thranduil

My mind boggles.    I can imagine the crew sitting round a table when PJ comes up with the immortal words, 'lets give Thandy a kewl skeletor face, the kids will go wild, it will be awesome!' the crew sits there in embarassed silence, not daring to tell him its a really crappy idea.

Has anyone stood up to peejers & told him most of his ideas are crap, shit, fucked up & weird ??? Have they ? or, does he switch on,or off, the 'selective hearing aid' & does whatever HE wants anyway ? If it took all those years to make LOTRs, eating there, sleeping there, away from home, for some, wrapped up only in the world of Peejers & his amazing techicolour acid trip, how the flying fook could you keep yer gob shut ??? For me, thats impossible. Id tell that deranged hallucinogenic dimwit exactly what I thought ! & shake him till he did listen. Can we lay some of the blame at the feet of the "yes men" ?? It only went on to bolster Peejers confidence, to nigh on destroying The Hobbit !

I'm not saying you're wrong, but the way success breads respect in the movie making business the people arund the table were probably shouting over each other to tell him how great an idea it was. And most of them probably believed it too.

Not that the lack of anyone saying no doesn't seem to be an inherent problem of Jacksons productions.   

But how can taste levels have divebombed so much in 10 years?

Easy. Success breeds inappropriate confidence.

It was the most self-indulgent of the three LOTR films that was showered with the most praise (and money), so it's not terribly surprising that the message PJ seems to have taken away is that indulgence is good. It will be interesting to see if the relatively lukewarm response to The Hobbit films changes things. King Kong failing to meet expectations didn't seem to make a difference, though like The Hobbit, it was still quite successful by normal standards. But that was only one film and seems to have been better received by Jackson's core fans than TH so far. The interesting thing about AUJ and DOS is that they seem to have pissed off different groups of fans to different extents, an alienating effect that King Kong, as a solo film, couldn't do.

It's weird: that mount not having a mane. I know it's because that's an elk, not a horse, but it still strikes me as strange.

Where do you get Elks in Middle Earth    I imagine them in Canada or N.USA ? How the fook can you mix up a horse with an elk ?

OK, so I looked up the issue. Here are my results.

The species we see in the film is really closest to something like the Megaloceros: a now-extinct species that used to be found throughout Eurasia mostly during the Pleistocene (think, during the Ice Ages).
These deer were up to 6 and a half feet at the withers, or shoulders basically, and had huge antlers. Apparently the deer that Thranduil is riding resembles of those more than either the European Elk or Moose, and the American Elk.
So my calling it an Elk was rather off.
Although, to specify, I did mean an Elk, not a moose.

Europe used to have a lot more moose (Alces alces) than it did now. The Romans hunted them in Gaul and Germania. There were even animals of the species living in France as recently as Charlemagne. They have always been called Elk in Europe, but the fact that they were hunted and lost their habitat so much over the years led to their dispersion northward and eastward, so that most early immigrants to North America during the 17th and 18th centuries had never seen an elk before.
Because of this, early settlers encountered these huge deer-like things (which were actually Wapiti (Cervus canadensis, an animal that is native to North America and Eastern Asia) and named them Elk. They also ran into these other ginormous beasties (the Eurasian Elk) and named them Moose.

"Wapiti" is from the Shawnee and Cree word waapiti, "white rump."
"Moose" is from the Algonquian languages (notably the Narraganset and Eastern Abenaki). And probably came from the word moosu, which means "he strips off."
"Elk" is an old-ass word from stuff like the Latin alces, Old Norse elgr, Scandinavian elg/alg and German Elch.

So out of all this grew the whole confusion that we have going on now-a-days.
To be clear:

Moose/Eurasian Elk (Alces alces)


Elk/Wapiti (Cervus canadensis)


Thranduil-mount (Wotheheccus isthiscrap)




Which is really most closely related to something like the Megaloceros or the "Irish Elk" (sketch done by firsthand observer):


P.S.
I don't remember any actual reference to the elves or men of Lake-town riding on animals in the last section of the book. Unless I'm mistaken, they had none, as did the dwarves of the Iron Hills.
The addition of a mount for Thranduil is simply artistic license. Although it is a pretty cool addition that helps reinforce the difference between the Silvan elves and the more western type we're used to, it gets rather swallowed up by all the idiotic additions that we are subjected to for the rest of the series.

P.P.S.
(Speaking of "Iron" and its counter-intuitive pronunciation, I looked up Metathesis (which is how sounds are switched around in words over time) online and found this:
The Old English pyrl "hole" underwent metathesis to pryl. This gave rise to a verb prylian "pierce", which became Modern English thrill, and formed the compound nospryl "nose-hole" which became Modern English nostril.)   Liiinguiiiiiistiiiics        
This led to Spoonerisms, which led to Men in Tights' Sheriff of Rottingham.  "Struckley has loxed again!"  

Source: Wikipedia, from which I lifted here and there directly.

Thranduil-mount (Wotheheccus isthiscrap).  Forest

 


but srsly wouldnt an Elk for a Mount would be pretty dumb in a tangled overgrown forest. How could he move at speed?   

Thranduil moves at a stately pace, he doth not scamper.


Derivation of nostril:   

Ah, yes. The Irish elk. That was rather ridiculous. As was the face thing.

I agree with the general sentiment of the thread though, Lee Pace performance was easily a highlight of the movie.

http://gingerhaze.tumblr.com/post/38201054887

 

  


A couple things, while I'm here. I found the book passage I mentioned earlier (in this thread, I think).
"Then the elves put thongs on him, and shut him in one of the inmost caves with strong wooden doors, and left him. They gave him food and drink, plenty of both, if not very fine; for Wood-elves were not goblins, and were reasonably well-behaved even to their worst enemies, when they captured them. The giant spiders were the only living things that they had no mercy upon."
-The Hobbit, Ch. VIII, "Flies and Spiders," (p. 153 in the Houghton Mifflin 1994 paperback edition).

So Thranduil executing an orc in his halls, even if that orc had been a member of a party that attacked his people, is rather questionable. What is even more questionable is that the wood-elves would have brought an orc into their halls at all.

And as concerns the thought that the mount Thranduil is riding being too large for Mirkwood. Well, the elves do live on the airier side of the forest, and there is a marsh nearby, so I think it sounds like pretty good habitat. I could see a beasty that large wending its way through beech trees:



The biggest problem with all this utter bullcrap that we are subjected to in the film, is that the orcs would never have made it through mirkwood, even if they had tried. They would have encountered the same problems as the dwarves. And unless orc-kind are somehow more resilient than dwarves when it comes to long, dark passages with little or no food they would have been lost as well inside the vastness of the forest. There is a reason that:
"...the subjects of the [wood-elf] king mostly lived and hunted in the open woods, and had houses or huts on the ground and in the branches. The beeches were their favourite trees."

The idea of the threat of goblins trekking from the Misty Mountains all the way across Wilderland and through Mirkwood would be dismissed by any sensible wood-elf as ridiculous. It is spiders or other foul creatures from the forest that they would need to fear, that's all.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Wotheheccus isthiscrap)

(sketch done by firsthand observer)

You're on a roll today, Forest.

Edit: elf school is great too.

Forest Shepherd wrote:The idea of the threat of goblins trekking from the Misty Mountains all the way across Wilderland and through Mirkwood would be dismissed by any sensible wood-elf as ridiculous. It is spiders or other foul creatures from the forest that they would need to fear, that's all.

Very reasonable points, but wasn't the orc that Thranduil beheaded one of Bolg's lot, from Dol Guldur?  That's at the far end of the forest, but I'd imagine there were ranger orcs of some sort who were familiar with the woods.

It's somewhat confusing because the role of the goblins in the book has been largely co-opted by Azog and his crew.  Like in AUJ, after the Company escapes the goblin tunnels, it's not the local goblins who they're being chased by, but Azog ... who has suddenly caught up with them despite having lost the Company before they even got to Rivendell.  This is the same pursuit as in the beginning of DOS, and by that point, the Misty Mountain goblins are all but forgotten and we're just continuing the Thorin vs. Azog maneuvering from the first part of AUJ.

I don't know if PJ intended the goblins of the Misty Mountains to be independent from Dol Guldur or not.  I know in LOTR they deliberately made the "Moria Goblins" physically different from the rest of the orcs, which had some basis in the books, though not to the extent that PJ went.  They also removed the Moria goblins from any further role in the story after the Fellowship's escape, whereas in the book the goblins were part of the orc pack that kidnapped Merry and Pippin.  Unfortunately I can't remember if the MM goblins from The Hobbit looked especially different from the Dol Guldur kind (notwithstanding unusual individuals like the Great Goblin or the little scribe dude played by Kiran Shah).

They definitely looked different Eldo. I could post some pictures to compare by, but I'm feeling too lazy at the moment. The goblins of the Misty Mountains are lesser in stature, their face shape is more rat-like and less humanoid, and I'm pretty sure they mostly spoke the Queen's own English.
In contrast, the orcs of Dol Guldur are nearly man-sized in stature, tend to speak the Black Speech, and have more recognizably humanoid features. Just think of that scene at the end of DOS, where the "badass" orcs were streaming out of Dol Guldur while Gandalf watched. They were not squeaky goblins, but heavily armoured orcish-types.
This is clearly Jackson continuing the delineation he had going on in LotR. Despite The Hobbit book failing to illustrate a great difference between the two, he has set Goblins and Orcs as the Orcs and Uruk-hai of this series, respectively.
(I do know that the terms are interchangeable, but the point stands that PJ wanted to have a "lighter" tone for the goblins of AUJ and now wishes to up the tension by introducing threatening hulks of goblins in DOS and TABA TBotFA.)

I agree about the co-opting thing with Azog. He did take over some of the role of the MM goblins in AUJ. That and the bloated role he enjoyed in the rest of the film of course.

What the heck, I'll find some examples:

Goblins: (Warning, they're hideous. Although the middle one reminds me of a grasping film producer.)

Spoiler:

Orcs:

(Is that supposed to be armour on the middle one there? The Lord of Bones would have a thing or two to say about it!)

I kinda like that, vain & egotistical as Thranduil appears ?

I don't think Thranduil is either of those things. The Master of Lake-town: sure; but not Thranduil.
He is over-fond of jewels and treasure and what-not, and not overkind to strangers; but he is not vain or egotistical. In fact, he and his people help the Men of Lake-town in their distress. He can be generous therefore, even if only with the expectation of rich reward later on.
It's just not a part of his characterization. He is fabulous, it is true, but he can't help that!

He's just looking at the rest of the world. Maybe he's curious as to where the Necromancer went to after leaving Mirkwood, and is looking south to Mordor with trepidation.


(I suppose you could say that the fact that film-Thranduil hid his old scar behind some sort of visage of perfect skin would indicate a sort of vain-glory, but I am going to ignore that idiotic addition.)

I think he's looking for a pair of 'Ruby Red slippers'