The Paths of the Dead

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:11 pm

Some august personage or other wrote:[...]book-Aragorn is one of my least favorite book characters.

I'm so glad you're back. I totally agree.

Post by **superwizard** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:14 pm

TORN wrote: As for the Aragorn dialogue, it didn't do anything for me either, even if it brings him closer to book-Aragorn, as book-Aragorn is one of my least favorite book characters.

Ahh man come on TORN! Help me out here I'm clearly outnumbered

Post by **vison** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:12 am

And here I thot I liked TORN.

Man, I was once in the biggest flame war of all time over Book Aragorn. A mean, horrible, nasty witchy enemy of mine described him as "stiff" and "wooden".

Can you imagine the horror I felt?

We duked it out, post upon post, for about a week and left scars on each other that the Eyes of the Wise can still see.

(But we are still good friends. Our emnity was, like, virtual.)

Post by **yovargas** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 1:31 am

Was that person me? Cuz I'm pretty sure I've called him "stiff" and "wooden" before. And I'm positive I've made some sort of comparison to cardboard at some point...

Post by **vison** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 1:50 am

Oh, no, yovargas, it wasn't you!!!

No, it was a woman on the old fanclub site. She and I are still fast friends and we never talk about Aragorn any more.

Wooden, my foot.

Just reserved, that's all.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:13 am

Yes, so reserved he matches the wallpaper. . . .

Post by **Erunáme** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:27 am

Another person here who doesn't much like book Aragorn. Movie Aragorn is much better to me.

Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:28 am

I like peaches. But nectarines are good too.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:33 am

I guess we can't really call ourselves a messageboard until we've done Fruit vs. Fruit. . . .

I actually don't mean to slag Book Aragorn. I find him rather colorless, but that's because I prefer the hobbits, who are more traditionally "rounded" characters who change and grow.

Film Aragorn is fine for me, though I don't either love or deplore the changes in him because I still can't see him as the center of the story. In the films as in the books, I tend during his bits to be waiting for the hobbits to come back.

Post by **yovargas** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:38 am

Aragorn in TTT has some of my very fav moments, particularly in the Golden Hall and Helm's Deep. Almost any scene with him and Théoden together is

worthy for me.

Post by **Old_Tom_Bombadil** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:39 am

Primula Baggins wrote:Instead we get THE WHOLE THING IN OUR FACES with lots of fairly generic horror-movie ghosties and beasties.

The lack of subtlety that Jackson displayed in the Paths of the Dead sequence is endemic in his treatment of Tolkien's work.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:51 am

I would argue that there are many subtle moments, some of them at critical points. Yet it's hard for me to judge. Some of the "over-the-topness" that other people can't stand bothers me not at all; it's hard for me to be visually overloaded, for example, and I like emotion.

I know that in failing to appreciate the more "epic" characters I'm missing something that was important to Tolkien. It's just the way I'm wired; in all such stories, high or low (comic-book movies, say), what touches me most about "high" or "powerful" characters is their moments of human feeling. Book Aragorn has very few—such as complaining about how no one trusts Strider because he looks dangerous.

Post by **superwizard** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:31 am

Prim its not that he doesn't have many of these feelings- just that we don't get to see them. We rarely see inside Aragorn's head and we know little about his thoughts. Read the appendicies again especially "of Aragorn and Arwen". I'm sure you'll like him more after that

PS: Favorite fruit: blueberry (not a fruit you say? S'Wiz doesn't care

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:39 am

Swiz, I've read it about a dozen times.

There is a big difference between experiencing a character's sadness in an immediate way, and reading a series of sketchily described events and reflecting, "Wow, when that happened, he must have been sad." It's because we rarely see inside Aragorn's head that he is so remote and, to me, unaffecting. I care about his quest with my head, not my heart. It's no competition for Frodo's.

Post by **Queen_Beruthiel** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:26 pm

It is a problem in the book - Deus Ex Machina.

The scene in the film is bad in almost every way, in my opinion. Vigo tries hard to instal some seriousness and some tension in the sequence, but the cheese and the fooling around, defeat him.

Post by **yovargas** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 6:34 pm

For the record, I do think most of the (non-EE) scene is entertaining. It's just enourmously, obnoxiously wrong in LOTR.

Post by **axordil** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 7:52 pm

The problem with book Aragorn is that, although he has a story, and we get to hear about it, LOTR isn't his story, it's Frodo and Sam's. The part of his story that we DO see is woven into a subplot where the focus is more on Merry and Pippin's growth (figuratively and literally

).

It's a bit like reading a novel set in WWII about two staffers in the War Office who end up going on a secret mission to Berchtesgarten, in which Winston Churchill is an important supporting character.

Well, except Churchill was interesting.

Seriously, though, he's a character from romance or epic after Rivendell. He may do interesting and important things, but that doesn't mean he's all that interesting as a character. Now, from Bree to the Ford, that's different. But that's another topic.