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The men who would be StewardGuardianship is the mark of the Stewards of Gondor. They are guardians, wardens, keeping an ancient trust placed in their hands by a family of kings which, at the end of the Third Age, no longer exists. Gondor's Ruling Stewards are a curious example of how authority combined with tradition can produce a subtle irony in power and position.The Elvish word for "steward" is Arandur, "King's servant". The name implies that the Stewards began their long career as something less than government officials. They may have been the personal servants of Gondor's early kings. At...

The Next ReelBy Nina RehfeldDecember 18, 2002 - 3:00 AM PST Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens For all the talk in the current cultural climate about how the wall between the highbrows and the lowbrows fell, or rather, was deconstructed decades ago, it's still a rare film that's as enthusiastically lauded, embraced or even just plain loved by critics and audiences alike as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Sure, there are critics who cloud their praise with anti-populist grudges but even most of those cave in by their last sentences to the sheer movieness of...

The Nature of Faramir? An analysis of Faramir, as it relates to the conversion from book to film Some notes on the introduction of Faramir (in the book -- not the movie)When Faramir and his men capture Frodo and Sam, Faramir declares his identity to the two Hobbits with the following words: "'I am Faramir, Captain of Gondor,' he said. 'But there are no travelers in this land: only the servants of the Dark Tower, or of the White.'" (A minor side-note by the way: one white use this passage for an argument that the two eponymous towers are those...