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"Lord of the Rings" Quicktime Preview Available
esk writes "A QuickTime 4.0 preview of the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie is now available at the official site." There's only about 30 seconds of actual footage from the movie in the two-minute trailer, but it's enough to give you an idea of what the characters will look like -- and they came out almost exactly as I have always envisioned them, even the Trolls and poor, sad Gollum. Yessssss!
Yessss, precious, we haves the first postesses!
This wasn't THE most important event in the entire history of Middle-Earth, but it was certainly one of the three most important. In order, those would have been: The casting out of Morgoth (and the end of the First Age), the defeat of Sauron at the hands of the Last Great Alliance of Elves and Men (end of the Second Age), and finally the destruction of the One Ring (ending the Third Age).
There are a number of reasons that Elrond and the White Council chose not to use force to destroy the Ring, but instead sent a small Fellowship to destroy it. The first reason is that the strength of the Elves and Men of Numenor was much less than that in previous Ages. Many of the greatest Elves had been slain in prior Wars against Morgoth and Sauron, and many of the rest had returned across the Sea to Valinor. The only Elven strongholds with the strength to combat Sauron were in Rivendell and Lorien, and few of the race of Numenor remained as well (including the Rangers of the North and the Stewards of Gondor). They simply did not have the strength for a full-on assault on Mordor.
Additionally, who would they give the Ring to? Gandalf? Galadriel? Aragorn? The desire to use the Ring would quickly overwhelm anyone with that kind of power, and they would find themselves in a position to overthrow Sauron; however, they would quickly be corrupted by the pure Evil of the ring. Of all the Ringbearers, only Frodo and Bilbo Baggins were pure enough of heart and free enough of desire and ambition to actually have a chance of resisting the temptation of the Ring, and in the end, Frodo even succumbed to the Ring's desire.
Also, they did not send Frodo off "with just any friends he found along the way". Yes, the four hobbits seemed like unwise choices at the outset, but they all proved their worth by the end. However, Gandalf (in truth Olorin of the Maia) was one of the most powerful forces in Middle-Earth at the time (remember, he faced a Balrog one-on-one and defeated it). Aragorn was the Heir of Isildur, and probably one of the few Men in Middle-Earth that Sauron actually feared, and he wielded the blade that had originally defeated Sauron at the end of the Second Age. Boromir was the Heir to the Steward of Gondor, and a great warrior in his own right. Gimli and Legolas both proved to be outstanding warriors as well, felling over ninety orcs in the battle of Helm's Deep between the two of them.
When given all of the options (hiding the Ring, sending a massive force to destroy the Ring, or sending a small Fellowship to destroy the Ring), this was the ONLY choice that had any reasonable chance of success.
They are making a trilogy .... 3 full length movies .... not 1
Fundamental to the lore of the ring is the fact that while it gave immense power to whomever wore it, it also possessed that individual totally. Witness the effect the 9 lesser rings had on the riders.
... or their hero. He selflessly sacrificed himself to destroy something everyone else knew they wouldn't have the courage to do.
Gandalf himself said he could not even hold it in its hands lest he become enthralled with the power it held. The ring needed to be carried by somebody who didn't care for its power and was innocent. That person would take longer to be possessed by the ring. It took the immense willpower and self control for the elf queen not to keep the ring when Frodo gave it to her... even then she had to give the ring back to Frodo before the desire for power consumed her.
There is also the additional side-effect to the person that destroyed the ring. The ring gradually transformed those who wore it into wraiths. Thus, when the ring was destroyed, in all likelyhood, he who wore the ring would be destroyed as well as much of what gave him former sustenance would be gone. In a way, Frodo was the guinea pig of the wizards and elves
And, on a final note, in the end even Frodo failed. Were it not for Golum, the ring would have fallen back into the hands of Sauron
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Two orc battles in LotR.
The human Riders of the Rohirrim, who knew nearly nothing about the saga of the Rings, but were next-door neighbors to the smooth charlatan, Saruman. It was Saruman's Uruk-hai (white hand) orc armies that were defeated on the Plains of the Pellenor.
Sauron's orc army remained in Mordor, until there was a clash at the front gates; this was fought by the humans of Gondor.
Elves don't breed like rabbits, humans do. Elves were giving up on life, waning in power and will to go on. Rivendell was an outpost, and Lothlorien was an enclave.
It has been years since I picked the books up, but I self-studied it pretty deeply at the time. If I'm inaccurate here, forgive.
While Tolkien steadfastly denied any metaphor for WWII politics, many scholars tied the Shire to England, the Elves to France, Mordor to Germany, Saruman's Orthanc to Japan, and the Rohirrim/Gondor pair as USA's two-fronted war.
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Even though the first movie is a year and a half away, I think this is a better trailer than some that are showing in theaters now.
The most technically impressive shots are the two that show the orc army marching through Mordor...Massive is probably the best cg software in existence. And, watching the letters get burning into the ring is just awe inspiring.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall when George Luca$ watches this. He wanted to make LOTR in the mid-eighties but couldn't get the rights to it. What did we get instead? Willow. Sad but true.
www.theonering.net has a shot by shot analysys here.
I was in their chat room earlier...watch for the preview to be mirrored around the web.
Dracos
"Integer: a number that represents any valid floating-point value"
Here's the URL for the 27.5MB 640x320 mov, direct from akamai.net. I tried severaly times putting this all together and properly "a href"'d, but slashdot just gives me a "Lameness filter encountered: post aborted" (is that because the URL is too long or something???)... so you'll have to cut-and-paste from below. SOrry!
7 /
3 c02589f25382f668c 9329e0375e81785ea61cd36a40938a41385e948b71d7cf058b d1c8ef765cc3f
http://a912.g.akamai.net/5/912/51/7f33d9e39a6b8
1a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb1245
/lotr_640_full.mov
lotr_640_full.mov (29 MB) (Now I really hate the damn AI of /., it didn't let me put the absurdly long direct URL into a href)
QuickTime Installer.zip (8 MB) (Win32 version)
I, as many others, like to actually download the files instead of downloading a downloader program which downloads something which perhaps downloads something, that you can't even save to your HD after downloading it. These links work as of my writing, let's hope nobody changes the URLs.
For some reason, Apple or New Line have rigged it so that you can't save the trailer to hard drive. Fortunately, there are two ways to get around this.
Right, I need an answer to this question from a Lord of the Rings fan. The question is this:
Given that the Ring was so goddamned important, and that its destruction was literally the central event of the entire history of Middle-Earth, why did the supposedly wise Elves entrust this mission to a young hobbit with no military experience, supported by any friends he happened to pick up along the way? Particularly as the hobbit in question had never previously been more than a few miles from his native village.
Surely, the obvious solution would have been to assign a company of elven cavalry with magic swords, supported by Ents, and accompanied by guides familiar with the terrain. It's clear from the book that the elves could raise a huge military force when they had to -- why not use it for this mission?
The really annoying thing is that there *is* a reason why this was not an option, and a Lord of the Rings fan told me what it was three years ago. I forgot it, though, and it's been driving me mad ever since.
thanks, streetlawyer
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