Careercow Robert Chipman / Bob / Moviebob / "Movieblob" - Middle-Aged Consoomer, CWC with a Thesaurus, Ardent Male Feminist and Superior Futurist, the Twice-Fired, the Mario-Worshipper, publicly dismantled by Hot Dog Girl, now a diabetic

[Judge Holden]

Although in defense, Glorfindel was practically the definition of 'throwaway character', and Tolkien had to bullshit a bit as to why Elrond let Merry and Pippin join the Fellowship and not Glorfindel (yes, I know a mighty Elf Lord couldn't charge the fucking gates of Minas Morgul, but I'm pretty certain he'd be more useful than those two knuckleheads).

Heck, in the old animated version of LotR, they gave his role to Legolas. So it didn't shock me in the slightest when they swapped him out for Arwen in the film.

*harumphs indignantly*

In my interpretation Glorfindel serves a good purpose in the story since he was an old school ultra powerful elf lord on the Silmarilion scale of things and he shows just how much power the elves of old once wielded, but as Elrond said this kind of power would just draw infinitely more attention than two random hobbits, and thus doom the fellowship because no matter how much power he had, the numbers and dark powers that would be brought against them would be far greater.

Remember, the fellowship was not a "get every ultimate badass we know on a roadtrip to kick ass in mordor" plan but a "get a small group of easily hidden and disguised commandos to slip through enemy lines unnoticed" which would not really work well with a literal shining divinely empowered uber-knight whose mere presence made Nazgul shit themselves in fear.

Think of it like this, if you were planning a special forces operation to steal some important documents in Iran, you wouldn't assign an M1 Abrams tank to tag along with the team, even if it is a whole lot deadlier than any individual Navy Seal, since it would immediately blow everyones cover the moment they tried to sneak it past a checkpoint.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

We talk about him wanting to be a wannabe Hitler, he actually wants to be even more powerful than a dictator.

So basically, Kim Jong Un if he were living in his brother’s basement and had a Boston accent.

 

[Mola Ram]

*harumphs indignantly*

In my interpretation Glorfindel serves a good purpose in the story since he was an old school ultra powerful elf lord on the Silmarilion scale of things and he shows just how much power the elves of old once wielded, but as Elrond said this kind of power would just draw infinitely more attention than two random hobbits, and thus doom the fellowship because no matter how much power he had, the numbers and dark powers that would be brought against them would be far greater.

Remember, the fellowship was not a "get every ultimate badass we know on a roadtrip to kick ass in mordor" plan but a "get a small group of easily hidden and disguised commandos to slip through enemy lines unnoticed" which would not really work well with a literal shining divinely empowered uber-knight whose mere presence made Nazgul shit themselves in fear.

Think of it like this, if you were planning a special forces operation to steal some important documents in Iran, you wouldn't assign an M1 Abrams tank to tag along with the team, even if it is a whole lot deadlier than any individual Navy Seal, since it would immediately blow everyones cover the moment they tried to sneak it past a checkpoint.

It was also thematically important that Glorfindel not be part of the Fellowship. A major element of the entire story is that the Elves have declined nearly to nothing, with just a few hidden refuges like Rivendell and Lorien representing the embers of their shrinking power. Tolkien once pointed out that Legolas accomplished the least of the members of the Fellowship.

This element was, of course, flagrantly ignored as the films progressed.

But we're wandering off topic. WILL BOB KNOW ANY OF THIS WHEN HE DOES A REALLY THAT GOOD ON LORD OF THE RINGS? Signs point to no.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

For a guy who rants so much about religion and not believing in god, he sure is pissed off that he himself isn't god.

He's so butthurt that he can't control everything that is going on at any given moment. We talk about him wanting to be a wannabe Hitler, he actually wants to be even more powerful than a dictator. He wants to be able to control literally everything, just so he could do away with something he hates the moment it comes to his attention.

Guess what Bob: you aren't god. You never will be either.

What is it with cows having god complexes

 

[Judge Dredd]

Would you believe they actually adapted "Cool Air" for an episode of Night Gallery? They turned it into a romance, which probably tells you all you need to know about the prospects for adapting Lovecraft faithfully.

I've not seen much of Night Gallery. I heard it was great. Second only to The Twilight Zone. I've not read cool air either, but you make it sound like they butchered it.

 

[Judge Holden]

It was also thematically important that Glorfindel not be part of the Fellowship. A major element of the entire story is that the Elves have declined nearly to nothing, with just a few hidden refuges like Rivendell and Lorien representing the embers of their shrinking power. Tolkien once pointed out that Legolas accomplished the least of the members of the Fellowship.

This element was, of course, flagrantly ignored as the films progressed.

But we're wandering off topic. WILL BOB KNOW ANY OF THIS WHEN HE DOES A REALLY THAT GOOD ON LORD OF THE RINGS? Signs point to no.

Also worth noting that the Valinor descended Elves of the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit (i.e. Rivendell and Lorien) are portrayed as being exceptionally humble and respectful towards "lesser" peoples despite their own gifts and powers, since they know just how badly they themselves as a people fucked up during the First Age during the events in the Silmarilion and thus are not exactly in any mood to look down upon Men or Dwarves for their flaws or failings, no matter how the movies spun Elrond.

Not exactly relevant to the point, but given the subject of the thread and his obsession with his own "superiority" and how much his "inferiors" deserve to be exterminated for the crime of existing I think its worth noting.

 

[Mola Ram]

I've not seen much of Night Gallery. I heard it was great. Second only to The Twilight Zone. I've not read cool air either, but you make it sound like they butchered it.

It's ... I dunno, probably not awful if you're not familiar with the original story. Basically, they change the narrator to a woman and have her fall in love with Dr. Munoz. The plot is otherwise pretty much the same, so it's a gruesome tragedy. It's been years since I saw it, but I remember lots of sappy music and soft lighting.

Night Gallery was hit or miss, much like Twilight Zone. The pilot with Roddy McDowell and Ossie Davis was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen, but then again I was six when I saw it, so YMMV.

EDIT: Oh, you haven't read it. Duh. Well, trust me when I say the original story is much more about staving off the inevitability of death and decomposition than it is doomed love. Also, Lovecraft's phobia of air conditioning.

 

[Red Hood]

I've not seen much of Night Gallery. I heard it was great. Second only to The Twilight Zone. I've not read cool air either, but you make it sound like they butchered it.

It was a good show, and AFAIK contains the only adaptation of a Clark Ashton Smith story (Return of the Sorceror) which stars Vincent Price and is pretty cool.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Sperging about billionaires

 

[MirrorNoir]

I've been watching with my buddy "electric dreams" which is like outer limits/black mirror except it's adapting Phillip K Dick stories.

Would be nice to see something like that ("unspeakable things" maybe?) adapting Lovecraft's short stories.

The biggest issue is that there are only two stories by Lovecraft that people care about: Re-Animator and Call of Cthlulhu. Even Guillermo Del Toro's "At the Mouth Of Madness" falls victim to this, as the last act basically abandons the plot of ATMOM and replaces it with the final act of CoC as far as Cthlulhu showing up out of the blue and the film shifting from the plot of ATMOM to the the sailors vs Cthlulhu fight from CoC.

It also hurts that what most associates with Lovecraft, actually is arc welding by later writers and stewards of Lovecraft's estate. Stuff like the King In Yellow or Great God Pan and Three Impostures, which (being public domain) were folded into the Lovecraft lore; hell, even the concept of the Cthlulhu Mythos itself is 100% the work of other writers, retrospectively trying to create a grand unifying theory where all of the Lovecraft stories are connected and creating stuff from whole cloth (like the elemental grid view of certain Elder God creatures) and inserting stuff like Chamber's King In Yellow, into the Lovecraft canon.

 

[Red Hood]

Sperging about billionaires

View attachment 657742

Hunting people for sport? Bob doesn't want to open that can of worms. Some mustachioed Englishman with a .700 Nitro Express wants to put Bob on a wall among the oddities.

 

[andr0id psycho sho(ker]

Hunting people for sport? Bob doesn't want to open that can of worms. Some mustachioed Englishman with a .700 Nitro Express wants to put Bob on a wall among the oddities.

"I say, that's the biggest white hippo, I've seen,"

 

[Iceland Heavy]

For a guy who rants so much about religion and not believing in god, he sure is pissed off that he himself isn't god.

He's so butthurt that he can't control everything that is going on at any given moment. We talk about him wanting to be a wannabe Hitler, he actually wants to be even more powerful than a dictator. He wants to be able to control literally everything, just so he could do away with something he hates the moment it comes to his attention.

Guess what Bob: you aren't god. You never will be either.

I actually don't know that he'd want to put in the effort to personally control everything. If he was magically put into a position of absolute power I can see him delegating his responsibilities to his orbiters or tasking some '''''benevolent'''''' AI supercomputer with implementing the superior future.

 

[Brother Wind]

It was also thematically important that Glorfindel not be part of the Fellowship. A major element of the entire story is that the Elves have declined nearly to nothing, with just a few hidden refuges like Rivendell and Lorien representing the embers of their shrinking power. Tolkien once pointed out that Legolas accomplished the least of the members of the Fellowship.

This element was, of course, flagrantly ignored as the films progressed.

But we're wandering off topic. WILL BOB KNOW ANY OF THIS WHEN HE DOES A REALLY THAT GOOD ON LORD OF THE RINGS? Signs point to no.

Well no, he never read it. Its clearly about colonialism by a racist old Englishman. Why would he read it?

 

[BScCollateral]

Would you believe they actually adapted "Cool Air" for an episode of Night Gallery?

Also swiped by the nice people at EC Comics and illustrated by Graham "Ghastly" Engels. No man ever drew fetid petrification better.

To this day whenever I see a depiction of a decaying corpse, part of me goes "putrid indeed, but no Engles."

 

[Pokemonquistador]

Also swiped by the nice people at EC Comics and illustrated by Graham "Ghastly" Engels. No man ever drew fetid petrification better.

To this day whenever I see a depiction of a decaying corpse, part of me goes "putrid indeed, but no Engles."

Night Gallery also did an adaptation of Pickman's Model, which also shoehorned a romance (of sorts) into it. It was okay...

(Best episode of Night Gallery was "The Caterpillar" and I'll fight anyone who sez otherwise...)

Those looking for fun "Evil-Dead" style adaptations of Lovecraft should check out the Jeffrey Combs movies "Re-Animator" and "Necronomicon."


Who else besides me thinks that, whenever Bob gets around to reviewing LOTR, he'll equate Orcs with Black People and call Tolkien a backwards looking Mayonnaise ghoul because he portrayed small towns like the Shire as pure and good, and larger towns like Bree and the post-Sauron corrupted, mechanized version of the Shire as evil?

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Night Gallery also did an adaptation of Pickman's Model, which also shoehorned a romance (of sorts) into it. It was okay...

(Best episode of Night Gallery was "The Caterpillar" and I'll fight anyone who sez otherwise...)

Those looking for fun "Evil-Dead" style adaptations of Lovecraft should check out the Jeffrey Combs movies "Re-Animator" and "Necronomicon."


Who else besides me thinks that, whenever Bob gets around to reviewing LOTR, he'll equate Orcs with Black People and call Tolkien a backwards looking Mayonnaise ghoul because he portrayed small towns like the Shire as pure and good, and larger towns like Bree and the post-Sauron corrupted, mechanized version of the Shire as evil?

I think he'll equate Orcs with Trump supporters and Sauron to Trump.

 

[Rathkor]

And Sauroman wore a white robe. Obvious KKK Grand WIZARD!

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Lovecraft just doesn't translate well to a visual medium, if you show what the things look like you've already failed, they're supposed to be unimaginable, incomprehensible, you can't really do that in a movie IMO.
You can still borrow from it, and plenty of movies/shows do.

How many Lovecraft stories have you read? He pretty clearly paints a picture of a lot of stuff. The whole "The monster was too terrible, too awful to describe... so I won't" was mostly later hack authors who couldn't round up the brain cells to imagine something alien.

 

[Godzilla@1989]

Holy shit this is retarded.