Lord of the Rings

In the books, of course.

That's because way back in like, the 60s, it was considered "immature" to like fantasy, and "mature" to like hard science, and the two avoided each other like high school clique-ches.

These days, the two tend to be intimately married. Cue deconstruction.

Also, film as a medium requires a certain level of believability. Cue physics simulators included in virtual animation studios.

It's difficult to model a 6-limbed creature believably. At the very least, it's a lot more work, and that translates to more money spent, for very little increase in revenue.

On the other hand, we have LOTS of references for 4-limbed fliers.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

" is it just me or has fantasy taken a turn towards the more 'realistic' in recent times?"

It might not be just you, but I don't think "gritty" is quite the same thing as "realistic." The unrelentingly gritty Song of Ice and Fire is the obvious current trendsetter.

I would not call The Lord of the Rings a fairy tale, but high fantasy. The Hobbit is mostly a fairy tale, though it becomes high fantasy after Smaug is killed and then turns back to fairy tale again when Bilbo returns to the Shire. The beginning of ''LotR'' is similar, though by the end of the party it's mostly high fantasy, and though it "softens" up a bit at the end when the hobbits return to the Shire it never quite gets back to the fairy tale/storybook mode - which of course reflects the hobbits' character growth and lost innocence.

Peter Jackson said that he made Smaug the "wyvern" type because he thought he was starting to look too much like a dog in the four-legged version.

edited 12th Aug '16 8:29:13 AM by Bense

That is actually a really good reason for the change then

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Notably, it is the four-legged Smaug in the opening scenes of the theatrical cut of An Unexpected Journey (at least, as far as you can see him - a foreleg is clearly visible), but they changed him to the two-legged "wyvern" version in the Extended Edition of Journey to match the final Desolation of Smaug version (the foreleg becomes a wing).

Eat your heart out, George Lucas!

edited 12th Aug '16 8:32:11 AM by Bense

Hey, at least it was subtle. I'm fairly certain that design thing was the reason we never saw the whole dragon in Journey.

Han tweaking his head out of the way of a point-blank blaster blast though....

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Well, calling it an outright fairy tale is perhaps a little too far. However it more fairy-tale *like* than a most of the recent offerings. I mean, Theoden is actually described to be 'fae-like' during his charge at the battle of Pelennor, so it's not like I'm dragging this out of my arse.

And yes, gritty and realistic aren't the same thing, I just see an increasing trend in both of these (and I guess I see them as opposite to what Lot R is). I guess realistic in my definition might also be Brandon Sanderson's way of doing things, where he lays out rules for magic and powers and fantasy races, whereas Tolkien just plops Bombadil there and goes "well, there's a mystery for you!" and just doesn't tell you the limitations of the magic of, say, Gandalf or the Ringwraiths.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

I'd say the difference comes down to Tolkien modeling his books directly off of legends and mythology, stuff like Beowulf or the Prose Edda, about as close to primary sources as you can get for stories that began in the Oral Tradition. By contrast, most fantasy authors from the mid-20th Century onward, while they may get some inspiration from myth and legend, are taking a lot of their influence from other modern novels, which have very different prose and narrative styles from the ancient manuscripts that Tolkien was inspired by.

You're probably referring to this passage: "Eomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first eored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Theoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his viens, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young."

"Fey" in this context means "crazy", not "fairy-like", though it might also mean "fated to die; doomed," which is what the original Anglo-Saxon word we get "fey" from meant. Basically, Theoden was in an Unstoppable Rage. Until the Witch King stopped him, that is.

In fact "fey" in LotR always means "acting crazy and/or doomed".

• It's used to describe Frodo (from Sam's point of view) when he's frantically running towards the pass into Mordor just before Shelob gets him.
• It's used by Eowyn to describe how Aragorn looked to her before he goes on the Paths to the Dead (she believes he has gone to his doom).
• It's used by Pippin to describe Denethor going to burn himself in the tombs.
• And finally it's used by the narrator to describe Eomer after he finds Eowyn lying apparently dead on the field and then charges back into battle crying "Death, death, death! Death take us all!"

I love having a searchable text of LotR. Very handy for internet forums.

edited 15th Aug '16 8:28:34 AM by Bense

give

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Hmm. Sanderson's way of doing things is one that works well, certainly, but I would call that "internal consistency", not realism per se. The Lord of the Rings is for the most part very internally consistent, right down to the moon being in the proper phase when comparing dates.

It seems clear there are limits to what magic can do in LotR, even if they're not all spelled out the way Sanderson would do, usually by including characters who don't know about magic's limits and ask questions about it for the benefit of the readers. Gandalf says he can't burn snow, for instance, and that when he uses his powers it draws unwanted attention. Even Bombadil seems to be strictly limited to a specific area, if not limited in power within that area.

What I mean when I say "gritty" is "harsh and unpleasant," which describes a lot of what happens to the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire. It seems realistic to many because real life is often harsh and unpleasant, but that doesn't have to mean that a work that isn't harsh and unpleasant can't be "realistic".

edited 15th Aug '16 8:26:22 AM by Bense

I bought a very nice .epub version of the one-volume 50th Anniversary Edition when it was on sale ($12) on Google Play Books a while back, and it's on my phone. It's got the maps and genealogy charts and everything.

I don't really have a link to share it with, though. Sorry.

Tolkien was intentionally vague about the precise scope and capabilities of magic. As I see it, this accomplishes two things: it lets you set up the desired plot points without having to worry over whether you've previously established that a character can do the precise thing you want; and it also shuts down most of the crazy fan arguments about precise internal consistency.

Magic in Middle-Earth seems to operate on a Power at a Price basis — mundane or trivial effects require little effort, but if you want to do something really spectacular, it costs large amounts of resources and may weaken you or even kill you, never mind drawing attention from every sensitive entity around. Tolkien was very deliberately writing a heroic narrative, which glosses over Magic A Is Magic A for the sake of storytelling.

edited 15th Aug '16 8:53:31 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Oh. I thought you had found like, an online publication or something.

Dang.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

The thing with Lord Of the Rings is that it almost makes high fantasy (in its highest sense of feeling like a Greek/Norse myth made into a narrative novel) a Dead Horse Trope. You can't tell a story so broadly sweeping, so heavy on exposition and light on characterization, with such moral absoluteness defining the sides of the conflict, without getting accused of being a LOTR ripoff. Even one of the most famous LOTR ripoffs, the Shannara series, quickly became more down-to-earth and character-driven after the first novel, because that's the only direction left to go in, unless an author be brave or foolish enough to create a fantasy world whole-cloth and simply write a fantasy world's version of a history textbook.

It's an interesting debate as to whether LOTR is, despite its improbably happy ending in the broad strokes, meant to be portrayed as a tragedy, the inevitable end of the Elvish age which had been slowly dying since the end of the First Age. It is telling that in the legendarium as a whole, the world is seen as steadily getting worse from the point where the Two Trees die, even if there are periods where things get a lot better for a few hundred or thousand years. Fitting in that, the beginning of the Fourth Age is another respite: Aragorn and Arwen reuniting the bloodlines of Elros and Elrond is the last gasp of a mythic age which will in time be forgotten, Elrond and Galadriel themselves must go overseas, and even Celeborn leaves in time (with only Cirdan's fate being uncertain, he might be bound to stay as long as any Elf remains in Middle Earth). Frodo's character arc is a microcosm of that; his earlier innocence shattered by conflict, where he prevails but remains scarred to the point where his only solace is in leaving, along with the Elves, to the pure realm of myth. It's not a happy book series for those who are paying attention, even if everyone other than Frodo ends up getting everything they ever wanted.

It resonates with people because it is ultimately about accepting death (Tolkien himself said this).

Despite all our triumphs and happiness we will get old and eventually discover that the old days were better than the days we have now, and that we must eventually depart whether we will or no.

Tolkien's religious perspective adds acceptance of that fate, while looking towards new and greater happiness and healing beyond this life made possible by the intervention of the divine. A very Christian understanding.

I think something Tolkien did very well was the way he started out with a bunch of fellows having a party, with all the realistic family squabbles and unusual gust list, into a tale of good and evil, heroic deeds and glory in battle, and then slowly, so that we hardly noticed until it had happened, wound it down until it was just a man saying his last goodbyes to an old friend, and walking back home to his wife and children. (Wow, that was a long sentence. I apologise.) Somehow, along the way, the legend turns into just another sad tale, one to which there is simultaneously a happy ending, and a very sad one as well. It adds another depth of realism, I think.

edited 17th Sep '16 11:24:35 PM by Dorondes

🍃

That's hilarious.

"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."

Say, would Galadriel's eyes showing many star-like points of light◊ (still image here) count as Exotic Eye Designs?

edited 24th Sep '16 4:07:53 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

... Still waiting for feedback about my above question.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's like, the textbook definition, I would think

Also, this thread moves very slowly.

It takes a long time to say anything in old Entish, and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

I wonder whatever became of Shelob, especially after Mordor itself was seemingly pacified (although Gorgoroth was probably left desolate for a long, long time).

Speaking of, Ungoliant and her place in the mythos always bugged me. She wasn't mentioned as a corrupted Maia, and the text implies that she was not. Was she then one of the "nameless things," mentioned by Gandalf a few times, said to dwell in the deeps of the sea, the Misty Mountains, and whatever the hell the Watcher in the Water was?

Quite OP, even compared to Shelob, since she went head to head with a Vala and had the upper hand for a while, when little Shelob got pwnd by some refracted silmaril light and a Gondolin knife.

Ungoliant was said to be a sort of primeval spirit of night. Whether that makes her part of the 'nameless things' category or something else altogether, we will not fully know, since Tolkien didn't elaborate a lot of backstory about her. Personally, I think she was the latter (and possibly superior to (at least some of) the nameless things), since she fought with a Vala and was quite powerful (seriously, consuming/drinking the reserves of water and light from the wells of Varda and must be one heck of a power), as you said.

As for Shelob, the only thing we know is that she retreated back into her lair after Sam stabbed her and that some of her offspring continued to produce generations (albeit smaller ones) in Mirkwood. After that, we can only speculate.

edited 3rd Oct '16 3:51:01 PM by Quag15

The fact that she even retreated in the face of the Silmaril's light after just one stab by Sam's Gondolin sword (albeit it was due to her accidentally impaling herself on it with all of her own Super-Strength) heavily implies she has realized that only death awaits her if she pressed on with her attack, IMO. It correlates with how she kept trying to knock away the phial from Sam's hand throughout the fight before actually attacking.

edited 4th Oct '16 12:28:16 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Didn't Melkor need help taking down Ungoliant?

"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."

... When did he ever need to take down Ungoliant? That's said, it's true that as Morgoth, he had no way of actually controlling her, and thus she was only allied with him due to sharing a common purpose (taking down the Valar), especially since Morgoth did not see any problem with her desire to eat everything (as long as he isn't on the menu, that is).

edited 4th Oct '16 1:35:25 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.