Lord of the rings

Sort of a review of LOTR

By J. R. R. Tolkien

ZZZzzzZZzzzzZz… Oh I’m sorry. I seem to have dozed off for a moment there. I was in the middle of reading something rather dull, I’m afraid.
Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s called ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ written by J. R. R. Tolkien.
I’ve heard much praise for this book, but honestly, I’m not that impressed.
The storyline is fairly slow to put it mildly. Persons and creatures with bizarre names walking from place to place, singing songs and meeting other persons with even weird-er names… Not to mention that many of these characters seem to be suffering from terribly inflated egos, as they often address themselves in the third person.
The characters are a blur, and so are all the oddly named places. And then there is all this talking about…. Zzzzzz
Oops! There I dropped my tea cup again. Dang!
I cannot even begin to tell you how many good cups of herbal tea this book has cost me… I must have snoozed off and dropped my cup at least 7 times while trying to read this, and by the end my robe was totally drenched!
But! I bravely conquered the first volume, even though my beard went numb from sitting still for so long.
Then imagine my terror when I found out that The Fellowship of the Ring is only one of three volumes in the Lord of the Rings book trilogy. The story continues in ‘The Two Towers’ and after that in ‘Return of the King’.
Did anyone actually get through all three volumes? If you did, I salute you, you poor soul.
But, thank the Great Unicorn, I found a very smart way to ”read” the story without actually reading it. I discovered that there is something called a ‘movie’. Ever heard of that? It is pronounced muuh–wee, and the characters actually move around (hence the name) on a screen, where you can watch them and do your knitting at the same time. It must be the work of a really clever wizard!
So, let’s get into it. Strap in, because this is a long one. But remember if you get through this, you’ll never have to read the book!

Summary:

The muuh-vie starts off with a very nice lady explaining what’s what. Perfect! That’s much easier to understand than all this beating around the bush in the book!
Ooh and beautiful, soothing music is playing, very nice touch!
The lady explains that it all began with the forging of some great magical rings. Three rings were granted to the elves – the fairest and wisest beings in Middle-earth, seven rings were granted to the dwarf lords, who were skilled craftsmen, while the human kings – who above all else desire power – were granted nine rings. Hmm. Who did the math on that one, eh?
But surprise!! All of these people were deceived, for the dark lord Sauron made a super-ring in a place called ‘Mount Doom’. I actually think that I know that place, it might be where I used to attend potion brewing in extreme conditions class…
But anyway, one ring to rule them all!

Now that this evil super-ring has been created, all is lost… But fear not! A bunch of handsome men gather together to free Middle-earth by fighting the forces of evil: The ugly orcs. (For as you all know, when you are evil, you are also ugly.)
The handsome men are just about to win, when Sauron smashes them with his super powerful ring.
But then, prince Isildur grabs his father’s sword and cuts off Sauron’s fingers, which of course makes Sauron explode.
Isildur picks up the ring, and now has the perfect opportunity to destroy evil forever. Nevertheless, he chooses not to, because he likes the ring.
And alas, Isildur dies and drops the ring, and everybody just sort of forgets about it for two and a half thousand years. Then, it is picked up by Gollum, whom it turns bald and toothless for 500 years until Bilbo (yes, you remember Bilbo the burglar, our hero-hobbit) steals it.

Now let’s turn to the present. A singing wizard appears! Lovely.
It is Gandalf, who has come to participate in Bilbo’s birthday, as Bilbo is about to turn 111 years old – but he is not yet bald and toothless. Apparently, that only happens sometimes.
Bilbo and Gandalf sit down and smoke weed, while Bilbo tells Gandalf about his plans to elope and never return.
Gandalf discovers that Bilbo possesses a magical ring, and confronts him about it. This makes Bilbo very angry, but then Gandalf yells at him, which scares Bilbo so much that he leaves the ring behind for Frodo, while he himself goes on a very long hike.
Gandalf discovers an engraving on the ring that says that this ring is, in fact, the one ring to rule them all and bind all of them in darkness and evilness forever!
Then, Gandalf and Frodo sit down to drink some tea – it really does help when you’ve just received terrible news – while Gandalf explains to Frodo that Sauron’s spirit survived the explosion, because his life force was bound to the ring. And now that the ring has awoken, Sauron has returned, and all he needs in order to fulfil his evil plans of being evil is the ring. Thus, the ring must be destroyed.
And who better to carry out that task than Frodo and his gardener, Sam. Gandalf rushes the two out the door, while he himself goes to meet with his boss, Saruman the White.

Saruman has looked into a crystal ball and seen that Sauron is indeed very powerful. Saruman is not about to be on the losing team, so he captures Gandalf and starts cutting down trees.
Meanwhile, Frodo, Sam and two more hobbits named Merry and Pippin, go to a pub where they get drunk and blow their cover. This is not so good, as they are being chased by nine hoarse ringwraiths.
Lucky for them, they meet Aragorn, who, lucky for me, doesn’t speak of himself in 3rd person like he did in the books. In the movie he is just a handsome man with hair that often blows in the wind.
But despite Aragorn’s help, a ringwraith stabs Frodo with a Morgul-blade, which is really bad.
But fear not, Aragorn’s elfish girlfriend appears and saves the day by taking Frodo to Rivendell to be healed.
There they all meet up with Gandalf – who escaped on the back of a huge eagle – and a bunch of other humans and elves.
They have a gathering where they decide that Frodo must take the ring to Mordor and destroy it, and that he is to be helped by Gandalf the grey, Aragorn the strider, Legolas the elf, Gimli the dwarf, Boromir the angry man, and the hobbits Sam, Pippin and Merry.
And so, they all set off on their jolly way to Mordor – but what they weren’t expecting was that Saruman would be standing on top of a tower yelling very loudly, thus sabotaging their plan to walk through the mountains. The fellowship is forced to go through the mines of Moria instead…

Now, this is where this movie gets very scary! If you do not have nerves of steel, I would recommend that you watch this part with a pillow over your eyes.
In the mines of Moria, they encounter a horrible, fire-breathing Balrog. If you do get scared and turn off the movie don’t worry! It’s completely normal to not be as brave as me – after all, I am a very great wizard.
Gandalf saves the fellowship from the Balrog, but falls down into a big cleft while doing so. But don’t worry, he’s a great wizard, I’m absolutely certain he’ll figure something out and be right back.

The others proceed without him and suddenly find themselves in a forest, where they meet the elf Galadriel, who is very nice and pretty. She has one tiny little hiccup where she talks about taking the ring from Frodo and becoming this dark, terrible queen who is stronger than the foundations of the earth and whom all shall behold and despair. But she quickly gets over that.
After all this, the fellowship is on their way again, but when the angry Boromir attempts to take the ring, Frodo decides that he might be better off by himself. He tries to sail away in a dinghy, but the very persistent Sam follows him and insists on coming with him. When the rest of the fellowship discover Frodo’s escape, they decide that it is smarter to focus their energy on saving Merry and Pippin, who got themselves caught by a gang of Uruk-hai, rather than making sure Frodo gets safely through Mordor.
The end! Phew.
That was a long one, eh? Wait what’s that… there’s an extended edition too?! Nope, no more I say! Let’s hurry on to the review.

Review:

When in danger, always bring a wizard.
Don’t steal jewellery, and be wary of evil rings that whisper to you.

Unfortunately, they killed Smaug in the last book … So no dragons.

Yes, I do relate. All that walking reminded me a lot of my own Camino journey… there were dangers at every turn in that one too.

There is one particularly unrealistic part of this movie that really makes my eyebrows fume. It is mentioned that Saruman is attempting to breed a new species called ‘Uruk Hai’ by mixing orcs and goblins. Here I certainly have to put my foot down! Besides the fact that it would be highly unethical for a wizard to conduct this kind of experiment, it is also impossible. Even though you might be a great magician, you cannot just ‘combine’ completely different magical species and get some sort of super mutant breed with a swift flick of your wand! Orcs and goblins may be malicious, but they nevertheless are living, breathing creatures with thoughts and feelings, and cannot just be forced upon each other! It would take at least a couple of centuries of candlelit dinners, therapy and romantic walks on the beach before the two would even consider looking fondly at each other, let alone date!

This movie thing is very knitting-friendly! Whoever invented this is so smart. Now I can knit and consume stories at the same time.

This movie features a wizard – who is almost as handsome as me – with a massively impressive beard.

I note that there are no women or orcs in the fellowship. I feel that this perpetuates an old-fashioned and hurtful stereotype that women and orcs can’t be heroes. It would have been very woke of them if they had included an orc-heroine.
Also, I think they should have included Galadriel some more and fleshed out her character arc, it would have really elevated this movie.

Galadriel is of course very beautiful in her elegant elf-dress. Apart from that the fashion in this movie is not that impressive.
Mostly hobbit-hiking clothing is worn, and Gandalf, the otherwise great and impressive wizard, looks a bit dirty, like he hasn’t washed his robes. And why the boring grey colour? (Tip #2) Why not Gandalf the glittery?

Peter Jorgenson, this is a big day. I cast a spell on the DVD, which enlightened me a great deal.
If you want to try it at home, the spell goes like this:

Oh, disc so full of shadow and flames
Stop spinning this instant, and show me your Danes

I’m happy to tell you that the handsome Aragorn is indeed played by Viggo Mortensen who is half Danish. Also, Frodo is married to a Danish Mette-Marie in real life. Congratulations, you people.

Conclusion

The absence of dragons and lack of diversity and fashionable clothing is disappointing.

Also, the movie confuses me a bit. The one ring possesses a very strange kind of magic, it is unclear what exactly it does. I’m left with unanswered questions, e.g.: Does the ring or does the ring not turn you bald and toothless when you wear it, or was that just due to Gollum’s poor hygiene?
On the bright side, I got to finish an entire sweater during this very knitting-friendly movie. Just be careful not to lose any stitches when the movie gets scary!
They did also get rid of Tom Bombadil from the book, which I’m very pleased with, may he never sing and rhyme again. Rest in peace and quiet!
Overall, it was very entertaining, and I enjoyed the music very much!

6/7 wizard’s hats

… Oh, and by the way, if somebody out there in the world-wide wizarding web happens to know Galadriel, please let her know that if she ever happens to stumble upon the Great Forest where I live, my door is open at all times, and I’m always in the mood to tell great stories of my many adventures over a nice cup of hot chocolate.