Rethinking my anti-hobbit prejudices
So, I finished reading The Return of the King last night. I also rewatched all three LOTR movies over the past week or so, and I discovered that I don't actually hate hobbits. I just really don't care for Elijah Wood as Frodo... the whining, the constant falling down and eyes rolling back in his head and being a jackass to Sam. Book!Frodo came across as a lot more capable and optimistic.
There were other things I preferred about the book(s), too. The Faramir/Eowyn stuff, for example... I wish they had put more of that in the movie. I wish they had made movie!Faramir more helpful and courteous, like book!Faramir, but I suppose they had to amp up the conflict. Oh, and at first I thought the last few chapters of RotK were going to be super-boring, but I actually loved the hobbits coming back to the shire being total BAMFS and taking their home back from the ruffians. Although the Saruman-Sharkey thing struck me as kind of silly.
There were other things I preferred about the book(s), too. The Faramir/Eowyn stuff, for example... I wish they had put more of that in the movie. I wish they had made movie!Faramir more helpful and courteous, like book!Faramir, but I suppose they had to amp up the conflict. Oh, and at first I thought the last few chapters of RotK were going to be super-boring, but I actually loved the hobbits coming back to the shire being total BAMFS and taking their home back from the ruffians. Although the Saruman-Sharkey thing struck me as kind of silly.
-
groggy
Then again, if you see the whole thing as a paean to the foot soldier of WW1 (in the form of Samwise Gamgee) then you can almost forgive Frodo, because he made Sam look to stick-to-itive.
If Gwaihir the Wind Lord could carry Gandalf for “many leagues,” and did so twice, he could have conveyed one hobbit, Frodo, to Mount Doom, flown him out of the collapse of Sauron's demesne and returned with him to Rivendell in time for lunch.
This would not make for a classic literary yarn.
Saruman was the only other “Great and Powerful” who knew of the Shire (even Radagast called it “some uncouth region called Shire” - “The Shire,” Gandalf corrected him, “and you're in it now!”). Saruman only knew of it because he'd learned long ago that it was generally a smart idea to keep an eye on what Gandalf was up to.
Yet his later enslavement to the palantir and Sauron was foreshadowed - he, too, took up smoking pipeweed just as Gandalf did (and for that reason)… but then he was unable to kick the habit. This is why Merry and Pippin found barrels of Shire tobacco at Orthanc - Saruman was master of much lore but not of himself.
Edited at 2013-07-22 04:36 pm (UTC)