Posted: December 07, 1999 at 22:53:22: by Michael Martinez
: with all due respect, I can't believe that *that* is your major
: complaint, Michael! I know most of your arguments about
: medieval whatnots and hoosiwhatees, and I agree with a good
: many of them--partly out of seeing the soundness of your
: arguments, partly because I don't know any better--but come on!
: Even I think you overstate your case a bit too much by being so
: self-assured. Your arguments are just that - positions which
: you've chosen to defend. Other positions - even the
: medievalists - have quite a bit to add to the mix, and on some
: counts they can score a point or two against you. Since Tolkien
: never described in detail the socio-economic organization of
: Middle-earth at the time of the War of the Ring, all arguments
: must necessarily be conjecture. So I guess my point is, please
: don't let that (of all things) spoil the movies for you.The most knowledgeable medievalists (including our own Martin) usually acknowledge that Middle-earth is not a pseudo-medieval Europe. Their point of view is that Tolkien created a world similar to that which he would have been familiar with as a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies at Oxford. But my concern where the movie displays this detailed medievalist view is that it will only reinforce the mistaken notion of many fans that Tolkien's stories are really employing somehow medieval lifestyles and technologies. They are not. People lived a certain way in Europe for many thousands of years: they farmed, raised livestock, wove their own clothes, took part in what we could call tribal or supertribal communities, and so forth. These traditions began to change during the Middle Ages under the influence of the Church, and that influence is not present in Tolkien's stories. At best only a protomedieval connection is justifiable in some cases. : Getting back to the original subject, I have heard that it is
: actually Gimli who they have chosen to be the "comic relief."
: Of course, this was in the old, two-movie version which has
: been well reworked and reworked again. But in that one, he was
: a bit more crass and off-the-cuff then he appears in the books.
: Hopefully they've fleshed out his character a bit more. Well, Merry was also going to be comic relief. I don't think it's going to be that big a deal. There will be a lot of intensity in the base storyline, which hasn't been altered.
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