>people keep talking about the religious subtext of Lord of the Rings
>none of the villains have any kind of redemption
I get that the Ring is supremely corrupting but it would have been nice for Gollum to not just end up a pathetic tweaker until he dies.
Not everyone is entitled to or gets a redemption arc.
Gollum was overcome by his evil nature but this in itself allowed for evil to be destroyed.
>Not everyone is entitled to or gets a redemption arc.
Sure, but between Gollum, Wormtongue and Denethor they all just go right down the drain. The closest we get is Boromir, and he just defaults back to his normal heroic state once he gets past his brush with the Ring.
>evil characters should have redemption arcs
no
Grima was just a c**t, sure. But Gollum was a tiny little dude twisted by the immense weight of an entity beyond his comprehension.
I really do like how the movie handled the final confrontation between Frodo and Gollum, where even Frodo, who held the Ring longer than anyone, was ultimately unable to resist it. But I think the setting would have benefitted from one instance where a fallen character can overcome their position.
>But I think the setting would have benefitted from one instance where a fallen character can overcome their position.
That's Faramir.
>Gollum was a tiny little dude twisted by the immense weight of an entity beyond his comprehension.
that is what all humans in sin are too and I think that’s the point. there’s an unsure degree of responsibility but in the end it’s on us to see ourselves for what we are or lie to ourselves. gollum chose the lie
jesus wasnt some white dude. get your capeshit fan art outtta here
yes he was and get your israelite lies out of here. the entire Mediterranean was Caucasian at the time due to Greek and Roman colonies
>Frodo, who held the Ring longer than anyone
Uh no?
Wasn't that Eru directly helping?
>But I think the setting would have benefitted from one instance where a fallen character can overcome their position.
Ahem
This is Lord of the Rings not Red Dead Redemption
>religious subtext
What fricking subtext, moron, it's literally Christian Fantasy. Do you also think the Bible has "religious subtext"?
>Do you also think the Bible has "religious subtext"
whoa
>the polytheistic setting based on European mythology and hero epics is Christian because... because Tolkien was Catholic
And your post is gay by virtue of you sucking dick in your private life.
Moreso because the author said it was. And he also said it wasn’t polytheistic
>Tolkien said "Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world", and when questioned who was the One God of Middle-earth, Tolkien replied "The one, of course! The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet."[5]
you can take it up with him I guess
There is literally a pantheon of beings who govern specific aspects of reality....
>the author lied about his own work
The valar are angels
Ah yes, the angels that control the sea and nature and hunting and crafting. Just like The Bible. Catholics really are heretics.
They aren’t primordial deities and were literally created by a monotheistic deity. They are contingent beings
homie, literally every mythological pantheon follows that formula.
no they don’t. you get some primordial chaos gods emerge from or a dualism between two gods
This is part of the bible isn’t it? The angels names denote their function ie kokabiel star of god taught humans astronomy
>what are emanations
Learn2theology prod
LOTR is intended a fictional real world mythology that blends mild conceptions of European paganism into a broader Christian context
>disputes somebody pointing out LOTR is paganistic
>by pointing out LOTR is paganistic
Learn2think papist
Oh yeah those beings created by the main eternal deity, the most powerful of which turned to evil and started a rebellion causing some of them to join him and become bad. Oh wait
you have the actual guy who wrote it quoted not agreeing with you
They won’t respond to this because it exposes how fricking moronic the mindset is. The actual author outright states what the intention of his work was and you disagree with him.
Tolkien was incorrect when he said this
>polytheistic
>he doesn't know
Reminder the eddas were written by a christian and that the romance genre (from which the actual main inspiration comes) was entirely christian.
this tbh. romances are way better than heroic epics. comfy adventures with a band of knights facing bizarre monsters trying to practice chivalry is kino
>the eddas were written by a christian
Who was simply documenting the myths of his people. What does that have to do with anything at all?
He did more than document, he actually formulated them into verse and was influential on the form the stories took as we know them. The moronic vikangz didn’t know shit about metre and had little tradition of actually recording anything.
Again, what does that have anything to do at all with the conversation at hand?
>a man interested in his native beliefs writes them down
>this is a christian victory
>christians have a verse and manuscript tradition
>have an interest in actual preserving history and creating art
>therefore we actually have old tales preserved and in a poetic format which would not be the case otherwise
>the christians who wrote this stuff were also influential on the form the tales took and what got passed down to us
>but it’s nothing to do with christianity for some reason
>also let’s ignore 99% of LOTR is from romances which had frick all to do with paganism
Once again, this is completely irrelevant. I think you're too broken by fighting about le vikangz on Cinemaphile or something so you immediately hostile at the simple implication of "paganism".
no i’m pointing out how most of the norse pagan stuff we have was massively influenced by christianity and doesn’t reflect some untouched primordial european urreligion.
Smeagol actually almost is redeemed. He feels remorse for betraying Frodo to Shelob and almost turns heel and doesn't go through with it. It's Sam waking up and yelling at him while he's about to reconsider that pushes him over the edge.
None of that is in the book, where he is a complete reprobate and sam and frodo both know this all along and that hes going to betray them
>Aragorn
Is Christ the King: the true king of Middle-Earth, but was forced out and now loves with the common people
>Frodo
Christ the man:Bears everyone’s sins and is forced to go on a grueling journey
>Gandalf
The Holy Spirit: his magic isn’t like an rpg video game, but more like miracles; he only uses magic at appropriate time and reflects the danger that is faced.
That’s the gist of it.
base synopsis. the shills here just want to b***h about a movie that isn't woke; nor broke
>isn't woke
it could be 'woke' if Eowyn wasn't forbidden from joining the battle and winning glory like she desperately wanted, and this moment just came yassing out of nowhere. Then there's Merry's ancient anti-witch king dagger doing half the work.
Gandalf is literally odin. Lotr is not a christian work no matter how much tolkien larped afterwards pretending it was to avoid getting condemned by christians. Death of the author
Much like snorri who got criticised by his christian contemporaries for being a crypto pagan and coped by saying "it's just interesting history, im definitely a christian!'
>Death of the author
I reject that interpretation and I reject your assumption.
>man writes controversial work
>people ask prying questions that threaten his social status and livelihood if he revealed his true motives
>"oh youre reading into it all wrong, its ackshually anti racist and pro liberal"
>phew
Imagine thinking an author will baby you through understanding his magnum opus
there are no scenes where gandalf drinks semen to gain magical powers like odin did though
>he thinks israeli erotica fanfiction is real
At least its real in your mind
>Death of the Author is a magic spell I can invoke to claim a famously Catholic writer in a Protestant country was a crypto-pagan pretending to be a Christian because he was afraid of religious persecution in a 20th century European country
>however, if you bring up peer reviewed academic hypothesis about a religion that died out a thousand years which I pretend to belong to, I can dismiss those claims as fanfiction based on the ethnicity of the academic who wrote it
Kek, tolkien was raised nominally prot and broke off his engagement to a catholic because he wasnt willing to convert but then later on decided to become catholic to get that pussy. If you know anything about pre vatican 2 catholicism or the traddy larp today that i used to be a part of, youd know that you have to couch all pagan interest in the realms of "ackshually im just interested in those pre christian monotheists awaiting christ" or youll be ostracised as a pagan heretic, which is what tolkien retroactively did when questioned about the pagan elements he was obsessed with. You think he would risk losing his wife, family and community over admitting he was a nordaboo? Theres also elements of self depusion too, "if i say its ackshually a catholic work enough then it will retroactively become one".
Also your "peer reviewed academic" israelite literally came to that "hypothesis" (cumcuckoldry projection) by seeing a verse where it says odin was hanging upside down from yggdrasil as a sacridice of himself to himself and then saying "heh hes probably cumming and the cum is dripping down into his mouth and hes drinking it, disgusting goyim"
The guy who wrote this post meant to say that he's a cum slurping gay (death of the author)
The sheer lack of nuanced understanding in this post makes me giggle. Either this is terrific bait or you genuinely smell really bad irl.
>ha ur dumb or trolling
>u smell
Nice rebuttal
Tolkien was Catholic and held to redemption through penance and repentance. Not easy one time redemptions. Collectively, men as a whole went through a penance, I guess.
when they say religious context they mean in lore religion
Tolkien wrote this on the matter with regards to gollum
>to the ultimate judgement upon Gollum I would not care to enquire. This would be to investigate Goddes privitee’, as the Medievals said. Gollum was pitiable, but he ended in persistent wickedness, and the fact that this worked good was no credit to him. His marvellous courage and endurance, as great as Frodo and Sam’s or greater, being devoted to evil was portentous, but not honourable. I am afraid, whatever our beliefs, we have to face the fact that there are persons who yield to temptation, reject their chances of nobility or salvation, and appear to be ‘damnable’. Their ‘damnability’ is not measurable in the terms of the macrocosm (where it may work good). But we who are all ‘in the same boat’ must not usurp the judge. The domination of the Ring was much too strong for the mean soul of Sméagol. But he would have never had to endure it if he had not become a mean sort of thief before it crossed his path. Need it ever have crossed his path? Need anything dangerous ever cross any of our paths? A kind of answer cd. be found in trying to imagine Gollum overcoming temptation. The story would have been quite different! By temporizing, not fixing the still not wholly corrupt Sméagol-will towards good in the debate in the slag hole, he weakened himself for the final chance when dawning love of Frodo was too easily withered by the jealousy of Sam before Shelob’s lair. After that he was lost
he is a pitiable character and definitely a victim of evil, but you need some sort of reality confronting pathos and to accept that not everyone repents or sees the error of their ways, even if their evil is a result of what was inflicted on them
Thanks anon, that clarifies a lot for me.
>gollum went to fricking hell
Thanks tolkien
His character is a cautionary tale for kids so his punishment has to be scary
went to fricking hell
based. all the orcs and hook noses burn in hell too
it’s similar to what gandalf says. we don’t choose the times we are born into or to a large extent what we are as a result of the hand life deals us. there is an inherent unfairness in that. but we do have control over the things we choose to do. you can wish to have never existed, or to have been some insensate animal with no culpability, but you aren’t. and at the end of the day you’re in control of your actions
he deserves it for being a trecherous unrepentent piece of shit. even before being totally corrupted & contaminated by the ring, he murders in cold blood his cousin & best friend within like a minute of them discovering it. gollum is a fricking slime & if hell exists he deserves to roast there
Evil is always pathetic and pitiable in Tolkien. Gollum deserves hell just like Sauron does.
Who corrupted sauron?
Melkor aka Lucifer
melkor
>what corrupted melkor
pride
>Smeagol literally was almost fixed by Frodo but butthurt Sam got in the way
thats the true tragedy. that Frodo was right all along in putting his faith in Smeagol and giving him a chance. that a few acts of tolerance and kindness was almost enough to rehabilite him from lifetimes of corruption.
he said Smeagol himself got in the way
Does Sméagol strangle his friend over the ring in the books like he does in the movie?
In the book he bums him to death
LotR takes so much from Norse mythology and most don't even realize it.
They do
Gollum ate babies
>I get that the Ring is supremely corrupting but it would have been nice for Gollum to not just end up a pathetic tweaker until he dies.
Gollum is supposed to look like that. It's Frodo's potential future self if Frodo clings to the ring.
why is some hook nose trying to derail the thread?
anytime people talk positively about the only deity to BFTO ( merchants) and you get hook noses kvetching and seething.
Jesus is king and is the path. deal with it
literally everyone in the fellowship fails in some way or another and finds redemption (except legolas because tolkien elves almost never do anything wrong)
aragorn fricks up at amon hen and is indecisive, later makes up his mind, he's also a bit of a dick at bree
gandalf fricks up before things even get started and again caving against the mountain and again jobbing to the balrog and again when he realizes sitting in minas tirith with pippin that he fricked up strategically
gimli fricks up in lothlorien by not sucking galadriel's dick but quickly repents
sam whines and complains all the way to mordor then pretends he was very supportive the entire way, as is english tradition
pippin is constantly fricking up
merry fricks up a bit too
boromir tries to take the ring
frodo succumbs completely and only divine intervention and plot armor combined manage to save him
I know Tolkien did feel somewhat conflicted that the Orcs were irredeemable in the context of his faith.
well tolkien did say that the orcs aren't irredeemably evil because that'd go against his beliefs
>be tolkien
>"create" race of insanely evil swarthoids called Turks, uh i mean Torcs, uh i mean Orcs
>explicitly say its prehistory of our world, you know, the one in which Torcs literally existed
>make Orcs completely irredeemable and no evidence of them possibly being redeemable in the book, completely contradicting christian teaching on the matter
>"oh yeah it's definitely a christian work... Orcs are redeemable tehe, and even if they arent theyre subhuman anyway..."
the orcs are a corruption of the elves
the fact that turkish sounds and is spelled like the black speech is just a coincidence
Man you really need to read a book brother and stop larping as an intellectual on Cinemaphile. Have you even read Beowolf? The etymology of orc is derived from linguistic history.
What we Gardanes in yore days...
Ive read beowulf and even translated it for fun into modern english. But thank you for your groundbreaking advice to "read a book"
Varg please go away
Gollum literally has a redemption arc you fricking moronic Black person.