Apparently this is a trilogy, who knew. I'm sure there's no movies after this one, though.ROTK starts with the Smeagol and Deagol back story and it's an interesting choice. Gollum is important to this novel (obviously) and it's important to show his past. It's interesting that Gollum was able to subvert the will of the ring for so long and not be drawn out to Mordor. I know the canon is that he used it sparingly and I think, too, Sauron wasn't at full strength and calling for it.
This isn't me having some clever insight; iirc, Gandalf points this out himself. The halflings who have been ring bearers had some natural immunity or strength when it came to the one ring. Maybe because their ambitions weren't as high as kings'. Smeagol did jump to murder alarming quickly. Frodo and Bilbo didn't kill anyone for the ring. Sam and Merry and Pippin and my perfect fat Freddy didn't ever consider killing Frodo.
So, Gollum: Good willpower, bad morals.
Please do not acquire birthday presents through murder.
God, Sam has rationed the food so they have enough to LEAVE Mordor once they're done, and the blank look Frodo gives him is heart breaking. He doesn't expect to live through this. Like, he's so certain this will kill him that he's genuinely *surprised* to learn that Sam thinks otherwise, MY HEART.
I have such complicated feelings about Gollum because, like, victim. But also murderer. And we really don't know whether he'd have been one without the ring. No way to tell.
Gimli wants to behead Saruman for efficiency and Gandalf shoots him down saying Saruman is powerless and FUCK YOU GANDALF??? I don't remember if that's canon, but I really struggle with Gandalf mathing up Saruman to be "powerless". Even without magic, he has years of esoteric knowledge and experience!!
Ah, good, I'm reminded that Book Gandalf says he's dangerous as fuck but Treebeard sorta lets him go because Treebeard is useless. NO WONDER THE ENT WIVES LEFT YOU TO GO BE ENT LESBIANS. Where's my Ent-Sapphic pin, I want that kickstarter.
Gandalf, just TELL him what a palantir is! We're less likely to touch dangerous stuff if we know WHY it's dangerous! Honestly, this is the best evidence that Gandalf is not a mom.
They managed to pack that Rohan hall pretty full considering nearly everyone died. Eowyn pines for Aragorn and Theoden massively misreads the room by assuming Aragorn will be onboard, and it's kinda adorable. Proud Uncle. The hobbit drinking sooooong!
"Smeagol did it once" Oh, honey, you've killed way more than once. You lived under the mountain killing goblins.
Frodo is all "we need a guide" and it's very fucking annoying that he won't listen to Sam who HEARD HIM PLANNING MURDER. There is a point at which your guide is a liability!
Pippin, my baby. No.
God, Theoden is such a fucking fool.
"Why should WE help THEM?" WHAT PART OF SAURON DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND, YOU TWIT.
I love Arwen so much.
Apparently....Aragorn's sword has not been reforged yet at this point in the movie canon???? That's a really weird choice, given that I'm pretty sure there's an extended edition of Fellowship that shows the sword being reforged. Peter Jackson got a lot of mileage out of his "genius" for these movies but I hope we can all agree in retrospect that he seems pretty uhhhhh.
God, poor Pippin's face when he realizes Denethot is not as good or noble as he imagined. (This is why you TELL people things, Gandalf, you had a whole ride to PREP him!!)
Gandalf is telling Pippin about the super deadly witch king that stabbed Frodo on Weathertop and I gotta think that PIPPIN must be thinking, like, "Oh that guy? Aragorn scared him off with a torch! We're gonna need torches, Gandalf, lots of them!!"
Oh oh oh oh the gentle hug Gandalf gives Pippin when shit starts getting scary in the sky. I love how loving all my boys are. There's so much TOUCHING in this movie? Nobody "no homos"? They hug and cry and smile and hug and I just.
The staircase into Mordor is killing me just *looking* at it.
Faramir is so pretty, but his tactics here seem to be designed to get his own force completely surrounded, and to NOT use the home turf to any advantage. Baby. Why. There's some kind of Fantasy rule that the prettier the face, the worse a man is at combat tactics, idk. This explains why the elves were mowed down at Helms Deep.
Pippin!! GONDOR CALLS FOR SOME MOTHERFUCKING AID.
Boy, they're not even trying to sell Denethor as anything other than pure evil.
I feel like I'd appreciate a stint at one of those watch towers. Peace and quiet to work on your book, and a hot guard to make out with. All you have to do is watch for fires that are never lit. And I guess not get slaughtered by orcs. ut so far in life I've been very good at not being slaughtered by orcs.
Poor Eowyn. Not allowed to fight, and the hottest man on earth is her brother.
And we're gonna have to pause there because (a) I need sleep and (b) the Nazgul screams are freaking Chip out, his ears are basically on backwards at this point.
---
I'm sleepy so this may not be coherent.
Pippin's FACE when he realizes Faramir has seen Frodo and Sam is just beautific.
Gollum is pouring poison against Sam in Frodo's ears and I just want to throttle him. "The Fat One", my ass.
They made Denethor *look* like Wormtongue, even; he's so slimy. He straight up tells poor Faramir he wishes he was dead instead of Boromir. Poor Faramir. You need a nice sword-girlfriend, baby.
Gollum throws all their food away and frames Sam as having eaten it all because he's fat.
God. My heart when Frodo banishes Sam and he breaks down sobbing. I think it works here because he's just so overwhelmed by the awfulness of what's happened?
I hate Faramir's doomed charge; it's such a pointless waste of life.
EOWYN DEFENDING MERRY'S RIGHT TO FIGHT.
I.....don't really understand how Arwen's life is now in direct opposition to Sauron's, but ok.
Man, I have SO MANY QUESTIONS about the Viking Men hired by Sauron, like how did THAT negotiation fucking go.
"Sir, uhh, I think we have a new client."
"You 'think'?"
"Well, he's....not quite human, sir."
"An elf?"
"No, he's...well, there's no other way to say it: he's some kind of giant goblin."
Aragorn lets Eowyn down in the nicest "it's not you, it's me" ever recorded in history. Say what you will about the man, he is a class act!
Eowyn scooping up Merry!!!! "Ride with me!"
"My lady!!" Merry's shit-eating grin
*sobs uncontrollably*
I know it's annoying that they made Gimli the silly one but I love him more for it. He's scared of ghosts, I'M scared of ghosts, we have so much in common. Like, Legolas is hot and has amazing hair, but he's essentially one dimensional: he's there to unhesitatingly support Aragorn. Gimli is more like Sam: scared, but doing the right thing in spite of it.
I choose to believe that every man in the army KNOWS that's Eowyn and they're wisely keeping their mouths shut because nobody is gonna get a thank you from Theoden for THAT news.
"Someone should say something."
"And get stabbed? No thank you."
"But she's not supposed to be here!"
"Fine! YOU tell him."
".....Maybe someone else will."
Aragorn needs a volumnizing conditioner.
Ew, I forgot about the heads in the catapults.
Shadowfax deserves to be an honorary wizard, he's doing almost as much as Gandalf! What a good boy.
I know Denethor deserved better, but I didn't like him much so I'm happy Gandalf knocked him out and told everyone to get back in their fucking positions.
YES TAKE OUT THAT SIEGE TOWER, AWW YEAH BABY THAT'S HOW IT'S DONE.
Everyone is howling in pain at the Witch King's shriek and this is why you need diversity in your army because a Deaf unit could fix this, no problem.
*everyone else scatters*
*entire Deaf unit calmly archerys the fuck out of that dragon*"
"but Ana the Witch King would still be alive"
HE'D BE ON FOOT THO, AND I THINK THAT'S BETTER THAN ON A FANCY DRAGON
PIPPIN SAVING GANDALF'S LIFE. *bawling*
Sam finds the bread and that's his turning point and I GET THAT?? He'd been gaslighted into thinking maybe he WAS the problem, maybe the ring HAD gotten in his head. Here is PROOF that Gollum betrayed them, proof Sam wasn't imagining things.
Somehow as a kid I got the impression that Shelob was one of those woman centaur spiders that you see in, like, fantasy video games. I was so certain of this that an actual regular spider confused me in this scene, lol. It just seemed very important that we know it's a GIRL spider, so I though she had boobs and eyelashes, I DON'T UNDERSTAND GENDER AND NEVER HAVE.
Huh. He didn't get stung?
The battering ram being used by the orcs is a giant flaming wolf head because FUCK ROHAN and their HORSES ON EVERYTHING, we're gonna win the Is This Too Much ball this year, boys!!!
Actually really fucking pissed at the people helping Denethor burn his wounded son alive.
It's really interesting to me that all of Gandalf's skills are "management" and "being in charge", he does almost no magic. This contributes to my childhood theory that he was a competent middle manager before retiring to go to wizard school. This is classic D&D; you set up a character to do one thing but it turns out you're the only player with a head for tactics so congratulations now your Thief-class barmaid is heading up the city's armed guard while the party's knights are doing shenanigans.
Like, TECHNICALLY the guy who rolled a paladin should probably give the inspiring speech but his player keeps leaving to go check the football game so everyone's gonna listen to your Dwarf Assassin and they're gonna like it.
NOW Frodo get stung. SAM SAM SAM SAM!
I loved how, in the book, Sam is just Sam to himself but to the Mordorians he's an elf prince because he has ELF WEAPONS and ELF LIGHT and a RING OF POWER. It's just such a nice contrast of how we can seem powerful to others even if we only think of ourselves as nobody.
I love how villains always use that "you'll wish you'd never been born" line as a threat, like some of us aren't already there.
"When I'm done with you, you'll wish you'd never been born."
"Does it help if I already wish that?"
"What."
"Like, does that make things easier for you at all? I'm just trying to help."
God, I love Pippin so much. The town is burning, the orcs have broken through, and he's looking for Gandalf because it's the only way he knows to save Boromir's brother from being burned alive.
I really HATE all the references to "the women and children", so here's a pro tip: when you use that to mean "non combatants", you're making armies all male and fuck that. Say "get the children and elderly out" or "save the civilians".
Really amazing that Peter Jackson managed to be worse about women than Tolkien.
Rohan answers the fucking call!! Eowyn and Merry are scared!! "Courage, Merry. Courage for our friends."
I love that Gandalf CARES that Denethor is about to burn Faramir. He really does love all his boys. He doesn't, you know, go "Pippin, I'm busy keeping OTHER people alive." He cares.
Eowyn took down a fucking elephant using TWO SWORDS.
The subtitles keep calling the Witch King's ride a "fell beast" when it is clearly a Smooth Dragon.
YEAH OMG SHE JUST TOOK THE SMOOTH DRAGON'S HEAD RIGHT OFF, HELL YES SHE DID
MERRY WITH THE ACHILLES HEEL ASSIST.
"BRIAN, THAT'S A MOVE WE HAVEN'T SEEN SINCE THE SECOND AGE."
"YOU'RE RIGHT, BILL, AND HE'S GONNA FEEL THAT IN THE MORNING. OWIE."
Face stab and he crumples like a soda can, TAKE THAT. Learn ya not to mess with my sword-girlfriend.
GOD, we would've had so many fanboys being shitty about this scene. "Aragorn was being set up to defeat him!" they'd whine.
I'm pretty fucking sure Pippin and Merry just got married to each other. (I'm not even fucking kidding; if Pippin was a girl, we'd straight up read that scene as getting engaged.)
Oh my god, how is there still an hour.
The look of unadulterated love when Sam finds Frodo again.
It honestly hurts me that they lost the mithril shirt.
Oh god, this is painful, just get there, it hurts.
And now Gimli and Legolas just got married.
This post, tho!!!! [Link: https://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/131423565980/any-thoughts-on-elf-sexuality]
Also this one!!! [Link: https://bramblepatch.tumblr.com/post/73489560597/prettyinpixiedust-so-one-day-a-dwarf-is-talking#notes]
Ok. Let's melt this ring.
"I can't carry it for you....but I can carry YOU!!!!!" *never stops crying*
oh oh oh!! Aragorn runs to the front lines and Merry and Pippin are the first to follow.
THE LITTLE MOTH CAME BACK OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
Yeah, take that, Smooth Dragon!! You've just been Eagled!
Ah, he was a Load Bearing Boss.
It's funny how Game of Thrones is supposed to be edgier, messier LOTR, but they both went for self-destructing armies for convenience sake.
I'm really glad they didn't do the ravaging of the Shire after all that. That was THREE HOURS and it's been a kick in the ankles. When all your heroes wanna do is see home again, it's cruel to burn their village down.
Everyone bowing to the hobbits, oh oh oh.
I don't......really like the treatment of Sam at the end, but it's hard to explain on Twitter. I'm a Rosie-Sam-Frodo triad, and the movie feels like it's trying really hard to No Homo at us? And that makes me irritable.
Anyway, that was a cute little trilogy and I guess we're d-- oh.
*later* Me: "Surely NO ONE who wanders is lost, because lost people travel in a manner that I have never once heard anyone describe as "wandering", that denotes a certain meander quality that doesn't mesh with the concept of..."
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