Lord of the Rings

I prefer not to speculate too much on Tom's origin, mostly because, like Tolkien, I think some things should remain mysteries in a story.

Though we should all be severely disappointed he didn't make it into the movies.

Granted, he doesn't exactly fit the tone of the movie adaptations. Or most adaptations, come to think of it. He didn't even show up in the original Ralph Bakshi animated movies.

Bombadil would throw the pacing of most adaptations way out, and given after the interlude he appears in has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the plot you can see why he's always been excised.

Which is not to denigrate the character in the least, or Tolkien's work, but what worked in the style and medium Tolkien used does not always translate to another easily.

In the far future I feel someone (a purest no doubt with very good intensions) will attempt to remake the lord of the rings movies just to make it closer to the source material,it won't achieve the same success as Peter Jackson's movies and we'll all know why

Tom is basically a clown and he was rightfully shooed out

That's right. There's a good narrative reason for the Old Forest sequence in the book but it's incredibly subtle and I don't see a way to throw it in a visual rendition without making audiences go WTF. Maybe if LOTR is treated as a serial work, like a TV show, and it's a single episode...

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 7:02:38 AM

I agree, leaving Bombadil out of the movies was the right choice.

As was leaving out tne Scouring of the Shire. Yes, it’s important in the books, but fully one-third of the book of ROTK is denoument and you simply can’t do that with the third movie of an epic cinematic trilogy. Different mediums have different needs.

Of course, I feel like the way it was done in the Peter Jackson films fails to adequately establish why Wormtongue turns on Saruman.

That's a pretty common result of cutting motivations while keeping plot points, especially for huge works like this. If they had wanted to explain Wormtongue's motivation, that would probably mean cutting something else instead.

It occurs to me scenes like the Scouring of the Shire in typical stories happen at the beginning as a part of a Doomed Home Town plot

Yes, but it serves a special purpose here, to show that not even the Shire has escaped the reach of Mordor, and that everything has changed even for the Hobbits. It also provides a rather stark You Can't Go Home Again moment for Frodo.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 16th 2021 at 1:57:21 PM

It also gives the Hobbits a chance to shine. They've fought wars, defeated a great evil. They aren't fazed by a few ruffians. Merry and Pippin have grown up and become leaders; they go on to greatness in their lives. And it also shows how the Hobbits as a whole can stand up in times of peril when given proper motivation.

Remember also that while Frodo doesn't fight, he is the unquestioned leader: the moral centerpiece of the battle. He's the one who spares Saruman in the end, and in that act of mercy proves the Hobbits to be the better people.

I can see why Bombadil was let out, I believe, but I am saddened by it. He (and other mysteries, like Ungoliant and Caradhras) are part of the beauty of the setting for me, and I mourn their loss.

(I'm also similarly saddened that we didn't get the barrow-wights, as I do rather like their little sequence. There's some wonderful imagery there, as I recall!)

Someone mentioned the thought of adapting The Lord of the Rings into serial form. I do like that idea—especially as it could, as likewise mentioned, provide space for Tom Bombadil. But even Bombadil aside, I think that it would allow the story more space to be expansive and sprawling, which I think is a strength of the books.

I've made my dislike for Tom Bombadil known, but Ungoliant being some nightmare creature that clawed its way out of the dark is far better narratively.

Well, her presence implies that either Eru is lying about being the Supreme Being of the universe or there are some really nasty things that he spawned and didn't bother to tell anyone else about.

It's possible that Ungoliant came from those same reaches of Creation that Melkor went exploring in before coming back with his radical reformist agenda, but it still doesn't answer the question of where those "dark places" came from if not from Eru.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 11:47:57 AM

Well there's also the concept of the "Nameless Things". So it's not entirely out of the question.

You could argue her origin is the same as whatever origin the Nameless Things that Gandalf encountered have. I think they're either Ainur that entered independently of the Maiar and Valar or byproducts of the discord Melkor introduced.

Yes, I assumed she was one of those nameless things Gandalf mentions.

> He's the one who spares Saruman in the end, and in that act of mercy proves the Hobbits to be the better people.

Should they have spared Saruman? I feel that act of mercy was like the viper biting the farmer

Well, that's the moral stance Tolkien seems to take: that anyone deserves a chance at mercy, at least. Note that the text does not particularly mourn him once he rejects that mercy.

Besides, Saruman was for all intents and purposes a defanged threat. Dude was a pathetic old man whose last bits of resources had just been taken apart by the Hobbits. Best he could do would be physically attacking the Hobbits, but by this point he'd have been unceriminously shot down by archers (as Grima is right after).

Letting him live to see his enemies triumph and his own ruin was almost Cruel Mercy (and definitely was in Saruman's POV).

Edited by Gaon on Feb 16th 2021 at 5:26:39 AM

Right. Frodo is perfectly aware of what his "mercy" means to Saruman. Saruman even compliments him on his insight. He's nobody's fool at this point.

If I remember correctly, Frodo is the only main character that never kills anyone in the story.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 8:41:41 AM

Even goblins in Moria?

Hmm. Now that I think about it, you may be right. I'd have to read that passage again. What I remember best about it is Frodo getting skewered.

Frodo isn't specifically mentioned as killing anyone in Moria, but he gets a good blow in with Sting and probably takes part in the subsequent fight.