Clare, Nick and Bill just came round with the new extended version of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. For those of you who are unaware, we're talking about almost four hours of nobility, honor, fighting and Orlando Bloom with beautifully flowing long blonde hair.
I've seen the film before twice at the movies and I loved it. And I loved it when we watched it again this evening, but I have one problem with the ending. And I have read the book so I know that Peter Jackson was being true to the original text, but still...
Why the hell does Frodo have to get on that boat at the end of the movie? Where are they going? I know he has had a bit of a tough time of late, you know, fighting monster spiders, having had his finger bitten off by a loinclothed, anorexic, um, thing and overthrowing the most formidable presense in the universe. But is a peaceful life in The Shire drinking ale, smoking weed and getting booty 24/7 from all those hero-worshipping nubile hobbit girls not enough for poor Frodo?
Apparently no, because instead he chooses a life on a decidedly poky boat, with a couple of senile old men and some pseudo intellectual Elves all suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Rock and roll! I have a sneaking suspicion that he's going to get a few miles out to sea and realise that he has made a bad decision, by which time it will be too late. I'm worried about him. I am of the belief that young Frodo should be back at his home in the company of his friend Samwise and all the bows and frills of their, er, special relationship.
(Marv - I know you are an expert on the "Rings", so perhaps you can offer an explanation of this silliness?)
2 comments:
Perhaps Frodo prefers the company of taller, older and wizened men. [Read between the lines.] Since we are normally attractedt to what we don't have, I would imagine that smooth feet would be quite the fetish for a hobbit from the Shire.
Marv here...just a quick answer. I don't like to describe myself as an expert, just a fan who has read the books every year for about 20 years.
Remember where they're going on the last ship - they're going to the island of Valinor (I think) in the West, the Undying Lands, which is the Tolkien equivalent of heaven, which is the only place Frodo can be healed. He takes Arwen's place on the ship. Read the Silmarillion to find out more about this (skip the first 6 chapters the first time you read it) I'm not so good on the Silmarillion; Dan B will know.
I think Frodo says somewhere that he has been too badly hurt to stay in the Shire, and that the Shire has been saved for other hobbits to enjoy, not him. Somewhere in the DVD appendices somebody says that the third film asks 'What is lost?' It's a big theme in the book; you can fight against evil, and destroy it, but you can't make the world as it was before the evil happened. Middle Earth can't be the way it was before Sauron came along; the Elves must fade or return to their home, and Frodo can't be as he was when he first left Bag End.
Tolkien mentions the First World War in the introduction - and I think that's worth remembering too - he says something like, 'by 1918 all of my closest friends were dead'. The earliest bits of the Lord of the Rings were written in 1939, by someone who has been through 1914-18. It's written by someone who had experienced the realities of war and its cost, on a personal level, and the consequences for societies and cultures.
Dan and a couple of other people I know are even more fanatical than I am - I'll see what they say.
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