Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lord Of The Rings Snark

So I finally decided to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We've had the books forever, I've just never bothered. Faced with the dilemma of not having anything to read, I finally decided to crack these books. I'm a nerd, I should have read these, right?

I'm doubting that now.

It's not that I hated them. I just think the story could have been tightened up. I don't know if Tolkien was paid by the word or what, but it shouldn't have taken three books to describe some Hobbits, an Elf, a Dwarf, a wizard, and that hot piece Viggo Mortenson walking. Oh wait, he was in the movie. Yeah. I need to watch those. Anywho....

So I have some questions and some commentary on this trilogy. There will be spoilers in this, so if you haven't read the books or seen the movies, you may not want to go to this part (hint: they walk).

Why are the Hobbits so fucking gay? Seriously, Sam and Frodo were about ten seconds away from going Brokeback Mountain on each other. The only thing that comes to mind is this scene from Clerks 2:



He may be right. I haven't seen the movies yet, but his description is eerily accurate for the books.

Okay, so that. The next thing that irks me is why the HELL didn't the Great Eagles just fly them into Mordor? They were obviously able to go and pick up Sam and Frodo after everything, so why not just have the good dudes distract the bad dudes and have the Great Eagles do a flyover? Would have saved time, Boromir, and about 500 pages. They also saved Gandalf after he battled the Balrog in Moria, so they were obviously capable of flying into bad territory. I think this is what bothered me the most. Then again, if they had done that, there wouldn't have been much of a story.

Sauron. Dude. It was a fucking EYE. Why the hell were so many people afraid of it? Come on. There were no better villains than an eye? The Nazgul scared me more.

All the fucking songs and poems. My husband told me to skip them. I did. That saved me about 100 pages.

So this thing is so big that there are like 8 appendices at the end of our copy of the trilogy (ours is one book). Really? I didn't even bother.

I know it was supposed to be all redemptive and stuff, but they should have killed Saruman from the start.

Gandalf annoyed me. I don't know why.

The Ents also annoyed me.

I don't know, maybe I'm not cut out for fantasy or whatever. I just really wanted the books to end. I enjoyed "The Two Towers" more than anything else, so maybe I just need more battles in my life.

All in all, I give it 3 out of 5 stars. It was a decent read, and it killed enough time. I'm reading The Hobbit now, but I'm already bored, and they've barely started the journey. So maybe it is just the fantasy aspect.

Or maybe I think Tolkien just had a really bad acid trip and wrote a bunch of shit for fanboys to latch on to.

3 comments:

  1. I thought I was the only one who felt this way and would be banned by fellow geeks if I ever admitted this. I have a "bestie" who would skin me alive for admitting I didn't like and found it more boring than descriptive.

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  2. I haven't read the books, haven't seen the movies. (I read The Hobbit - but you know...) I normally like a bit of the fantasy genre, but this just doesn't do it for me. Heck, I love me some Viggo too but I just have no interest. Good for you though reading through the whole thing - sorry it pissed you off! lol

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  3. I have respect for LOTR for its place in history, but all your criticisms are correct. Those books are a pile of shit. If you want to read/watch good fantasy genre check out Game of Thrones, or Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb.

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