deep breath

REAL LIFE IS NOT BOOKS, TOLKIEN'S STORY, WHILE DIRECTLY INFLUENCED BY HIS EXPERIENCES DURING WWI, DO NOT GIVE HIM DIRECT AND INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY ON THE SUBJECTS OF WAR AND PEACE AND EVEN IF THEY DID, THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE BOOKS IS THAT WAR IS BAD AND RUINS LIVES, EVEN IF IT IS NECESSARY, ALL PARTIES INVOLVED ARE INDELIBLY SCARRED BY THEIR EXPERIENCES AND IT ALL HAPPENED BECAUSE OF THE FAILURES OF MEN AND THEIR DESIRES!

Lmao all the libs saying that us "tankies" were delusional for saying there's a new cold war started by the US Empire are now quiet because the media is fully on board.

Yo, whoever wrote this didn't read the book or even see the movie. Opening damn paragraph shows that

"In J.R.R. Tolkien’s great epic, The Lord of the Rings, it becomes apparent only gradually that the forces of darkness have united. Sauron, with his baleful all-seeing eye, emerges as the leader of a vast axis of evil: the Black Riders, the corrupted wizard Saruman, the subhuman orcs, the malignant courtier Wormtongue, the giant venomous spider Shelob — they are all in it together, and Mordor is their headquarters."

These are explicitly not united forces of darkness. Saruman is trying to play both sides of the fence and sucks at it, wormtongue is some dude he bribed into being evil, Shelob is a descendant of a Lovecraftian evil that isn't allied to anyone and the Nazgul are saurons slaves. They are not at all in it together and Mordor is Sauron's headquarters and that's it. Saruman lives in Orthanc, Wortongue lives in Rohan, Shelob lives in a cave, the nazgul live in Minas Morgul and orcs live just about everywhere. Also Sauron doesn't have an all seeing eye or he would've gotten the ring back hundreds of years prior.

While I do like the LotR movies, the worst thing about them is one very specific directorial choice made by Jackson that isn't in the books: to show the "good guys" as being reluctant to fight and downplaying the threats faced.

Theoden is portrayed as unwilling to fight at first. I can't count the number of times I've seen reactionaries on Twitter reference Aragorn's line about "open war is upon you, whether you would have it or not" when talking about tRaNsGeNdEr iDeOLoGy or something. Theoden has to be convinced to fight. Likewise, Treebeard and the Ents initially refuse to fight until Merry delivers his Sorkin-esque speech about how they're a part of the world, so they have to fight for it.

But none of that is actually in the books!

Theoden and Treebeard are not indecisive. They immediately join the fight without hesitation. Everyone recognizes the threat posed by Sauron and they join in. The Hobbits, while they are Little Englanders, are more in an isolated bubble far away from trouble, so it's more that their courage is never tested until the Scouring. They are unaware of what's happening in the world, not that they know about it but don't want to fight.

This seemingly small change has been latched onto by liberals and chuds alike for 20 years now. Because no one reads books anymore, we just assume the movies are the books. I doubt Ferguson has read the books any time recently.

And for as long as LotR has been published, everyone wants to interpret their own allegories into the story. It was very popular to read Mordor as Nazi Germany, which Tolkien had to always push back against. While Tolkien was the first to say things like his experiences in war and his religious faith influenced the books, he absolutely and in no uncertain terms was NOT writing anything to be allegorical to the real world. And to any fan of the books, it's offensive to try and read allegory into it when you understand that act of story telling and world building - and not allegory making - was central to the writing process for Tolkien.

it's pretty cool how people get to write all kinds of things. I'm gonna give it a go now.

iran and russia are sort of like bowser and the United States is like Mario and he has to save Peach (Western Civilization) by stomping on Goombas (nuking Beijing)

Thoughts??

“I told you so,” when Hitler and Stalin joined forces in 1939.

And then what happened?

Libs need to stay away from Tolkien, for real.

we're gotta get more racist

One west to rule them all, and in capitalism, bind them

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?

Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?

Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?

They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,

Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

"If you really want to understand the world, simply read the 576,459 words of the LoTR books. After all, who has the time to slog through all 288,000 [weird coincidence, almost exactly half] words in actual theory like Capital?"

Why are the people who get to do so much writing for a living always so low-brow? There's so much literature that's more interesting than children's fairy tales.

TBF, I think most big battles don't exist in Harry Potter, or there's like one, and like most movies of the era, the directors were probably just trying to copy the LotR big battles, so it makes sense they would need a new IP for speculative discussion about the upcoming (release date TBA) world war.

Although it's funny that once consider things that actually exist, like five eyes/NSA, the United States makes a much better allegory for Sauron, and the general 3rd world and other non-Western countries make a much better allegorical The Shire.

"Legolas what do your elf eyes see?"

"Another dogshit opinion column."

Nooooooooooo

my god, it is exactly like the lord of the rings. the soviet union is arnor, which the repeated depredations of the great satan have destroyed. china is gondor, which still survives.

when thinking of china, i often remember the quote from eorl: "If the Mundburg falls, whither shall we flee from the Darkness?"

Tolkien himself said that he was anarcho-monarchist, get fucked nerds on every side lmao