Quicksilver wrote:

I think you have to enjoy ROP for what it is - a Tolkien inspired visual extravaganza. It's easy to criticise the writing and plot elements (most of it is ropey) - but let's face it, they have a tough act to follow when it comes to writing and "sub-creation". Nothing in it is holy writ and nothing changes Tolkien's writing. Visually, I thought it was beautifully done and that's what I watch it for. No point getting hung up on anything else because it's not Tolkien, just an adaptation inspired by his work.

northman wrote:

I disagree. What little i have seen of RoP has not been good visually. Basically alot of it looks fake especially nature. The scenes look cartoonish because of various filters and CGI and god knows what. It's impossible not to think 'that's not on a real ocean' or 'that's not a real living tree'. The scene with Galadriel almost going to the undying lands only to jump ship and swim back to middle-earth doesn not only suffer from insufferably bad writing, but it looks like an acid trip not an experience in real nature. The sea clearly isnt the sea, the lighting is artificial and the unavoidable ethereal score does not help. RoP is not unique in presenting middle-earth as unnatural though. Mirkwood in Jacksons hobbit looks like a plastic set, Lothlorien in his LotR looks like a spaceship and it all looks too pretty and too clean and too good-weathered. There is an article somewhere in here about how removed moviemaking can be from nature. The really sad thing is that Tolkien wrote nature brilliantly and real, but visually on screen middle-earth looks like its made by people who haven't spent much time outdoors.

The un-reality goes beyond nature too. The Pelennor in Jacksons movies is a good example. The Pelennor is the townlands and fields of a large city. Yet the movie is void of fences, farmlands, farms and homesteads and plantlife. It looks sterile like a computer game setting for a battle scene, not like a place in a real world.

Quicksilver wrote:

I think you have to enjoy ROP for what it is - a Tolkien inspired visual extravaganza. It's easy to criticise the writing and plot elements (most of it is ropey) - but let's face it, they have a tough act to follow when it comes to writing and "sub-creation". Nothing in it is holy writ and nothing changes Tolkien's writing. Visually, I thought it was beautifully done and that's what I watch it for. No point getting hung up on anything else because it's not Tolkien, just an adaptation inspired by his work.

visually on screen middle-earth looks like its made by people who haven't spent much time outdoors.

Quicksilver wrote:

And the scenes with Adar saying that Orcs had a right to life like anyone else, and Galadriel's hysterical response, was a thought provoking comment on Tolkien's struggles with his representation of Orcs later in his life.

Absence has only made the heart of the Lord of the Rings fandom grow fonder for Old Tom. In addition to his prominent role in the new season of The Rings of Power, HarperCollins is publishing a new edition of Tolkien’s 1962 book The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, featuring his poems about the ethereal figure—some of which date back to long before his epic trilogy. The book, set to hit shelves August 20, is aimed at the enduring fascination Tolkien readers have for this enigmatic fantasy figure. Even Tolkien himself was transfixed.

“He has his origins in the name of a wooden doll that lived in the Tolkien family, and like many of the toys owned by the children, such as the teddy bears who appeared in Mr. Bliss, or the metal dog that inspired the hero of Roverandom, Tom Bombadil was drawn into Tolkien’s invented world,” Chris Smith, the publishing director for the company’s Tolkien titles, tells Vanity Fair. “His first known appearance was in the 1920s, in a story entitled ‘Tom Bombadil,’ and even in this fragment—which is included in the new edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil—he is described as one of ‘the oldest inhabitants in the kingdom,’ suggesting that from the outset Tolkien viewed Tom as primordial. Later, in the early 1930s, Tolkien put him into a poem.”

That early poem was the beginning of a long fascination with the character. Tolkien’s full verse for “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” was published in 1934 in The Oxford Magazine, and led him to wonder if this woodland being might be a good protagonist for future stories. Ultimately, Bombadil would remain a supporting player for the Lord of the Rings saga, with Tolkien determined not to explore his full nature too thoroughly.

“Having lived for millennia, he has learned and understood its deeper mysteries and perhaps this is why he has now become ‘Master,’ as he is called by himself and his wife, Goldberry, and why he is free from any control by the outside world,” Smith says. “His is a pure and unaffected joy in the living things of the world, very much removed from the oppressive menace of the overarching tale of the quest of the Ring. Perhaps Tolkien intended Tom to remain forever a light in the darkness of troubled times? But ultimately, he must remain a delightful enigma.”

Scarlet_Sorcerer wrote:

Just to clarify:

The new paperback edition (in the Tolkien Signature style) is a paperback version of the edition featured in the Tolkien Treasury boxed set, correct?