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Blizzard vs Tolkien
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Post by
Adamsm
Eh, that may be your opinion about Tolkien, but I think your in the minority there...You'd be surprised.
I personally hold him to be one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time./shrug Which is your opinion heh.
And I mentioned a lot of gray characters in lotr, as I said gray is a persons character not their actions, actions are very rarly neutralBut actions define a character...and you don't see very much gray in the rest of Tolkien's works; and even those you mentioned, rather then doing something gray, such as Boromir, completely kills whatever tension he created by going and doing a heroic sacrifice for the hobbits...which is what always happens in the series: Someone seems not-good but dies heroically showing he was really good deep inside. It got boring and sickening after it happened again for the 10th time.
Again though; you can't really disagree that the book is very cut and dried about good and evil: If you follow Gandalf, you are good. If you follow Sauron, you are evil.....since one is an angel and the other is a devil/demon........or a Fallen if you want to be completely honest.
But again again; he set the stage, it's those who came after him, such as Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchet, Piers Anthony, the good folks at White Wolf, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course all the video game companies who have made fantasy better. If WoW was truly based on Lord of the Rings, it would get incredibly stale incredibly fast; for all that people bash the writers, they've created a damn good universe for the series.
Post by
Gone
But again again; he set the stage, it's those who came after him, such as Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchet, Piers Anthony, the good folks at White Wolf, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course all the video game companies who have made fantasy better
That I disagree with, I mean they have come out withs ome very good work, but I wouldnt call it better any more than I would say Tolkien is better. Any form of art is only as good or as bad as the people who apreciate it.
for all that people bash the writers, they've created a damn good universe for the series.
That I completly agree with you on, the folks at Blizzard really have created a very wide and in depth world of lore, thats why I wanted to make the comparison between Blizzzard and Tolkiens original storys to show how far things have changed.
Truth be told I originaly titled this thread "Blizzard Orcs vs Tolkien Orcs" because Warcraft seems to be the first story to change orcs from the war minded barbarians to the shamanistis race that they are in wow. I changed it up though to show the comparisons between all of the races.
Post by
Thandion
But actions define a character...and you don't see very much gray in the rest of Tolkien's works; and even those you mentioned, rather then doing something gray, such as Boromir, completely kills whatever tension he created by going and doing a heroic sacrifice for the hobbits...which is what always happens in the series: Someone seems not-good but dies heroically showing he was really good deep inside. It got boring and sickening after it happened again for the 10th time
Just to pick up on that point, Boromir wasn't really "evil" or "not so good" was he? He was a noble son of a noble house, whose dreams of seeing a restoration of Gondor were corrupted by the power and draw of the ring. By making a heroic sacrifice, I see it as Tolkien demonstrating the strength of the human spirit, that an evil presence may influence even the strongest of minds (as we see it doing to Frodo and attempting to do to Aragorn throughout the book) but ultimately the inherent noble-ness imbued in Boromir wins out and what he does is, ultimately, true to his character. He was a "hero", for want of a better word, and thus his heroic deed in the end when he sacrifices his life for the halflings was his tru nature.
Plus, the ring was further away from him at the time XD
Post by
Adamsm
But again again; he set the stage, it's those who came after him, such as Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchet, Piers Anthony, the good folks at White Wolf, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course all the video game companies who have made fantasy better
That I disagree with, I mean they have come out withs ome very good work, but I wouldnt call it better any more than I would say Tolkien is better. Any form of art is only as good or as bad as the people who apreciate it./shrug Like I said; I hate Middle Earth, and not a fan of Tolkien's works; way too sanitized for me. I've read LotR once; and it took me a year because I could just not get into it and I had to force myself to finish it but I'm never picking it up again as I don't want to read 900 pages about a walk to a mountain. Same with the Hobbit; read it once, found it interesting, but have no desire to go back and read again.
Classic or not....meh; his world is just too 'perfect'.
Post by
Patty
The closest I can think of is one of those charactures who does something evil in order to do what they think is something good.
Which doesn't exist in the LotR sadly, so removes any real deep feelings for the characters because you can't honestly see them as realistic.
Actually, there are examples of the elves doing things like that, particularly in the Silmarillion.
Post by
Alkony
Keep in mind we only interact with 20 or 30 characters in the whole of Lord of the Rings. There are a LOT more people inhabiting Tolkien's world, they just don't impinge greatly on that story.
The characters that most fall into what modern readers think of as "grey areas" are those who we see as fallen. Saruman and Denethor are the two that come most to mind.
Saruman was sent with Gandalf, Radaghast and the two others to help guide men and the other races. What Saruman saw, in part due to Sauron's influence thru the palantir, was that men were weak and he decided they needed a firmer hand to help instruct them in the right way to be and behave. While from the outside we see his actions during the actual story as evil, it is entirely likely he began, at least, with the intent of doing good.
Denethor was a good man who gave in to despair. Sauron's direct influence thru the use of the palantir was again a factor. A Steward in title, Denethor had ruled for most of his life with all the authority of a king in a constantly embattled city-state. Faced with allies who had grown distant and a seemingly endless flow of foes, he could see no way for his people to conquer.
There is a lot more information about the world and its people than made it into the actual storyline. Keep in mind, the entire story takes place in less than a year. The youngest character we follow through the story is Pippin Took at ~30 years old (memory's a bit rusty here) who was not yet an adult by Hobbit standards. Gandalf is centuries old, so is Elrond, Aragorn is about 90, and so on.
More of Aragorn's tale is available in the appendices. He had gone through his hero's tale well before Frodo met him and was just waiting for the opportunity to ascend to his legacy. The uncertainty shown in the movies is largely shifting of this maturation process to the time period that the viewer participates in.
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I can accept that Tolkien's writing style isn't to everyone's taste, but I respectfully disagree that the world he presents in simplistic. =]
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Gone
Many don't, since it was cut from the movie
That about sums it up, sadly most so called Lotr fans today have never even picked up the books...
Not that the movies werent awesome of course, but you should really read the source material
Post by
280320
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
WTBaggrodump
Ironically, it was Tolkien who turned alot of views on the basic dwarves, elves, ect on their heads. Before him, elves were tiny creatures akin to fairies. You blame them for missing food or clothing.
Dwarves were like the crap in Sleeping Beauty.
Who wants that? The only thing I've seen Blizzard do is have it's own universe where they bring together alot of fabled, mythic, and unique creatures and give all of them their own story and livihood. Tolkien was epic and worked on his books for decades. Blizzard's been at this for... 20 years?
I'm thinking you do not know fairy tales nor their origins very well....
I'd guess you were likely referring to Snow White, but even then if you look further back than disney you'll see that most fairy/folk tales did not have very "nice" mythical creatures.
Yeah, I was refering to Snow White, my bad. Still, my point stands. Tolkien turned something mischievious and mundane and made it serious, deadly, and fearsome. <3
Post by
Sweetscot
Again, only if you are assuming that Disney dwarves are it for dwarves and that's just not so...
If dwarves were so benign in germanic mythology why did they have herbs and symbols used to ward them off?
Also the disney version of snow white is highly bastardized and sanitized... We don't see the stepmom eat what she thinks is Snow White's heart, we don't see her forced to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she dies, and the fact that Snow White has been identified as a seven year old and is getting kissed and carried off by a "prince" at the end is very glossed over. At various points in the retelling of Snow White the "dwarves" have been everything from just shadows of men on the ground, to a gang of robbers, to a band of knights that swear to protect her. It's just a bad example all around and I really doubt that Tolkein was using Disney to write his characters off of...I would find it much more likely that he was looking at translated texts of the middle english versions of dwarves that do sound very much like what he wrote...in fact his dwarves aren't that original at all, his work just became popular and rebroadcast an image of a "dwarf" that had been around for centuries.
Some scholars believe that Snee Wittchen (Snow White) is based off the life of a girl in germany in the 1500s the "dwarves" that saved her were actually children being used in mines, thus the "mischievous" personality in the story. Dwarves as they appear in Old and Middle English, Germanic, and Scandinavian tales are generally seen as demi-gods that live in mountains or below earth and mine and smith. They were serious, deadly, and very fearsome. They weren't seen as inately benign at all, in fact more often they were taking men to task for their misuse of nature.
Edit: Before a JRRT fan freaks out on me over the statement about his dwarves not being that original..I wasn't trying to diss him AT ALL in fact I find that he was able to take the mythology and use it in such a way is extremely awesome.
Post by
Monday
and I really doubt that Tolkein was using Disney to write his characters off of...
Considering Tolkien was a scholar of literature and a professor of Anglo-Saxon, I tend to agree ;)
Post by
Alkony
and I really doubt that Tolkein was using Disney to write his characters off of...
Considering Tolkien was a scholar of literature and a professor of Anglo-Saxon, I tend to agree ;)
Also, he began writing stories of Middle Earth before the Disney Company was even founded...
Post by
Sweetscot
Wrong.
Disney began (rather informally but still....began) in 1923, JRRT didn't write The Hobbit til 1937, coincidentally the same year that Snow White was in theaters for the first time.
Post by
25556
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Sweetscot
Wait, who are you arguing with? I don't think disney influenced JRRT either.
By that yardstick I could say I've been writing alien stories since I was 10 years old....but I've never had alien stuff published so I cannot say that.
As I said above, I don't think Disney had any influence on JRRT's work at all, but saying that Also, he began writing stories of Middle Earth before the Disney Company was even founded... is wrong unless you can find me a
published
work by JRRT prior to 1923.
JRRT didn't use disney, he didn't "turn something silly into something badazz" he used mythology to write fantasy, and did it very well.
Post by
25556
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Sweetscot
Yes but until a work is published it is subject to undocumented changes based on influence from other works, popular culture, anything really. You can't say that a work is unaffected by an influence just because you began it prior to the advent of the possibly influencing factor.
Post by
144978
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Monday
Then go play Warhammer?
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