[film] [lotr] Is there an argument to be made about releasing two versions of a film being either confusing or lazy from a creative standpoint?
(I'm firming up my arguments for the roast. I want to talk about furthering class issues and leaning into a racist aesthetic that wasn't necessary to the story, but I thought this might be a potential avenue.)
the idea is supposed to be that war is ugly and evil defeats itself because it can't help being evil but the movie gets overexcited with making sure war looks super cool and has a point
both in the "inherently shady, clever but evil/gullible" coding and, in the books, with the awareness of past (Gondorian) invasion/displacement of the Easterlings and Haradrim
(plus JRRT also was trying to make a point about some of these people being forced etc though it's not great I just meant his letters reveal more nuance at times)
(this is WHY i'm so interested in the coding, bc to me LotR reads as "centrist-to-progressive for the time", rather than intended as racist. It comes across more the way that Orwell describes the Indians he knew - disrespectful but Trying)
what I think I mean it's that Tolkien's racism is generally of the period and possibly unconscious. Not justified, but I get it. movie doesn't have an excuse.
this is getting into the Deep Lore but a. they're described as dark haired and grey eyed, and more importantly b. Númenor itself was significantly south of Gondor and the other southern races are largely described as swarthy/dark/etc
and it's made clear that Númenorean blood shows very clearly in bloodlines, and yeah, you can take that as "is seven foot tall and looks super kingly" but there's no reason not to ALSO take that as "doesn't look white"
so it's not that númenoreans are canonically other than white, it's just that to me it makes perfect sense that they might not be, and it would be cool if they weren't
in terms of... in the films she comes across much more as driven by her crush on aragorn, imo, compared to what we see in the books of her ambition and honour and stuff. although i agree with the choice not to include the faramir ship at the end (even though I love them)
and like. they really did not show her devotion to either her uncle or her people (or, really, her self-sacrifice in staying in Edoras) and I am eternally Big Mad
(I'm firming up my arguments for the roast. I want to talk about furthering class issues and leaning into a racist aesthetic that wasn't necessary to the story, but I thought this might be a potential avenue.)