h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not to worry.

I suspect the muse has departed, the urge to rhyme is no longer flowing.

and what I meant was... not that I don't like what you're doing here... just that I want some more of the other

er....

as we were saying ... something about the weather?

Something about the weather.

Yeah. Tolkien records each and every sunrise and sunset. Each and every one. Why?

At first I thought he was just marking time, but he makes such a big deal out of it that I wondered if he were trying to say something.

Leggy makes a point of saying that a red dawn means blood has been spilled in the night, just before Eomer turns up with the Rohirrim. The weather is generally quite expressive - the storm at Caradhras is engineered either by Saurman (in the movie) or maybe Sauron (Books) or possibly by the mountain itself (also maybe books) hinting that nature actually takes a part in the proceedings.
The rain at Helm's Deep is a wonderful atmospheric.
There's a storm once Sauron finds out that Saurman isn't playing ball any more.

It's pretty clear to me that the Prof. was very into weather and observation, but I'm trying to work out whether he's just using it as a realism point or whether the weather is delivering more than that.

well... he was British, wasn't he? he's bound to have a "thing" for the weather....

To be honest I'm always slightly disappointed about the weather after the mountain. I thought there was more than a hint that it was very active in producing all the snow, but afterwards there isn't much mention of the actual landscape rising against Middle Earth.

Tolk certainly had a thing for weather. I've seen it quoted somewhere (maybe this very thread) that he predicted fierce storms in England for 1986 . . . the year of the hurricane . . . when Fish got out of his depth . . .

He may have got out of his depth, who hasn`t, once in a while?
He`s still pluggin` away though, even if his suit is a bit tighter!

Not that that`s got anything to do with the price of fish...

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He did? This is interesting...

Might have been 12 June '87; can't find more details.

The weather in LOTR for me works in several ways . Clearly a great deal of the play is acted out with wild open places as the stage . It anchors the story in a older time when this years crops affected how hungry you got , and todays rain how wet . It also gives scale to the events , the players involved are of such a stature that they can influence the weather.
Sorry to start another hare runnning , but: -
Has anyone else considered that one thread in Saruman may be William Morris and his dark satanic motor car factories gobbling up the ancient woodland around the dreaming spires of Oxford in the 1920s and 30s ?

I just read (and returned to the library <scowlsmiley&gt a book called the Rough Guide to LotR, which mentions William Morris as one of Tolkien's influences...
Oh, and has anyone heard about the proposed LotR musical stage play? What's *that* about?

What have they done to Saruman in the movie? He doesn't come back!

Saruman's fate is left open for a sequel, Shagrath.

Nope, just kidding!

What happens to Saruman was cut for reasons of time. It makes it into the extended edition of RoTK, apparently, but either way I don't think we get to see the Scourging of the Shire and all that good stuff.

YAY! At least they filmed it! If they just completely left it out I was going to have to go kick Jackson's a*se for being an idiot. I was really, really looking forward to the Scouring.

Christopher Lee (who is an enormous fan of LOTR and has read it something like a million times, and can't he speak Elvish?) was really really miffed. Can't blame him, it totally ruined the Palantir storyline.

Oh well, I suppose Jackson knew that we die-hards would go to see it and buy the Extended Edition DVD and (probably) the super duper boxed set...

cynic? moi?

nah!

Yeah, what was up with the whole palantír business? They didn't explain it at all. The ROTK movie made me in a few ways.

I have to say that I loved the film. It's just not complete, and people around me who didn't know what was going on (ie. hadn't read the books) were very confused.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, it was great, but *very* incomplete, and the resolution was *way* too long.

well, that kind of reflected the last part of the book, which goes on and on and on and on.

pity he didn't make a 4th film with the appendices...

Appendices? How do you make a movie of the appendices??

Oooooo...Appendices!

Some of the apendicies deal with the events that happened after the end of the book, some of them deal with other stories (like the Aragorn/Arwen deal) and others are just kind of..cool bits that were never a part of the story.

I can see that making an astounding DVD package.

And now I'm gonna go off and over the prospect. Such a shame it won't happen.