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Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

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Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#181

Post by reddog »

nindalf wrote: post #105
Trasmatta wrote: post #29

> Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. I've been a fan of Tolkien for decades, and this doesn't match up with my experience at all...Tolkien fans seem to generally love Tom, and many were deeply disappointed that he wasn't in the movies (even though his exclusion makes perfect se…

> Did I just run in different Tolkien circles than the author? Almost certainly. Tolkien fans aren't a monolith, there's plenty of diversity of opinion. I remember seeing these screenshots of a Tolkien forum from 2000 and 2001 of people berating Peter Jackson in the most scathing terms. They were talking about how he's completely ruined Tolkien's legacy. That said, if you're looking for a Tolkien fan who dislikes Tom…

> He contributed exactly nothing to the story.

He was in the books to add depth, history and verisimilitude to Middle Earth. He was an important part of world building. Tolkien could have left him out and the story would not have suffered but the same could be said for the appendixes and map as well.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#182

Post by saiya-jin »

boringg wrote: post #47
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it seem like everyone wants it to fail? It is almost like everyone has deemed it to be a disaster without watching one episode. I hope that is not the case and critics go in with an open mind, why sap all the fun out of it right out of the starting gate

I didn't say anything about it or alluding to it failing - I mentioned that there is LOTR content popping up at the same time as Elden Ring is getting traction. Your bias really shines through here.

Well not sure why you keep repeating name 'Elden ring' - thats a computer game completely unrelated to LOTR or incoming TV show from Amazon (The rings of power). It may sound like a jab on the TV show from you, probably hence the reactions

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#183

Post by fmajid »

eric_cc wrote: post #89

Tolkien on Tom in Letter 144: I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. but if you have, as it were taken 'a vow of poverty…

The Beornings as well, though far from pacifists.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#184

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

nonameiguess wrote: post #69
jfengel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. But I know a lot of people who find Tom irrelevant to the plot. It looks more like a silly digression just at the time the book had shifted from "Hobbit sequel" to serious epic. He talks in poetry that can feel singsong and childish. Tolkien fans seem to focus on the bit with the Ring, which is an engaging enigma without a resolution. It makes him seem very important and powerful, but the story doesn't expl…

It provides some pretty key context to where Merry got his blade from and why it is able to break the spell and make the Witch King killable. Bit of a better explanation than Eowyn's "I am no man."

I don't recall it explicitly making him killable? Eowyn still finishes him off in the book without (I assume?) an ambiguously magical blade.

I always thought it was more of a misleading prophecy, very like Macbeth (probably inspired by? Tolkien certainly drew some inspiration from Macbeth in other areas); "No man of woman born" and "Not by the hand of man" are both interpreted as "can't be killed" but really turn out to have very significant loopholes.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#185

Post by fmajid »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #59

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy the same writer's take on R2D2 being the central character of Star Wara: https://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html

Or Kirill Eskov's The Last Ringbearer:

https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#186

Post by deltarholamda »

nonameiguess wrote: post #75
boringg wrote: post #26

A random thought just occurred - and I welcome speculation. Do you/we think Lord of the Rings will have staying power in human history 1000 years from now or only last one century or so? Inherent assumptions: humans will survive 1000 years and so will books.

1000 years is a pretty long time. Looking at literature from the 11 century, Beowulf is the only thing that stands out as still having any impact and continuing to be adapted and widely read today. Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better, so more work will survive and have a shot at continuing relevance, and Lord of the Rings certainly has a shot, provided epic fanta…

>Information storage and transmission over the next 1000 years should be quite a bit better

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch to compare 1000 years ago to 1000 years from now. Things are radically different, and using the past to judge the future is rife with opportunities to make mistakes.

Some people have suggested that it may actually be worse, in that so much of our current knowledge is contained in non-durable formats (digital instead of hard copy, for instance), which is an interesting idea. Here a comparison could be made to inscriptions on stone and clay vs. on papyrus. It may be that when the Walking Dead happens, rebuilding our knowledge will depend on the large numbers of libraries that will still exist, but are less than up-to-date, since so much of the modern knowledge isn't contained there, but instead in a PDF on some cloud server.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#187

Post by ghaff »

yborg wrote: post #168
nindalf wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merry's sword was Númenorean, but there was no need of that entire digression to get Merry a Númenorean sword. The movie has Aragorn tell them "here are some weapons, help yourselves", which is just as good.

You can argue that much of the books can be eliminated because they're just not Hollywood, reading is for boomers after all. The origin of the blade is relevant because they nearly died in getting it, and because it came from the tomb of a prince who himself died battling the Witch King, so in a sense he obtained vengeance from beyond the grave. "Wow, this sword just turned out to be magic, what a coincidence" isn't…

Film--even a whole trilogy of films--is a different medium from books. Books are in general much more tolerant of diversions that don't move the story forward. Bombadil was pretty much a diversion.

The films also had to deal with the fact that the LoTR books had a lot of material after the ring was destroyed--and that's not even counting all the material in the appendix of RoTK. Say whatever positive things you like about LoTR but the narrative structure of RoTK in particular is a bit of a mess.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#188

Post by ghaff »

Trasmatta wrote: post #41
lordfoom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is even an active sub-reddit of fans: https://old.reddit.com/r/GloriousTomBombadil/ And his absence from the films was remarked upon, negatively in my circles.

> And his absence from the films was remarked upon, negatively in my circles. Yeah, same. On Tolkien forums in the early to mid 2000's, I think these were the most commented on complaints about the movies: * No Tom Bombadil * No Scouring of the Shire * Movie Faramir vs book Faramir * The Ents deciding to not help Merry and Pippin at first (tbh, this is the one that still gets me the most. It sort of ruined a key attr…

Well, in literary fandom generally, anything other than faithful transcription from page to screen often generates outrage.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#189

Post by ncmncm »

Trasmatta wrote: post #41
lordfoom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is even an active sub-reddit of fans: https://old.reddit.com/r/GloriousTomBombadil/ And his absence from the films was remarked upon, negatively in my circles.

> And his absence from the films was remarked upon, negatively in my circles. Yeah, same. On Tolkien forums in the early to mid 2000's, I think these were the most commented on complaints about the movies: * No Tom Bombadil * No Scouring of the Shire * Movie Faramir vs book Faramir * The Ents deciding to not help Merry and Pippin at first (tbh, this is the one that still gets me the most. It sort of ruined a key attr…

I was mainly irritated that the ents had knees.

That the whole Sauron business was a local and temporary nuisance seems central to the roles of Tom B and the ents. The ents' complaint was, in the end, only with Saruman.

Re: Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)

#190

Post by fmajid »

valarauko wrote: post #161
Sporktacular wrote: post #100

I understood Ciridan the Shipwright to be the oldest character but may be wrong.

Cirdan is certainly the oldest elf in Middle Earth during the period of the LotR. Treebeard and the other ents are probably older.

Gandalf, as a Maia, has got to be older than all left in Middle Earth.
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