Middle-earth Journeys

So glad you have returned to us, Librislove, and sorry to hear about your troubles. May your Road be a lot straighter from now on!!

Dear librislove, I am so very sorry to hear about your terrible loss. The Road can be very, very hard sometimes and full of grief. Here's wishing you a safer, smoother path as you go forward, full of love and light and adventure and unexpected kindnesses.

I have scored two tickets to the August 29, 2009 showing of The Two Towers at Wolf Trap, with the soundtrack performed by live orchestra, chorus, and soloists. You may recall that my husband surprised me last year with tickets to a performance of Fellowship of the Ring at Wolf Trap (an early birthday present). Just like last year, I will scan the program notes and send them to Riv to be posted here for our enjoyment and discussion.

How wonderful for you! What a great setting, too.

As I've mentioned in another thread, I've been slowly making my way through another reading of LOTR this fall. As always, there are new things to learn! I think the movies have been in my mind too much: I was surprised to learn that Aragorn wasn't involved in fighting at all on Amon Hen. He looked for Frodo, went to the high seat to look around, heard Boromir's horn, and arrived too late to help him. That's it. It is reported that Boromir, Legolas, and Gimli have been involved in fighting, but we don't witness it in the book.

It makes his despair at what he sees as bad choices even more poignant, doesn't it? All that going on and he's completely in the wrong place to be of any use to anyone. No wonder he feels dreadful afterwards!

Yes, that was my thought, too. And also that PJ spent way too much time on fighting in the movies.

Agreed - far too much time on fighting, at the expense of proper development and ultimate closure of some of the characters' stories.
But having said that, the Amon Hen fight scene in the movie is one of my guilty pleasures. And somehow, it fits in with my purely Tolkienist, pre-PJ image of Aragorn.

I love that whole scene too . I think they had to find the most exciting way possible to end that second film and leaving Aragorn out of the fighting just wouldn't have cut it!

I like parts of the scene, especially the death of Boromir and Aragorn saluting the orcs with his sword before he fights. I also like Aragorn crashing down the hill looking for Boromir. But I find the swordplay to be too contrived. The moviemakers tried for realism in so many ways, so I find it a bit self-indulgent for them to have the mighty fighting Uruks just fall over dead at the mere touch of Aragorn's sword. Most of it is so ridiculous that it takes me out of it--I can no longer suspend my disbelief, which is so necessary in a film like this.

Not that I have any idea what a real sword fight would look like--probably bloody beyond what is decent, and I wouldn't want to see that, either!

As I've said before, I've been reading LOTR again, slowly, trying to notice details I haven't noticed before. Another one: the creeping darkness that comes from Mordor alongside of the war Sauron lets loose on the West. I don't think I've ever seen much commentary on this, but I wonder what it is? Does Sauron have some big polluting machine that emits some foul stuff? What is it? Is its purpose just to make everyone feel gloomy? Why does it fail the morning of Rohan's charge on the Pelennor? Does the wind from the sea just blow the stuff away or does the machine fail for some other reason?

Merry, I was always under the impression that Sauron produced the "creeping darkness" by somehow manipulating the eruptions from Orodruin (Mount Doom), i.e., "torturing" the mountain (isn't there a character that mentions this?). On the morning that the Rohirrim arrive, several characters note that the wind has changed -- and since the winds are the province of Manwe, I believe we can interpret the changing wind as a form of divine intervention. It is these winds that blow away the foul smoke and fumes from Mount Doom.

I always thought it came from Mount Doom too, and the purpose (apart from depressing the spirits of those that love the light) was to give the cover of near darkness to the orcs who couldn't bear to fight in the full glare of the sun.

It's also a wonderful allegory (is that Tolkien rolling...) of the terrible smog and pollution that hung perpetually over industrial centres like Birmingham when he was a boy. Birmingham's growth to swallow up his beloved Sarehole (which was rural when he lived there as a child) was something he felt very deeply.

Well, those theories make sense. Clearly my confusion here stems from my tendency to skip over the 'bad' parts when I read LOTR. But I've made a conscious effort to concentrate on them in this reading, and they are beautiful in their own ways, I suppose.

Iolanthe, in addition to protecting the orcs from the Sun, that covering darkness would also prevent the battle trolls from turning to stone.