The Lord of the Rings/YMMV: Difference between revisions

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== Book ==

* [[Applicability]]: Read the entry for details.

* [[Complete Monster]]: Sauron and his chief minions.

* [[Die for Our Ship]]: Poor, poor Arwen. Aragorn/Boromir, Aragorn/Legolas and Éowyn/Aragorn fanbrats hate and bash her like there's ''no'' tomorrow.

** This goes back much further than the movies, too. The fact that she was a late addition (Tolkien didn't create her until the third draft) really doesn't help her any, nor does the fact that she doesn't actually ''do'' anything, and her love story with Aragorn is [[All There in the Manual|in the appendices]]. The movies gave her Glorfindel's part because they wanted her to do something other than hang out in Rivendell and look pretty--given that all her characterization is developed in the appendix, they had to toss her something. Fortunately they did ''not'' go with their original idea, which was to send her to the freaking battle of Helm's Deep like some kind of Xena the Elven Warrior Princess. Even [[Liv Tyler]] despised that idea.

** And no mention of Tom Bombadil? He's practically the series Chuck Norris. Of course, he's also [[The Scrappy]] to some.

** Legolas, Faramir, The Balrog

* [[Hell Is That Noise]]: Drums... [[Nightmare Fuel|Drums in the deep...]]

** The cries of the Nazgul and their steeds fits here as well.

* [[Hilarious in Hindsight]]: When Galadriel gives gifts to the members of the Fellowship, most of them get some pretty cool [[MacGuffin|items]]. Sam, on the other hand gets a box of dirt, leaving the reader to ask, "[[Pirates of the Caribbean|Is the box of dirt going to help?]]"

* [[Ho Yay]]: Hi, meet the fandom. Read the books. Go on the Internet in general. [[Word of God|Tolkien himself apparently stated that Sam and Frodo were not in love with each other]], and it didn't slow the fandom down a bit.

* [[Internet Backdraft]]: Everyone stand back... "The Balrog has no wings!"

** There's arguments both ways, considering how Tolkien worded it in the books, but even if it did the Balrog couldn't fly with them. Jackson's version [[Take a Third Option|ran with this]]. Besides, [[Rule of Cool|giant fire and shadow monsters look more awesome with wings]].

** Less of a Jerkass ''or'' a Woobie than Gollum, but still qualifying, is Boromir.

* [[Magnificent Bastard]]: Sauron. Especially after reading the appendixes and learning about everything he did to set up his victory--not to mention his role in ''The Downfall of Númenor''.

* [[Memetic Mutation]]: '''"Frodo Lives!"'''

** and "Gandalf for President", both popular rallying cries from [[The Sixties]].

* [[Older Than They Think]]: The idea of a ring that makes you invisible goes back to the Ring of Gyges from Plato's Republic. Considering how well read Tolkien was, it's probably where he got the idea in the first place.

* [[Ron the Death Eater]]: Poor, poor Arwen. Boromir, Denethor, and Thranduil definitely tend to get this treatment too in fan fiction.

* [[Sequel Displacement]]: While ''[[The Hobbit]]'' is still considered a literary classic, it is ''The Lord of the Rings'' which is considered the defining work of [[High Fantasy]].

* [[Ugly Cute]]: Gollum

* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: For lots and lots of details, see the trope page.

* [[Values Dissonance]]: Allusions to Aragorn's inherently kingly status and confidence (almost magical, as mythology was wont to do) are greatly reduced in the movie, to the point his major character arc is reversed to personal ''reluctance'' to be king.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]

** "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." -Tolkien, responding to this in a forward to a later edition.

*** Tolkien's old buddy CS Lewis adored allegory, hence his Narnia books being nothing but allegory. Such a falling out over allegory in Narnia (and other things Lewis did that pissed Tolkien off) that Tolkien and Lewis didn't speak for awhile. They agreed to disagree and got over it, buddies again, but it must have really rankled Tolkien to the end of his days when people saw allegory in LOTR.

* [[Crowning Music of Awesome]]: Leonard Rosenman's score.

* [[They Just Didn't Care]]: Despite the rich languages that Tolkien invented, and the number of people fluent in them even back in 1978, composer Leonard Rosenman used made-up gibberish for the soundtrack's choral chants, with the occasional word like "Sauron" or "Mordor" thrown in.

 

== Peter Jackson Films ==

* [[Can't Unhear It]]: Sean Astin's distinctive accent for Samwise Gamgee is very similar to one of the most famous (extant) audio narrations of the book, though Astin claims he wasn't aware of the audio version. Eerily, Sam is never actually written with such an accent in the books, making it all the weirder.

* [[Crazy Awesome]]: Viggo Mortensen. During the filming of Helm's Deep, he caught a sword in the face, and broke a tooth. His solution? Superglue the tooth back together and keep filming. All of the other actors were afraid he was going to end up killing himself before they finished filming, due to his insistence on performing lots of extremely dangerous stunts himself. Even the stuntmen were impressed by his dedication, and ability to ignore pain and injuries while filming. See [[Throw It In]] and [[Fatal Method Acting]] for more examples.

** Discussed on the cast commentary track, where somebody (one of the Hobbits I believe) says that the fade after "Here, at the end of all things" could be the end of the movie, albeit a very artsy and far-out ending.

* [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]] / [[Rule of Symbolism]]: Christian symbolism is carried over from the books, although in a [[Viewers Are Geniuses|very discreet manner]]. To cite an example: in the first movie, when the Fellowship parts from Lothlorien, a [[Woman in White|white-clad]] Galadriel makes [http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/gallery/2001/11/14/galadriel.jpg a blessing gesture], looking much like Catholic statues of Virgin Mary.

* [[Fountain of Memes]]: Just look at this page.

* [[Genius Bonus]]: A little bit of extra awesome for those versed in [[The Silmarillion]]. In the scene in the extended edition where Sam tells Frodo, "There's light and beauty up there that no shadow can touch," the star he sees is no ordinary star. That's the Star of Earendil, the Evenstar -- yeah, the one Arwen was named after. We would call it Venus. In Middle Earth, though, it's an elf on a flying ship with one of the three Silmarils, which contain the light of the Two Trees; holy light that predates the sun and moon. The Star of Earendil was the source of the light contained in Galadriel's Phial.

* [[Ho Yay]]: Frodo and Sam, as usual. Actor [[Ian McKellen]], who is gay, was interested in the close relationship between the two characters. He noted the attention to detail in the pair's close relationship from page to screen, such as when Sam grabs Frodo's hand after he awakens from unconsciousness. In fact, both pairs of hobbits can reasonably be called [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]. It's worth noting that Sam is ironically the only hobbit to show interest in any specific woman in the films. In this regard, Merry and Pippin might be closer to this trope than Frodo and Sam.

** This is pushed [[Up to Eleven]] in the DVD cast commentaries for the three films (but especially ''The Two Towers''), where all four actors play with this trope at one point or another.

* [[Memetic Mutation]]: "One does not simply [[Walk Into Mordor]]!"

** ''(sigh)'' [[Here We Go Again|"They have a cave troll!"]]

** "They come in pints?! I'm getting one."

** "THEY'RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD!!"

** “Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”

*** I always got the notion that it was Frodo who pushed Boromir onto the pile of leaves, as he was badmouthing Frodo and his race at the time.

** The music did not help. It might as well have been the best musical theme to depict pure evil ever written.

**** The Mouth of Sauron should have taken the hint. Yeesh!

* [[Nightmare Fuel]]: Smeagol turning into Gollum at the beginning of ''Return Of The King''.

* [[Role Association]]: About half the cast, but especially [[The Matrix|Agent]] [[Fan Nickname|Elrond]].

* [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]: Gloriously subverted, see [[Academy Award|Academy Awards]] above.

** The movie actually adds another layer to this. When you watch the documentaries on the DVD, you see that, under the prosthetics and make-up, the vast majority of the stunt people playing the brutish, subhuman Orcs and Uruk-Hai are actually Maori. The good guys, in contrast, are universally white; even the extras/stunt people playing random human and elf warriors. I suppose this is [[Justified Trope|justified]] by the [[Medieval European Fantasy]], but it's still quite jarring.

* [[The Woobie]]: Frodo. Perhaps overly so, as a common criticism of the character (or at least Elijah Wood's portrayal thereof) is how he spends basically the entire trilogy with a pained expression on his face.