50 Reasons Lord of the Rings Sucks

Pointless Waste of Time ^

[A.J.Armitage]

50 Reasons why
LORD OF THE RINGS


sucks

1. Fellowship of the Rings was shoved down our throats.
   
   I've heard some students are even forced to read some novelization of the movie in their literature classes. Ridiculous. Does Hollywood run our classrooms now?
   
   
2. Greed.
   
   Hollywood can't make a movie these days without crapping out a sequel the next year to squeeze more money out of the sheep. Guess what; there's ANOTHER LOTR movie coming this Christmas. Gee, I wonder what will bring Rocky out of retirement this time?
   
   
3. Quality Control at New Line.
   
   Millions of copies of the LOTR DVD have thick black bars at the bottom and top of the screen throughout the film. Didn't anyone catch this? You know what happens at the end, in the extreme foreground and extreme upper sky? Neither do I. Bush league, guys.
   
   
4. They switched Darrens on us!
   
   Look closely and you'll notice the human member of their party is played by two different actors at different points of the movie (it takes a sharp eye to notice, but one of them has red hair, one black).
   
   
5. Quality Control at New Line, II.
   
   In the massive Mt. Doom battle scene at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, a DVD pause reveals at least half a dozen of the 50,000 Orc Warrior extras are wearing modern tennis shoes.
   
   
6. Speaking of Orcs...
   
   The Orcs were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Too bad Blizzard is apparently too scared to sue New Line over it.
   
   
7. Racism.
   
   Percentage of protagonists in Fellowship who are white: 100. Meanwhile the black antagonists and their black crow spies and their black glass seeing ball inhabit their black towers and perform black magic. Gosh, I wonder if there's some symbolism there?
   
   
8. Gold: The Stretchy Element.
   
   The ring, which is seen to be at least two inches in diameter at the beginning to fit the polish sausage-sized finger of Sauron, suddenly fits Frodo's child-sized finger later. I guess this movie takes place in a world where rings magically change sizes on their own.
   
   
9. Violence.
   
   Give me one reason that story couldn't have been told without all the fighting.
   
   
10. Horse sense.
    
    Why didn't they take horses on their quest? Or even better, why didn't Gandalf's giant flying bird friend haul them into Mordor? Watch out, Frodo! All of your methods of transportation have been swallowed by the Dark Lord of the Plot Hole!
    
    
11. Retracted.*
    
    See below.
    
    
12. Return of the Living Dead.
    
    If you watch closely during the Inn scene, Frodo and his crew are shown getting stabbed by the Ring Wraiths. Then, five seconds later, they are fine again. Note to the director: try proofreading your movie before you release it to the public.
    
    
13. Did someone say plot hole?
    
    Liv Tyler's character is seen easily defeating nine strong supernatural beings, even though she is clearly a woman.
    
    
14. The Battle Droid Syndrome.
    
    The mutated muscular soldiers of Mordor turned out to be hilariously ineffective soldiers, a dozen of them held off by a single dying human. Apparently they made the beasts by crossing Orcs, Goblins and the French.
    
    
15. Sloppy CGI.
    
    Gandalf's smoke boat is pretty impressive, but smoke cannot be made to travel horizontally, thus revealing it to be nothing but a cheap special effect.
    
    
16. The Asbestos Wizard.
    
    We all saw Gandalf fall into the molten core of Middle Earth after his battle with the firebeast thing. Well, I guess the Gandalf action figure must have sold well, because in the slap-together sequel coming up this year Gandalf is back. I wonder if they'll even bother to explain it. Maybe he'll be resurrected via voodoo, a la the corpse in Weekend at Bernie's II (look closely and you'll notice LOTR steals several elements from the WAB films).
    
    
17. Invisible Implausibility.
    
    Every time Frodo or Bilbo went invisible with the ring they should have also gone BLIND. Your eyes cannot function unless light is reflected off the cornea. If light passes through it (as must be the case with invisibility) sight is no longer possible. Also, rings do not turn you invisible.
    
    
18. The Asbestos Wizard, II.
    
    The giant fire beast thing at the end was breathing a firey breath hot enough to send heat-distortion waves through the air. The sheer temperature of the air should have burned off Gandalf's beard and eyebrows. None of my reading on evolutionary biology reveals a single reason why a particular race of humans would develop unflammable facial hair as this would provide practically no advantage in either survival or mating.
    
    
19. I'll have to rent that one.
    
    The rushed-through story the screenwriter threw in as the first ten minutes of Fellowship of the Ring looked a lot more interesting than the movie we were forced to watch. Why didn't somebody make a movie off that instead?
    
    
20. Magic Mechanics.
    
    Experts on the occult say in order for a wizard to floorspin a fully-grown man like Gandalf, he'd need three magical staffs, not two.
    
    
21. Finders, keepers.
    
    So Bilbo, who we are supposed to identify with as a protagonist, finds a piece of someone else's jewelry and just keeps it for himself? That's funny, because I would expect a good man to submit it to the local Lost and Found so it could be claimed by its owner. It makes me wonder if he bought that hillside house or if he was just squatting.
    
    
22. Go-Go Gadget Arrow Sprouter.
    
    Legolas shoots arrow after arrow at his enemies, and yet the number of arrows in his quiver never decreases. I guess elves have glands on their back that secrete arrows.
    
    
23. Watch out! He's going to explode!
    
    The heroes are shown eating again and again, and yet no one ever goes to the bathroom throughout their entire quest.
    
    
24. Meesa gonna make theesa movie suckah!
    
    The character of Gollum in The Two Towers will be entirely computer animated, in a cheap effort to cash in on Jar Jar Binks Mania. Thank you, Peter Jackson. Thank you right to Hell.
    
    
25. Propaganda.
    
    The Elves, clearly the most advanced and wise species, are also clearly gay.
    
    

26. Speaking of Elves...
    
    Elves are beautiful and wise and tall? Great warriors? Makers of fine lightweight weapons? Our modern knowledge of elves has observed only an ability to make cookies and toys. All the elves in the film are portrayed as living in a warm paradise (Rivendell) but our own information tells us the aforementioned group of toymaking elves work and thrive in the arctic. Hey, Mr. Jackson: Research is half of writing.
    
    
27. Homage or theft?
    
    The "happy village of little people" idea was stolen from Willow.
    
    
28. Homage or theft II?
    
    The wise old wizard character was stolen from Harry Potter.
    
    
29. Homage or theft III?
    
    The "travelling on our quest through a corn field" scene was stolen from Shrek.
    
    
30. Homage or theft IV?
    
    The character of the rebellious-but-helpful Ranger was stolen from Val Kilmer in Willow.
    
    
31. Homage or theft V?
    
    The concept of the violent dwarf was based on Al Pacino.
    
    
32. Homage or theft VI?
    
    The "old man looking through the door hatch at the approaching little people" scene was stolen from A Clockwork Orange.
    
    
33. Homage or theft VII?
    
    The cantina scene with a noisy bar filled with a mix of otherworldly species was stolen from Cecile B. DeMille's One Night in an Alien Bar.
    
    
34. Homage or theft VIII?
    
    The incident with the flock of evil magical spying crows serving the All-Seeing Eye was based on an actual incident.
    
    
35. Homage or theft IX?
    
    The character of the Giant Evil Flaming All-Seeing Eye was based on former President Jimmy Carter.
    
    
36. Homage or theft X?
    
    The character of Elrond was based on Agent Smith from The Matrix.
    
    
37. Weighty issues.
    
    AKA "Plot Hole No. 273." Even with all that walking and light eating, the character of Sam only got fatter.
    
    
38. Realism, schmealism.
    
    Liv Tyler's immortal elf volunteers to give up her eternal life for a single romance with a human man. Could any man really be that well endowed? I find it unlikely.
    
    
39. Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.
    
    The most advanced civilization is that of the elves, which are long-haired, new-age types? Sorry, Mr. Jackson, but modern science has proven that in any modern civilization, hippies would be extinct.
    
    
40. Too many notes.
    
    No movie should be over two hours long. Did we need that whole thing in the mine? Didn't it seem like they were just adding pointless scenes in the middle to pad it? It's like they decided beforehand they wanted three hours and used filler to flesh it out.
    
    
41. Too many notes, II.
    
    I just want to re-emphasize the above point. There is no reason entertainment can't be concise.
    
    
42. Too many notes, III.
    
    Too many characters to keep track of. The dwarf was clearly only there as a token dwarf character to sell tickets to lucrative movie-going dwarf demographic. Lose him.
    
    
43. Rationalization for violence.
    
    Why is the black octopus creature painted as the bad guy when it attacks, when one of the fellowship had clearly been throwing rocks at it?
    
    
44. The Shoeless Land.
    
    The Hobbits both 1) refuse to wear shoes and 2) run a livestock-based farming economy. Wouldn't they constantly be stepping in crap? Why doesn't the movie address this issue?
    
    
45. Casting.
    
    Why couldn't Frodo have been played by Christopher Walken?
    
    
46. Casting, II.
    
    Why couldn't Gandalf have been played by Bruce Campbell?
    
    
47. Casting, III.
    
    Why couldn't Bilbo have been played by Vin Diesel?
    
    
48. Casting, IV.
    
    Why couldn't the Ranger have been played by a monkey?
    
    
49. The Score.
    
    The background music wasn't nearly funky enough for me.
    
    
50. What's that smell?
    
    As bad as the Lucasfilm leaks were last year, the filmmakers of The Two Towers already have the novelization out in paperback. I've seen it at Barnes & Noble already. As if we needed any less of a reason to go see it.

*RETRACTED REASONS LORD OF THE RINGS SUCKS:

11. Damn you, gravity!

The giant firebeast thing is defeated by Gandalf when he destroys the bridge, sending the creature plunging to its death... despite the fact that it has wings.

This was retracted when a reader pointed out that the wings, like the rest of the beast, were made of shadow and fire and thus would be useless for flight. Thanks for the tip!

[Jael]

Hey! Bad form! I wasn't hanging out with them at all!!! I posted on a religion forum that they invaded!!!!

I don't post there any longer, it's just way to wicked. Not only are they witches and such like, they are WAY liberal.

You know I never said anything positive about witchcraft, in fact, the opposite.

[Jael]

Actually, Scripture of the New Covenant does not teach executing witches. It teaches that they should be born again, just like everyone, and repent. If they don't, just like everyone else who doesn't, God will be forced to send them to Hell, because that is his promise, and He can not lie.

That having been said, as a Christian, I know that God tells me to have no fellowship with any works of darkness. So I will not.

Ephesians 5:11  And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

He says to reprove them.

I certainly would not look for entertainment in anything that glorifies witchcraft.

God also tells us that when witches were converted, and other workers of darkness, they burned the items of the occult.

Acts 19:17  And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.

18  And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.

19  Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

20  So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.

[motzman]

On Elrond's side, he decides to marry this elf called, well I don't remember


Celebrian.

[HairOfTheDog]

You may not have said anything positive, but you have studied them, and they certainly hold your fascination more than they fascinate me. And I have read Lord of the Rings... So much for your window to the occult.

I think our ability to imagine things wonderful and beautiful is one of God's greatest gifts.

If you would let your imagination develop above a child's level, you would see that for all the fantasy outer shell in Lord of the Rings, the story is, at its heart, about very human nature, human struggles, and human bravery, even when there is little hope of success.

You have not read Lord of the Rings, so don't condemn it as occult. It is silly to throw around accusations like that in the company of people who know better, and harmful to do it around those who don't.

Was Peter Pan, at its heart, about magic? - Or was it a human story about motherless little boys, and their desire to be loved?

[Jael]

You are wrong. I have never been fascinated with anything wicked like witchcraft. Whether they were on a forum I was already posting on when they showed up, or in a LOTR books. Neither holds any fascination for me.

The Bible is my standard.

Ephesians 5:11  And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

I reproved them. They hated me for it. But that is ok. God said they would.

Matthew 5:11  Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

About Peter Pan. It's a book written by a pedophile. Of course when I was 5 and my mother read it out loud to me at night, one chapter at a time, I liked the story, although parts of it were disconcerting.

But I don't like it now. I know what kind of evil mind thought that up, a boy that never grows up. And I know why Barrie thought that up. It is disgusting to me now. Same with ALice in Wonderland, although I was never allowed to read that and never wanted to.

Say, I don't have an argument with you personally. But please do not slander me on this board and imply that I have something to do with witches. That makes me want to vomit.

[HairOfTheDog]

Again, you must find something ugly in everything, and I am sorry about that. I am off the hook where LoTR is concerned. it is not a "work of darkness" but a work of great hope. You will never know, perhaps, and that is a shame for you.

Good Day Jael.

[Jael]

I do find pedophiles to be very ugly. I find the fact that the star of the Lord of the Rings tears out pages in a Bible (that address his sodomy) to be very ugly.

Sin is a very ugly thing.

James 1:15  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

16  Do not err, my beloved brethren.

17  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

18  Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

[HairOfTheDog]

Of course pedophiles are ugly. But I have never heard that accusation about the author before, and I would rather not hear it again.

The one actor you speak of was but one of thousands who made this film, and he didn't write the story. Nor did he write the film. He acted.

Your message is not one of the Joy and Glory of God, but rather of a rather weak and suspicious heart. I am sorry. I don't share that with you. I see glory everywhere where you see only demons.

Good day. I need a shower.

[HairOfTheDog]

I just want to be clear for all concerned... Jael has made an allegation that the author of Peter Pan was a pedophile, not Tolkien, or anyone related to Lord of the Rings. Ick. Enough of this thread.

[Jael]

You don't have to be negative. You don't have to slam people personally because they disagree with YOUR opinion. You don't have to lie about them like you did me. If that is the kind of person that LOTR produces, praise God I never involved myself in it.



The word of God is my final authority. I make no apologies for that. :-)

[Jael]

I assumed you knew that. Tsk.

[HairOfTheDog]

I'm negative? - au contaire! - I am the most optimistic person I know!

ask anybody.

[Dinsdale]

Refering to the geekilary.

Harvard Lampoons Bored of the Rings.

The Boogie national anthem.

We Boogies are a hairy folk
Who like to eat untill we choke
Loving all like friend and brother
We hardly ever eat each other.

Ever Hungry, ever thirsting
Never stop till belly's bursting (grammer error in orig.)
Chewing chop and pork and muttons
A merry race of boring gluttons

(sing) Gobble Gobble Gobble Gobble
Gobble Gobble Gobble Gobble

Boogies gather round the table,
Eat as much as you are able.
Gorge yourself from moon till noon
(Don't forget your plate and spoon).

Anything edible we've got dibs on,
And hope we all die with our bibs on.
Ever gay we never grow up
Come! And sing and play and throw-up!

(sing) Gobble Gobble Gobble Gobble
Gobble Gobble Gobble Gobble

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The Orcs were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Too bad Blizzard is apparently too scared to sue New Line over it.

What!? Has this numbnuts actually cracked the book and looked at the original copyright date?

What a weenie.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I just stopped reading at #13. What a tool.

[2nd Amendment]

I respect your consistancy. "Guard your hearts and minds inChrist Jesus" I have some home school friends that present the same viewpoint. I will agree to ponder and pray on these points. I do believe God's power and revelation is way beyond the realm of man to understand. The soaring imaginations of Lewis and Tolkien have always prompted me to attempt to fathom the majesty and omnipotence of God. I am very aware of the dangers of the occult (ala with of endor) I,ve read seduction of Christianity and realize that we are in an epic stuggle of good and evil where only God can give us the wisdom or strength to contest "the wiles of the evil one" I've always like LOR because good triumps ultimately over evil. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were scholars of mysthology in a time when europe was turning postchristian. They were holding out the last bastion of orthodoxy in a contintent that would turn away from God. It is true they were not orthodox in every respect, Incidentally Chuck Coolsen cites Lewis' Screwtape Letters as instrumental in his coming to faith. Audios, Keep up the stuggle. I will ponder your thoughts regarding mythology.

[kaylar]

This ring and no other was made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mothers to grab it themselves...

[valkyrieanne]

Hi, DemMom:

Fortunately Bored of the Rings is still in print. No doubt they rushed it back in when the first Jackson movie came out. Who could forget immortal lines like:

We boggies are a hairy folk
Who like to eat until we choke...

Or,

An elven lass there was of old,
A stenographer by day...

[valkyrieanne]

That should be "exDemMom." No offense taken, I hope.

[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.