Lord of the Rings

Hey guys. The versions for sale on You Tube and Google play: are those the theatrical editions or the extended ones?

The ones I've seen on Youtube have 'Extended Edition' printed on them in big letters.

Seems like both are available on Google Play. Wouldn't be surprised if the regulars were on Youtube somewhere if that's the case.

The theatrical versions are on Netflix right now.

They're so good.

Although.

That one scene where the nazgul rush the Prancing Pony and stab up exactly one empty room is a bit Narm, isn't it? Like, they stopped and asked someone for directions along the way? And didn't bother to search around?

It was so tense the first time you watch, but on subsequent viewings, it's just hilarious

Doesn't that scene play out the same way in the book? It's been a while since I've watched the movies or read the book.

In the book, the hobbits are in a different room during the night and go back to their actual rooms in the morning to find the beds stabbed and ransacked. It's not clear if the Ringwraiths did this themselves or had local collaborators (Bill Ferny and his gang) do it for them. Aragorn actually implies the latter, noting that the Nine would be unlikely to attack a busy inn full of light and people so far from their home turf (though Butterbur the innkeeper says he stayed up all night and didn't hear or see anything, which implies a supernatural attack - though it's also possible Butterbur just nodded off at some point without realizing it). In any case, we only see the results, not the attack itself.

And now my friends.

To Isengard.

TA-RUNA, RUNA, RUNA ROM!

edited 28th Feb '18 7:37:00 PM by Gaon

I'm watching the movies again after having played Shadow of Mordor (not the sequel)

And it's kind of hilarious how much Movie Elrond reminds me of Celebrimbor. Impossibly badass elf warrior, coldly pragmatic, perfectly willing to sacrifice or send into danger the innocent for the betterment of Middle Earth...

Although Foils are opposites, so of course Celebrimbor is a lot more evillllll

Video Game! Celebrimbor is a great character.

I could look at him and say "Yeah, that's Feanor's grandson alright!"

Movie Elrond's just kind of a dick to be a dick whereas Game! Celebrimbor is grasping and being corrupted so he's not a dick for no established reason.

edited 28th Feb '18 11:52:04 PM by MadSkillz

WE COME, WE COME, WITH ROLL OF DRUM! TA-RUNDA, TA-RUNDA, TA-RUNDA ROM!

I don't like game Celebrimbor because the entire point of his character is that he's the Token Good Teammate who tries to redeem his bloodline after his grandfather's mistakes. There's a whole scene in the S Ilmarillion Celebrimbor essentially sheds his ties with his family because they keep doing all this horrible shit. So Celebrimbor spends his life trying to go as far as possible from the folly of Féanor, but tragically this leads to him becoming a Unwitting Pawn to Sauron, and yet even then, he manages to go out heroically by forging the three elven rings in secret and refusing to tell Sauron of their location even while he's being tortured to death, dying a hero.

In the game he's just literally Féanor 2.0.

That's the thing though: it introduces the idea of Tolkien's elves being total bastards to a wider audience. The closest we got before was the Hobbit's Thranduil, and in that case, he was more of an isolationist than any source of potential malice.

I like Game-Celebrimbor specifically because of his similarities to Feanor.

There are plenty of ways to do that without fucking over the entire character arc of Celebrimbor and Féanor's lineage.

I feel like Celebrimbor would otherwise have been doomed to remain a footnote in the Middle Earth legendarium, known only to Tolkien's greatest fans otherwise. I wouldn't have known who he was were it not for this game. I remember maybe encountering his name once in The Lord of The Rings, and I don't remember him at all from the bits of the Silmarillion that I manage to remember.

Also, fuck Feanor's legacy. Earendil can be his legacy. Galadriel had the right idea about him, the jerk.

I really liked the Bright Lord DLC, because of the Ham-to-Ham Combat between Celebrimbor and Sauron. God, it was hilarious and I would play it again in a heartbeat.

That's not a very good justification. "Let's absolutely wreck this entire character because he's not known to mainstream media!". Wouldn't it be perfectly possible to simply, you know, make a story using Celebrimbor's actual arc in the story rather than just making him a expy of his grandfather? Or Hell, use another character if you want to bring Féanor back so much? Even the ghost of actual Féanor would be less of a problem. You could use Maglor, who is still alive by the canon (Just forever wandering the shores of Middle Earth in sorrow) and it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

Also:

But that's exactly what I'm getting across. Celebrimbor, his own grandson, repudiating Féanor's folly is the entire weight of his character and the nail on the coffin of Féanor's legacy (plus, Celebrimbor is the Last of His Kind, so with his death Féanor's line is finished). If you do what the game did, then his legacy is more alive than ever via Sow!Celebrimbor's madness. In the lore Tolkien tramples over Féanor's legacy, but this game keeps it alive much longer and in the process screws over the entire character arc of the family.

Also, Eärendil is of Fingolfin's branch of the family, not Féanor's.

Earendil carries Feanor's greatest craft though, the thing that caused Feanor's madness (or at least the pebble that triggered the avalanche). It's the last surviving thing that Feanor's hand touched, and it plays a major part in delivering Frodo and thus the entirety of Middle Earth from doom.

Your reasons for disliking the story of those games is fair and reasonable. I just

I really like the game's delving into the backstory using the movies' aesthetic.

The movies and books have become fundamentally irreconcilable, sadly, with the Nazgul having their backstory completely changed and the timeline condensed considerably. I do enjoy the games bringing book elements into the movie "verse" quite a bit.

My favorite LOTR game remains Rise of the Witch King from the Battle for Middle Earth series. GOD I love the nazgul.

edited 1st Mar '18 7:29:02 AM by blkwhtrbbt

Eh, the Silmarils are ultimately not Féanor's. They are the light of the Tree, created by the gods. The whole crux of Féanor's stupidity is that he thinks they belong to him and to him alone, not to the gods. So I'd say Eärendil using the Silmaril on his brow to serve the gods is, if anything, another posthumous insult to Féanor's folly.

And that's fair. I just can't bring myself to like them when I find the actual lore much better written and more engaging. One case of this is in Shadow of War using Helm hammerhand as a Nazgûl and giving him...a hammer. When the whole fun of his character is that he doens't need a hammer because he punches people to death.

Also: my favorite LOTR game might likewise be Rise of the Wich-King, though I enjoyed LOTR Online, as simple as it was, when I first played.

I imagine his Nazgul form is a lot less good at punching. I've noticed the Nazgul in general don't seem to do fisticuffs. So the next best thing is an actual hammer.

But in canon (where he was never a Nazgûl) he punched people to death in life. When the game shows him in life he's still just wielding a giant warhammer.

I think Nazgûl could just punch people to death as long as they are wearing a gauntlet. Tolkien more or less states that Nazgûl only exist in the form of the clothes they're wearing, so if a Nazgûl has a gauntlet, he has a fist under it.

I am a bit surprised they used established characters as Nazgul. Where is Khamul? Why not use the Games Workshop characters? Why not entirely new ones?

Even in the LOTR tabletop game the other Nazgul had titles, not names, aside from Kamul. There was also that other guy that was the Witch-king's second in command in the Battle for Middle-earth games.

MERP (Middle Earth Role-Playing) by Iron Crown Enterprises in the '80s and '90s had fully-developed names and backstories for all of the Ringwraiths, including the interesting tidbit that one of them was a woman.

MERP's last book came out in '97 and ICE lost the license in '00 when they filed bankruptcy - before the movies came out - and none of their material can really be considered canon now.

edited 1st Mar '18 9:26:52 AM by Bense

I wouldn't have minded Celebrimbor being replaced with Maglor.

But I'm separating game canon from the actual canon of the silmarillion so it doesn't ruin anything for me.

In fact, I was treating it like cool fan fic until the ending tried to make it reconcile with LOTR's ending.

I was kinda hoping that Celebrimbor would beat Sauron and the twist being that nothing's changed. You just replaced Sauron with yourself as a lesser version of him just like Sauron was a lesser version of Morgoth in a sense and the game ends there.

edited 3rd Mar '18 8:52:25 PM by MadSkillz

I didn't play the Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War games, but I think that using Maglor as a stand-in for a "bloodthirsty, vengeful progeny of Feanor" Celebrimbor is described as carries the same problems Gaon is talking about. Maglor was probably the most decent of Feanor's sons, though that's not saying much. But he at least saw the error of his ways and tried to repent, pity he didn't show the strength of character at the most crucial time. He's also responsible for Elrond and Elros being the wise and compassionate people they were (after kidnapping them, but still).

The only role that would fit Maglor should he be reused, I think, is of The Atoner one.

edited 3rd Mar '18 10:00:54 PM by Millership

I think pretty much all options for what the game wants Celebrimbor to be would be pretty bad, but Maglor was less-bad, because you could at least make something out of how he spent eternities wandering around the shores of Middle Earth singing sorrowfully and these eons of sorrow have rendered him much more emotionally unstable and ruthless, explaining how he became more cruel in this meantime.

It's still a deviation, but it's a more plausible one.

The thing is though, Maglor's been there done that. He's way too emotionally tested to go down that road either.

What they should have done is have the elf ghost be friendly and wise to contrast with Talion's bitterness.