in the return of the king movie, when Pippin looks in the palantir, why does gandalf ask him if it was minas tirith that he saw?
Like how the fuck would Pippin know if it was
Pretty easy City to describe and recognize though.
Plus, there aren't that many cities in middle earth in this time period. It's much easier when it's 1 of 5? cities to know.
I didn't see the movie but semi remember that scene from the book. Pippin saw Sauron, and seeing Minas Tirith would have revealed Sauron's location, always good intellligence. I don't remember what Pippin reported about it though.
The book is a momumental classic and I highly recommend it if you like reading fiction. I saw the first of the three LOTR movies and thought it was ok considering what it was trying to do. It could have been lots worse. But still, I didn't feel particularly interested in seeing the other two movies. Maybe I'll re-read the books sometime. It's been ages. These days, lots of fanfics are longer than the LOTR books, since they no longer have the limitations of printing on paper.
If you stopped watching the trilogy after the first movie, you almost certainly won’t like the second. It deviates from the book a lot. The third was still pretty faithful though.
Ive read the books and see the films many times and would never go as far as saying someone wont like it. Go into the films with the understanding that they had to change things due the constraints of the media. Things had to be cut, rearranged and changed to make them fit in 9ish hours of film.
For example, Helms Deep and the battle fought there in the book barely a chapter and change, the film adaptation I would argue is the best fantasy battle scene ever made.
Translating between medias is an art, not a science and it should be regarded as art and judged on its own merrits, along side its merrits as an adaptation.
Thanks, that's good info, though I was never really interested in the movies to begin with. I saw the first one mostly through getting dragged along by some friends. I don't have that big a problem with deviating from the finer details of the book's plot lines. It's mostly that the movies couldn't (or anyway didn't) capture the books' sense of grandness.
I liked this a lot, a fanfiction where Harry Potter finds himself transported to Middle Earth. There are actually quite a lot of those but this one is particularly good. Warning, it's unfinished, though it doesn't stop on a cliffhanger or anything like that. It captures Tolkien's writing style and sweep pretty well.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628394/chapters/56706448
This one is also complete and is one of my favorites, but in a totally different style from Tolkien. It says LOTR is revisionist history / elf propaganda, and that Sauron and Mordor were actually the good side of the war. The main character is an orc:
Seriously, I'm an old coot, read the book in the 70s and 80s etc. and the trilogy is absolutely beautiful
Until then I never thought we could have special effects good enough to tell many book stories. It was a real turning point. Funny how much crap has come out since though. Its still top of my collection along with firefly.
I've read the books twice
Even if he'd never seen it he could know by hearing people describe it or he could describe what he saw.
Minas Tirith is pretty stand out in its description.
It was more of a statement than a question, and "is that what you saw" more rhetorical to get Pippin to tell what else he saw.
I think this is it. Thanks!