please note that a lot of my understanding of this comes from reading the internet, so i might have got a few things wrong. also this will definately cause screams of “what you’re suggesting differs from the source material, ergo it will be RUINED FOREVER YOU BASTARD!!!” from the zero people reading this (somehow) despite the fact that the original books remain, the still exist and thanks to their e-books will probably keep on existing.
having just finished reading lord of the rings: return of the king i thought i’d talk about that. first off a quick review:
The books: good but they have problems. i personally think that the hobbit was better.
The Group Representing All The Peoples of middle earth despite being comprised of old white men… of the ring: probably the best bit of the trilogy
The Twin… i mean Two towers: at this point we start getting bogged down in tolkien’s superfluous archaic flavour text, quite a lot happens though
The Return of the Prime Minister: toliken cuts down on his trademark descriptions just when all the cool battles begun, on the plus side this means that the films got to invent all the cool bits. also included: some guys who live in the woods and are almost definitely racially insulting though i can’t tell exactly why and Eowyn’s being a badass in killing the lich guy having nothing to do with her being a strong female character but instead because since she can’t have aragon she wants to kill herself…
i mean seriously; WHAT THE HELL? this doesn’t even have anything to do with tolkien being a product of his time
The Films: Much More Enjoyable to experience, probably because i watched them first but also i skimread the books and it was still slow progress. it loses a lot of scale but that still leaves it with plenty, merry and pippin never seem to get any defining personality traits.
There, i’ve just begat a firey fandom rage such as this land has never… my statistics inform me that nobody views my stuff, i’m pretty much doing this for my own entertainment anyway but if i have pissed a whole bunch of people off over insulting their favorite work of fiction then let’s face it they were asking for it and any response will simply amuse me.
On to the rest of this article: now that they’ve completed the hobbit should they adapt the scouring/battle of the shire into it’s own movie?
In my Opinion yes, although they’d have to make a few changes and i would say that anything longer than 90 minutes would be overkill for one maybe two chapters, even though a significant chunk of the battle of five armies movie was elaborate fight scenes that tolkien gave about 2 pages total of the book to.
first off i understand why they didn’t include it in the movies: it breaks the flow between the coronation and grey havens scene, is only loosely tied into the plot and as i have said would require heavy adaptation to make into a full story.
at the same time it shows how much our hobbit protagonists have grown since the start of the book, ending their character arcs and showing them as seasoned heroes and adventurers. also it makes merry and pippin different character wise, not by much but to some degree they start showing how their experiences have changed them for example merry has become a strong leader thanks to his time spent with theoden, eowyn and elfhelm (who is not an elf but a riders of rohan officer guy, that would like my name being Blackguyhat Smith…)
you know, the one from live and let die
of course there is a couple of changes that would need to be made during an adaptation like this:
first off christopher lee is dead and although apparently there is some “scourging of the shire” deleted scenes footage which they used in a lothlorien scene, i have no idea how complete it was but i get the impression that there wasn’t a great deal of it released or someone would have posted it on youtube. solution, and yes this is lore friendly, saruman wanted the one ring for himself because… take over the world, in the two towers he is shown controlling theoden with his wizard magics which is pretty similar to what the one ring can do, controlling people, ergo we can conclude from this that saruman was studying ways to replicate the ring. because what good is one almighty mind dominating ring of power when you can have 20?
The CEO of Trotter’s Istarian Traders
sauron in the movie continuity lacks physical form but is able to survive, this is probably because he’s actually a spirity god thing of the same irk that created middle earth. do you know who else are spirity god things that were granted mortal form to go and piss around on middle earth? the wizards!
apparently sauron can’t remanifest himself in middle earth after the ring was destroyed, so we can assume that it also serves as a “foot in the door” thing, when gandalf dies it apparently takes super ultra god to bring him back to life, so lets say saruman sees this and thinks: “so if i make one of these ring things then i don’t have to rely on super ultra god resurrecting me, because he’s not stupid enough to do that” give him some time trapped in the tower before gandalf arrives and lets say he makes such a ring. the extended edition film shows him being stabbed and grima shot through the heart, grima being a cunning dude before death steals this new ring from his master’s stash in an attempt to prolong his failing life and this ring does in fact do that at the same time allowing saruman’s spirity god bit to possess him. grimuman sets out to conquer the shire because of the reasons he does in the book: he’s already doing that (as the books explain he’s sending thugs up there to import food and weed using lotho sackville-baggins as a local puppet leader), wants to get back at the midgets who barged into his fortress with and army of ents and needs somewhere to turn to.
There you go: a justification for not needing the late christopher lee to make this film that makes sense and as far as i can tell fits within the bounds of what could be achieved in canon, sure it’s not from tolkien’s original vision but was legolas singlehandedly besting an elephant or sauron being a british guy with a name that comes straight out of a mary sue fic and crazy fangirls in numbers dangerously close to the levels that cause everyone to hate boybands.
i don’t hate the guy, but if his fangirls become particularly obnoxius then i just might start. just like i kinda hate christmas because of the obnoxius early adverts for it that this year have inexplicably started even earlier in july.
and i do know the true meaning of christamas: spending vast amounts of money so that you can get your close relitives the latest optimus prime (or equivilent) and lesser amounts of money to get your far relitives a generic snowglobe in the unspoken agreement that they will do the same. and i like that, just not the stupid early stupid reminder stupid stupid ads… stupid.
second off (yes seriously that was all just one point) frodo needs to do more, in the books he just stands around telling everyone that they shouldn’t harm any other hobbits. oh and there definately needs to be some hobbit on hobbit fights, having some hobbits actually enjoy collaborating with the occupying forces because of the power it gives them and choose to fight alongside grimuman’s… it’s never really explained if they’re urukhai or humans but probably a mix of both, forces would make them a much more believable people unlike in the books where only lotho and some miller guy agree with saruman.
that said why have frodo do more when it makes more sense to focus on the other three as protagonists: saruman is striking back at merry and pippin for trashing his fortress, ergo having them be the protagonists makes sense, those two and sam have also taken several levels in fighter and brought down or helped to bring down several larger entries in the middle earth bestiary over their travels. frodo is more vunerable compared to them because he was too busy with the ring to pick up any useful skills on his journey.
then we have lotho/pimple who gets killed offscreen in the book by grima, with all the building up of him in the book as “the chief” it would kind of make more sense (to me at least) to have him act as an unwilling dragon to grimuman, have him be the guy leading the sherrifs who go out to capture the heroes and is killed when he betrays grimuman because he decides that he’s went too far, that’s essentially why saruman has him pre-emptively bumped off in the book.
so yeah, that was me ranting for over 1.5 thousand words over what an adaptation of the scouring of the shire would need in my eyes. although if anything they should adapt the simallarion next so i don’t have to read it and also 4 words: soundtrack by blind guardian.