Skip to main content

HEY LORD OF THE RINGS, WHY SO SERIOUS?




It's a shameful confession for a nerd to make, but I've never read Lord of the Rings (shameful!) After enjoying such spin-offs as Dungeons & Dragons, The Order of the Stick, and DM of the Rings, I thought that I should finally see the movies at least. Besides, The Fellowship of the Ring was on Netflix streaming.

So anyway --it was OK. I know now where the concept of a "ranger" in D & D comes from. But, you know, I wouldn't mind a little humor or some sex. These are kind of a big part of most peoples' lives, is it so weird to want that? I hear tell that the filmmakers took the liberty of adding some romance in later films (correct me if I'm wrong), but it was not in the books. If you are writing a book set in a monastery or an intimate portrait of an asexual it's one thing, but this is a world-spanning epic with dozens of races and hardly any romantic/sexual relationships. It also has unfortunate "fewer girls=more serious" implications.

The whole thing of bludgeoning the audience with, "This is totally serious and about good and evil, everyone!" whenever someone starting falling under the ring's baleful influence also got old fast. And some wonder why people write slash fiction about Sam and Frodo or try to seduce every wench or dude they see while roleplaying a fantasy scenario. Great world-building, JRR, but the people want the dancing girls/boys too.

My kind of fantasy is more of the pulpy, steamy, decadent 20s-30s sort. Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, E.R, Eddison, Fritz Leiber, James Branch Cabell etc., had a lot of fun creating imaginary worlds before Tolkein came along and sucked all the fun out of it. I'd be all over a Jirel of Joiry or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser movie in a heartbeat. Please Guillermo Del Toro, Joss Whedon, somebody, make it happen!




Labels:

Comments

JethSeux said…
Yeah I guess Tolkien's background as an Oxford professor of dead languages might have made him a little stuffy. He was one of the foremost experts on the Anglo Saxon language of his day. I couldn't get into the Hobbit, it was much more dry and dense than CS Lewis, and I put it down quickly! From what I understand though, Tolkien was much more into building imaginary races and their languages (he wrote an Elven dictionary), than in the details of daily life that are more interesting to the average reader. I spent my youth with Narnia and Robert E. Howard's Conan books. I am glad the last cinematic interpretation of the later got through, being true to the writer's lurid focus on the seamier side of barbarian life, while still escaping an NC 17 rating!
10:56 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

 The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant.  That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens.  I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity:  swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra
Post a Comment
Read more

WOMEN IN, ON AND AROUND FILM

Over at the Bitch Blog , they were talking about female movie directors, so I had to make sure psychotronic faves like Stephanie Rothman and Doris Wishman were given their due. I hadn't known that one of my favorite female badasses, the Kill-Bill -influencing Dag from Bury Me An Angel (introduced to me by Dr. S ), was also a woman director's creation (should've known). Then I put in a word for the woman who started me on my movie-obsessed path, the fabulous Pauline Kael . She taught me to own my loves and hates and call 'em as I see 'em. Maybe some people wouldn't consider her a feminist icon because she didn't always like the "right" movies, but read her review of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for some keen feminist insight. She totally terrified those guys in the movie boys' club. I mean, George Lucas named the villain in Willow after her! Here's Kael on the New Testament: Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Mathew
Post a Comment
Read more

Things I Learned in 2020

Well, this has been quite a year, yessiree bob. But I’m being thankful right now of what I have and how my powers of Super-Introversion were activated by the current crisis as a laser-focus on learning stuff. Not that there weren’t many long hours of being too tired and paralyzed to move from the couch to the bed and vice-versa. And dusting and many other cleaning activities that didn’t aid in bodily sanitation were left by the wayside. Anyway, I hope that you too can make a list of things that you learned other than the details of the Electoral College.  How to make quick pasta sauce with canned tomatoes How to make instant oatmeal How to make creamed spinach Basic ASL Basic Inkscape Video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/Webex/Meet/Jitsi How to make ink-jet Shrinky Dinks Basic screencasting with Screen-Cast-O-Matic and Camtasia Online training creation with Niche Academy Online playlist transfer with Soundiiz Mask making Cuttlebone casting Intermediate Tinkercad Slide digitization Basic
Post a Comment
Read more