Re: LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring - Screencap Thingie

by malickfan Sat Jan 09, 2016 11:42 pm

Eldorion wrote:

You can see their face if you pause at just the right time, but unfortunately it's not a very flattering expression what with the strong winds and all...

Her expression does sorta indicate that someone may have let loose with some strong winds of their own Laughing

On a serious note, the prologue battle is definitely one of the things I'd like to hear/see more about/of in the hypothetical Ultimate Editions PJ talks about occasionally, they definitely filmed more than was seen in the films, and I'd be intrigued as to just how much pressure they were under to start things off in style...

by Eldorion Sun Jan 10, 2016 12:33 am

Yeah, I remember reading the movie tie-in book Weapons and Warfare and seeing the photographs of Second Age Elves and especially the Numenorean Exiles and wanting to see even more.

NB That book was my shit back in the day, mainly for all the pictures -- I didn't have the films on DVD yet, but a lot of the pictures were previously-unreleased behind-the-scenes stuff -- and because it went a long way towards establishing a coherent "movie canon" version of Middle-earth, although the attempts at blending Appendix-based Tolkien lore with what was shown/stated in the movies were at times pretty clunky, probably inevitably so.

by malickfan Sun Jan 10, 2016 12:37 am

Eldorion wrote:Yeah, I remember reading the movie tie-in book Weapons and Warfare and seeing the photographs of Second Age Elves and especially the Numenorean Exiles and wanting to see even more.

NB That book was my shit back in the day, mainly for all the pictures -- I didn't have the films on DVD yet, but a lot of the pictures were previously-unreleased behind-the-scenes stuff -- and because it went a long way towards establishing a coherent "movie canon" version of Middle-earth, although the attempts at blending Appendix-based Tolkien lore with what was shown/stated in the movies were at times pretty clunky, probably inevitably so.

I used to have that book (until my copy fell apart Sad

) , a great read Nod

I agree about the confusing canon...it's rather ironic looking back on it now considering how they rewrote all the Dwarven history Evil or Very Mad

Somewhere on youtube there's a convention panel with the Gil-galad actor talking about and 'recreating' his death that they shot for the film...

by Radaghast Sun Jan 10, 2016 12:46 am

azriel wrote:3. The scene before is the destruction of Sauron in a ball of light, which is strange for a villain, surely bad characters are not associated with the Light?
Dunno ? Light sabers used in Star Wars are pretty bright, & if you want to incapacitate your opponent blindness will do it. Isnt the name "Satan" to do with light ?

That's Lucifer. The two are usually equated, but sometimes I think they're not. I could be wrong about that.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 1:24 am

Lucifer also goes by the title 'Morning Star' which is the association with light. The morning star is not in fact a star at all but Venus, it was hugely important to early culture as it was a clear marker in the sky that preceded the sun on Solstices- monuments all over the world are built with the movements of Venus in mind (we also get the pentagram from Venus, as thats the shape it makes from the view point of earth if you trace out its apparent movement in the sky, which it repeats on a cycle- hence its usefulness, you could predict it and set your stone circle by it! Its also why now we associate pentagrams with the Devil).

The association with the Devil and Venus is a Christian invention, connecting passages in the NT with ones in the UT where in fact they are about completely different things.
In fact Jesus refers to himself as the Morning Star by its other title of the Bringer of Light (a name applied to Venus because on the summer solstice its position in the sky is at the exact spot where the sun will rise into).

Its also possible the confusion between Lucifer/Devil and Venus was in part at least deliberate as a means of denigrating the other older Venus based religions (particularly in Northern Europe where the pagan belief system had a huge Venus connection).

by Eldorion Sun Jan 10, 2016 2:23 am

malickfan wrote:I used to have that book (until my copy fell apart ) , a great read I agree about the confusing canon...it's rather ironic looking back on it now considering how they rewrote all the Dwarven history

As if I needed another reason to dislike The Hobbit. Razz

Somewhere on youtube there's a convention panel with the Gil-galad actor talking about and 'recreating' his death that they shot for the film...

Interesting ... do you recall if that scene involved Gil-galad being burned by Sauron's hand as was recounted in the books?

by Radaghast Sun Jan 10, 2016 4:02 am

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Lucifer also goes by the title 'Morning Star' which is the association with light. The morning star is not in fact a star at all but Venus, it was hugely important to early culture as it was a clear marker in the sky that preceded the sun on Solstices- monuments all over the world are built with the movements of Venus in mind (we also get the pentagram from Venus, as thats the shape it makes from the view point of earth if you trace out its apparent movement in the sky, which it repeats on a cycle- hence its usefulness, you could predict it and set your stone circle by it! Its also why now we associate pentagrams with the Devil).

The association with the Devil and Venus is a Christian invention, connecting passages in the NT with ones in the UT where in fact they are about completely different things.
In fact Jesus refers to himself as the Morning Star by its other title of the Bringer of Light (a name applied to Venus because on the summer solstice its position in the sky is at the exact spot where the sun will rise into).

Its also possible the confusion between Lucifer/Devil and Venus was in part at least deliberate as a means of denigrating the other older Venus based religions (particularly in Northern Europe where the pagan belief system had a huge Venus connection).

Interesting! Do you mean OT instead of UT, though?

Re: the demonization of pagan religions, the popular image of devils is said to be partially derived from the Greek god Pan. Also, the flipped pentagram abstractly resembles a goat's head and that is what is popularly recognized as the satanic symbol; how or why goats became equated with Satan, I'm not sure; maybe that has something to do with Pan as well. The regular pentagram was actually used by early Christians to represent the five wounds of Christ.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:16 am

Do you mean OT instead of UT, though?- Forest

Um yes. Embarassed

I always thought the goat association with the pentagram was purely down to the imagery created of Baphomet by Levi, in the 1800's. And further established in the book "La Clef de la Magie Noire" by French occultist Stanislas de Guaita, in 1897.

Levi's Baphomet-

LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring - Screencap Thingie - Page 7 Baphomet_zpsyc2owjdk

LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring - Screencap Thingie - Page 7 Baphomet_zpsyc2owjdk

Guaita's 'goat pentagram'-

LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring - Screencap Thingie - Page 7 SamaelLilithGoatPentagram_zpsrpmvdp1s

I could be wrong but I dont know of any earlier associations between goat and pentagram.

The association of the goat with the devil goes back to a passage in the Bible- where in the end days God will separate out the 'lambs from the goats- 'And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left'

But in the early years and into the middle ages the Church extended this to basically cover anything with horns, which a lot of the pagan Gods had, and used it to associate those religions with devil worship, this not only included Pan, but also the Celtic God of the Hunt Cerrunnos and the Babylonian bull god Nimrod among others.

The actual first historic record of Baphomet doesn't come up until the time of the Knights Templar and the Crusades, when thyet are accused of worshipping a talking head called Baphomet. Before that Baphomet doesn't seem to exist.

by azriel Sun Jan 10, 2016 10:48 am

Have I norced this thread ? Smile

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 12:49 pm

Yup

by malickfan Sun Jan 10, 2016 1:09 pm

Eldorion wrote:
malickfan wrote:I used to have that book (until my copy fell apart ) , a great read I agree about the confusing canon...it's rather ironic looking back on it now considering how they rewrote all the Dwarven history

As if I needed another reason to dislike The Hobbit.

Somewhere on youtube there's a convention panel with the Gil-galad actor talking about and 'recreating' his death that they shot for the film...

Interesting ... do you recall if that scene involved Gil-galad being burned by Sauron's hand as was recounted in the books?

I think this was the Gil-galad video I was taking about:

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 1:33 pm

Going on that it seems likely the rather silly hand reaching out shot was originally from this scene originally.

by Radaghast Sun Jan 10, 2016 3:13 pm

azriel wrote:Have I norced this thread ?

It's my fault Embarassed

It was I who opened this can of ~~goats~~ worms.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 3:50 pm

Reminds me of a bit of Pratchett wisdom from Small Gods, concerning how different things might had been had the Great God Om spoken first to a goat herder instead of a sheep herder because 'sheep need to be driven but goats have to be led.'

by Elthir Sun Jan 10, 2016 4:41 pm

malickfan wrote: "... are pointy ears elves canon to the books? I don't actually remember reading this anywhere in LOTR"

In my definition of canon, no; but yours may be different.

I believe Tolkien imagined his Elves as having more pointy and leaf-shaped ears (than humans) in the mid to later 1930s, possibly the early 1940s, although these are just the general dates of the posthumously published evidence in favor of the idea (especially Etymologies, entry LAS), seen in the links Eldo provided (in other words, JRRT could have imagined this to be true earlier for example, but just never noted it).

That said, most websites do not include a much later entry from Tolkien's Words, Phrases And Passages (later 1950s? early 1960s), where in my opinion Tolkien basically updates the linguistic entry for LAS1 and LAS2-, which, by comparison to the information in the 1930s or early 1940s, the later entry drops the direct statement that Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf shaped than human ears.

Why is this significant (in my opinion)? 'Cause in the earlier entry, it's noted that some think there is a relationship between LAS1 and LAS2 because Elvish ears were more pointed and leaf shaped than human ears... yet in the much later entry, while once again a possible relationship of some kind is referred to (between leaf words, listen words, and ear words), the shape of Quendian ears is not presented as a known fact as it was back in Etymologies. In other words there is no statement (pun alert) hear (pun alert over), in WPP, about the shape of Elvish ears.

Tolkien never published Words Phrases and Passages either, but he did publish Elvish words like lasto (listen [imperative]), and lassi (leaves) and Amon Lhaw (Hill of Hearing), so even if he changed his mind about Elvish ears after publishing The Lord of the Rings, he was "locked in" to these words. And Tolkien could change his mind more easily about something he had never published, all we need do is look at how tall the Elves were when he first started writing about them, for instance, or JRRT ultimately revising how Elves were reincarnated.

Anyway, to my mind these author-published words don't necessarily mean that Tolkien was locked into the old idea. It would be interesting to know who would have been the imagined author of the new LAS/SLAS entry. My guess is "Tolkien as translator" rather than say, an Elf or a scribe of Gondor... and if that were the case, and if the many other ancient texts that Tolkien translated gave no certain evidence (Silmarillion, Akallabeth, Of The Rings Of Power) how certain could even he be of the detail, one way or the other...

... what he could say was that more modern depictions have "Elves" with pointed ears, but whether the folk behind these modern legends actually had more leaf shaped ears than Men, remains only possible -- arguably "hinted" at by this linguistic detail but not a given fact. Some modern depictions of Elves or Fairies include wings too, but JRRT dashes this one in Appendix F. The Quendi, the Eldar, the "true Elves" if you go far enough back in time, did not possess wings.

Just my opinion, but to me it seems a very Tolkienian path to take Very Happy

In any case some of the old essays on the subject were written before Words, Phrases and Passages was published, so that's why the entry might not be noted. We also now know, more certainly, that the word back in Etymologies was "Human". There used to be more debate about that.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:39 pm

An enlightening and entertaining read as always Elthir. Nod

by malickfan Sun Jan 10, 2016 7:17 pm

Elthir wrote:
malickfan wrote: "... are pointy ears elves canon to the books? I don't actually remember reading this anywhere in LOTR"

In my definition of canon, no; but yours may be different...

Thanks for clearing that up Elthir, interesting insights as usual Smile

Hmm...Jackson has never struck me as a massive Tolkien geek, and as I understand it much of the linguistic material etc has been published in academic journals or relatively obscure scholarly fanzines etc, so I'm wondering if he and the design teams were simply influenced by existing artwork or cultural perception of Tolkien's Elves, and took the pointy ears as 'canon' without wishing to dive any deeper and confirm it.

Afterall the 'expert' on the writing team Phillapa Boyens said in interview she hadn't read the Silmarillion since the 1980s...

by Elthir Sun Jan 10, 2016 10:37 pm

Thanks Petty (though Eldo beat me to the punch with most of this), and I basically agree malickfan. And I think the films would have gone pointed even if Etymologies never existed, as a way to help visually distinguish Elves from Men.

If anyone on the film staff had delved into web articles or forums (copyright concerns aside), the famed Etymologies entry (HME V) has been known about for a longer time than the entry in WPP (published in the journal Parma Eldalamberon, or PE17), and Etymologies is probably quoted on line a lot more than WPP.

I must confess that one of the first things I did when my copy of PE17 arrived was look for a "leaf word" entry... to see what a post-Lord of the Rings Tolkien had to say, if anything, about Elvish ears. I had to know!

Or did he mention anything about Cirdan's "old and grey" anywhere?

Well "almost" to the first, I guess, and no to the second Very Happy

by Elthir Sun Jan 10, 2016 10:50 pm

Wow, what am I going to write about for my post number 1,000? I should try to make it interesting and...

... oh waitaminit. Drat.

by Radaghast Sun Jan 10, 2016 10:53 pm

Elthir wrote:Wow, what am I going to write about for my post number 1,000? I should try to make it interesting and...

... oh waitaminit. Drat.

by Eldorion Mon Jan 11, 2016 5:24 am

malickfan wrote:I think this was the Gil-galad video I was taking about:

That was pretty great. Very Happy

And pretty compatible with the (admittedly sparse) descriptions we have from the book. Nod

by Eldorion Mon Jan 11, 2016 5:29 am

Elthir wrote:Wow, what am I going to write about for my post number 1,000? I should try to make it interesting and...

... oh waitaminit. Drat.

Congratulations, Elthir! cheers

And thanks for your elaborations on the ear question. Smile

malickfan wrote:Hmm...Jackson has never struck me as a massive Tolkien geek, and as I understand it much of the linguistic material etc has been published in academic journals or relatively obscure scholarly fanzines etc, so I'm wondering if he and the design teams were simply influenced by existing artwork or cultural perception of Tolkien's Elves, and took the pointy ears as 'canon' without wishing to dive any deeper and confirm it.

Afterall the 'expert' on the writing team Phillapa Boyens said in interview she hadn't read the Silmarillion since the 1980s...

I wouldn't expect a screenwriter for an adaptation to go digging through that level of esoterica, nor do I think it would really have benefited the film's quality. I mean, there's enough stuff to worry about in terms of trying to adjust the story for the new medium (though I agree that not all of PJ's adjusting was necessary) and design the whole world of the film. Does anyone complain that Jackson's Merry says that Brandywine Bridge is 20 miles from Buckleberry Ferry, as is stated in some editions of the book, even though Tolkien's true intention was for it to be 10 miles and most editions were eventually updated to reflect this? I mean, I'm sure some people do, but I'm not sure if the level of devotion needed to explore that kind of minutiae can really coexist with the kind of artistic sensibilities needed to make the tough decisions of adaptation.

by Forest Shepherd Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:08 am

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I was taken aback at the scale of things, and how amazing the battlefield looked in comparison to, say, Braveheart which was probably my standard for big battle scenes at the time. - Forest

Oddly enough for me the battles in these films were never that impressive beyond the technically wizardly.

I grew up watching stuff precgi- so an epic onscreen battle was literally thousands of extras- this not also gave it the epic feel, but it feels more real than the battles in PJ's because all the people really are there.

Heres a good example from the film 'Waterloo' from 1970. Its technically not as well shot, largely down to camera and optical equipment being primitive by modern standards- but epic, fuck yeah, its that all right. And in a way PJ's over the top, cartoony battles cant ever hope to match.

Pfft.
Apart from the fact that both films do actually show many of the same things (cavalry charges, actual people fighting other actual people), and apart from the obvious genre differences between the two films, the battles in the Lord of the Rings are most certainly more epic than those depicted in Waterloo because the characters in LotR actually engage in the battles, rather than sit back and make jingoistic rallies about their men and comments that can come across as ridiculous ("Those men on gray horses are terrifying." "They are the noblest cavalry in Europe, and the worst led." "That may be. That may be...").
Well-choreographed close-up combat with a wider combat backdrop will always be more epic in appearance than wide-angle helicopter shots of little figures charging other little figures. This is why the Army of the Dead are so ridiculous, and why the wide shots of Sauron's armies on the Pelennor Fields are not terribly effective. But it's also why watching Napoleon sit on his butt and comment on the colour of the enemy horses is like a five-day old fish in comparison to seeing Elrond engaged in battle.

So sure, the number of people and horses involved in these shots and the fact that none of it is CGI is impressively epic, but pulling out the "well hey Jackson used a lot of CGI so that discredits all of the non-CGI work he did in a more engaging way than whoever made Waterloo" claim, is silly.

by halfwise Mon Jan 11, 2016 1:56 pm

{{ nice to see someone giving Petty a dose of his own medicine! }}

by Mrs Figg Mon Jan 11, 2016 2:29 pm

But it's also why watching Napoleon sit on his butt and comment on the colour of the enemy horses is like a five-day old fish in comparison to seeing Elrond engaged in battle. Forest

I agree Elrond was always magnificent. Razz