Just What Everyone Wanted...A LORD OF THE RINGS Sequel Written by Stephen Colbert

[AndyDursin]

"Sam's daughter discovers the buried Nielsen numbers of a canceled liberal late night host"....

[Paul MacLean]

[AndyDursin]

Excellent article on similar lines today in The Federalist touching upon Tolkien's Catholicism (I wasn't even aware of the significance of the ring being destroyed on March 25th, etc.) and how the mere concept of this movie is all wrong..

[Eric W.]

I was looking for a Babylon Bee link somewhere for this.

[Paul MacLean]

Excellent article on similar lines today in The Federalist touching upon Tolkien's Catholicism (I wasn't even aware of the significance of the ring being destroyed on March 25th, etc.) and how the mere concept of this movie is all wrong..

Apart from the fact they were self-indulgently overlong (and boring), the main reason I never liked the LOTR films, was that they were a distortion of what Tolkien was actually on about. Tolkien was devout Catholic, and while he didn't intend Lord of the Rings as an allegory, it was entirely informed by his religious beliefs. Yet how did Peter Jackson describe the story? "A celebration of all things pagan".

In the book, Frodo is rescued by Glorfinel -- a male elf. In the movie, he is rescued by Awren -- a female elf (in an attempt to amend the "sexism" of Tolkien's story).

In the book, the "ent" episode represented Tolkien's reticence about cities encroaching upon the tranquil, pristine English countryside. In the film, it becomes a modern, heavy-handed "Greenpeace" polemic.

In the book, Faramir's strength of character made him immune to the allure of the One Ring. Jackson changed the character so that Faramir was as covetous of the ring as everyone else. Jackson's rationale? "Tolkien was wrong. Everyone is tempted by the ring!"

I could go on.

I realize you have to make a big budget movie palatable to the general public, but the films went way overboard with CGI gimmickry, changing characters (to suit "our more enlightened era"), physically preposterous "stuntwork", horror movie shock effects, etc. at the expense of the book's substance and introspection.

[AndyDursin]

Great post Paul, thanks for reminding us. Obviously it's not as explicit as NARNIA but it's there underneath the surface and the movies have angosti-wiped it out of existence.

The whole "Mother Earth" BS with Old Bones Blanchett was the immediate tip-off the filmmakers were going to embrace some free-lovin' feminism and drop it into the Tolkien-verse where it never existed before.