1) Pippin professes atheism, argues so persuasively he somehow manages to get GANDALF to second guess himself for a split second
2) “what if we put the Ring in a catapult & launched it into Mount Doom from a distance”: dismissed as a serious plan very quickly due to high margin for error but the argument simmers for several days as Gandalf refuses to concede that it would work in theory. (Pippin also started this one.)
3) Who Started It: Legolas or Gimli edition
4) Who Started It: Merry or Pippin edition
5) Who ate the last *insert food item here* I know it was one of your four FESS UP (one time it was actually Gandalf, he never fessed up)
6) Legolas is mad at Gimli but whenever anyone asks why he just says ‘the dwarf knows what he did’ (Gimli hasn’t a clue)
Somebody made Sam cry one (1) time early on & after that every time he cries the entire company starts slinging accusations like there’s no tomorrow
Further thoughts:
1) although Pippin started the catapult argument the ppl who keep it going are Frodo and Boromir (both of whom were momentarily 100% down with it until they realised what a horrible idea it would be in practice, ie miss & the Ring is just lying about in Mordor for any orc to grab)
it’s all fun and games till one of the hobbits calls beards ‘unsightly’ and Gimi shoots back ‘that’s a bit rich coming from someone with that much fOOT HAIR’ and after that it is fucking ON and once the dust settles certain people don’t speak to certain other people for like 3 days
Sam: *bursts into tears because idk he just does that sometimes*
Frodo: For fuck’s sake Sam just yesterday you were crying about snakes.
if i ever draw Faramir im drawing him with green skin because there is totally a sentence in LotR where he is described as “the tall green man.” yes i know u meant his clothes Tolkien but did you write “the tall green-clad man”? No. You wrote “tall green man” and now you are dead. anyway i think the only (other) info we’re given about Faramir’s skin is that its pale or fair (i can’t remember which) so. light green (or pretty green). a kinda seafoam green. or maybe spring green. anyway, faramir is green pass it on.
truly one of the funniest things about lotr to me is how much hostility
the hobbits, a race of cheerful, fun-loving farm people, bear towards
gandalf for absolutely NO reason except that he kills their chill vibe
the hobbits of the shire whenever they hear gandalf is in town:
viggo mortensen’s appeal as aragorn is 70% the voice, 25% the scene where the wild horse saves him from drowning, 12% hair, 8% ‘the beacons are lit!’, 3% swinging around the broken blade, 1.03% spitting soup back into the bowl on a windy day, .3% the way he speaks elvish (which mostly fits into the voice, but its elvish so its special), and .0004% when he kicks the orc head and screams
This is blatant “smoking a pipe with his hood on in Bree” and “shoving the double doors of helm’s deep open” erasure and I will not stand for it.
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
every time I see the words “Tolkien ripoff” in reference to fantasy I laugh, because while there’s a lot of Tolkien ripoff in worldbuilding it almost never crops up in plot or theme or characterization
like
where are my stories about the decay of the world from the glory of days gone by?
where’s the motif of limb loss?
where’s the longing for the return of something worth following?
where are the bloodthirsty oaths that tear sanity to shreds?
where are the evil spirits who try and destroy the gods with steampunk V-1 buzz bombs (looking at you, The Lost Road)?
where’s my continent-wide dialectical shift ending in massive arguments over the proper pronunciation of a name? where’s my family drama centered around sparkly rocks? where are my dragons the size of mountain ranges?
Tolkienesque Fantasy™: there’s a quest, the elves are bitchy, the dwarves drink a lot, farm boy hero.
Tolkien’s Actual Writing: absolute power corrupts absolutely, a little bit of power corrupts a little, to what extent are people responsible for their actions? does God/the gods really answer our prayers? and pacifistic undertones.
One overlooked thing that really sets the Lord of the Rings films apart from other franchises is how earnest they are-
Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! 😉 Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”
But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.
And when Lord of the Rings does “lean on the fourth wall” to talk about storytelling within the film, it’s never to make jokes about How Ridiculous These Storytelling Tropes are (the way most films do)…. but instead to talk about how valuable these stories can be. Like Sam’s Speech at the end of the Two Towers: the greatest stories are ones that give you something to believe in, give you hope, that help you see there are things in a bleak violent world that are worth living for
Earnestness is so much cooler than all the hip cynicism in the world. You go LOTR
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