Posted on 03/14/2002 5:07:26 AM PST by HairOfTheDog
I knew they were gay....
Class is done, see you this evening!
One last post, and then I've got to leave until later. But the article I've been talking about addresses this as well. I don't necessarily agree with it, but let me put it out for conversational purposes:
"Equally misunderstood and misrepresented are those who have succumbed to the forces of evil. An excellent example is in the depiction of the Orcs, a race that was bred to be the minions of evil. They are the scions of snared Elves and Men, twisted and broken over the centuries. In Tolkien's depiction, these hordes are just that - hordes. They are surprisingly faceless in battle. One gets the impression that, if the average swordsman came upon a solitary Orc, he would be revolted and saddened, but not particularly threatened. In numbers, however, they are the overwhelming masses of bureaucratic evil: the nameless, faceless denizens of the dark, tied to their Lord by mutual hatred and fear, rather than by loyalty and love. Even the "fighting Uruk-hai," the larger, stronger Orcs bred by the turncoat wizard Saruman to fight in the sunlight, are not individual "personalities" so much as a powerful cohort.
"Yet Jackson, though he expends valuable screen time on the exposition of their lineage, misses this crucial point when he dedicates huge amounts of time to brief shots of snarling individual Orcs. In so doing he nullifies the true horror of the Orcs; this faceless horde is what broken and twisted people can become. Instead, his Orcs are persons to be reckoned with. Their lack of virtue has made them personalities, individually important. The only place where they are really frightening as a horde is the Dwarf-mines of Moria, and there they are transformed into an insectile swarm that descends the columns of the hall to surround the Fellowship. They have lost all connection with us. They are not twisted versions of recognizable people. They are totally other. Jackson's cartoonish Orcs are evil because they are foreign, not foreign because they are evil."
Thoughts?
What a brilliant description of the current Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats.....
As someone who read the trilogy AFTER watching the movie, I found that the Orcs were made more frightening in the book after witnessing Jackson's individual attention to their horridness in the movie.
Peter Jackson's LoTR was created for both Tolkien fans AND those who have never even read The Hobbit, so if anything, PJ's creative license more than likely sparked more than a few people to pick up the LoTR books. My husband is one of them and so am I (although I had read The Hobbit on more than one occasion before the movie was made).
If PJ had made the movie solely for Tolkien fans, spending less time on details like the origin and nastiness of Orcs, he would have lost a lot of repeat customers in the theatre who couldn't make any sense of the story without first reading the books. He presents it in a way that explains the basics to those who have never heard of Tolkien, but still takes the time to catch most of the trivialities that die-hard fans expect to see.
PJ's LoTR = job well done.
This is absolutely the case...and is why I don't feel much guilt when it comes to movie-elf bashing.
Yep...I'm lucky in that I'm in perhaps the most conservative county in the state (we all had fun torturing our token Democrat during the whole Gore / Bush election fiasco), but the flatlanders in some of the other counties tend to beat us out in the voting booth. It's really frustrating, and the reason I avoid any Vermont threads in the News forum - there are always TONS of people who will happily treat ALL Vermonters as if we're closet liberals. Sigh!
Can you imagine the misery of watching any movie with tis guy???
Whoo Hoo! Say it loud! Say it proud, Rosie!
Add her to the (ever growing) Elf Bash list, OT!
No! You guys back ALL elves, regardless of whether they're the movie or book version! That ain't me!
I would LOVE to spend a year or two among the REAL elves at Rivendell, listening to all the talk and music, learning as much as I could from them.
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