[aruanan]

Give me one reason that story couldn't have been told without all the fighting.

Anyone who could complain about the novelization of the movie and this is obviously doing his arguing for reasons other than what he's stated. This reminds me of some reviewer saying that the "gentle medievalist" Tolkien would probably have been shocked at the level of violence in the Helm's Deep battle scene. Another person who hasn't read the book. There was actually very little graphic violence in the Helm's Deep battle scene. There was a lot of motion and implied violence, but when the occasional head was struck off, there was no slow-motion spouting of arterial gore. I thought the depiction of mayhem was very restrained and never became gratuitous.

If you should complain about anything, it should be that the palantir were too tiny or that Gollum's outfit was absurd. Either he wore nothing or he wore scavanged clothing for protection against the weather. No one would believe that a creature whose only goals were possessing his Precious and killing those who had taken it from him would have any sense of genital modesty. An outfit of tattered rags would have been more believable than a skimpy, yet undestructable, loin cloth. But then it may have been much more difficult to convincingly digitally animate many folds and tatters of clothing than a smooth surface. And though Smeagol's movement was pretty good, it looked as though he and the Hobbits were interacting with the gravity of two different planets.

As far as racism is concerned. Ha ha ha ha ha. Since the orcs are not human their darkness has nothing to do with race. I suppose you could say that Darkness was associated with Evil and Light with Good, but, if anything, that's a pretty universal archetype (though in China white is a symbol of death). At the same time throughout the world's folklore there have been descriptions of the seemingly beautiful which is evil and of the apparently ugly which is good (such as the description of the Messiah in Isaiah).

[valkyrieanne]

As far as racism is concerned. Ha ha ha ha ha. Since the orcs are not human their darkness has nothing to do with race.

Actually, the Orcs were produced (not by yanking them out full-grown wrapped in goo from the ground, as in the movie) by the evil Valar Melkor (Sauron's Boss) in the time after the creation of the Elves in Middle-Earth, but before Men were created.

Sauron captured Elves and experimented on them, torturing and deforming them until they produced the Orc "race." Orcs mate and produce little Orcs in the (presumably normal, for them) way. If they are black, it's because they were made that way by Melkor.

They apparently like to go on abducting sprees, capturing Elf women, and at least one Human character in the book (Bill Ferny in the town of Bree) is said to look as if he might have some Orc in his ancestry.

I find this very curious because Tolkien was apparently almost entirely ignorant of the current science of the day (1930s or so) and yet was able to work into his story a point that even most science fiction of the day didn't even approach, with perhaps the exception of HG Well's Island of Doctor Moreau. Of course in today's atmosphere, with scientists creating human/pig and human/mouse hybrids, it's even creepier.