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MGM and Warner Near On Deal For Hobbit Films
Jamie found an NYT story that says "After months of negotiation and delay, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are on the verge of an agreement that would allow the director Peter Jackson to begin shooting a two-part version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit early next year." The production has struggled recently with issues with unions, and a fire.
Nothing can ever beat that cartoon.
I swear I read that as "The production has struggled recently with issues with Unicorns, and a fire."
With the producers, director, actors, production crews, and distributors facing off in a lawsuit -- a great Battle of Five Armies over a huge pile of gold.
Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to throwing my $10 on the pile. I'm sure the film itself will be great.
Magic Palantír Says: DON'T COUNT ON IT
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
ie. They're going to milk this for all it's worth.
No sig today...
I'd almost forgotten the skateboarding elf, thanks.
Yet another opportunity to wear funny glasses for three hours and have pointy objects thrust at me repeatedly.
Maybe he'll buck the trend and NOT do it in 3D?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the artists and writers; wisest and most creative of all beings. Seven, to the union actors, great visionaries and craftsmen of the stage. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the studio execs, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern over each group. But they were all of them deceived, for a new ring was made. In the land of New Zealand, in the fires of Mount Cook, the Dark Lord Peter Jackson forged in secret, a master ring, to control all others.
So I suppose you didn't read Silmarillion?
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I always wondered if the fact that Hobbits were used to eating 'shrooms and smoking their special tobacco is what made them slightly more resilient to the promises of the ring, and therefore the ideal ring-bearers, but the movie pretty much strips out all of that without really explaining why Hobbits are better suited to carry the ring than, say, the giant eagle (who presumably could have dropped off the ring in a couple of hours and been back in time for tea).
I think this is well explained in the books and in the movie, though somewhat in the subcontext: hobbits have so little power and are so devoid of ambitions (other than living a very simple life) that the Ring doesn't have a strong effect on them. It would corrupt a powerful being such as a Maia (such as Gandalf) or a great Eagle. Moreover, that might explain why the Ring has absolutely no effect on Tom Bombadil. But maybe I'm seeing too much.
I was always under the impression that the hobbits were not so easily corrupted by the ring, because their race had never wielded rings of power nor had any made for them, unlike the elves, dwarves and men.
Gollum was a Hobbit
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What I got from both the books and the movie on that was simply that Hobbits don't really give two shits about power. Tolkien hammered on this concept until it hurt, and Jackson remained pretty true to that concept. They intentionally choose a simple life, they have little interest in controlling (or, let's be honest, even helping) anyone outside their borders, so the whole concept of a ring that gives absolute power has little meaning. The Ring can corrupt them (see Smeagol/Gollum and Frodo). Hell, even Bilbo got corrupted by it to an extent, but he managed to hold out for quite a while because he didn't know what it was.
The only people who could bear the Ring are those who could wield it (limited to a population of one, named "Sauron") and those to whom it would not occur to try.
Bilbo never had a clue what the Ring was, or what it represented. At least not until long after it was out of his hands, and I'm not sure he really knew anything other that it was a burden to Frodo, then forgot about that soon after. To him, it was a magical little shiny that allowed him to avoid unpleasant encounters and skulk around. He didn't have buttons the Ring could have pushed to seek absolute power. He didn't know about it, and didn't care, other than the small and insignificant uses he put it to. Even so, it took threats from Gandalf to get him to set it aside, and it still gnawed at him.
Frodo knew what he had from fairly early on, but lacked the sort of desire for power the Ring could leverage. Even so, the Ring did work on Frodo at the end. He was unable to cast it into the fires and actually started to try and wield it, and it fell on Gollum and a bit of clumsiness and happy chance to finally destroy the Ring.
Hobbits are also insignificant to the powerful to the point of near invisibility. Give the Ring to an Eagle, and he'd be spotted and intercepted, probably before he crossed the border into Mordor, if his own sense of power didn't turn his purposes to that of the Ring's first. No one could wield it without Sauron being aware of it (and eventually being subverted by it), and no one could openly fight past Sauron and into Mordor without wielding it. It was only through stealth that Frodo managed to get the Ring into Mordor without being immediately caught.
Remember, all of the people who understood the ring and understood power (Gandalf, Elrond, Aragorn, Faramir, Galadriel, etc) were strong enough to reject the ring but wise enough to understand that they were not strong enough to control it or even handle it. Boromir was weak enough to be unable to reject the ring, and though he managed to reject it briefly it was really only Saruman's orcs killing him off that saved him from eventually succumbing to its appeal and attempting to wield it. Denethor was weak enough that the mere concept that it slipped through Faramir's fingers was enough to drive him batshit crazy.
No one who was strong enough to understand what the Ring truly was would be strong enough to carry it for any length of time. Its power was too appealing.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Not to mention that the undead army never made it to Pelannor Fields. They defeated the Corsairs of Umbar, were released from service, and the reinforcements came from the freed slaves and the now un-besieged coastal region.
Allowing Saruman his final chance of redemption (to wait out the war & think about why he (and other Istari) was sent to middle earth), show that even Fangorn was susceptible to Saruman's final evil skill (voice), and show the damage which can still be caused by a hollowed out "powerless" voice set loose among a good-natured group such as the Shire, cheats Gandalf and Saruman of character and Tolkien of some of his more subtle points. Not to mention cheating the Shire of it's endurance before and hard-will after the rising sparked by the returning hobbits.
I don't know how I stumbled across this but here is an interesting theory about Tom Bombadil being Sauron. It's from a Usenet posting circa 1996.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Bad Theory. Frodo gave the ring to Bombadil to look at and Bombadil showed that he had power over the ring, something the Witch King would not have, so Bombadil is not the Witch King. If he was then he would have taken it immediately back to his master, Sauron, but he didn't, he gave it back to Frodo, something the Witch King would never have done. Elrond's refusal to let Bombadil keep the ring is more out of his understanding that Bombadil, though powerful, could not be trusted as he would just as easily misplace it as keep it safe. (An alternative no better than throwing it in the deep ocean hoping it lost forever. Elrond wanted the ring destroyed and guided the council to that purpose.)
Bombadil is an enigma that Tolkien purposefully never wanted explained. The theory I prefer is that he and Goldberry are one of the Aniur that was appointed to do a task, probably by Manwë, in that area of Middle Earth in the Third Age.