Film: The Hobbit : Battle of the five armies (December 2014)

[E.H. Ruddock]

I'm pretty sure LOTR, as a piece, is my favorite film of all time. My favorite trilogy to be sure.

It is 3 films though.

[BurtReynolds]

Bmacsmith trivia: my grandparents' last name was Bilbo. Ain't that some shit?

[stip]

I'm pretty sure LOTR, as a piece, is my favorite film of all time. My favorite trilogy to be sure.

It is 3 films though.

True, but one story whose totality is greater than the sum of its parts

[dimejinky99]

has a world and its peoples ever been more fully realised and made attractive in film?

[dimejinky99]

Also. Stip.
you casting the dwarves as Jews is the most poorly informed statement you have ever made that I've read.
Tolkien didn't do metaphor or allegory.
You have made an assumption through modern eyes of a story almost a hundred years old.
Sure, Jews are bitter mean and prone to averice. But they are not represented in dwarves. At all.
By those lights, who do the orcs represent? Their ancestors elves captured and warped to Morgoths need?

[Norah]

Sure, Jews are bitter mean and prone to averice.

[dimejinky99]

I forgot prone to bombing the shit out of Palestine. My bad.

[Norah]

Dig up, stupid.

[dimejinky99]

Dig up, stupid.

You started it


Like that's a first

[Norah]

oh boy

[dimejinky99]

Troll hoard.

[Kaius]

Bmacsmith trivia: my grandparents' last name was Bilbo. Ain't that some shit?

This didn't go unnoticed,.. Weirdo.

[dimejinky99]

In 1938, some months after the initial publication of The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien and his British publisher, Stanley Unwin, opened talks with Rütten & Loening, a Berlin-based publishing house who were keen to translate the novel for the German market. All was going well until, in July, they wrote to Tolkien and asked for proof of his Aryan descent. Tolkien was furious, and forwarded their letter to his publisher along with two possible replies — one in which their question was delicately side-stepped, and one, seen below, in which Tolkien made his displeasure known with considerable style.

It is unknown which reply was sent.

(Source: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien; Image: Tolkien in 1955, via; Thanks to William Vodrey.)

25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

[dimejinky99]

His feelings are also evidenced in a letter he wrote to his son: "I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler ... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light."



this, from an overtly devout catholic..

[dimejinky99]

And Bain was Bards sons name...not effing Jonah...

one of a million pissy little mistakes this film has..how hard would that be to get right


a budget that big and nobody managed to get that right..

[@SkitchP]

And Bain was Bards sons name...not effing Jonah...

Better than Herschel though!

[dimejinky99]

Jews win either way...

the marketing budget for this film was bigger than the entire budget for Return of the king..

happy mazeltov or quanza or whatever the fuck

[LoathedVermin72]

Holy shit, what the fuck is happening in here?

[dimejinky99]

Petern fucking Jackson

[stip]

Also. Stip.
you casting the dwarves as Jews is the most poorly informed statement you have ever made that I've read.
Tolkien didn't do metaphor or allegory.
You have made an assumption through modern eyes of a story almost a hundred years old.
Sure, Jews are bitter mean and prone to averice. But they are not represented in dwarves. At all.
By those lights, who do the orcs represent? Their ancestors elves captured and warped to Morgoths need?

Tolkien himself has made that connection, Dime. He is generally positive towards dwarves but he embraces some of the sterotypes (themselves hundreds of years old) nonetheless. The appearence, the language, the lust for gold.

And in some race mythology blacks are seen as perverted descendants of whites.

I can post a link later, but there is an article on Tolkien and racism on the Tolkien gateway site that talks about it a bit.

Tolkien is of his time. These are not progressive books. He could very easily reproduce the racial thinking of his time without explicitly setting out to make a point. Nor does that make him a nazi