Yep. They hate white people and so any movie that heavily features them is now a huge problem for everyone that needs to be immediately rectified by eliminating white character casting. No other race, just whites. What a joke
Even if you accept their premise about audience preference, it's still implying the work itself has changed. Even if audiences were "more enlightened" (lol), that has everything to do with the audience and not the work "aging."
In summary: "LOTR has aged poorly because I can't go more than five minutes without checking Tiktok and lack the attention span to comprehend the books."
"my npc programming is triggered by Tolkein's non-conformity to the current woke insanity that dictates my opinions. Orc lives matter. Orc lives matter."
The Hobbit is only 1000Lexile level surely LOTR is harder but not by much, Ursula K Leguine’s earthsea was harder to read than any book of LOTR. I breezed through LOTR as a teen but at 14, when I was tested at a 12th grade reading level I had to read one of her sentences three times to comprehend and gave up because it was the first I’d hit a reading ceiling so I regularly checked out multiple books to finish in two weeks and I had to return it unread and never got back to it unfortunately. It’s not hard to get good at reading if you learn to like it which is what Tolkien’s writing did for me. It’s a a shame so few people can read I wonder what the heck they do in public school that so few people can read that a writer who presumably graduated from a bachelors of English or similar could be this bad at writing/reading as the person who wrote this article.
I've noticed that in actual life, there are characters who I've met only once, have and a profound effect, and yet I've never seen them again. I guess my life has been poorly written.
Excellent point. How about the npc type people you see every day?...or their dim cousin who likes to be critical of genuinely great fiction. No impact, no significance on the lives of others.
I am fromthe east (India) and I never had any problem with anything in Tolkein. There's nothing for me to relate to in the text (according to the woke critics), hell, there's nothing for an Indian to relate to (superficially) in almost all of the western pop culture, and yet I find meaning and solace in many of these stories. I relate to characters not because they have the same skin tone as mine or the same sexuality as mine, I relate because we have similar struggles, similar passions, similar hopes and dreams. The fact that these modern critics think that I can't relate to Aragorn because he's a cis white male and I am brown is pretty much a form of racism. I can relate to the fact that he wants to try and help even when hope is lost. I don't need to see the myself physically in a character to be able to relate to them. Also, the representation debate is completely biased to the most profitable sections. They talk about representation of black people or asian people or latino people but I am yet to find anyone arguing about the representation of middle easterns in a good light, or Indians and Pakistanis outside of their stereotypical roles or Burmese people or Bhutanese people or Srilankans (Just some of my 'under represented' neighbours). This whole debate is a racist propaganda to fill seats in theatres because the stories nowadays don't have the legs to stand on their own and thus they have to resort to these arguments to sell tickets.
I saw another video about how forcing diversity into fiction is just giving fiction more power over what people believe. If people, like you, don't particularly care about what race people are in the media you consume, you're less likely to feel like you can't be a doctor or lawyer or whatever else just because you don't see one fictionally represented as your own race. By telling people you have to include everyone in a story then you're also telling people that if they aren't explicitly included as some role then you can't become that role. It's a bit like how the "updated" rainbow flag with more colours is less inclusive than the original that was just the rainbow. By forcing inclusivity you're also excluding anything not explicitly included, whereas a figurative inclusion of everyone doesn't exclude anyone. And yeah, when it comes to many modern productions, it's all about what's profitable. They don't care about diversity - they care about what sells and what brings attention.
@@AnotherDuck And yet, if they claim representation sells, why do they often fail in ratings or box office? It is as if they actually don't care about money and more about sending their, the globalists and progressives, globalist "message".
@@1685Violin People also thought sex sold far more than it actually did and tried to include it everywhere. They notice something is trending, so obviously it has to be popular. But considering how flawed many of those productions are, I don't think there's any wonder why they fail to make something actually popular rather than something just superficially popular. Of course, there are people who do want to spread their propaganda, often convinced they're actually doing something good. They're among those convincing these corporations of these things.
I agree. They do the same by unnecessary sticking "strong" female characters in everything. But they get it wrong, those characters are not the smart, witty, thoughtful, kind and recourseful women I would respect and feel kinship to. They are basically male bullies with females cast in the roles. I read The Hobbit when I was ten years old and the Lord if the Rings the first time when I was twelve and I never realised that I wasn't supposed to be able see myself in the characters because they weren't the same sex as me... I saw friendship and humanity and curage. The offhanded way the hobbits were treated by the other races reminded me of how I was treated by most adults, me being a child at the time. I loved the books then and I still do.
@@erikaeriksson9840 I find this the most frustrating because by the time 2014 rolled around I had played so many games with varied and cool female characters that the modern narrative that they had all been "damsels in distress" felt like an insult to the things I loved and grew up on.
Objection. I have been reading them for the first time and agree the CBR article is nonsense. The books are dense but not that hard to understand. The journalist just doesn’t get great literature.
@@calebgoodman3028 My remark was in jest, and I agree wholeheartedly, The Lord of the Rings is very accessible to modern readers, and always will be. It's a timeless work.
I think the author of this article is (unintentionally) saying more about the shortcomings of modern audiences than LoTR. Or at least what the author imagines modern audiences to be.
@@MrBrendanRizzo Maybe a lot of modern writers are hoping that's how audiences are. It's not like either books or movies are getting better. Predictable, repititious, ideologically pandering, et cetera.
@@treebeardtheent2200 While I agree completely, the only reason we remember LOTR is because it was much better than it’s contemporaries. So the average crap is forgotten.
yeah, the first one... is a sign of unrealistic expectations of readers. If every single thing gets wrapped up in a single plot thread at the end... the world feels small, and unfinished.
@@MrBrendanRizzo My recollection isn't crystal ball clear, but didn't The LOTR take quite a while before it was generally recognized outside a small obscure fan base? For years I think there were other works that competed well if not even better than Tolkein's stories. plz forgive my text musings here, but as I think about it, isn't the fact that The LOTR is still hugely popular while so much other stuff (even stuff by authors more popular than Tolkein once upon a time) is largely forgotten the very definition of The LOTR aging exceptionally well? Hmm? 🤔
These will not be in the order that appeared in the video, but I will try. 1) Tom Bombadil is actually very involved in the rest of the plot, though for things he did or that were seen in his passages. This video covered a few of them. A few others are Frodo's sword which he uses against the Witch-King at Weathertop, his realization that he had seen Gandalf imprisoned on Orthanc while in the house of Tom, the recall of Old Man Willow when dealing with the Ents, and Gandalf leaves the Hobbits to visit Tom for quite a spell as he had not had opportunity for some years. 2) Any novel has the one off characters that do not appear again or are even referenced. Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire, Shannara, Star Wars (the original Expanded Universe), the Bible, and any historical text are filled with people who appear briefly, seemingly contribute nothing, and then disappear again. 3) Quite a few people die in the Lord of the Rings, and this gives it a very melancholy air. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins dies before the story ends as do Hamá, Boromir, Denethor, Theoden, Gandalf, and a nilumber of others. In fact, it is the deaths of Gandalf and Boromir that actually sends Aragorn into a brief moment of paralytic indecision. The death of Boromir has a profound impact upon Denethor and Faramir throughout the rest of their story. 4) Merry and Pippin actually display a great deal of agency from very early. They make the arrangements that Frodo is unaware that he needs to make and help him leave the Shire undetected, they help unhorse the Nazgûl, they get themselves enlisted in the Fellowship, Pippin raises the Orc host of Moria and draw the Balrog, they raise the last March of the Ents, Pippin causes Sauron to begin making moves earlier than planned (which Aragorn hastens further,) and Pippin lightens the mood of even the increasingly grim Gandalf, and Merry gives Theoden the hope of peace after the final conflict and is one of the last faces the king sees. 5) There are a fair number of women that make appearances in the story. Among these are Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Arwen, Galadriel, Ewoyn, Ioreth and her cousin, Rose Cotton, and Elbereth. There would be as many more if I were commence naming from the Silmarillion as well. 6) There is not a lack of diversity in Middle Earth as we have Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Men, Ents, Trolls, Wraiths, the Valar, Balrog, dragons, and Maiar. His complaint is a lack of human racial "diversity". 7) It is rare for any book or series to start off in the middle of action, unless done by means of a prologue. Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire, Shannara, Star Wars, Star Trek all generally start slow and gain pace. This is also true of Dan Brown's continual exposition dump titled The Da Vinci Code. It is a hazard of needing to start a book. I am now uncertain which relevant points remain to be refuted, but they can be done by someone with more investment. This CBR.com contributer is not a real reader or his points would be more relevant. He also has not read most of the books to which he gives reference in his critique of Tolkien, otherwise he would see that his opinion is validly ill-informed.
"It is rare for any book or series to start off in the middle of action" - People don't object to FOTR having any intro at all. They object to just how long and ponderous it is compared to most books, which still have introductory sequences but are much tighter.
@@gamingwhatwecan When you say "people," do you mean you? Because unless you've polled the populace you should stop assuming that what you think is what others think. I, any many others, enjoy the slow beginning of this story. I don't know if it's the majority, and neither do you. But I'd like to put out there that there's a good chance that a lot of people who don't like Fellowship's opening are not big readers in general.
@@jarnobrofelt1891 He's not talking about Sting; Frodo gets given that from Bilbo in Rivendell. Much earlier, Tom Bombadil gives the four hobbits each a dagger from the Barrow-downs. Those daggers were made by the Dúnedain during their war with the Witch-King and as such, have been imbued with powers to hurt him. In the book, during the encounter at Weathertop, Frodo uses his dagger to attack the Witch-King and actually hurts him. Also in the books, the dagger Merry gets given by Tom Bombadil ultimately plays a vital role in defeating the Witch-King, as it's this blade he uses to stab the Witch-King in the leg (and not one given by Galadriel, as happens in the movies).
@@mage1439 I was referring to the people who object to FOTR's pacing, the people who were addressed by the original comment. Often the word "people" is used to refer generically to some people and is not necessarily meant to encompass everyone.
This is very true, LOTR can be seen as a criticism of industrialization and the destruction of nature. Look at what is happening to the world, it applies more than ever.
@@clwho4652 More than that. Focusing on "nature" causes you to lose sight on the corruption caused to the human soul. Look at how many today have their face glued to their phones, take no responsibility for their own actions, and expect everyone around them to bend over and serve them. Humanity has been dumbed down in the name of wokeness. Try thinking of Wormtongue, or Denethor who try to take shortcuts to gain the ends they desire only to cause suffering and evil for those around them. Both become corrupted and their endings become tragic. There is more, but I'll make this short and end it here. Look for the forest beyond the trees.
It’s odd how the article author says that the main characters come out unscathed. When Frodo and Sam are thin husks compared to their lives at the beginning. The fact that merry is forever scarred by the death of Theodin, in that he can’t help but break out into tears when he hears a horn. And going back to Frodo, he is in constant pain from the wounds that never heal. Eowyn and Faramir, have also been struck by morgal magic, which we understand from Frodo, they do get strength back but the wound never fully heals. And that’s not to forget that the populations of Gondor and Rohan are crippled by the end of the war. The westfold burned, and all the towns and cities around Mina’s tirith, and even the western provinces were destroyed by the forces of umbar, and orcs. The shire is destroyed, and Bree is a shadow of itself, so I don’t know what the article writer was thinking.
And the party tree! They cut down the party tree! That's what finally made Sam burst into tears. Frodo, more than anyone, doesn't come out unscathed or anything close to it. He is so traumatized that he can no longer bear to live in the home that he had loved more than anything else. Tolkien is writing about PTSD here, although the term didn't exist then - but having been at the Somme he certainly knew men who were affected that way by the Great War. People who came back from the trenches in body but never did in mind or spirit.
@@brucetucker4847 Exactly. And while the term PTSD did not exist yet, other words for it have existed for hundreds of years: I believe the era-appropriate one would be shell shock.
Hi, ex-writer for CBR here. (Not the writer of this article, though) First off, great video, you make a lot of good points here and your passion for LotR and Tolkien's works is very evident. I just want to clarify some things about the way CBR works and how their writers get paid, hopefully it'll help people better understand why articles like this one get made. At the basic level, writers for CBR are freelancers who only get paid for output, not by hours worked or time spent doing research beforehand. The average rate for a 'List' article, e.g. "10 Best/Worst" or "10 Ways" etc articles, was $18 in 2021, meaning that any article which takes more than 3 hours to research, draft, finalize and be reviewed by the editors is paid at an equivalent of less than minimum wage. In addition, the higher ups are much more interested in number of articles published than their particular contents, or in other words, quantity over quality. The more clicks and views they get, the more ad revenue they can generate. It's like this with pretty much all internet article publishers, not just CBR, although there are certainly some sites that have a higher standard of quality and fact-checking. But this desire for site traffic and ad revenue means that oftentimes, the article prompts which these freelance writers are given by the tenured editors are usually meant to capitalize on trends in entertainment and media, so for example there's been an increased number of LotR articles written around the timeframe the Amazon Prime show was airing. I'm not saying that it's always 100% like this, but in all likelihood the writer of the article you talk about in this video was simply given this article prompt and told to get it pushed out, regardless of whether they personally believe the premise. And, they had to get it done quickly or else the pay isn't worth the time spent. All this to say, hopefully this information has given a little bit of new perspective on why these controversial or lackluster articles exist, and hopefully you'll consider blaming the company rather than the individual writers. They're paid terribly and don't deserve all the hate they get.
Thanks for letting us know. I suspected something like that, and have been trying to avoid such articles lately for that reason (with varying success 😅) which is probably the best thing that we can do, no matter how wrong or upsetting such articles might be. Your comment should get pinned.
If anyone is amazed or surprised that companies like cbr underpay freelancers to produce poorly researched clickbait then the above comment may be helpful I suspect however that the intersection of the venn diagram where people are smart enough to survive into reading age, and dumb enough not to already know the above is extremely narrow.
I don't know that "underpay" is the word. That would ascribe too great a value to poorly researched clickbait articles. You also can't argue that the writer deserves more for their time and effort. I can put out a lot of time and effort trying to push over a brick wall. Is anyone obliged to pay me for that? It's crappy that companies like CBR profit off exploiting writers like this, but they wouldn't be able to without a glut of under -qualified journalists in the market.
Honestly nr. 6 is probably the one that annoyed me the most. Taking a look at the fellowship you have a ranger raised among the elves of Rivendell, a wizard (and maiar), a captain of Gondor, an elf prince (of the sindar elves), a dwarf of Erebor and 4 hobbits. Sam is from a working class family whereas Frodo, Merry and Pippin are from rich families. So out of the fellowship you have four people from the land and culture with three of them from the same background and all of those are relatives. The rest are different lands and cultures. On a larger scale we can look at three groups of men that we interact with Breelander, the people of Rohan and the people of Gondor. Those are all different peoples, cultures and histories. But according to modern "Diversity" non of this matters, because apparently it is only your skin colour who defines you
I have to giggle when the idea of rascism is strictly defined as a skin color thing, I'm Scotch-Irish. It's fascinating to me that even in 2022 with so much of human history and knowledge at our fingertips that we haven't uniformly acknowledged, we're all in this together. We all live in this tiny shell of an atmosphere around a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
@@Captaintrippz It's because most people would rather make enemies and have something arbitrary to fight, than be part of true progress and snuff out inequality. It's easier for a PoC to gripe at the USA for having an unfair advantage and be racist against white people (many of whom are immigrants or 1st-2nd generation themselves without any ties to Jim Crow or slavery), than to admit that we've had legal equality since the 70s and take responsibility for their social status. Plenty of PoC are among the richest and most privileged, we had a black president, we have PoC professors and scholars and athletes and musicians... yet the term is blaxploitation and lacks any counterpart for any time we rag on a Scot for their kilt and haggis or a Chinese for their studying and efficiency or "walk like an Egyptian". It's messed up and choosing to be a victim imho.
The thing I noticed is that they’re basically of different species. Yes I do know that elves in men are very close to the point where it’s kind of just a spiritual difference. And I know hobbits are a diminutive branch of men. Dwarves are the most different from all of them. And if you include the wizard then they have an angel with them too. So the fellowship contains four completely different kinds of being.
Also, one doesn't have to implicitly agree that "modern audiences" and "modern works" are a reference. Trends change with time as narrative styles. I think that when reading a story, it is also important to know the context in which it was born. But independently of that, what makes a story good is typically more related to how it resounds with the human nature, and that's ageless.
The modern audience is a myth. I honestly have no idea why the entertainment industry has moved away from themes that play on human nature to themes based on their asinine modern philosophies. No is looking for that in a story. People just like what’s good.
The "modern audience" is the equivalent of the "New Soviet Man" -- a fiction that defines what the radicals want, rather than the reality. The "New Soviet Man" was supposed to develop from people being forced to live according to the socialist ideals -- in accordance with Lysenkoism and eugenics. . Today they want to force people into only accepting their idea of "diverse" -- which has more to do with their industry and neighborhoods than reality -- by only showing them "diverse" and endlessly declaring it to be good. . If they wanted real diversity, they'd leave LOTR to be northern European myth-based and look to films based on legends from Africa, Asian, the Middle East and the Americas.
Another thing about the West vs East thing, the men of the East were never portrayed as inherently evil or somehow different from the men of the West. Sam's speech tells us this. They just happened to fall under the yoke of Sauron. Tolkien even had the Blue Wizards sent to the East to try and liberate them, with how successful their mission was changing over the years.
What irritates me most about the West vs East point is how it is assigning intention with no evidence of it. And that is both incredibly irritating and harmful (both sides do this). I mean they even mention right afterward that there is indication that Tolkien was against racism. So how do you say that then imply that merely using the same "sides" is a bad thing? And using something like that as a point of "aging poorly" is not a good thing. Because lists of aged poorly inherently connect bad aging as being a negative thing, not just like o the book is boring for modern audiences but there are bad things in there. So it is in a way endorsing a mindset of an almost fearful way of approaching anything that can even be loosely connected to problematic mindsets. It reminds me of how some hardcore Christians are so afraid of any connection to evil that they won't even dial a phone number that has 666 in it.
I have found that people who write critiques like "this hasn't aged well.." often have an ideological axe to grind. Philip Pullman, author of the Golden Compass and lots of other stories, has been quoted as saying that the Narnia Books were bad writing, apparently because of their Christian orientation. However, this of course doesn't make them badly written, only written with a premise on which he doesn't happen to agree. Perhaps a look at the CBR gentleman's previous work would show a similar bias.
Tolkien didn't like Dune, eh? I'm finally reading it for the first time and having a hard time getting through to the end. Not that there aren't some things I like about it.
In the german speaking countries there is the childrens game "Wer hat Angst vorm schwerzen Mann" - "Who feares the black man", and this has nothing to do with racism, but with the german-mythological figure of the "Schwarzen Mann" = pesonification of death, who is imagined as beeing A) clothed in a black mantle (=Sensenmann) or B) a black shadowy figure. As you said, Butterbur referring to the Black Riders as black men is perfectly in line with describing their appearance. If knewing about this game, this writer would break out into a lamment about how racial-othering, fear etc. etc. is cemented into the youth.
Regarding Orcs evil nature, I always thought them being evil is a result of the entire race being essentially created by Morgoth, presumably from Elves. If you look at it in this light, good Orcs are... Elves.
@@squaeman_2644 But now they are corrupted Elves. Morgoth was incapable of creating a new race like Iluvatar (though Aulë created the Dwarves, which is quite interesting). He kidnapped Elves and mutilated them turning them into Orcs, or so the Silmarillion says.
@@reddleman2 You've got that backwards. First he had them be corrupted elves, but because of the question of immortality he changed them to corrupted dwarves.
yeah, skin color =/= RACE!!! This is the big lie of modern representation BS. Your skin color does not determine your self-identity any more than the color of your eyes or hair. This modern crap is ignoring why anyone cares about having races at all.
I immediate tune out when people start taking about their skin color. It doesn't matter to me, and I don't want to think about them in terms of their skin color.
9:30 Even if one would argue that Barliman IS actually being racist, so what? One of my pet peeves in modern writing, or rather in its critique, is that if a writer invents a racist/homophobic/otherwise terrible character that somehow makes the writer exactly like that character. No, that's not how it works! People no longer even understand this simple fact. Believe it or not, good writers can actually create characters that are different from themselves.
In defense of Peter Jackson, the way he portrays Treebeard I was initially left with the impression that he had been asleep. Maybe asleep for years before they woke him up. That would explain why he doesn't know about Saruman's betrayal and is caught off guard by it. And this is further backed up by the portrayal of the other ents waking up and shaking themselves awake before taking action. That's just how I understood it in a vacuum though.
They also take a longer view of things. A slower view. They probably checked on Saruman 50 years ago and saw that everything was tip top and weren't worried about significant change for another hundred years at least
I mean yeah, that's kinda how I understood it in context of the films is the Ents live so long for them a short nap could be like 5 years so logically it would make sense Treebeard knows Saruman was industrializing at Isengard but didn't know how far along Saruman was in terms of it.
In the movies at least Saruman was only building up his army for maybe 6 months rather than the books where he'd been doing it slowly for a couple decades.
@bleack8701 I see your point, but Treebeard mistakes Merry and Pippin for Orcs, and he hates Orcs for chopping down trees in the forest, and he then takes the Hobbits to Gandalf to see if they're okay. Here's two big issues: 1. If Treebeard knows about Orcs chopping down trees in the Fangorn forest, can't he check on Isengard to make sure it isn't Saruman? What other place near the Fangorn forest would have a lot of Orcs? 2. Why didn't Gandalf tell Treebeard about Saruman chopping down trees? Surely Treebeard would trust Gandalf more than random Hobbits. It makes Saruman's insult "Gandalf the Fool" seems more accurate rather than a moustache twirler line.
Boromir’s relationship with his brother and father is greatly detailed in the books, his leadership and battlefield commanding skills also detailed. Also his flaws. And his death is an epic Catholic death. He received grace and was at peace in death as seen by his dead body looking to be at peace more so than in life. It was incredible.
The whole "There are few woman in Tolkien" argument always forgets quality vs. quantity. Eowyn voices thoughts we all had at one point or another, Galadriel is insanely awesome and honestly, if I were to be in Middle Earth I'd wish to be like Arwen rather than any of the guys. xD I'll gladly take a couple of thoughtfully written female characters over a sea of flat, 2-dimentional characters of certain modern productions. =.= Also obviously the autor of the article has never heard about Luthien. :)
I also respect the idea Tolkien had about not wanting to write bad female characters and so kept them to a few good ones. He simply grew up without having close female friends because of the times. He knew his mother and wife well, and that’s about it. As a result Tolkein is one of the few male authors who escapes the «men writing women» tropes.
@@MissCaraMint Can the same be said with women who have trouble writing Male characters because they met few men in their lives other their fathers and husbands? There is a double standard at play whenever a journalist complains about lack of female characters and that is they never complain about the lack of male charecters when a story is about a woman or a few women having the spotlight.
@@1685Violin I 100% agree. I'm a woman, and I tend to populate my books mostly with women - they're just what leaps to mind unless I'm making a love interest or father! I have nothing against men, I don't even feel I write them shallowly, but being as I AM a woman that's what my mind considers the 'default human'. There's nothing sexist about it, and I don't feel that it's sexist in reverse, either.
I also found it funny that the author said the female characters are portrayed in terms of their relationship with the men when the three main female characters aren't at all like that. If you see Arwen and Eowyn and think the only thing about them is their relationship towards Aragon you are being purposefully daft, that is one aspect of their characters.
I'm always a bit annoyed when people say that Tolkien's works aren't racially diverse enough. I mean, what are elves, humans, hobbits, dwarves, goblins and orks then? Not races? I mean, characters even face certain racism and are often being judged solely by their race. The only point here is that characters aren't explicitly black or asian but like... read the description of elves - they sound pretty asian, when you think about it, the only thing is that Tolkien never really says "they're asian", because THERE IS NO F*KING ASIA IN MIDDLE EARTH. It would be crazy if a magical medieval world with its own long history had literally the same races as the Earth. I'm really tired at this point of the people who only want to judge a story solely by whether it contains moden agenda with a check list of minorities being mentioned. Anyways, thanks for your video. I've just discovered your channel, and It's awesome.
I once worked for the US census which asks people to list their race. I can only write in one answer to that one and I inform others that they can do likewise. My Race: Human "There is no such thing as race, and hardly such a thing as ethnicity." - P.J. O'Rourke
Pretty sure Tolkein aluded to other parts of middle earth that we have never been written about which may contain people’s of different ethnicities and skin colors. It’s pretty much free realestate for spin offs and fanfiction writing.
@@raylangivens7151 It all comes from America, where they can't understand the very intricate tribal history of Europe, and have no substantial connection to our ancient lands and unique histories and cultures. It's simply something that Americans can never truly understand or connect with.
I just love, how the author mentions Sanderson as an example for fast paced intros to the story. I mean, did he even read anything other than mistborn!? Stormlight Archive is so slow, full of lore and takes little steps in the story; I love the books for that, but using Sanderson in particular to criticise Tolkien is mental
It’s so ironic. So many people complain about the pace of the entire first SA book it’s absurd. Personally I love slow builds so it was just my cup of tea, but I would be the first to admit that it is slow and exposition heavy.
Robert Jordan, too, in the Wheel of Time, often has long, world-expanding scenes and characters who come in and then disappear. And Quaithe in Game of Thrones- the veiled woman who briefly meets Jorah Mormot -- as I recall seems only there to utter a few prophecies. But these plot devices give us a sense of the breadth and depth of these fantasy worlds, just as the Tolkien Geek states about Tom Bombadil -- he is the ancient Green Man, the power of the Primeval forest. He helps the hobbits learn just how wide and dangerous the world is. And one of my favorite chapters of the Lord of the Rings is "The Shadow of the Past", which is mostly exposition, but done so deftly and with such power that it doesn't feel slow at all.
@@melaniephillips4238 Shadow of the past and Council of Elrond are my favourite chapters for exactly the same reasons you mentioned. But, probably we are simply not considered "modern" enough =D
The Faded Sun trilogy ( on book 2 right now) is not a barn burner, instead presenting a methodical, interesting universe, set against the backdrop of societal upheaval in the wake of a Galactic war. There are few scenes of combat, and the few that are are poignant, powerfully inspiring, and add to the tragedy that is unfolding. I imagine that the series would be too slow for "modern audiences". The fact is that good literature isn't "made for modern audiences" good art demands that the consumer rise to the challenge and engage with the piece on its level allowing for self reflection and introspection.
12:30 It's Merry who procures the ponies and makes the ruse of Frodo staying in Buckland work. He's also the one who guides the other hobbits through the Old Forrest. Merry is a man of substance in the Shire
“The google-Facebook duopoly devoured all our add revenue so we’re going to drive up hate clicks by hiring a freelance writer to say the thing you like sucks.”
Your comment about "reading at a very surface level" hits the nail on the head. These points--and pretty much every other list like these--"critique" LOTR as an action/adventure story. They read the surface, but miss the depth. Tolkien, on the other hand, was writing for depth. He was writing for the people who dig. Sure, a character may appear shallow--but once you read the legend that his name came from you see that it's really very cleaver foreshadowing or a reference to something. The 'Invincible main characters" also demonstrates that the authors didn't understand the Bombadil sequence. The hobbits are nearly killed twice in two days--once with Old Man Willow and once with the Barrow-Downs. Gimli is wounded at Helm's Deep, Samwise is wounded in Moria (Aragorn discusses how he's lucky the knife wasn't poisoned), Merry nearly loses his arm, Pippen gets squashed by a troll....Aragorn and Legolas come out unwounded, but NONE of the others do. The accusation of a lack of diversity is also hilariously misguided. The Fellowship is intentionally diverse, including all races of Tolkien's world--Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits (a type of Man, but different enough to warrant being pulled out). They didn't include people of different skin color because they didn't think about race in that way. That's both historically accurate and consistent with the world building. In a world where Orcs and Elves and Dwarves and Ents and Wizards and Maia and Valar exist the idea that some human is going to look down upon another because of skin color is nonsensical. And the books show that diversity is strength--both openly stating it in the Council of Elrond and the Last Debate (discussing how division is the Enemy's greatest strength), and by showing that the Fellowship succeeded because of the inclusion of different peoples. You could honestly read the book as a case-study in the benefits of diversity in organizations. To accuse Tolkien's works of a lack of diversity shows a VERY shallow understanding of the concept on the part of the accuser.
Kind of the same as in JKR's Harry Potter serie: skin color is not an issue, neither is being gay or straight. the issue is belonging to the Pure Bloods or not. An author chooses a topic on which the character distinguish themselves from each other and asign hierarchy and all else is not an issue. In Tolkiens world it is the closeness to the Elven heritage and among Elves the closeness to the Valar.
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because-what with trolls and dwarfs and so on-speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.” - Terry Pratchett, _Witches Abroad_
it seems the writer's only idea of diversity is based on skin color. Specifically non-white. Which tracks with the standard leftist mindset. It does not surprised me that he(?) wouldn't see a group of different species as diverse just because they're all white skinned. (change them all to black skinned and it would suddenly be the most diverse thing in the world. And people who truly believe that obviously don't know the meaning of the word.)
GRR Martin says he got the idea of killing off major characters halfway through the story from Tolkien! And in The Silmarillion, that's nearly every chapter!
"DiVeRsItY!!!!!" is a distraction from how people are being taught to LACK empathy by focusing on seeing "themselves" on the screen, instead of looking for character traits, good examples, and bad examples for what they share with characters and how to act. FFS, I can identify with all six of the main cast of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because they're dynamic characters with multiple facets and I haven't been taught to focus on them being a mirror image of me.
I have a nephew who really got into Lord of The Rings when I showed him the Last Alliance from the first movie. massive armies clashing, epic music, and Sauron killing hundreds by himself with a single swing of his mace. he loved it. then I showed him Bilbo and Smaug in the Treasure Hall. he loved that too. Tolken's works are timeless. they were way ahead of their time and inspired so much of what we have today. if they can't satisfy modern audiences, then there is nothing they enjoy.
5:00 what, did he expect Butterbur, the innkeeper of the Prancing Pony, to follow Frodo around for the rest of the story? Or that all of Middle Earth should have been completely empty except for the characters who were around for a long time?
The West/East conflict also doesn't work because Tolkien was writing after WW1. The Eastern villains in Tolkeins life were Germans and Austrians, who are also white!
Middle-earth is supposed to be a fictional mythological past version of Europe so naturally it's situated in the west where invaders can only come from the south and east which was also the case in actual history.
One of the key aspects noticed and loved about the way Tolkien wrote his stories is that it all takes place in a LIVING and BREATHING world. What the article author and other people like them always expect in stories is that it all revolves around the reader, like the world and all its characters only start existing and moving the moment they start reading the story. But when you start reading a Tolkien story, you're actually just walking into a world that's already been existing outside of your awareness. All the little stories are just snippets of a bigger world, and all the "random" stuff you encounter in those stories are just organic events that happen on their own (which is actually closer to reality), and as the reader you'd only be lucky enough to "experience" the most historically significant ones as they happen. As he said in the video, it's because of those random little events and encounters that there's more flavor to the world and it gets you to start asking more questions about Tolkien's world as a whole...creating this grand perspective that makes you realize that this world spans way further than the very pages it's written on.
Yes. Just like in real history you can just pick practically any random character and with a little reserch trace back their entire faily history. That’s how rich it is.
I still wonder where the Entwives went. That was one of the questions that stuck in my mind after reading the books the first time at the age of twelve. Just one of the side storys capturing my imagination.
I'd say Glorfindel and other such characters who show up and leave are examples of the simple fact that the world is a big place and there are a lot of people in it, not all of whom you get to read a full dossier on. It's realistic, albeit a writing style not all want.
There's a similar article from Screenrant with references to the movies and the Amazon series. One of the worst critiques in there is that Galadriel seems more human in ROP because she can't identify anything wrong with Halbrand and that this makes her more human. In other words, it destroyed her character (but the writers at SR seem to find this a good thing). Galadriel isn't supposed to be human, in the Second Age, she's one of the most powerful elves in Middle-Earth, a ruler in various places throughout the Age and a powerful magic-wielder who warned Celebrimbor that something was off with Annatar.
After watching many of your videos and reading wikis, I'm finally reading Lord of the Rings! I was a movie fan before and read The Hobbit when I was younger. You also inspired me to get the Silmarillion for Christmas, love your videos!
You can tell LoTR is out of date cuz no one reads it these days, you'll not see a shelf full of the range of Tolkien's work in a bookshop (there are probably audiences who think a bookshop is out of date, but I assume not this one) , no new books based on Tolkien's work people get excited about and there is no way anyone would use it as a basis, however loosely, for a crazy expensive, platform defining series.
Aragorn is around 87 by the time of Lord of the Rings. Whatever character development happened earlier in his life. During the war of the ring, his purpose is clear.
@@rcrawford42 I didn't get that from the book, only the fact that the tasks placed before him are all immense to the point of being practically impossible. When I think about the journey through Moria, I marvel at how Aragorn feared for Gandalf, not for himself, just as an example. I do think the movies did a great shameful thing as it's their way to always portray characters as weak, seriously flawed and then suddenly heroic. Real life and really great writing like Tolkein's is not so. Great men can blunder, but the weak at heart don't become heroes. I hate that kind of narrative which has infected modern fiction and even modern "true life" accounts. It's dismissive of the need to be consistently honorable without fail as I think Aaragorn was.
@@rcrawford42 In the movies yes. In the books he would have had a lot of time to come to terms with that already since there is a 17 year time skip. I can’t remember exactly how long Aragorn and the Rangers patrol and keep The Shire safe, but it’s probably at least a few years. He would have had the time to do all of that growing then if he hadn’t allready.
@@treebeardtheent2200 But Jackson didn’t do that. He showed their vulnralibilty, but that doesn’t make them weak. You have genuenly weak characters like Wormtoung who’s characters just couldnt withstand corruption, or Gollum. But then you have characters who are genuenly strong all the time, but feel guilt, doubt, or temptation. It’s not about weak characters becomming unrealistically corrageous. It’s about the fact that even the brave and strong sometimes feeling small and afraid. Aragorn’s protrayal in the movies is all about his fear of failing to be that honorable person he feels he needs to be. And ultimately he doesnt feil he suceeds. The diference is that book Aragorn has a lot more time to deal with all this stuff, what with the time skip, and everything. Movie Aragorn has to deal with the news of the Ring being found and having to be the person to fulfil that prophecy about becoming King in a very short period of time.
@@MissCaraMint Aragon had been preparing for this his whole life (87 years), much of which was spent living in Rivendell under the tutelage of Elrond and the rest as the leader of the Dunedin patrolling Middle Earth. He was aware of the prophecies surrounding him and that he would be king and he had no doubt or qualms about becoming king if they won the war. Although I love the LOTR movies, Jackson did a disservice to Aragon when he had him doubt his destiny and to Frodo when he had him believe Gollum instead of Sam and he sent Sam away. Frodo never doubted Sam in the books. Jackson took something away from the true natures of these characters.
When I read the LotR, the Soviet Union was still a thing. In thee days, “The East” was synonymous with the Communist Danger, the Red Tide or whatever. I naturally read the story as a Cold War allegory. Only much later, I learnt that Tolkien’s East/West dichotomy is in fact even older than the Soviet Revolution. We all tend to read the prejudices or the season into literature.
@Morrigan Mhor Tolkien likes the German people though. Just no fan of their governments. He spoke German and that translation was the one he was most involved in (also because he did not like the previous translations) and used this one to write a general translation guide. He used a lot of Old-Saxon and Old-Franconian ( such as in Hobbit first names).
The East vs West dichotomy has existed since ancient Greece and the Greco-Persian Wars. This also would have been cemented in the mind of "westerners" over the millennia, as movements of people have tended to migrate westwards. Think the Germanic tribes and Huns coming from the east and invading the west. Or the Mongol hordes ravaging eastern and central Europe. In the worldview of a (pre-modern) westerner, the world opens up to the east, and naturally the origin of most invasive forces.
@@morriganmhor5078 It is that Germany wasn't seen as the East by Tolkien specifically but also not by Britain in general. The conflict of the two states was never framed that way.
I didn't even read The Silmarillion until after I had read Unfinished Tales. I also managed to read a copy of The Hobbit where Gollum had walked Frodo to the exit. When I got to LOTR, I was so confused. The same confusion happened with The Sil. Despite that, I loved the stories and wanted more, more, more. I was a young girl. I didn't care about representation. I don't need representation to be able to place myself in a story. I don't need womankings in anything I read or watch. What I want is a woman who belongs in the story, not a story that was surgically altered to include a woman. What I want is a woman who is redoubtable, yet never loses her identity as a woman. Those women exist in literature. Those women exist in real life. Why can't we honor them instead of watering down their values and contributions by forcing "strong women" who are dictatorial into our stories?
" I also managed to read a copy of The Hobbit where Gollum had walked Frodo to the exit". Wow, how cool. I imagine that would be a very rare book these days.
By simply filling masculine social tropes with female character types who embody those very tropes it might not be so much an election of the feminine we are seeing as much as a blind attachment to the masculine qualities as the ones the actually matter.
The movies giving a bigger part to Arwen wasn't necessarily bad, but could have been done better. Why did she carry a sword? One of her ancestors stood before Morgoth with no weapon at all, and prevailed.
Eowyn is one of the most fleshed out characters in the books, her motivations and her arc are on display and she gets most of a chapter dedicated to exploring her mind.
This was brilliant..my favourite part was 'they are literally invisible!' 🤣 I am glad you mentioned the Fairy Tale element- the hobbits and later the fellowship enter several places of safety and/or enchanted realms or underworlds along the way. Also totally agree that it's the feeling of mystery and depth of history and legend that makes Middle Earth feel so real - we discover it alongside the hobbits.
I’m a little surprised he didn’t bring up that they’re probably white before they were invisible and I don’t remember if their true firms are ever described so they could still be white men in the wraith world visually it’s just such a non issue
I've seen all the films, from the animated features from the last century, to the cherished live action from Jackson. I recently decided to read the series and I'm starting with the Silmarillion as I wanted to read in chronological order and I'm loving it. I do love, however, the fact that it seems that article's writer doesn't understand what "minor" or "secondary" characters are.
Point two is especially bad since FRODO, the Arguable Main Character, is so tragically wounded by the WItch king, Shelob and carrying the ring, that life among Hobbits becomes unbearable so he has to leave and go to another plane of existence to be comforted from his wounds and he has to abandon his friends forever to do so.
Something you missed when talking about the evil race point: there was a line about rebel uruk-hai that Frodo and Sam overheard in Mordor, indicating that there were already some who refused to follow the shadow even before the ring was destroyed.
They were refusing the shadow because they wanted to be evil for themselves, not on someone else's behalf. It wasn't like they were planning to settle down and grow rutabagas.
@@Avigorus Yes. One of the things that Tolkien - and C.S. Lewis, for that matter - does very well is show that the villains of the story do so for their own sakes. They don't serve some grand cause of villainy in general.
"Spook" seems to be a related word to the German word "Spuk" (pronounced spook btw.) which means a ghostly presence, a haunting. Hm, I wonder if Tolkien used the word 80 years ago in this meaning or in a way some people use it today? Just watch the Simpsons episode in which the meaning of the word "gay" is so masterfully presented.... Language changes but if you read literature from a certain age, you need to understand the time and place it was written.
I mean Spook still means ghostly presence today. It’s just acumulated a few other uses today as well. Like a spook can also be another name for a spy. You know a mysterious invisible presence.
To be fair, an innocuous word becoming a slur could indeed be a way something could be said to have "aged poorly" (I mean I can't read Conan the Barbarian, with its liberal use of the term "flaming faggot" to mean torch with a straight face. Always causes me to chuckle and somewhat undermines an action scene.) However "spook" as a racial slur is just so obscure of a term I don't think that particular example could be an example of poor aging due to a linguistic shift. I've honestly heard more people use spook as slang for FBI or CIA agents than I've seen it used in a racial context.
I like to giggle a lot at the repeated use of 'queer' in LOTR, especially early on, but *I know* in what sense it's actually meant. If someone were to seriously suggest it was meant (or that people will read it as) as a slur instead of a clear case of linguistic drift, I'd have to look at them sideways
@@rickpgriffin I think that reading LotR in English was the first time I encountered the word queer at all xD I later connected it in my head with its LGBT meaning, but this was my first impression and it never quite went away. It's kinda funny
I love the Tom Bombadil chapter. I like what you said about it. The chapter reminds me a bit of the style of White's Sword in the Stone where chapters are certainly linked, but also can stand on their own.
Watching the progression from indifferent skepticism to outraged incredulity is very healing 😅 I especially appreciated the point that if you wanted to make this argument, there were several better lines to pursue.
Half these points are debunked by the LOTR movies, which adapt the books pretty well and are universally loved! Other than the introduction by Galadrial, the first 30 minutes of Fellowship is just them planning a party, where the main problem is Merry and Pippin stealing a firework. The movies had a slow start too!
The Fellowship movie intro is much faster paced, it succeeds because it cut out and restructured content from the book. The pacing of the Nazgul chase, missing Gandalf, and arrival at Rivendell flows far better than the book with its willow, Barrow Wights and Bombadil detours.
@@gamingwhatwecan It sucseeds because Jackson understood that movies and books require different approaces. First and foremost because a movie is a much sorter time to tell a story in. If you push aside that you can see that for a movie Fellowship has an incredibly slow start compared to conteporary movies. Hell it starts with a heavy voice over exposition dump. One of the biggest movie no no’s ever. And yet it works because of the material Jackson is working with. Then all we get for 30 min is just the party and Bilbo’s goodbye. It’s incredibly slow paced, and exposition heavy for a movie. And yet it grabs you. You understand that there is a rich and wonderful world that is yet to be explored because that is what quality writing is.
Way back in high-school I had one of those nights where I could not get to sleep. So I went searching threw my older sisters books. I found a book called The Hobbit. Read the first chapter. Okay, but still could not sleep. Read the second chapter. Getting better. Still could not sleep. Big mistake next. I read the 3rd chapter. Read the entire book. About a month later I was visiting a friend. Her brother had given her a 3 pack of books written by the exact same person. Lord of The Rings. The Silmarillian came many years later along with a book of maps of Middle Earth. Old lady now and still amongst my favorite books.
27:03 - "You gotta pick a direction man!" Hilarious. Really well done sir. I was expecting a knee-jerk defense but everything you said was well-considered. I consider myself to be fairly "politically correct" - "woke" if you will whether you think that's good or bad. But most of the criticisms in the article were ridiculous, and nowhere does the author recognize that a large number of people who (presumably) aren't white nationalists read the story (repeatedly in many cases, including mine) for the simple reason that it engages and moves them profoundly..
I agree 100% with your point about readers of LOTR are likely to have come to it without having read the Silmarillion. But it did make me laugh as I did read the Silmarillion first. This wasn’t me trying to be “clever” but was because LOTR was always booked out at our school library so I could never get hold of it to read 😁
Haha. Likewise, I actually read the Silmarillion first when I was 11 (the translated version in my mother tongue). Its book cover was so cool that I just had to buy it (John Howe's Ulmo painting), and the year after I bought the Unfinished Tales, LOTR and Hobbit - Just in time before the films were released.
I read The Two Towers first because it was the only one available in the library, everything I knew about The Fellowship of the Ring came from the page-and-a-half synopsis.
In addition to what you say at the beginning, I think that up to Bree there is a "transition" from a sequel of the Hobbit, i.e. a bunch of harmless hobbits getting into adventures a bit too big for them, to the actual LotR main plot and mood. I don't think critizing that slow start is completely absurd but I find this transition convincing and surprising and overall well executed.
I agree. The hobbits don’t know how things will escalate and the slow start puts the reader into their shoes, things dawn on us just as slowly and I like that.
As soon as the four Hobbits there will be no second breakfast for a very long time they know the Shire is left behind them and they have to ready themselves for the "real" world. The tone of the telling changes from "Shire-style" to a darker tone and were the dialogue was still very every day talk it becomes more and more official as if the ones having a dialogue constant realise the is an audience present to hear them talk.
The first part of FotR is a kind of preview of later themes or episodes in the story. A few examples: the Old Forest--Fangorn; caught underground in a barrow inhabited by a dangerous being--Moria; the Prancing Pony, a temporary haven--Rivendell; the marshes after Bree---the Dead Marshes. The hobbits are, if not eased into their dangerous quest, at least given opportunities to grow up and learn to cope with danger, enemies, hardships.
@@elainechubb971 I never saw it as this kind of development in stages, but I think you are right. It is inherent to good writing to have the protagonist gradually grow into his of her quest. As David Eddings put it when you want to write a story about a world saver you start with prince Dumb and take your time to have him grow up.
Somewhere, Tolkien refers to the description of the excellent man/hobbit relationships in Bree as 'Bilbo's' observation. Until that appeared late in the History of Middle-earth, I had not realized that Tolkien conceived Book I as Bilbo's work, even well after LotR was published. It accounts for things like the fox's opinion of the sleeping Hobbits.
People have become duller, dimmer and narrower in their mind for the last few generations. So in that case, LOTR aging poorly for the current day is a good thing. But still it did not age poorly, because it's too legendary of a story.
Diversity for sure. The representation arguments are different though. If the author chooses to represent specific types of people, criticism of said representation is valid. Tolkien's stories are based on myths where the female characters usually were just objects in the background, and unsurprisingly, women in LOTR mostly just exist to be love interests/get married to the main characters. Rosie and Arwen, Eowyn for most of her story. And that's at least 75% of the female characters that are even in the story lol Does this ruin LOTR? Not at all, but it is a valid criticism that his female characters are shallow, and have little agency or large role in the story. He could have included them more, or just cut them from the story, but the representation he gave them was mediocre for the most part. Eowyn is given the most agency, but her entire character is either pining for Aragorn, protecting her uncle, or pining for Faramir. Outside of those 3 things, does she do much else in the story?
@@GeneralTaco155555a i think the biggest thing to keep in mind with the lord of the rings is that apart from what we see with the fellowship there is a heck of alot more moving in the back ground of the story that is scarcity covered because it is not what the story is about nor is it the story of the secondary characters so they are not focused on. The story is about from taking the ring to mount doom with the escort of 8 others on voluntary basis while navigating a war. Following the split it also becomes the story of why aragon is a deserving king worth of the thrones of Gondor and Arnor and how he draws the focus of murder to himself. That is the story line that matters and all other mentions of other stories are in support of that story.
@@seanrea550 like I said, it doesn't ruin the story at all, and it's even entirely fair to not have female characters at all since it's ultimately the story of Frodo destroying the ring. It's just that Tolkien's female characters are kinda shallow and it's awkward when the book is essentially like: "oh, Sam got married to this character we've never heard of" "oh, Aragorn has actually been engaged to Arwen this whole time and then she shows up only at the very end to get married to him" "Oh, this Eowyn character seems interesting and badass, but her entire motivations are related to men she admires, and then she becomes completely irrelevant after falling in love with Faramir" I think Peter Jackson giving them a bit more screen time was a good choice. We just needed one or 2 more scenes of each of them. With Rosie, we see Sam had a crush on her, but never had the courage to ask her out before the journey. Arwen was established as badass elven princess doing her own thing, saving Frodo, and we see the romance between her and Aragorn way earlier. Eowyn is less man obsessed, and more just wanting to prove herself as a warrior vs in the books implying she fights because she's somewhat sui__cidal after Aragorn rejects her. Alternatively, the story loses nothing if it just says something like "Sam gets married and has kids" or even just "Sam lived happily in the Shire" without ever mentioning Rosie or marriage. Or, Eowyn doesn't exist at all and Merry kills the Witch King as Theoden falls fighting by his side. Or Arwen is more of an arranged marriage as one last gesture of good will between the elves and men before they pass into the Undying Lands, and isn't really mentioned before that. These are all just examples, but it goes to show how weak Tolkien's female characters are when they could be entirely improved/removed by tweaking one or 2 scenes. And as I said in the last comment, LOTR being based on myths, weak female characters are possibly an intentional choice, but it is still valid critique.
Arwen doesn’t show up at the end; she is at the feast in Many Meetings. And Eowyn doesn’t go to war to protect Theoden, she goes because her culture values glorious death in battle so that’s what she wants. I think it’s your understanding of the women rather than the characters themselves that is shallow.
@@TolkienLorePodcast she wishes for a glorious death because the man she just met rejected her. It's a very Shakespearian/Chaucerian motivation, which as I've said is completely fine, but calling her character deep is a massive reach.
Supposed racism: "‘I hope not, indeed,’ said Butterbur. ‘But spooks or no spooks, they won’t get in The Pony so easy. Don’t you worry till the morning. Nob’ll say no word. No black man shall pass my doors, while I can stand on my legs." What the Nazgul look like: "In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver..." "‘What has happened? Where is the pale king?’ he asked wildly."
Great pushback against CBR. Please let me add: 1) the Bombadil “detour” is necessary, as are all the early “detours:” At first the hobbits are barely fit to even reach Farmer Maggot’s. They are utterly helpless in the Old Forest and need the Bombadil adventures to grow and mature, not just to get weapons. They need to slowly develop their latent heroic virtues. And their characters develop as well. 2) Lacking agency?! Ridiculous. Just look at Merry for a start, The whole journey begins because Merry obtains the house in Crickhollow, Merry supplies the ponies they use, Merry gets them into the Old Forest and leads them. Merry has agency from the get-go. Ditto for the others. 3) A lack of diversity badly ages LOTR? If so then virtually EVERY great work of European literature has aged badly as well! From the Iliad to the Great Gatsby and forward. Idiotic! 4) Orcs are shown as having NO good qualities? Several Orcs use phrases referring to “the good guys” as “cursed rebels”: “foul rebels and brigands,” etc. They have a sense of duty, esprit de corps, etc. So clearly THEY don’t think they’re evil, but on the right side (tho they are ferocious and brutal, by breeding and upbringing): 5) etc...
I actually think the reason for the west/east thing is that these were the lines drawn in WW2. Nazi germany being to the east of Britain where Tolkien lived and also the rising tyranical power in his time. So might have influenced the depiction of Mordor.
also the Romans invaded britain from the east back in the day. In fact everyone who ever tried to invade Britain came from the east from the British perspectiv. They don’t have many forces to their west. Being on an island (or archipelago) at the western edge of Europe.
There are 2 sets of books I read annually: the completely works of Jane Austen and LOTR. There are vast audiences for both authors and all their works. If you aren't in that audience, it doesn't mean the books have "aged poorly", it just means you don't like a particular piece of literature. Shocking, I know, but not everything is going to appeal to everyone, and that's ok.
Some things don't age at all. Such as legendary Stories and Sagas. The Grimm farytales are ancient german folk tales. Still known and told today. Even the ancient greek legends are still known. Doesn't matter how old a story is, if it is good today it will be good in 100 years.
Wait! Pippin has a whole chapter almost just for him, when they were being carried to Isengard by the Uruk-hai. 😊 And they are important to the Fangorn chapter too!
I didn't think that Bombadillo and his part was pointless at all. It showed the beauty and love of Middle Earth. The songs, the poetry, the dedication to his lady as he was representing the spirit of what's good in the world. It's like a firm reminder that the world isn't as dark as we think. Yes, he is integral to the plot as you've said. He hooked up the right weapons to get the job done.
I think that Tom Bombadil is at the same time the personification of Middle Earth as a kind of wrote-in-character of JRR Tolkien himself. In fan fiction we call it a Mary Sue, but it would be degrading to use that term in case of Tom Bombadill. When Elrond says that Tom Bombadill would just forget the One Ring, it could be a kind symbolising the fear of Tolkien himself to forget the main plot and loose himself in sideplots and details. If Tolkien had written the way Robert Jordan wrote the Wheel of Time the LotR would had been 30 books and still not finished.
No, Bombadil is not Tolkien. He's the "true neutral" -- he does not want any more than what he has, has no desire for power over others, so the Ring has no way to tempt him.
@@kamion53 No it wouldn’t call Tom a Tolkien stand in. Tom seems more like the personification of the land itself. He is the human (ish) personification of what is at stake. Tom is like nature he is neither good or bad, he just exists, but if Sauron wins he wold seek to destroy Tom Bombadill just like the Romans salted the earth of a defeated Carthage so that nothing could grow there ever again.
I think Tom Bombadil is the perfect intro adventure for 4 hobbits who haven't travelled beyond the shire. And it introduces the idea of powers, both benevolent and harmful, and of a history of this world both old and mysterious.
This is the mentality that gave us ROP. ROP springs from a malicious rejection of Tolkien and an attempt to invert nearly everything Tolkien believed or cared about.
@@treebeardtheent2200 Exactly. I'm not one who holds Tolkien as some kind of demigod figure, but he was very careful and intentional in his story telling. Tolkien's perspective was ALWAYS profoundly conservative and Christian. His stories don't make much sense when divorced from that. That atheists and leftists can still enjoy his stories shows his skill at story telling and the painstaking craft that went into them. It also shows that he was writing about universal truths. If the atheistic left wants their own stories (they have plenty of them and they're mostly crap) let them make their own instead of hijacking Tolkien for their own ends (and cynical money grabs).
Bah. They didn't attempt squat. Challenging the assumptions behind Tolkien's world would've been interesting. They avoided "interesting" like the plague.
@@SgtPUSMC Very well written words of your own. They aren't going to win you any social media popularity contests, but then again I can't recall when profound truth ever has.
I am a playwright. And within the last few years I"ve developed a paradigm about the elements of story-telling, at least in terms of my own writing. I use the intitials PACT--Plot, Atmosphere, Character, and Theme. The vast majority of facile complaints and writing advice focuses almost exclusively upon Plot, and it shows. Small wonder so many films (for example) have so many gunfights and car chases and such shallow characters, and it seems most authors cannot even intelligently discuss what Theme even is (at best they seem to equate it with a moral, or message). Reading LOTR many times was one way I developed this idea. Yeah the writer of this blog seems to have a very shallow understanding of storytelling.
I always took that Treebeard KNEW that Saruman was a shifty character already, but the other trees were too pacifist to approve of the entire ent nation going to bloody war without being sure of victory first Edit: the author of that article ironically includes Spain and Turkey in the list of "white Europeans"... Edit: it's also kinda funny that the auther thinks Tolkien doesnt like women, or that somehow they were sideline characters. Two of the most powerful characters in LotR were women, and the romance between Aragorn and Arwen is actually very noble and empowering. Women are allowed to have feelings too, ya know.
It's patently obvious that most of these "critics," not to mention most people involved with the abomination that is RoP, simply don't understand Tolkien, his themes, influences, or writing.
Frodo, who can't re-engage with his own society after returning from his adventures, and is constantly sick both physically and spiritually. This article: NoNe Of ThE mAiN cHaRaCtErS hAs AnY pRoBlEmS
I don't think LOTR would make sense if the start wasn't slow. By introducing us to the Shire, we're made as reluctant to leave it as Frodo is. That makes us care about it. If he'd been on the road by chapter 2, the Shire wouldn't be the beloved and iconic fantasy location that it is. And of course, for Tolkien the Shire was a reflection of the countryside that he loved, and preserving it was a reflection of his desire to save that countryside from the effects of industrialisation. Besides all this, I don't know that the start of LOTR is exactly slow anyway. Everything that happens sets the ground for later points in the story.
Great review of the article! I think Bombadil serves a more important purpose than he is given credit for here. He is the first character the hobbits meet after leaving the Shire. His place in the story, saving them from Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wights, is a great framing device to show us that the protagonists have truly left the comfort and safety of the shire. It’s the same as the trolls in the Hobbit. Danger and risk exist beyond your comfort zone. The Bombadil chapters set the stage for the four hobbits to start maturing in terms of their understanding of the wider world.
It sounds as if the writer is used to the sculpted plots of contemporary movies, as opposed to rich fantasy works, which contain the largeness and largesse of vast numbers of characters who provide substance and detail to the story, and do "advance" the plot in ways that superficial readers don't quite comprehend.
10 Ways Modern Readers Fail To Understand Why Tolkien Was Amazing Because Of Entitled Impatience, A Hamfisted Understanding Of Writing, Drama, Storytelling, And Lack Of Basic Reading Comprehension.
*10)* You can basically boil this point down to “I have a short attention span and _The Lord of the Rings_ doesn’t accommodate it.” *9)* This is one of the qualities that makes people love _Lord of the Rings:_ its incredible depth. The fact that so many “random” people have their own unrelated backstories gives the world greater verisimilitude. *8)* You know, just because “modern audiences” prefer certain things doesn’t make those things good. And the idea that more characters _must_ die for “realism” says a few things about this author’s views of reality. Real life has happy events and coincidences; why can’t fiction? *7)* I’d like to know what the author means by “lacking agency.” But he should have picked a better example than Bella Swan. Trust me, her “passiveness” was one of the last issues people had with her _terrible_ character! *6)* See point 10. This is the same argument again. *5)* So the author is just a Woke NPC. Color me shocked. Having a non-diverse cast does not make you a racist; you do what makes sense for your story. Adding in demographics just to have them is called tokenism and it’s a bad thing, but the Woke have rebranded it “diversity” and act like it’s the most important thing ever. It makes sense for a world based on European myth to have a European cast. Did this author complain about films with mainly black or Asian casts, like _Crazy Rich Asians_ or _Wakanda Forever?_ If he’s like other journalists, he likely _praised_ those movies because they “lacked whiteness” (their own words). “Diversity” and “representation” are used by Woke NPCs as covers for their own bigotry. Does the author believe that whites don’t deserve representation too? *4)* This is the one I most expected. Orcs are not human; they are a fantasy race, engineered by the Arda equivalent of Satan to enforce his malevolent will. If they represent any real-life concept, it’s _depravity._ If this author looked at Orcs and interpreted them as representing minorities, then he should get help because that problem is with HIM, not Tolkien. *3)* Western civilization IS under attack (this article alone shows it) and defending it is not “racist.” The fact that “bad actors” (whoever they are; the author shows no examples, of course) have used the terms “West” and “East” to support bad ideas _does not mean_ that ANY author who uses those same terms is endorsing them too. This argument is pathetic. It’s beyond obvious this article is just an excuse for its author to spew his own twisted political ideas. *2)* I think I’ve already addressed this in my last three points. _The Lord of the Rings_ uses older, medieval-styled language. If this author is interpreting such terms through a modern hyper-sensitive lens, then the problem is with HIM. I feel this author has serious mental issues. *1)* See my point about tokenism again. This is that same argument again. If a story features primarily one gender or the other, so what? Does it work for the story? It _does?_ Then that’s that. But aside from that, this point boils down to how the female representation in Middle-Earth doesn’t meet this author’s exclusive vision for what women must be, and that is why it’s bad. This author should really see a shrink. I apologize for making this comment so long. I’ve had it with these Woke cultists trying to appropriate Tolkien to promote their hateful, divisive politics.
"The story started slowly..." In 12th grade our English teacher attempted to have us read Hardy's Return of the Native. By the 2nd chapter of ennnndddlleesss directionless exposition our class made it clear that unless we were given another assignment, mayhem was a real possibility. Enter, C.S. Forester. Ahhhh
I have known HS grads who tested out at 2nd grade level when they met with a US military recruiter (rejected of course). idk where that puts actual modern 3rd graders, but I think you got it about right.
A fun fact I found out about the lore. There's a line stating, in the war against the great enemy, Morgoth and later Sauron, Elves is the only race that fought on only one side. Which implies some Orcs fought against Sauron or more specifically against the greater Evils and their plans.
None of this surprises me. I have worked at a retail store in the electronics section and quite literally saw a dvd of Sesame street with the label "Might not be suitable for modern children." And that was some years ago and those children grew up into "modern audiences". Also, fun trivia. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I thought hobbits were green goblinoids before I started reading the appendices. To this day I still have no idea why.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 The long golden hair maybe? or was it the shoes? btw P. Jackson and crew seemed to all miss that the hair on hobbit feet is really thick, like head hair, so don't feel bad. Butterbur even described them as "wooly footed", not simply like a hairy man's calves which wouldn't really do much to keep feet warm.
Ridiculously long comment warning! OK let's start with some facts about me. I'm definitely from "that side" of the aisle. Heck, being a European leftist I probably count as a downright communist for some here in the US. I'm also a woman. White though. In fact, much to my chagrin, I'm downright pale which is not a good complexion when you grow up under the Greek sun. So I like when there's real representation of other people. Not a token black/Asian/Latino (forget others; they don't seem to exist), but a true diverse setting. When it makes sense to have one. For instance it irks me that, at one series I otherwise like, in Chicago, you see one Latino (from Florida) and one black person (from Russia) maybe a couple in EXTREMELY peripheral roles. Like really? I live in Michigan but business has taken me to Chicago more than a couple of times and there's lots of people of color there. In Lord of the Rings? No, it doesn't really bug me. I mean apparently the cradle of Western civilization was not Middle East -> Egypt -> Greece -> Roman Empire. In fact I probably count as an Easterner in Tolkien's world (or a Southern; he has me coming and going). Don't care! It's a mythology of England with a bit of the rest of the island and much more of the other Germanic peoples' mythology in it. I'm not talking about the series here, where the only believable male Elf was Arondir (young looking, lithe, with a long history written in his mien etc etc). In the books, everyone is white and probably looking nothing like my mom and I'm OK with it. Women? Can't say I didn't enjoy the many more powerful women in Silmarillion. But there was no room for many of us females in the setting of LotR. So Galandriel and Earwen were more than enough. Game of Thrones have many more because the story takes us to the corridors of power more, where a woman can indeed exert her influence even in a medieval setting. But, with the exception of Brienne (who suffers for it greatly) no other women appears on the battlefield. Because the vast majority of us wouldn't cut it even if societal norms permitted it. Orcs? I'm actually happy to think of them as just evil. Tolkien, because of his religious beliefs struggled greatly with the matter, but I have no issue with a race (with the real meaning of the word, not the skin deep differences between members of the human race) of beings molded by an evil god are actually evil. And hey, just going by the Appendices and not his other works, the Numenoreans and their descendants were not exactly angels and paradigms of virtue. I love the LotR, I even "managed" to greatly enjoy the Garret books by Cook where, especially in the beginning, we women are all pretty much floozies (to go with the books' zeitgeist). Representation of women and people of color is important. When it's done right (and not as a checklist to make you feel virtuous). And it's just doesn't fit LotR. Now if they made a series about, say, Harad and how the Numenoreans pretty much handed those people back to Sauron, now that would be interesting!
10 Ways TLOTR Didn't Age Well:
1. I can't read
10. I can't count
11. i know binary
@@jmdomaniii 100. I know nothing.
@@natebit8130 7922. I know the Muffin Man.
@pianotm the one who lives in Drury Lane?
Hello there!
The author of that article wasn't writing about audience preferences, but rather about their own preferences projected onto an assumed audience.
Isn't that the way of the woke?
Yep. They hate white people and so any movie that heavily features them is now a huge problem for everyone that needs to be immediately rectified by eliminating white character casting. No other race, just whites. What a joke
He just did a search on specific words in the books. That's the only way to explain the quaint examples.
"Journalist" is too strong a word for these people. Even "OpEd writer seems ill-fitting. They're nothing but paid gaslighters.
Even if you accept their premise about audience preference, it's still implying the work itself has changed. Even if audiences were "more enlightened" (lol), that has everything to do with the audience and not the work "aging."
In summary: "LOTR has aged poorly because I can't go more than five minutes without checking Tiktok and lack the attention span to comprehend the books."
"my npc programming is triggered by Tolkein's non-conformity to the current woke insanity that dictates my opinions. Orc lives matter. Orc lives matter."
@@treebeardtheent2200 Troll Lives Matter!
🤣🤣🤣🤣👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
The Hobbit is only 1000Lexile level surely LOTR is harder but not by much, Ursula K Leguine’s earthsea was harder to read than any book of LOTR. I breezed through LOTR as a teen but at 14, when I was tested at a 12th grade reading level I had to read one of her sentences three times to comprehend and gave up because it was the first I’d hit a reading ceiling so I regularly checked out multiple books to finish in two weeks and I had to return it unread and never got back to it unfortunately. It’s not hard to get good at reading if you learn to like it which is what Tolkien’s writing did for me. It’s a a shame so few people can read I wonder what the heck they do in public school that so few people can read that a writer who presumably graduated from a bachelors of English or similar could be this bad at writing/reading as the person who wrote this article.
@@treebeardtheent2200 anyone here know Daily Gondor? Top tier satire absolutely hilarious lol
I've noticed that in actual life, there are characters who I've met only once, have and a profound effect, and yet I've never seen them again. I guess my life has been poorly written.
Excellent point. How about the npc type people you see every day?...or their dim cousin who likes to be critical of genuinely great fiction. No impact, no significance on the lives of others.
Dood! You're so passive, YuO dOn'T hAvE AgEnCy!!1!
No your life is not poorly written. It has just aged poorly.
I am fromthe east (India) and I never had any problem with anything in Tolkein. There's nothing for me to relate to in the text (according to the woke critics), hell, there's nothing for an Indian to relate to (superficially) in almost all of the western pop culture, and yet I find meaning and solace in many of these stories. I relate to characters not because they have the same skin tone as mine or the same sexuality as mine, I relate because we have similar struggles, similar passions, similar hopes and dreams.
The fact that these modern critics think that I can't relate to Aragorn because he's a cis white male and I am brown is pretty much a form of racism. I can relate to the fact that he wants to try and help even when hope is lost. I don't need to see the myself physically in a character to be able to relate to them.
Also, the representation debate is completely biased to the most profitable sections. They talk about representation of black people or asian people or latino people but I am yet to find anyone arguing about the representation of middle easterns in a good light, or Indians and Pakistanis outside of their stereotypical roles or Burmese people or Bhutanese people or Srilankans (Just some of my 'under represented' neighbours). This whole debate is a racist propaganda to fill seats in theatres because the stories nowadays don't have the legs to stand on their own and thus they have to resort to these arguments to sell tickets.
I saw another video about how forcing diversity into fiction is just giving fiction more power over what people believe. If people, like you, don't particularly care about what race people are in the media you consume, you're less likely to feel like you can't be a doctor or lawyer or whatever else just because you don't see one fictionally represented as your own race. By telling people you have to include everyone in a story then you're also telling people that if they aren't explicitly included as some role then you can't become that role.
It's a bit like how the "updated" rainbow flag with more colours is less inclusive than the original that was just the rainbow. By forcing inclusivity you're also excluding anything not explicitly included, whereas a figurative inclusion of everyone doesn't exclude anyone.
And yeah, when it comes to many modern productions, it's all about what's profitable. They don't care about diversity - they care about what sells and what brings attention.
@@AnotherDuck And yet, if they claim representation sells, why do they often fail in ratings or box office? It is as if they actually don't care about money and more about sending their, the globalists and progressives, globalist "message".
@@1685Violin People also thought sex sold far more than it actually did and tried to include it everywhere.
They notice something is trending, so obviously it has to be popular. But considering how flawed many of those productions are, I don't think there's any wonder why they fail to make something actually popular rather than something just superficially popular.
Of course, there are people who do want to spread their propaganda, often convinced they're actually doing something good. They're among those convincing these corporations of these things.
I agree. They do the same by unnecessary sticking "strong" female characters in everything. But they get it wrong, those characters are not the smart, witty, thoughtful, kind and recourseful women I would respect and feel kinship to. They are basically male bullies with females cast in the roles.
I read The Hobbit when I was ten years old and the Lord if the Rings the first time when I was twelve and I never realised that I wasn't supposed to be able see myself in the characters because they weren't the same sex as me...
I saw friendship and humanity and curage. The offhanded way the hobbits were treated by the other races reminded me of how I was treated by most adults, me being a child at the time. I loved the books then and I still do.
@@erikaeriksson9840 I find this the most frustrating because by the time 2014 rolled around I had played so many games with varied and cool female characters that the modern narrative that they had all been "damsels in distress" felt like an insult to the things I loved and grew up on.
This article should be called, “10 ways modern readers aren’t worthy of The Lord of the Rings.
Is not modern readers are stupid California nobodies with more money than intelligence
Objection. I have been reading them for the first time and agree the CBR article is nonsense. The books are dense but not that hard to understand. The journalist just doesn’t get great literature.
@@calebgoodman3028 My remark was in jest, and I agree wholeheartedly, The Lord of the Rings is very accessible to modern readers, and always will be. It's a timeless work.
Agreed 👍
I think the author of this article is (unintentionally) saying more about the shortcomings of modern audiences than LoTR. Or at least what the author imagines modern audiences to be.
Fortunately, modern audiences are not like his imaginings.
@@MrBrendanRizzo Maybe a lot of modern writers are hoping that's how audiences are. It's not like either books or movies are getting better. Predictable, repititious, ideologically pandering, et cetera.
@@treebeardtheent2200 While I agree completely, the only reason we remember LOTR is because it was much better than it’s contemporaries. So the average crap is forgotten.
yeah, the first one... is a sign of unrealistic expectations of readers. If every single thing gets wrapped up in a single plot thread at the end... the world feels small, and unfinished.
@@MrBrendanRizzo My recollection isn't crystal ball clear, but didn't The LOTR take quite a while before it was generally recognized outside a small obscure fan base? For years I think there were other works that competed well if not even better than Tolkein's stories.
plz forgive my text musings here, but as I think about it, isn't the fact that The LOTR is still hugely popular while so much other stuff (even stuff by authors more popular than Tolkein once upon a time) is largely forgotten the very definition of The LOTR aging exceptionally well? Hmm? 🤔
Holy shit those arguments were basically "modern audience is so stupid we need to spoon feed information to them"
*We need to spoon feed them with OUR satanic New World Order agendas*
Well next time you hear "broader audience" that's code for dipshits...
Not "stupid", more accurate to say that modern audiences have been spoon fed sub par material for so long that they now need info dumped on them.
Well let's put it this way. LOTR was made for audiences in the 1950s. ROP was made for audiences now. Deduce from that what you will.
@@pCeLobster that is absolute BS. Then why does LOTR resonate with millions of modern people?
These will not be in the order that appeared in the video, but I will try.
1) Tom Bombadil is actually very involved in the rest of the plot, though for things he did or that were seen in his passages. This video covered a few of them. A few others are Frodo's sword which he uses against the Witch-King at Weathertop, his realization that he had seen Gandalf imprisoned on Orthanc while in the house of Tom, the recall of Old Man Willow when dealing with the Ents, and Gandalf leaves the Hobbits to visit Tom for quite a spell as he had not had opportunity for some years.
2) Any novel has the one off characters that do not appear again or are even referenced. Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire, Shannara, Star Wars (the original Expanded Universe), the Bible, and any historical text are filled with people who appear briefly, seemingly contribute nothing, and then disappear again.
3) Quite a few people die in the Lord of the Rings, and this gives it a very melancholy air. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins dies before the story ends as do Hamá, Boromir, Denethor, Theoden, Gandalf, and a nilumber of others. In fact, it is the deaths of Gandalf and Boromir that actually sends Aragorn into a brief moment of paralytic indecision. The death of Boromir has a profound impact upon Denethor and Faramir throughout the rest of their story.
4) Merry and Pippin actually display a great deal of agency from very early. They make the arrangements that Frodo is unaware that he needs to make and help him leave the Shire undetected, they help unhorse the Nazgûl, they get themselves enlisted in the Fellowship, Pippin raises the Orc host of Moria and draw the Balrog, they raise the last March of the Ents, Pippin causes Sauron to begin making moves earlier than planned (which Aragorn hastens further,) and Pippin lightens the mood of even the increasingly grim Gandalf, and Merry gives Theoden the hope of peace after the final conflict and is one of the last faces the king sees.
5) There are a fair number of women that make appearances in the story. Among these are Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Arwen, Galadriel, Ewoyn, Ioreth and her cousin, Rose Cotton, and Elbereth. There would be as many more if I were commence naming from the Silmarillion as well.
6) There is not a lack of diversity in Middle Earth as we have Dwarves, Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Men, Ents, Trolls, Wraiths, the Valar, Balrog, dragons, and Maiar. His complaint is a lack of human racial "diversity".
7) It is rare for any book or series to start off in the middle of action, unless done by means of a prologue. Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire, Shannara, Star Wars, Star Trek all generally start slow and gain pace. This is also true of Dan Brown's continual exposition dump titled The Da Vinci Code. It is a hazard of needing to start a book.
I am now uncertain which relevant points remain to be refuted, but they can be done by someone with more investment. This CBR.com contributer is not a real reader or his points would be more relevant. He also has not read most of the books to which he gives reference in his critique of Tolkien, otherwise he would see that his opinion is validly ill-informed.
"It is rare for any book or series to start off in the middle of action" - People don't object to FOTR having any intro at all. They object to just how long and ponderous it is compared to most books, which still have introductory sequences but are much tighter.
What Sting, sword (dagger) that Bilbo gives to Frodo has to whit Tom Bombadil?
Rest i agree.
@@gamingwhatwecan When you say "people," do you mean you? Because unless you've polled the populace you should stop assuming that what you think is what others think. I, any many others, enjoy the slow beginning of this story. I don't know if it's the majority, and neither do you. But I'd like to put out there that there's a good chance that a lot of people who don't like Fellowship's opening are not big readers in general.
@@jarnobrofelt1891 He's not talking about Sting; Frodo gets given that from Bilbo in Rivendell. Much earlier, Tom Bombadil gives the four hobbits each a dagger from the Barrow-downs. Those daggers were made by the Dúnedain during their war with the Witch-King and as such, have been imbued with powers to hurt him.
In the book, during the encounter at Weathertop, Frodo uses his dagger to attack the Witch-King and actually hurts him.
Also in the books, the dagger Merry gets given by Tom Bombadil ultimately plays a vital role in defeating the Witch-King, as it's this blade he uses to stab the Witch-King in the leg (and not one given by Galadriel, as happens in the movies).
@@mage1439 I was referring to the people who object to FOTR's pacing, the people who were addressed by the original comment. Often the word "people" is used to refer generically to some people and is not necessarily meant to encompass everyone.
Tolkiens work is more relevant than ever
Absolutely! RAAACEWAAAAAAR!!! XD sorry a sketch from whitest kids you know came to mind.
Only a lotr/trop fan or paid shill , like the author of the article would claim Tolkien needs updating for ‘modern audiences’.
The blood of lesser men
This is very true, LOTR can be seen as a criticism of industrialization and the destruction of nature. Look at what is happening to the world, it applies more than ever.
@@clwho4652 More than that. Focusing on "nature" causes you to lose sight on the corruption caused to the human soul.
Look at how many today have their face glued to their phones, take no responsibility for their own actions, and expect everyone around them to bend over and serve them. Humanity has been dumbed down in the name of wokeness. Try thinking of Wormtongue, or Denethor who try to take shortcuts to gain the ends they desire only to cause suffering and evil for those around them. Both become corrupted and their endings become tragic. There is more, but I'll make this short and end it here.
Look for the forest beyond the trees.
It’s odd how the article author says that the main characters come out unscathed.
When Frodo and Sam are thin husks compared to their lives at the beginning.
The fact that merry is forever scarred by the death of Theodin, in that he can’t help but break out into tears when he hears a horn.
And going back to Frodo, he is in constant pain from the wounds that never heal.
Eowyn and Faramir, have also been struck by morgal magic, which we understand from Frodo, they do get strength back but the wound never fully heals.
And that’s not to forget that the populations of Gondor and Rohan are crippled by the end of the war.
The westfold burned, and all the towns and cities around Mina’s tirith, and even the western provinces were destroyed by the forces of umbar, and orcs.
The shire is destroyed, and Bree is a shadow of itself, so I don’t know what the article writer was thinking.
And the party tree! They cut down the party tree! That's what finally made Sam burst into tears.
Frodo, more than anyone, doesn't come out unscathed or anything close to it. He is so traumatized that he can no longer bear to live in the home that he had loved more than anything else. Tolkien is writing about PTSD here, although the term didn't exist then - but having been at the Somme he certainly knew men who were affected that way by the Great War. People who came back from the trenches in body but never did in mind or spirit.
@@brucetucker4847 Exactly. And while the term PTSD did not exist yet, other words for it have existed for hundreds of years: I believe the era-appropriate one would be shell shock.
Bold of you to assume the writer was thinking!
@@sciranger6703
In fact, Thranduil seems to have had PTSD from the Last Alliance.
Hi, ex-writer for CBR here. (Not the writer of this article, though)
First off, great video, you make a lot of good points here and your passion for LotR and Tolkien's works is very evident.
I just want to clarify some things about the way CBR works and how their writers get paid, hopefully it'll help people better understand why articles like this one get made.
At the basic level, writers for CBR are freelancers who only get paid for output, not by hours worked or time spent doing research beforehand. The average rate for a 'List' article, e.g. "10 Best/Worst" or "10 Ways" etc articles, was $18 in 2021, meaning that any article which takes more than 3 hours to research, draft, finalize and be reviewed by the editors is paid at an equivalent of less than minimum wage.
In addition, the higher ups are much more interested in number of articles published than their particular contents, or in other words, quantity over quality. The more clicks and views they get, the more ad revenue they can generate. It's like this with pretty much all internet article publishers, not just CBR, although there are certainly some sites that have a higher standard of quality and fact-checking.
But this desire for site traffic and ad revenue means that oftentimes, the article prompts which these freelance writers are given by the tenured editors are usually meant to capitalize on trends in entertainment and media, so for example there's been an increased number of LotR articles written around the timeframe the Amazon Prime show was airing.
I'm not saying that it's always 100% like this, but in all likelihood the writer of the article you talk about in this video was simply given this article prompt and told to get it pushed out, regardless of whether they personally believe the premise. And, they had to get it done quickly or else the pay isn't worth the time spent.
All this to say, hopefully this information has given a little bit of new perspective on why these controversial or lackluster articles exist, and hopefully you'll consider blaming the company rather than the individual writers. They're paid terribly and don't deserve all the hate they get.
Thanks for letting us know. I suspected something like that, and have been trying to avoid such articles lately for that reason (with varying success 😅) which is probably the best thing that we can do, no matter how wrong or upsetting such articles might be. Your comment should get pinned.
If anyone is amazed or surprised that companies like cbr underpay freelancers to produce poorly researched clickbait then the above comment may be helpful
I suspect however that the intersection of the venn diagram where people are smart enough to survive into reading age, and dumb enough not to already know the above is extremely narrow.
I don't know that "underpay" is the word. That would ascribe too great a value to poorly researched clickbait articles.
You also can't argue that the writer deserves more for their time and effort. I can put out a lot of time and effort trying to push over a brick wall. Is anyone obliged to pay me for that?
It's crappy that companies like CBR profit off exploiting writers like this, but they wouldn't be able to without a glut of under -qualified journalists in the market.
Honestly nr. 6 is probably the one that annoyed me the most. Taking a look at the fellowship you have a ranger raised among the elves of Rivendell, a wizard (and maiar), a captain of Gondor, an elf prince (of the sindar elves), a dwarf of Erebor and 4 hobbits. Sam is from a working class family whereas Frodo, Merry and Pippin are from rich families. So out of the fellowship you have four people from the land and culture with three of them from the same background and all of those are relatives. The rest are different lands and cultures.
On a larger scale we can look at three groups of men that we interact with Breelander, the people of Rohan and the people of Gondor. Those are all different peoples, cultures and histories.
But according to modern "Diversity" non of this matters, because apparently it is only your skin colour who defines you
I have to giggle when the idea of rascism is strictly defined as a skin color thing, I'm Scotch-Irish. It's fascinating to me that even in 2022 with so much of human history and knowledge at our fingertips that we haven't uniformly acknowledged, we're all in this together. We all live in this tiny shell of an atmosphere around a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
@@Captaintrippz It's because most people would rather make enemies and have something arbitrary to fight, than be part of true progress and snuff out inequality. It's easier for a PoC to gripe at the USA for having an unfair advantage and be racist against white people (many of whom are immigrants or 1st-2nd generation themselves without any ties to Jim Crow or slavery), than to admit that we've had legal equality since the 70s and take responsibility for their social status. Plenty of PoC are among the richest and most privileged, we had a black president, we have PoC professors and scholars and athletes and musicians... yet the term is blaxploitation and lacks any counterpart for any time we rag on a Scot for their kilt and haggis or a Chinese for their studying and efficiency or "walk like an Egyptian". It's messed up and choosing to be a victim imho.
Diversity only includes skin colors, sexuality and genders, not cultures, histories, and entirely different species.
@@SebasTian58323 that's sarcasm, right?
The thing I noticed is that they’re basically of different species. Yes I do know that elves in men are very close to the point where it’s kind of just a spiritual difference. And I know hobbits are a diminutive branch of men. Dwarves are the most different from all of them. And if you include the wizard then they have an angel with them too. So the fellowship contains four completely different kinds of being.
Also, one doesn't have to implicitly agree that "modern audiences" and "modern works" are a reference. Trends change with time as narrative styles. I think that when reading a story, it is also important to know the context in which it was born. But independently of that, what makes a story good is typically more related to how it resounds with the human nature, and that's ageless.
Currently the post modernist belief is that human nature is infinitely malleable in a very short space of time. Wrong, but they believe it.
The modern audience is a myth. I honestly have no idea why the entertainment industry has moved away from themes that play on human nature to themes based on their asinine modern philosophies. No is looking for that in a story. People just like what’s good.
@@hurinthalion5984 They're bolschevic parasites serving the New World Order.
@@hurinthalion5984 because Hollywood is a propaganda machine
The "modern audience" is the equivalent of the "New Soviet Man" -- a fiction that defines what the radicals want, rather than the reality. The "New Soviet Man" was supposed to develop from people being forced to live according to the socialist ideals -- in accordance with Lysenkoism and eugenics.
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Today they want to force people into only accepting their idea of "diverse" -- which has more to do with their industry and neighborhoods than reality -- by only showing them "diverse" and endlessly declaring it to be good.
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If they wanted real diversity, they'd leave LOTR to be northern European myth-based and look to films based on legends from Africa, Asian, the Middle East and the Americas.
Another thing about the West vs East thing, the men of the East were never portrayed as inherently evil or somehow different from the men of the West. Sam's speech tells us this. They just happened to fall under the yoke of Sauron. Tolkien even had the Blue Wizards sent to the East to try and liberate them, with how successful their mission was changing over the years.
What irritates me most about the West vs East point is how it is assigning intention with no evidence of it. And that is both incredibly irritating and harmful (both sides do this). I mean they even mention right afterward that there is indication that Tolkien was against racism. So how do you say that then imply that merely using the same "sides" is a bad thing?
And using something like that as a point of "aging poorly" is not a good thing. Because lists of aged poorly inherently connect bad aging as being a negative thing, not just like o the book is boring for modern audiences but there are bad things in there. So it is in a way endorsing a mindset of an almost fearful way of approaching anything that can even be loosely connected to problematic mindsets. It reminds me of how some hardcore Christians are so afraid of any connection to evil that they won't even dial a phone number that has 666 in it.
And the Akallabêth makes their animosity towards the Dúnedain very understandable.
I have found that people who write critiques like "this hasn't aged well.." often have an ideological axe to grind. Philip Pullman, author of the Golden Compass and lots of other stories, has been quoted as saying that the Narnia Books were bad writing, apparently because of their Christian orientation. However, this of course doesn't make them badly written, only written with a premise on which he doesn't happen to agree. Perhaps a look at the CBR gentleman's previous work would show a similar bias.
Tolkien didn't like Dune, eh? I'm finally reading it for the first time and having a hard time getting through to the end. Not that there aren't some things I like about it.
@@DrCorndog1 I read Dune. It seems Tolkien had good taste
In the german speaking countries there is the childrens game "Wer hat Angst vorm schwerzen Mann" - "Who feares the black man", and this has nothing to do with racism, but with the german-mythological figure of the "Schwarzen Mann" = pesonification of death, who is imagined as beeing A) clothed in a black mantle (=Sensenmann) or B) a black shadowy figure. As you said, Butterbur referring to the Black Riders as black men is perfectly in line with describing their appearance. If knewing about this game, this writer would break out into a lamment about how racial-othering, fear etc. etc. is cemented into the youth.
Darth Vader is also depicted as a dark figure in complete dark appearance with a long black cape. And this is not considered as a racial insult.
In Italy, too!
Yeah it’s realy more the mysterious «man in black» plot device at play.
This game exists in Finland as well. I think schools have renamed it since my childhood.
The song “Angst” from German band Rammstein actually references this game. The line “Who fears the black man?” is a part of the lyrics.
Regarding Orcs evil nature, I always thought them being evil is a result of the entire race being essentially created by Morgoth, presumably from Elves. If you look at it in this light, good Orcs are... Elves.
That is not fair! Other races should have a chance to become Orcs too! }:)
This is basically what the Nation of Islam teaches about the origin of the white race, but apparently that's just fine.
@@reddleman2 well apparently Tolkien considered making orcs corrupted men at some point.
@@squaeman_2644 But now they are corrupted Elves. Morgoth was incapable of creating a new race like Iluvatar (though Aulë created the Dwarves, which is quite interesting). He kidnapped Elves and mutilated them turning them into Orcs, or so the Silmarillion says.
@@reddleman2 You've got that backwards. First he had them be corrupted elves, but because of the question of immortality he changed them to corrupted dwarves.
LOTR is a very diverse writing, the races are based on what type of being they are.
Only modern racist look at skin color as a liability.
yeah, skin color =/= RACE!!! This is the big lie of modern representation BS. Your skin color does not determine your self-identity any more than the color of your eyes or hair. This modern crap is ignoring why anyone cares about having races at all.
I immediate tune out when people start taking about their skin color. It doesn't matter to me, and I don't want to think about them in terms of their skin color.
9:30 Even if one would argue that Barliman IS actually being racist, so what? One of my pet peeves in modern writing, or rather in its critique, is that if a writer invents a racist/homophobic/otherwise terrible character that somehow makes the writer exactly like that character. No, that's not how it works! People no longer even understand this simple fact. Believe it or not, good writers can actually create characters that are different from themselves.
In defense of Peter Jackson, the way he portrays Treebeard I was initially left with the impression that he had been asleep. Maybe asleep for years before they woke him up. That would explain why he doesn't know about Saruman's betrayal and is caught off guard by it. And this is further backed up by the portrayal of the other ents waking up and shaking themselves awake before taking action.
That's just how I understood it in a vacuum though.
They also take a longer view of things. A slower view. They probably checked on Saruman 50 years ago and saw that everything was tip top and weren't worried about significant change for another hundred years at least
I mean yeah, that's kinda how I understood it in context of the films is the Ents live so long for them a short nap could be like 5 years so logically it would make sense Treebeard knows Saruman was industrializing at Isengard but didn't know how far along Saruman was in terms of it.
In the movies at least Saruman was only building up his army for maybe 6 months rather than the books where he'd been doing it slowly for a couple decades.
@@Will_Parkerbook Sauroman was building up at least right after the Hobbit
@bleack8701 I see your point, but Treebeard mistakes Merry and Pippin for Orcs, and he hates Orcs for chopping down trees in the forest, and he then takes the Hobbits to Gandalf to see if they're okay. Here's two big issues:
1. If Treebeard knows about Orcs chopping down trees in the Fangorn forest, can't he check on Isengard to make sure it isn't Saruman? What other place near the Fangorn forest would have a lot of Orcs?
2. Why didn't Gandalf tell Treebeard about Saruman chopping down trees? Surely Treebeard would trust Gandalf more than random Hobbits. It makes Saruman's insult "Gandalf the Fool" seems more accurate rather than a moustache twirler line.
Boromir’s relationship with his brother and father is greatly detailed in the books, his leadership and battlefield commanding skills also detailed. Also his flaws. And his death is an epic Catholic death. He received grace and was at peace in death as seen by his dead body looking to be at peace more so than in life. It was incredible.
The ending with the vision of Boromir's body in the boat, was reminiscent in my mind, of Arthur's body being ferried to Avalon.
@@Weaseldog2001 yes. That also.
@@Weaseldog2001 Oh, and also of the introduction to Beowulf, where Scyld Scefing's body is put in a boat and set to sail in the ocean.
Not really a Catholic death...
@@powerofberzerker9487 No it wasn't. But if he gave Boromir a Catholic Death, it would be an allegory. And Tolkien hated allegories.
The whole "There are few woman in Tolkien" argument always forgets quality vs. quantity.
Eowyn voices thoughts we all had at one point or another, Galadriel is insanely awesome and honestly, if I were to be in Middle Earth I'd wish to be like Arwen rather than any of the guys. xD I'll gladly take a couple of thoughtfully written female characters over a sea of flat, 2-dimentional characters of certain modern productions. =.=
Also obviously the autor of the article has never heard about Luthien. :)
I also respect the idea Tolkien had about not wanting to write bad female characters and so kept them to a few good ones. He simply grew up without having close female friends because of the times. He knew his mother and wife well, and that’s about it. As a result Tolkein is one of the few male authors who escapes the «men writing women» tropes.
Tbh I forgot who Arwen is.
@@MissCaraMint Can the same be said with women who have trouble writing Male characters because they met few men in their lives other their fathers and husbands? There is a double standard at play whenever a journalist complains about lack of female characters and that is they never complain about the lack of male charecters when a story is about a woman or a few women having the spotlight.
@@1685Violin I 100% agree. I'm a woman, and I tend to populate my books mostly with women - they're just what leaps to mind unless I'm making a love interest or father! I have nothing against men, I don't even feel I write them shallowly, but being as I AM a woman that's what my mind considers the 'default human'. There's nothing sexist about it, and I don't feel that it's sexist in reverse, either.
I also found it funny that the author said the female characters are portrayed in terms of their relationship with the men when the three main female characters aren't at all like that. If you see Arwen and Eowyn and think the only thing about them is their relationship towards Aragon you are being purposefully daft, that is one aspect of their characters.
I'm always a bit annoyed when people say that Tolkien's works aren't racially diverse enough. I mean, what are elves, humans, hobbits, dwarves, goblins and orks then? Not races? I mean, characters even face certain racism and are often being judged solely by their race. The only point here is that characters aren't explicitly black or asian but like... read the description of elves - they sound pretty asian, when you think about it, the only thing is that Tolkien never really says "they're asian", because THERE IS NO F*KING ASIA IN MIDDLE EARTH. It would be crazy if a magical medieval world with its own long history had literally the same races as the Earth.
I'm really tired at this point of the people who only want to judge a story solely by whether it contains moden agenda with a check list of minorities being mentioned.
Anyways, thanks for your video. I've just discovered your channel, and It's awesome.
I once worked for the US census which asks people to list their race. I can only write in one answer to that one and I inform others that they can do likewise.
My Race: Human
"There is no such thing as race, and hardly such a thing as ethnicity." - P.J. O'Rourke
@@treebeardtheent2200 Brilliant! 😂💛
Also, elves and humans started in the east around Lake Something-Or-Other.
Pretty sure Tolkein aluded to other parts of middle earth that we have never been written about which may contain people’s of different ethnicities and skin colors. It’s pretty much free realestate for spin offs and fanfiction writing.
@@raylangivens7151 It all comes from America, where they can't understand the very intricate tribal history of Europe, and have no substantial connection to our ancient lands and unique histories and cultures. It's simply something that Americans can never truly understand or connect with.
I just love, how the author mentions Sanderson as an example for fast paced intros to the story. I mean, did he even read anything other than mistborn!? Stormlight Archive is so slow, full of lore and takes little steps in the story; I love the books for that, but using Sanderson in particular to criticise Tolkien is mental
It’s so ironic. So many people complain about the pace of the entire first SA book it’s absurd. Personally I love slow builds so it was just my cup of tea, but I would be the first to admit that it is slow and exposition heavy.
Robert Jordan, too, in the Wheel of Time, often has long, world-expanding scenes and characters who come in and then disappear. And Quaithe in Game of Thrones- the veiled woman who briefly meets Jorah Mormot -- as I recall seems only there to utter a few prophecies. But these plot devices give us a sense of the breadth and depth of these fantasy worlds, just as the Tolkien Geek states about Tom Bombadil -- he is the ancient Green Man, the power of the Primeval forest. He helps the hobbits learn just how wide and dangerous the world is. And one of my favorite chapters of the Lord of the Rings is "The Shadow of the Past", which is mostly exposition, but done so deftly and with such power that it doesn't feel slow at all.
@@melaniephillips4238 Shadow of the past and Council of Elrond are my favourite chapters for exactly the same reasons you mentioned. But, probably we are simply not considered "modern" enough =D
The Faded Sun trilogy ( on book 2 right now) is not a barn burner, instead presenting a methodical, interesting universe, set against the backdrop of societal upheaval in the wake of a Galactic war. There are few scenes of combat, and the few that are are poignant, powerfully inspiring, and add to the tragedy that is unfolding. I imagine that the series would be too slow for "modern audiences".
The fact is that good literature isn't "made for modern audiences" good art demands that the consumer rise to the challenge and engage with the piece on its level allowing for self reflection and introspection.
Well, even Mistborn is relatively chill for 25 % of the story.
12:30 It's Merry who procures the ponies and makes the ruse of Frodo staying in Buckland work. He's also the one who guides the other hobbits through the Old Forrest. Merry is a man of substance in the Shire
The Brandybucks (and Tooks) are the closest Hobbits have to nobility.
@@schwarzerritter5724 could the baggins be seen that way too?
I get the feeling their more upper-middle class. Bilbo was well-off before Smaug, but was definitely "new money" afterwards.
@@rcrawford42 ahh I see now! Thanks for the response.
Yeah the Baggins family is more like an old and respected family, not of the "nobility", but they have old family ties to the Brandybucks and Tooks.
“The google-Facebook duopoly devoured all our add revenue so we’re going to drive up hate clicks by hiring a freelance writer to say the thing you like sucks.”
Your comment about "reading at a very surface level" hits the nail on the head. These points--and pretty much every other list like these--"critique" LOTR as an action/adventure story. They read the surface, but miss the depth. Tolkien, on the other hand, was writing for depth. He was writing for the people who dig. Sure, a character may appear shallow--but once you read the legend that his name came from you see that it's really very cleaver foreshadowing or a reference to something.
The 'Invincible main characters" also demonstrates that the authors didn't understand the Bombadil sequence. The hobbits are nearly killed twice in two days--once with Old Man Willow and once with the Barrow-Downs. Gimli is wounded at Helm's Deep, Samwise is wounded in Moria (Aragorn discusses how he's lucky the knife wasn't poisoned), Merry nearly loses his arm, Pippen gets squashed by a troll....Aragorn and Legolas come out unwounded, but NONE of the others do.
The accusation of a lack of diversity is also hilariously misguided. The Fellowship is intentionally diverse, including all races of Tolkien's world--Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits (a type of Man, but different enough to warrant being pulled out). They didn't include people of different skin color because they didn't think about race in that way. That's both historically accurate and consistent with the world building. In a world where Orcs and Elves and Dwarves and Ents and Wizards and Maia and Valar exist the idea that some human is going to look down upon another because of skin color is nonsensical. And the books show that diversity is strength--both openly stating it in the Council of Elrond and the Last Debate (discussing how division is the Enemy's greatest strength), and by showing that the Fellowship succeeded because of the inclusion of different peoples. You could honestly read the book as a case-study in the benefits of diversity in organizations. To accuse Tolkien's works of a lack of diversity shows a VERY shallow understanding of the concept on the part of the accuser.
Kind of the same as in JKR's Harry Potter serie:
skin color is not an issue, neither is being gay or straight. the issue is belonging to the Pure Bloods or not.
An author chooses a topic on which the character distinguish themselves from each other and asign hierarchy and all else is not an issue.
In Tolkiens world it is the closeness to the Elven heritage and among Elves the closeness to the Valar.
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because-what with trolls and dwarfs and so on-speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
- Terry Pratchett, _Witches Abroad_
it seems the writer's only idea of diversity is based on skin color. Specifically non-white. Which tracks with the standard leftist mindset. It does not surprised me that he(?) wouldn't see a group of different species as diverse just because they're all white skinned. (change them all to black skinned and it would suddenly be the most diverse thing in the world. And people who truly believe that obviously don't know the meaning of the word.)
@@davidh.4944 Yet another example of why Sir Terry should be required reading in school.
Meriadoc, stabbing the *witch king*: "am i a joke to you?"
GRR Martin says he got the idea of killing off major characters halfway through the story from Tolkien! And in The Silmarillion, that's nearly every chapter!
Tolkien killed off MORGOTH!!!
@@rcrawford42 Morgoth? 'E's not dead. 'E's restin'.
@@brucetucker4847 Pinin' for the fjords. Lovely plumage.
"DiVeRsItY!!!!!" is a distraction from how people are being taught to LACK empathy by focusing on seeing "themselves" on the screen, instead of looking for character traits, good examples, and bad examples for what they share with characters and how to act.
FFS, I can identify with all six of the main cast of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because they're dynamic characters with multiple facets and I haven't been taught to focus on them being a mirror image of me.
I have a nephew who really got into Lord of The Rings when I showed him the Last Alliance from the first movie. massive armies clashing, epic music, and Sauron killing hundreds by himself with a single swing of his mace. he loved it. then I showed him Bilbo and Smaug in the Treasure Hall. he loved that too.
Tolken's works are timeless. they were way ahead of their time and inspired so much of what we have today. if they can't satisfy modern audiences, then there is nothing they enjoy.
5:00 what, did he expect Butterbur, the innkeeper of the Prancing Pony, to follow Frodo around for the rest of the story? Or that all of Middle Earth should have been completely empty except for the characters who were around for a long time?
The West/East conflict also doesn't work because Tolkien was writing after WW1. The Eastern villains in Tolkeins life were Germans and Austrians, who are also white!
Eh it’s more based on the medieval conflict Islam’s vs Christianity. And that’s neat
Middle-earth is supposed to be a fictional mythological past version of Europe so naturally it's situated in the west where invaders can only come from the south and east which was also the case in actual history.
@@aguilarraliuga1777 It can just as much be based on Greeks vs Persians, or Central Europeans vs Steppe Nomads.
One of the key aspects noticed and loved about the way Tolkien wrote his stories is that it all takes place in a LIVING and BREATHING world. What the article author and other people like them always expect in stories is that it all revolves around the reader, like the world and all its characters only start existing and moving the moment they start reading the story.
But when you start reading a Tolkien story, you're actually just walking into a world that's already been existing outside of your awareness. All the little stories are just snippets of a bigger world, and all the "random" stuff you encounter in those stories are just organic events that happen on their own (which is actually closer to reality), and as the reader you'd only be lucky enough to "experience" the most historically significant ones as they happen.
As he said in the video, it's because of those random little events and encounters that there's more flavor to the world and it gets you to start asking more questions about Tolkien's world as a whole...creating this grand perspective that makes you realize that this world spans way further than the very pages it's written on.
Yes. Just like in real history you can just pick practically any random character and with a little reserch trace back their entire faily history. That’s how rich it is.
I still wonder where the Entwives went. That was one of the questions that stuck in my mind after reading the books the first time at the age of twelve. Just one of the side storys capturing my imagination.
I'd say Glorfindel and other such characters who show up and leave are examples of the simple fact that the world is a big place and there are a lot of people in it, not all of whom you get to read a full dossier on. It's realistic, albeit a writing style not all want.
There's a similar article from Screenrant with references to the movies and the Amazon series. One of the worst critiques in there is that Galadriel seems more human in ROP because she can't identify anything wrong with Halbrand and that this makes her more human. In other words, it destroyed her character (but the writers at SR seem to find this a good thing). Galadriel isn't supposed to be human, in the Second Age, she's one of the most powerful elves in Middle-Earth, a ruler in various places throughout the Age and a powerful magic-wielder who warned Celebrimbor that something was off with Annatar.
After watching many of your videos and reading wikis, I'm finally reading Lord of the Rings! I was a movie fan before and read The Hobbit when I was younger. You also inspired me to get the Silmarillion for Christmas, love your videos!
You can tell LoTR is out of date cuz no one reads it these days, you'll not see a shelf full of the range of Tolkien's work in a bookshop (there are probably audiences who think a bookshop is out of date, but I assume not this one) , no new books based on Tolkien's work people get excited about and there is no way anyone would use it as a basis, however loosely, for a crazy expensive, platform defining series.
...or write articles about it... 😊
Waiting for someone to fail to see this is sarcasm and start shouting at you...
"10 ways audiences have aged poorly."
Aragorn is around 87 by the time of Lord of the Rings. Whatever character development happened earlier in his life. During the war of the ring, his purpose is clear.
And yet he still struggles with whether he is worthy to take the throne.
@@rcrawford42 I didn't get that from the book, only the fact that the tasks placed before him are all immense to the point of being practically impossible.
When I think about the journey through Moria, I marvel at how Aragorn feared for Gandalf, not for himself, just as an example.
I do think the movies did a great shameful thing as it's their way to always portray characters as weak, seriously flawed and then suddenly heroic. Real life and really great writing like Tolkein's is not so. Great men can blunder, but the weak at heart don't become heroes. I hate that kind of narrative which has infected modern fiction and even modern "true life" accounts. It's dismissive of the need to be consistently honorable without fail as I think Aaragorn was.
@@rcrawford42 In the movies yes. In the books he would have had a lot of time to come to terms with that already since there is a 17 year time skip. I can’t remember exactly how long Aragorn and the Rangers patrol and keep The Shire safe, but it’s probably at least a few years. He would have had the time to do all of that growing then if he hadn’t allready.
@@treebeardtheent2200 But Jackson didn’t do that. He showed their vulnralibilty, but that doesn’t make them weak. You have genuenly weak characters like Wormtoung who’s characters just couldnt withstand corruption, or Gollum. But then you have characters who are genuenly strong all the time, but feel guilt, doubt, or temptation. It’s not about weak characters becomming unrealistically corrageous. It’s about the fact that even the brave and strong sometimes feeling small and afraid. Aragorn’s protrayal in the movies is all about his fear of failing to be that honorable person he feels he needs to be. And ultimately he doesnt feil he suceeds. The diference is that book Aragorn has a lot more time to deal with all this stuff, what with the time skip, and everything. Movie Aragorn has to deal with the news of the Ring being found and having to be the person to fulfil that prophecy about becoming King in a very short period of time.
@@MissCaraMint Aragon had been preparing for this his whole life (87 years), much of which was spent living in Rivendell under the tutelage of Elrond and the rest as the leader of the Dunedin patrolling Middle Earth. He was aware of the prophecies surrounding him and that he would be king and he had no doubt or qualms about becoming king if they won the war. Although I love the LOTR movies, Jackson did a disservice to Aragon when he had him doubt his destiny and to Frodo when he had him believe Gollum instead of Sam and he sent Sam away. Frodo never doubted Sam in the books. Jackson took something away from the true natures of these characters.
When I read the LotR, the Soviet Union was still a thing. In thee days, “The East” was synonymous with the Communist Danger, the Red Tide or whatever. I naturally read the story as a Cold War allegory. Only much later, I learnt that Tolkien’s East/West dichotomy is in fact even older than the Soviet Revolution.
We all tend to read the prejudices or the season into literature.
Also, in Tolkien´s times the Huns (Germans) were also coming from the East (if Albion was the West).
@Morrigan Mhor Tolkien likes the German people though. Just no fan of their governments. He spoke German and that translation was the one he was most involved in (also because he did not like the previous translations) and used this one to write a general translation guide.
He used a lot of Old-Saxon and Old-Franconian ( such as in Hobbit first names).
@@napoleonfeanor And what is the connection with my comment?
The East vs West dichotomy has existed since ancient Greece and the Greco-Persian Wars. This also would have been cemented in the mind of "westerners" over the millennia, as movements of people have tended to migrate westwards. Think the Germanic tribes and Huns coming from the east and invading the west. Or the Mongol hordes ravaging eastern and central Europe.
In the worldview of a (pre-modern) westerner, the world opens up to the east, and naturally the origin of most invasive forces.
@@morriganmhor5078 It is that Germany wasn't seen as the East by Tolkien specifically but also not by Britain in general. The conflict of the two states was never framed that way.
I didn't even read The Silmarillion until after I had read Unfinished Tales. I also managed to read a copy of The Hobbit where Gollum had walked Frodo to the exit. When I got to LOTR, I was so confused. The same confusion happened with The Sil. Despite that, I loved the stories and wanted more, more, more. I was a young girl. I didn't care about representation. I don't need representation to be able to place myself in a story. I don't need womankings in anything I read or watch. What I want is a woman who belongs in the story, not a story that was surgically altered to include a woman. What I want is a woman who is redoubtable, yet never loses her identity as a woman. Those women exist in literature. Those women exist in real life. Why can't we honor them instead of watering down their values and contributions by forcing "strong women" who are dictatorial into our stories?
" I also managed to read a copy of The Hobbit where Gollum had walked Frodo to the exit". Wow, how cool. I imagine that would be a very rare book these days.
By simply filling masculine social tropes with female character types who embody those very tropes it might not be so much an election of the feminine we are seeing as much as a blind attachment to the masculine qualities as the ones the actually matter.
The movies giving a bigger part to Arwen wasn't necessarily bad, but could have been done better. Why did she carry a sword? One of her ancestors stood before Morgoth with no weapon at all, and prevailed.
@@gmansard641 Ah yes, Luthien, the elf-maia maiden who sang Morgoth to sleep. A songstress for a lack of better term.
@@gmansard641 That ancestor was half Maia, Arwen was almost all Elf. Her brothers certainly used weapons.
Eowyn is one of the most fleshed out characters in the books, her motivations and her arc are on display and she gets most of a chapter dedicated to exploring her mind.
This was brilliant..my favourite part was 'they are literally invisible!' 🤣 I am glad you mentioned the Fairy Tale element- the hobbits and later the fellowship enter several places of safety and/or enchanted realms or underworlds along the way. Also totally agree that it's the feeling of mystery and depth of history and legend that makes Middle Earth feel so real - we discover it alongside the hobbits.
I’m a little surprised he didn’t bring up that they’re probably white before they were invisible and I don’t remember if their true firms are ever described so they could still be white men in the wraith world visually it’s just such a non issue
@@solalabell9674 I did read that one of the Nazgul may have been an Easterling or Southron but I am not sure that was ever confirmed
11:35, the entire point of the book was that no one is immune to temptation. That’s called good writing. It’s not something fair to complain about
For me, the ONLY thing this article succeeds at, is highlighting everything I HATE about today's world!
I've seen all the films, from the animated features from the last century, to the cherished live action from Jackson. I recently decided to read the series and I'm starting with the Silmarillion as I wanted to read in chronological order and I'm loving it. I do love, however, the fact that it seems that article's writer doesn't understand what "minor" or "secondary" characters are.
Yes, I've heard nobody complain that there weren't enough women in Saving Private Ryan.
Another great example!
I'm sure there have been complaints...
Point two is especially bad since FRODO, the Arguable Main Character, is so tragically wounded by the WItch king, Shelob and carrying the ring, that life among Hobbits becomes unbearable so he has to leave and go to another plane of existence to be comforted from his wounds and he has to abandon his friends forever to do so.
Something you missed when talking about the evil race point: there was a line about rebel uruk-hai that Frodo and Sam overheard in Mordor, indicating that there were already some who refused to follow the shadow even before the ring was destroyed.
They were refusing the shadow because they wanted to be evil for themselves, not on someone else's behalf. It wasn't like they were planning to settle down and grow rutabagas.
@@Veylon True, but at the very least they weren't completely in lockstep.
@@Avigorus Yes. One of the things that Tolkien - and C.S. Lewis, for that matter - does very well is show that the villains of the story do so for their own sakes. They don't serve some grand cause of villainy in general.
"10 ways Lord of the Rings has aged poorly."
Tell me you've never read Tolkien, without telling me you've never read Tolkien.
"Spook" seems to be a related word to the German word "Spuk" (pronounced spook btw.) which means a ghostly presence, a haunting. Hm, I wonder if Tolkien used the word 80 years ago in this meaning or in a way some people use it today? Just watch the Simpsons episode in which the meaning of the word "gay" is so masterfully presented.... Language changes but if you read literature from a certain age, you need to understand the time and place it was written.
Tolkien uses "gay", "faggot", and "queer" in FotR in their traditional meanings.
I mean Spook still means ghostly presence today. It’s just acumulated a few other uses today as well. Like a spook can also be another name for a spy. You know a mysterious invisible presence.
To be fair, an innocuous word becoming a slur could indeed be a way something could be said to have "aged poorly" (I mean I can't read Conan the Barbarian, with its liberal use of the term "flaming faggot" to mean torch with a straight face. Always causes me to chuckle and somewhat undermines an action scene.)
However "spook" as a racial slur is just so obscure of a term I don't think that particular example could be an example of poor aging due to a linguistic shift. I've honestly heard more people use spook as slang for FBI or CIA agents than I've seen it used in a racial context.
I like to giggle a lot at the repeated use of 'queer' in LOTR, especially early on, but *I know* in what sense it's actually meant. If someone were to seriously suggest it was meant (or that people will read it as) as a slur instead of a clear case of linguistic drift, I'd have to look at them sideways
@@rickpgriffin I think that reading LotR in English was the first time I encountered the word queer at all xD I later connected it in my head with its LGBT meaning, but this was my first impression and it never quite went away. It's kinda funny
I love the Tom Bombadil chapter. I like what you said about it. The chapter reminds me a bit of the style of White's Sword in the Stone where chapters are certainly linked, but also can stand on their own.
How can you not read the prologue? Who the hobbits are and what they represent is one of the most important parts of the story!
Watching the progression from indifferent skepticism to outraged incredulity is very healing 😅
I especially appreciated the point that if you wanted to make this argument, there were several better lines to pursue.
Half these points are debunked by the LOTR movies, which adapt the books pretty well and are universally loved! Other than the introduction by Galadrial, the first 30 minutes of Fellowship is just them planning a party, where the main problem is Merry and Pippin stealing a firework. The movies had a slow start too!
The Fellowship movie intro is much faster paced, it succeeds because it cut out and restructured content from the book. The pacing of the Nazgul chase, missing Gandalf, and arrival at Rivendell flows far better than the book with its willow, Barrow Wights and Bombadil detours.
@@gamingwhatwecan It sucseeds because Jackson understood that movies and books require different approaces. First and foremost because a movie is a much sorter time to tell a story in. If you push aside that you can see that for a movie Fellowship has an incredibly slow start compared to conteporary movies. Hell it starts with a heavy voice over exposition dump. One of the biggest movie no no’s ever. And yet it works because of the material Jackson is working with. Then all we get for 30 min is just the party and Bilbo’s goodbye. It’s incredibly slow paced, and exposition heavy for a movie. And yet it grabs you. You understand that there is a rich and wonderful world that is yet to be explored because that is what quality writing is.
Way back in high-school I had one of those nights where I could not get to sleep. So I went searching threw my older sisters books. I found a book called The Hobbit. Read the first chapter. Okay, but still could not sleep. Read the second chapter. Getting better. Still could not sleep.
Big mistake next. I read the 3rd chapter. Read the entire book.
About a month later I was visiting a friend. Her brother had given her a 3 pack of books written by the exact same person. Lord of The Rings.
The Silmarillian came many years later along with a book of maps of Middle Earth.
Old lady now and still amongst my favorite books.
27:03 - "You gotta pick a direction man!" Hilarious. Really well done sir. I was expecting a knee-jerk defense but everything you said was well-considered. I consider myself to be fairly "politically correct" - "woke" if you will whether you think that's good or bad. But most of the criticisms in the article were ridiculous, and nowhere does the author recognize that a large number of people who (presumably) aren't white nationalists read the story (repeatedly in many cases, including mine) for the simple reason that it engages and moves them profoundly..
A CBR writer saying something objectively stupid?
Well, imagine my shock.
I agree 100% with your point about readers of LOTR are likely to have come to it without having read the Silmarillion. But it did make me laugh as I did read the Silmarillion first. This wasn’t me trying to be “clever” but was because LOTR was always booked out at our school library so I could never get hold of it to read 😁
Haha. Likewise, I actually read the Silmarillion first when I was 11 (the translated version in my mother tongue). Its book cover was so cool that I just had to buy it (John Howe's Ulmo painting), and the year after I bought the Unfinished Tales, LOTR and Hobbit - Just in time before the films were released.
I read The Two Towers first because it was the only one available in the library, everything I knew about The Fellowship of the Ring came from the page-and-a-half synopsis.
Some of us old fogeys read LotR before the Silmarillion was published, or at least before it was out in paperback in the US.
In addition to what you say at the beginning, I think that up to Bree there is a "transition" from a sequel of the Hobbit, i.e. a bunch of harmless hobbits getting into adventures a bit too big for them, to the actual LotR main plot and mood. I don't think critizing that slow start is completely absurd but I find this transition convincing and surprising and overall well executed.
I agree. The hobbits don’t know how things will escalate and the slow start puts the reader into their shoes, things dawn on us just as slowly and I like that.
As soon as the four Hobbits there will be no second breakfast for a very long time they know the Shire is left behind them and they have to ready themselves for the "real" world.
The tone of the telling changes from "Shire-style" to a darker tone and were the dialogue was still very every day talk it becomes more and more official as if the ones having a dialogue constant realise the is an audience present to hear them talk.
The first part of FotR is a kind of preview of later themes or episodes in the story. A few examples: the Old Forest--Fangorn; caught underground in a barrow inhabited by a dangerous being--Moria; the Prancing Pony, a temporary haven--Rivendell; the marshes after Bree---the Dead Marshes. The hobbits are, if not eased into their dangerous quest, at least given opportunities to grow up and learn to cope with danger, enemies, hardships.
@@elainechubb971 I never saw it as this kind of development in stages, but I think you are right.
It is inherent to good writing to have the protagonist gradually grow into his of her quest.
As David Eddings put it when you want to write a story about a world saver you start with prince Dumb and take your time to have him grow up.
Somewhere, Tolkien refers to the description of the excellent man/hobbit relationships in Bree as 'Bilbo's' observation. Until that appeared late in the History of Middle-earth, I had not realized that Tolkien conceived Book I as Bilbo's work, even well after LotR was published. It accounts for things like the fox's opinion of the sleeping Hobbits.
Great Points! Love that you Debunked that Article! Nice job! :D
Anything Tolkien is ageless and-by that standard-ages "poorly."
Lord of the Rigns is a timeless masterpeice, I bet in hundreds of years people will still be talking about Middle-Earth.
And internet archeologists will be laughing at the trash that was cbr.
@@guillermoelnino Lord of the Rings is going to outlast all those articles who critisize it
People have become duller, dimmer and narrower in their mind for the last few generations. So in that case, LOTR aging poorly for the current day is a good thing. But still it did not age poorly, because it's too legendary of a story.
Alot of these diversity arguments try to argue that every story be diverse rather than encouraging people to read a diversity of stories.
Diversity for sure. The representation arguments are different though. If the author chooses to represent specific types of people, criticism of said representation is valid.
Tolkien's stories are based on myths where the female characters usually were just objects in the background, and unsurprisingly, women in LOTR mostly just exist to be love interests/get married to the main characters.
Rosie and Arwen, Eowyn for most of her story. And that's at least 75% of the female characters that are even in the story lol
Does this ruin LOTR? Not at all, but it is a valid criticism that his female characters are shallow, and have little agency or large role in the story. He could have included them more, or just cut them from the story, but the representation he gave them was mediocre for the most part.
Eowyn is given the most agency, but her entire character is either pining for Aragorn, protecting her uncle, or pining for Faramir. Outside of those 3 things, does she do much else in the story?
@@GeneralTaco155555a i think the biggest thing to keep in mind with the lord of the rings is that apart from what we see with the fellowship there is a heck of alot more moving in the back ground of the story that is scarcity covered because it is not what the story is about nor is it the story of the secondary characters so they are not focused on. The story is about from taking the ring to mount doom with the escort of 8 others on voluntary basis while navigating a war. Following the split it also becomes the story of why aragon is a deserving king worth of the thrones of Gondor and Arnor and how he draws the focus of murder to himself. That is the story line that matters and all other mentions of other stories are in support of that story.
@@seanrea550 like I said, it doesn't ruin the story at all, and it's even entirely fair to not have female characters at all since it's ultimately the story of Frodo destroying the ring. It's just that Tolkien's female characters are kinda shallow and it's awkward when the book is essentially like: "oh, Sam got married to this character we've never heard of" "oh, Aragorn has actually been engaged to Arwen this whole time and then she shows up only at the very end to get married to him"
"Oh, this Eowyn character seems interesting and badass, but her entire motivations are related to men she admires, and then she becomes completely irrelevant after falling in love with Faramir"
I think Peter Jackson giving them a bit more screen time was a good choice. We just needed one or 2 more scenes of each of them.
With Rosie, we see Sam had a crush on her, but never had the courage to ask her out before the journey.
Arwen was established as badass elven princess doing her own thing, saving Frodo, and we see the romance between her and Aragorn way earlier.
Eowyn is less man obsessed, and more just wanting to prove herself as a warrior vs in the books implying she fights because she's somewhat sui__cidal after Aragorn rejects her.
Alternatively, the story loses nothing if it just says something like "Sam gets married and has kids" or even just "Sam lived happily in the Shire" without ever mentioning Rosie or marriage. Or, Eowyn doesn't exist at all and Merry kills the Witch King as Theoden falls fighting by his side.
Or Arwen is more of an arranged marriage as one last gesture of good will between the elves and men before they pass into the Undying Lands, and isn't really mentioned before that.
These are all just examples, but it goes to show how weak Tolkien's female characters are when they could be entirely improved/removed by tweaking one or 2 scenes.
And as I said in the last comment, LOTR being based on myths, weak female characters are possibly an intentional choice, but it is still valid critique.
Arwen doesn’t show up at the end; she is at the feast in Many Meetings. And Eowyn doesn’t go to war to protect Theoden, she goes because her culture values glorious death in battle so that’s what she wants. I think it’s your understanding of the women rather than the characters themselves that is shallow.
@@TolkienLorePodcast she wishes for a glorious death because the man she just met rejected her.
It's a very Shakespearian/Chaucerian motivation, which as I've said is completely fine, but calling her character deep is a massive reach.
Supposed racism:
"‘I hope not, indeed,’ said Butterbur. ‘But spooks or no spooks, they won’t get in The Pony so easy. Don’t you worry till the morning. Nob’ll say no word. No black man shall pass my doors, while I can stand on my legs."
What the Nazgul look like:
"In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver..."
"‘What has happened? Where is the pale king?’ he asked wildly."
Great pushback against CBR. Please let me add:
1) the Bombadil “detour” is necessary, as are all the early “detours:” At first the hobbits are barely fit to even reach Farmer Maggot’s. They are utterly helpless in the Old Forest and need the Bombadil adventures to grow and mature, not just to get weapons. They need to slowly develop their latent heroic virtues. And their characters develop as well.
2) Lacking agency?! Ridiculous. Just look at Merry for a start, The whole journey begins because Merry obtains the house in Crickhollow, Merry supplies the ponies they use, Merry gets them into the Old Forest and leads them. Merry has agency from the get-go. Ditto for the others.
3) A lack of diversity badly ages LOTR? If so then virtually EVERY great work of European literature has aged badly as well! From the Iliad to the Great Gatsby and forward. Idiotic!
4) Orcs are shown as having NO good qualities? Several Orcs use phrases referring to “the good guys” as “cursed rebels”: “foul rebels and brigands,” etc. They have a sense of duty, esprit de corps, etc. So clearly THEY don’t think they’re evil, but on the right side (tho they are ferocious and brutal, by breeding and upbringing):
5) etc...
Why does the article read like "tell me you have never read Lord of the Rings" without telling me you have never read Lord of thr Rings.
I actually think the reason for the west/east thing is that these were the lines drawn in WW2. Nazi germany being to the east of Britain where Tolkien lived and also the rising tyranical power in his time. So might have influenced the depiction of Mordor.
also the Romans invaded britain from the east back in the day. In fact everyone who ever tried to invade Britain came from the east from the British perspectiv. They don’t have many forces to their west. Being on an island (or archipelago) at the western edge of Europe.
There are 2 sets of books I read annually: the completely works of Jane Austen and LOTR. There are vast audiences for both authors and all their works. If you aren't in that audience, it doesn't mean the books have "aged poorly", it just means you don't like a particular piece of literature. Shocking, I know, but not everything is going to appeal to everyone, and that's ok.
Some things don't age at all. Such as legendary Stories and Sagas. The Grimm farytales are ancient german folk tales. Still known and told today. Even the ancient greek legends are still known. Doesn't matter how old a story is, if it is good today it will be good in 100 years.
“There are very few women in The A-Team.”
Nobody is forcing you to watch The A-Team.
"Reading at a surface level." I think that nails it.
Your point in Tom Bombadil and the "fairy story" element is spot on. Never thought about it in that way.
Wait! Pippin has a whole chapter almost just for him, when they were being carried to Isengard by the Uruk-hai. 😊
And they are important to the Fangorn chapter too!
I never understood the dislike for Tom Bombadil. He's like a woodland version of what I think Santa Claus would act like, and that's awesome.
I didn't think that Bombadillo and his part was pointless at all. It showed the beauty and love of Middle Earth. The songs, the poetry, the dedication to his lady as he was representing the spirit of what's good in the world. It's like a firm reminder that the world isn't as dark as we think.
Yes, he is integral to the plot as you've said. He hooked up the right weapons to get the job done.
I think that Tom Bombadil is at the same time the personification of Middle Earth as a kind of wrote-in-character of JRR Tolkien himself.
In fan fiction we call it a Mary Sue, but it would be degrading to use that term in case of Tom Bombadill.
When Elrond says that Tom Bombadill would just forget the One Ring, it could be a kind symbolising the fear of Tolkien himself to forget the main plot and loose himself in sideplots and details.
If Tolkien had written the way Robert Jordan wrote the Wheel of Time the LotR would had been 30 books and still not finished.
No, Bombadil is not Tolkien. He's the "true neutral" -- he does not want any more than what he has, has no desire for power over others, so the Ring has no way to tempt him.
@@kamion53 No it wouldn’t call Tom a Tolkien stand in. Tom seems more like the personification of the land itself. He is the human (ish) personification of what is at stake. Tom is like nature he is neither good or bad, he just exists, but if Sauron wins he wold seek to destroy Tom Bombadill just like the Romans salted the earth of a defeated Carthage so that nothing could grow there ever again.
Tom is the wonder of the world as experienced by those who had not yet had wonder driven from them.
I think Tom Bombadil is the perfect intro adventure for 4 hobbits who haven't travelled beyond the shire. And it introduces the idea of powers, both benevolent and harmful, and of a history of this world both old and mysterious.
This is the mentality that gave us ROP. ROP springs from a malicious rejection of Tolkien and an attempt to invert nearly everything Tolkien believed or cared about.
The greatest evils are derived by perverting the greatest good and virtuous things on earth.
Fire, Water, relationships, freedom, et cetera.
@@treebeardtheent2200 Exactly. I'm not one who holds Tolkien as some kind of demigod figure, but he was very careful and intentional in his story telling. Tolkien's perspective was ALWAYS profoundly conservative and Christian. His stories don't make much sense when divorced from that. That atheists and leftists can still enjoy his stories shows his skill at story telling and the painstaking craft that went into them. It also shows that he was writing about universal truths.
If the atheistic left wants their own stories (they have plenty of them and they're mostly crap) let them make their own instead of hijacking Tolkien for their own ends (and cynical money grabs).
Bah. They didn't attempt squat. Challenging the assumptions behind Tolkien's world would've been interesting. They avoided "interesting" like the plague.
@@SgtPUSMC Very well written words of your own. They aren't going to win you any social media popularity contests, but then again I can't recall when profound truth ever has.
I am a playwright. And within the last few years I"ve developed a paradigm about the elements of story-telling, at least in terms of my own writing. I use the intitials PACT--Plot, Atmosphere, Character, and Theme. The vast majority of facile complaints and writing advice focuses almost exclusively upon Plot, and it shows. Small wonder so many films (for example) have so many gunfights and car chases and such shallow characters, and it seems most authors cannot even intelligently discuss what Theme even is (at best they seem to equate it with a moral, or message).
Reading LOTR many times was one way I developed this idea.
Yeah the writer of this blog seems to have a very shallow understanding of storytelling.
I always took that Treebeard KNEW that Saruman was a shifty character already, but the other trees were too pacifist to approve of the entire ent nation going to bloody war without being sure of victory first
Edit: the author of that article ironically includes Spain and Turkey in the list of "white Europeans"...
Edit: it's also kinda funny that the auther thinks Tolkien doesnt like women, or that somehow they were sideline characters. Two of the most powerful characters in LotR were women, and the romance between Aragorn and Arwen is actually very noble and empowering. Women are allowed to have feelings too, ya know.
Man what a great and clearly truthful response to that ridiculous article, well done.
It's patently obvious that most of these "critics," not to mention most people involved with the abomination that is RoP, simply don't understand Tolkien, his themes, influences, or writing.
Frodo, who can't re-engage with his own society after returning from his adventures, and is constantly sick both physically and spiritually.
This article: NoNe Of ThE mAiN cHaRaCtErS hAs AnY pRoBlEmS
I don't think LOTR would make sense if the start wasn't slow. By introducing us to the Shire, we're made as reluctant to leave it as Frodo is. That makes us care about it. If he'd been on the road by chapter 2, the Shire wouldn't be the beloved and iconic fantasy location that it is. And of course, for Tolkien the Shire was a reflection of the countryside that he loved, and preserving it was a reflection of his desire to save that countryside from the effects of industrialisation.
Besides all this, I don't know that the start of LOTR is exactly slow anyway. Everything that happens sets the ground for later points in the story.
Great review of the article!
I think Bombadil serves a more important purpose than he is given credit for here. He is the first character the hobbits meet after leaving the Shire. His place in the story, saving them from Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wights, is a great framing device to show us that the protagonists have truly left the comfort and safety of the shire. It’s the same as the trolls in the Hobbit. Danger and risk exist beyond your comfort zone. The Bombadil chapters set the stage for the four hobbits to start maturing in terms of their understanding of the wider world.
It sounds as if the writer is used to the sculpted plots of contemporary movies, as opposed to rich fantasy works, which contain the largeness and largesse of vast numbers of characters who provide substance and detail to the story, and do "advance" the plot in ways that superficial readers don't quite comprehend.
10 Ways Modern Readers Fail To Understand Why Tolkien Was Amazing Because Of Entitled Impatience, A Hamfisted Understanding Of Writing, Drama, Storytelling, And Lack Of Basic Reading Comprehension.
*10)* You can basically boil this point down to “I have a short attention span and _The Lord of the Rings_ doesn’t accommodate it.”
*9)* This is one of the qualities that makes people love _Lord of the Rings:_ its incredible depth. The fact that so many “random” people have their own unrelated backstories gives the world greater verisimilitude.
*8)* You know, just because “modern audiences” prefer certain things doesn’t make those things good. And the idea that more characters _must_ die for “realism” says a few things about this author’s views of reality. Real life has happy events and coincidences; why can’t fiction?
*7)* I’d like to know what the author means by “lacking agency.” But he should have picked a better example than Bella Swan. Trust me, her “passiveness” was one of the last issues people had with her _terrible_ character!
*6)* See point 10. This is the same argument again.
*5)* So the author is just a Woke NPC. Color me shocked.
Having a non-diverse cast does not make you a racist; you do what makes sense for your story. Adding in demographics just to have them is called tokenism and it’s a bad thing, but the Woke have rebranded it “diversity” and act like it’s the most important thing ever. It makes sense for a world based on European myth to have a European cast. Did this author complain about films with mainly black or Asian casts, like _Crazy Rich Asians_ or _Wakanda Forever?_ If he’s like other journalists, he likely _praised_ those movies because they “lacked whiteness” (their own words). “Diversity” and “representation” are used by Woke NPCs as covers for their own bigotry. Does the author believe that whites don’t deserve representation too?
*4)* This is the one I most expected. Orcs are not human; they are a fantasy race, engineered by the Arda equivalent of Satan to enforce his malevolent will. If they represent any real-life concept, it’s _depravity._ If this author looked at Orcs and interpreted them as representing minorities, then he should get help because that problem is with HIM, not Tolkien.
*3)* Western civilization IS under attack (this article alone shows it) and defending it is not “racist.” The fact that “bad actors” (whoever they are; the author shows no examples, of course) have used the terms “West” and “East” to support bad ideas _does not mean_ that ANY author who uses those same terms is endorsing them too. This argument is pathetic. It’s beyond obvious this article is just an excuse for its author to spew his own twisted political ideas.
*2)* I think I’ve already addressed this in my last three points. _The Lord of the Rings_ uses older, medieval-styled language. If this author is interpreting such terms through a modern hyper-sensitive lens, then the problem is with HIM. I feel this author has serious mental issues.
*1)* See my point about tokenism again. This is that same argument again. If a story features primarily one gender or the other, so what? Does it work for the story? It _does?_ Then that’s that.
But aside from that, this point boils down to how the female representation in Middle-Earth doesn’t meet this author’s exclusive vision for what women must be, and that is why it’s bad. This author should really see a shrink.
I apologize for making this comment so long. I’ve had it with these Woke cultists trying to appropriate Tolkien to promote their hateful, divisive politics.
"The story started slowly..." In 12th grade our English teacher attempted to have us read Hardy's Return of the Native. By the 2nd chapter of ennnndddlleesss directionless exposition our class made it clear that unless we were given another assignment, mayhem was a real possibility. Enter, C.S. Forester. Ahhhh
Personally I think the first part, up to perhaps around Bree, is the best part... I love that "We're going on an adventure" feeling...
This article should be titled "10 Ways Lord of the Rings is superior to modern fantasy"!
3rd grade thinking characterizes modern political discourse
I have known HS grads who tested out at 2nd grade level when they met with a US military recruiter (rejected of course).
idk where that puts actual modern 3rd graders, but I think you got it about right.
A fun fact I found out about the lore. There's a line stating, in the war against the great enemy, Morgoth and later Sauron, Elves is the only race that fought on only one side. Which implies some Orcs fought against Sauron or more specifically against the greater Evils and their plans.
None of this surprises me. I have worked at a retail store in the electronics section and quite literally saw a dvd of Sesame street with the label "Might not be suitable for modern children." And that was some years ago and those children grew up into "modern audiences".
Also, fun trivia. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I thought hobbits were green goblinoids before I started reading the appendices. To this day I still have no idea why.
Rankin Bass maybe? 👀
hob gob lins maybe.
I somehow though Legolas was a woman for a while when I first read the book at 8 years-old lol. I'm not sure what gave me this idea.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 The long golden hair maybe? or was it the shoes?
btw P. Jackson and crew seemed to all miss that the hair on hobbit feet is really thick, like head hair, so don't feel bad. Butterbur even described them as "wooly footed", not simply like a hairy man's calves which wouldn't really do much to keep feet warm.
@@treebeardtheent2200 A hobbit is always wearing their 'sneakers'.
I scanned this article and thought "are you an idiot?" It made my head hurt
Ridiculously long comment warning!
OK let's start with some facts about me. I'm definitely from "that side" of the aisle. Heck, being a European leftist I probably count as a downright communist for some here in the US. I'm also a woman. White though. In fact, much to my chagrin, I'm downright pale which is not a good complexion when you grow up under the Greek sun.
So I like when there's real representation of other people. Not a token black/Asian/Latino (forget others; they don't seem to exist), but a true diverse setting. When it makes sense to have one. For instance it irks me that, at one series I otherwise like, in Chicago, you see one Latino (from Florida) and one black person (from Russia) maybe a couple in EXTREMELY peripheral roles. Like really? I live in Michigan but business has taken me to Chicago more than a couple of times and there's lots of people of color there.
In Lord of the Rings? No, it doesn't really bug me. I mean apparently the cradle of Western civilization was not Middle East -> Egypt -> Greece -> Roman Empire. In fact I probably count as an Easterner in Tolkien's world (or a Southern; he has me coming and going). Don't care! It's a mythology of England with a bit of the rest of the island and much more of the other Germanic peoples' mythology in it. I'm not talking about the series here, where the only believable male Elf was Arondir (young looking, lithe, with a long history written in his mien etc etc). In the books, everyone is white and probably looking nothing like my mom and I'm OK with it.
Women? Can't say I didn't enjoy the many more powerful women in Silmarillion. But there was no room for many of us females in the setting of LotR. So Galandriel and Earwen were more than enough. Game of Thrones have many more because the story takes us to the corridors of power more, where a woman can indeed exert her influence even in a medieval setting. But, with the exception of Brienne (who suffers for it greatly) no other women appears on the battlefield. Because the vast majority of us wouldn't cut it even if societal norms permitted it.
Orcs? I'm actually happy to think of them as just evil. Tolkien, because of his religious beliefs struggled greatly with the matter, but I have no issue with a race (with the real meaning of the word, not the skin deep differences between members of the human race) of beings molded by an evil god are actually evil. And hey, just going by the Appendices and not his other works, the Numenoreans and their descendants were not exactly angels and paradigms of virtue.
I love the LotR, I even "managed" to greatly enjoy the Garret books by Cook where, especially in the beginning, we women are all pretty much floozies (to go with the books' zeitgeist). Representation of women and people of color is important. When it's done right (and not as a checklist to make you feel virtuous). And it's just doesn't fit LotR. Now if they made a series about, say, Harad and how the Numenoreans pretty much handed those people back to Sauron, now that would be interesting!
Cameo!? Hell, they mentioned Glorfindel in The Martian. (Interestingly "Glorfindel" is in autocorrect.)