History Fridge / TheLordofTheRings

* I always thought that Galadriel giving Gimli three locks of her hair was kind, but I really never thought much about it. Then I was reading through the ''Literature/UnfinishedTales'' and read about the description of her hair and how the Eldar believed that the light of the Two Trees were ensnared in it and how Feanor was attracted to it, yet she refused to give him any lock. Some of the Eldar believed that her hair inspired Feanor to create the Silmarils. So it was a very great honor that she gave Gimli not one, but three locks of her hair.

* There's european folklore explaining you have to kill a wizard three times to keep him dead. Interestingly, Saruman in the movie is stabbed with a knife, falls from a great height, and impaled on a spike. Naturally, an actor famous for playing Dracula gets impaled right in the chest...

* I read ''Lord of the Rings'' when I was young and loved it. Saw the movies, loved them. A year ago, I read the Silmarillion, and then suddenly the whole sequence with Shelob, already HighOctaneNightmareFuel, becomes both a hundred times more intense and very symmetrical. The draining, total darkness in Shelob's lair isn't an absence of light, but Shelob is quite literally excreting darkness as its own material just like her mother Ungoliant. Also, the light of Earendil, which is the light of a Silmaril, shines through that darkness. When Ungoliant devoured the first trees, Feanor refused to allow the use of the Silmarils to restore them.

* I always thought that Galadriel giving Gimli three locks of her hair was kind, but I really never thought much about it. Then I was reading through the Unfinished Tales and read about the description of her hair and how the Eldar believed that the light of the Two Trees were ensnared in it and how Feanor was attracted to it, yet she refused to give him any lock. Some of the Eldar believed that her hair inspired Feanor to create the Silmarils. So it was a very great honor that she gave Gimli not one, but three locks of her hair.

* At first the impact of the ring on Frodo seems rather extreme, but aside from Bilbo who only handles it before Sauron's rise to power, and Gollum (and look what happened to him), Frodo is the only one to ever '''touch''' the ring. Everyone else just comes close to touching it, then pulls away or is forced away somehow.

* Denethor's madness wasn't just because of Faramir's injury and the Palantir's visions of the power of Mordor. The Palantir also showed him things that caused him to believe
Frodo had been captured and Sauron had obtained the ring:

** The West is sometimes compared to death. Sam waited until old age to leave the world naturally. Frodo returned from a war to make the decision to leave almost immediately. In a sense, Sam "died" of old age, while Frodo committed suicide.
*** Actually, Sam too left to the West. But only after many years of prosperity in the Shire (and a butt-load of kids).

-->"Comfort me not with wizards!" said Denethor. "The fool's hope has failed. '''The Enemy as found it, and now his power waxes'''; he sees our very thoughts, and all we do is ruinous."

** On the same vein Denethor's madness actually makes more sense, He was right about Frodo yet couldn't count on Gollum. One of the details the movie oversights heavily.

** I read ''Lord of the Rings'' when I was young and loved it. Saw the movies, loved them. A year ago, I read the Silmarillion, and then suddenly the whole sequence with Shelob, already HighOctaneNightmareFuel, becomes both a hundred times more intense and very symmetrical. The draining, total darkness in Shelob's lair isn't an absence of light, but Shelob is quite literally excreting darkness as its own material just like her mother Ungoliant. Also, the light of Earendil, which is the light of a Silmaril, shines through that darkness. When Ungoliant devoured the first trees, Feanor refused to allow the use of the Silmarils to restore them.
** While rewatching "The Return of the King," I sobbed so hard at the end that I had to turn the movie off; the whole experience was just emotionally draining, and I couldn't bear to watch Sam go home to the cute little Shire after all he and Frodo had been through in Mordor. Then, while rereading the book, I realized that that was the same reason Frodo needed to leave Middle Earth; the experience had taken so much out of him that he simply couldn't return to the Shire. O.o It was a very emotional weekend all around.

** I always thought that Galadriel giving Gimli three locks of her hair was kind, but I really never thought much about it. Then I was reading through the Unfinished Tales and read about the description of her hair and how the Eldar believed that the light of the Two Trees were ensnared in it and how Feanor was attracted to it, yet she refused to give him any lock. Some of the Eldar believed that her hair inspired Feanor to create the Silmarils. So it was a very great honor that she gave Gimli not one, but three locks of her hair.
*** It sort of mirrors her CharacterDevelopment: she starts off a prideful Noldorin princess, setting out to forge her own land in Beleriand. By the end of the Third Age, she is [[DefrostingIceQueen mature and wise]] enough to not only turn down the Ring, but graciously gift something as trivial as a lock of hair (or three) to a traditional enemy of the Eldar. Seems plausible that she wanted to mend relations between the Dwarves and Elves partly because she saw how [[TheSilmarillion King Thingol's]] pride was his downfall in regards to the Dwarves.
** Pippin's immaturity and the fact that he's ruled by his impulses makes a lot more sense when you taken into account that he is still a child by hobbit standards. Hobbits come of age at thirty-three, and Pippin is twenty-nine during the events of the trilogy, so he's not a small child, but in way of physical and emotional maturity, he's in the 14-16 age range. All of the other hobbits are adults (in Merry's case, a very young adult), but Pippin's still a teenager. --{{ncfan}}
** Aragorn's alias Thorongil is a combination of his father's - Ara''thorn'' - and his mother's - ''Gil''raen - names. --{{lordleycester}}
** Only after reading it on some forum, I realised that Sauron was actually right about the Ring - Noone could have destroyed it! All those eagles visions would fail – no one would thrown the Ring into fire - Sauron didn't even need to protect the cracks - even Frodo, who was specifically suited to be least affected by the ring, was incapable of destroying it. It took several twists of fate and coincidences, also known as Eru ex Machina, to destroy One Ring - something that could not be predicted by Sauron
*** On the same vein Denethor's madness actually makes more sense, He was right about Frodo yet couldn't count on Gollum. One of the details the movie oversights heavily.

!!The Films

* The scene near the start where Bilbo drops the Ring is one that is very, very unsettling. Something's not right, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Later, usually on another watching, you finally realize what it is: It does not bounce. It simply falls and stops. It's a fantastic underscore to the fact that the Ring is ''very'' unnatural.

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** Only after reading it on some forum, I realised that Sauron was actually right about the Ring - Noone could have destroyed it! All those eagles visions would fail – no one would thrown the RIng into fire - Sauron didn't even need to protect the cracks - even Frodo, who was specifically suited to be least affected by the ring, was incapable of destroying it. It took several twists of fate and coincidences, also known as Eru ex Machina, to destroy One Ring - something that could not be predicted by Sauron

* It always bothered me that Elrond, a supposedly ageless elf, is played by the visibly balding Hugo Weaving, while all the other (equally ageless) elves in the movies have full hair. Then I remembered that, according to ''{{Silmarillion}}'', Elrond is a ''half-elf''. Perhaps he'd already started to bald (a trait inherited from the human side of his family) before he reached the "ageless" stage of his life cycle?