The elves don't leave the natural world, but maybe it will last forever, so they will, too.

[Alorael at Large]

Tolkien's Valar are clearly angels, but they're also sometimes worshipped. It's not incompatible with a single God, exactly, but it's also not the situation I'd envision arising from good, corporeally present, and dutiful servants of Eru Ilúvatar.

 

The Elves don't die like Men do, but they are bound to the natural world, and Tolkien has a fairly clear eschatology. The world will end and Men will be involves in singing in the next world. The role of Elves is less clear, and Tolkien went back and forth in his writings on the subject. It's to his credit that he grappled with it and didn't sweep it under the rug, but it's certainly a strange predicament for a devout world-builder to drop one of his goodly races into.

 

—Alorael, who could understand it better from Dwarves. Those weren't created by Eru, but adopted by him, and they're less inherently good than elves. It would be reasonable for them to get wiped clean with the rest of terrestrial reality.

[Lauren CW]

An interesting dilemma for the elves, one I would think more fitting of George R.R. Martin's writing style.

[Student of Trinity]

Are the Valar really worshiped? Catholics and Orthodox Christians draw lines, that seem awfully fine to other monotheists, between worship and 'veneration'.

 

But the end of the world for Tolkien is a bit funny, I grant. He seemed much more interested in the past than in the future, and I don't think he really tied up all the loose ends.

[Callie]

This film was a bit long in the exposition...