May
03
Riddles in the Dark: Episode Eight
Dr. Olsen and Dave Kale sat down for an emergency recording of Riddles in the Dark following “The CinemaCon Controversy”, as it’s come to be known. Take a listen to Episode Eight for their takes on what was seen in the most recent footage!
Corey, here’s a question for a later episode: four of Bilbo’s most important scenes (escape from Gollum, fight with spiders, rescue of dwarves from elves, and encounter with Smaug) all occur while Bilbo is invisible. Hard for an actor to act while invisible. So how will they handle this? Rankin-Bass and Tolkien himself in his paintings use translucency to represent invisibility, but Jackson has painted himself into a corner with his bad-trip ring world invisibility from LoTR. How will the invisibility be handled? Or will it simply be omitted in the scenes mentioned above?
I wondered if they might treat it as if Frodo’s experience with the ring was being affected by the fact that Sauron was growing in power and focusing his will on the ring. As a result using the ring in the time of LotR affected the wearer more dramatically (perhaps drawing them further in to that other realm) than it did during the time of The Hobbit.
If there is a “tomb of the 9 ringwraiths” that is fastened with binding spells, and they make a big deal about the tomb being opened, then the complete failure of the Council and Gandalf especially to make any kind of move about them makes no sense at all. Specifically, if Gandalf had known that the 9 had been loosed 60 years ago, why would he leave Frodo unprotected for long periods of time while continuing to investigate the ring and the rise of Sauron during his periods of absence in FOTR? Jackson, as on other occasions, makes choices that produce nonsensical (e.g., Faramir taking Frodo to Osgiliath, resulting in a direct face-off between a Nazgul and Frodo, who escapes by simply diving behind a parapet, or Treebeard’s ignorance about the destruction of the forest).
It FOTR, the appearance of the 9 is what really shows that Sauron is about to act, that the time for action cannot be delayed any longer. But if they actually showed up 60 years ago, the hesitancy of Gandalf’s investigation and of the Council in FOTR makes either no sense, or implies that they are complete idiots.
@Joshua, I can see at least one way that the Nazgul could appear in The Hobbit, non-canon though that may be, and still play the role of fore-runners of Sauron in the movie-FotR. The White Council does not *know* that the Necromancer is Sauron (neither did Tolkien when he wrote The Hobbit). They would have known the existence of the nine Rings for mortal men, and the nine wraiths of men who held those rings; this was always a threat, just not a present threat. The Nine could be wakened by powers other than Sauron, presumably, and it looks like Jackson & Co. have come up with a way to explicitly show that they were not active, and then became active, a few decades earlier than Tolkien contemplated.
If the White Council succeeds in annihilating the Nine in the battle at Dol Guldur, possibly even re-entombing them, then the Council would not see the Nazgul as an imminent threat, going forward. If the Nazgul never appear on-screen with Bilbo, and Gandalf fails to mention them, the hobbits remain ignorant of the Nazguls’ existence and would not have written about them in Bilbo’s story.
I’ve been enjoying the podcasts from over here in the UK for over 2 years now – and the speculation over the movie has been really interesting.
Just a thought on your discussion about how Sauron may be depicted (if at all) and how Gandalf identifies him.
I think I recall that when Frodo says to Gollum that Isildur cut the ring from Sauron’shand, Gollum replies that, “Yes, there are only 4 fingers on the black hand, but oh, they are enough.”
That makes me think that Gollum met Sauron when he was being tortured in Mordor. It hints at corporeality for Sauron other than the giant flaming eye we all love from the movie) and this could be what Gandalf sees in Dol Guldur… just a black 4 fingered hand.. or maybe even a Nosferatu-like shadow.
And two other thoughts:
On the Sauron / Smaug relationship, might we see the Ringwraiths attempting to negotiate with Smaug on Sauron’s behalf, offering an alliance? I rather think that Smaug would be too old and cagey to fall for anything they could offer and would send them scurrying off in a puff of fire – would make a great scene though.
Secondly – how old is Smaug and how long has he been around? Dragon’s live a long time so could it be that he knows Sauron from old?
I don’t think we ever get told when Smaug is born but it is about 170 years from when he attacked the Lonely Mountain to when he gets killed. At some point in the conversation with Bilbo, Smaug refers to himself as having been young when he did that. I don’t really know what counts as ‘young’ for a dragon, but I would hazard a guess that it is probably less than 100 years. So Smaug is probably less than 300 years old at the time of his death. That suggests that he is over 2000 years too young to have known Sauron, although no doubt he would have known of him.
Good point, Chris, I hadn’t picked up Smaug’s comment on being young when he first came to Erebor. I guess I was assumIng that like many of Melkor and Sauron’s creations the dragons were much longer lived.
Both Glaurung and Ancalagon are killed relatively quickly so I don’t think we have a clear example of their potential longevity. The other issue is thei source: orcs are rumoured to be corrupted elves, trolls possibly created from enter, while balrogs were maia spirits. So we’re dragons Maia, corruptions or creatures in their own right?
And something else that occurred to me: if Smaug had caught Bilbo he would then have been on possession of the one ring.
That’s a really interesting point Jim. Glaurung certainly seems to live to a similar age (well maybe up to 100 years more) to Smaug, with only a 260 year gap from when he is first seen, and described as being young, to when he is killed. I’m not so sure with Ancalagon – don’t know when he is first seen although we know quite clearly when he is killed (in the War of Wrath). But given that Glaurung is “the Father of Dragons”, Ancalagon must have come after him and so he probably can’t have been much more than 300-350 years old when he was killed.
Your comment on Orc raised an interesting question in my mind though. Given that they were originally elves, how long do orcs live? Generally not to a ripe old age given their lifestyle choices
but has the process that Morgoth used to turn them in to orcs broken that connection to the world that makes them (the elves) immortal? If so you can understand why the orcs seem so angry all the time 
But then, what becomes of the orcs when they are slain? Do they end up in the Halls of Mandos? Seems unlikely, but what other choices are there for a spirit that was originally elvish? But then, given the orcs apparent fecundity compared to the elves you’d think Mandos would be overflowing with them. Certainly they’d outnumber the elves.
Yes, the theory that orcs were corrupted elves has always thrown up some intriguing conundrums. I can’t recall from where but something in my sleep-deprived brain (young children do that to you) thinks that the orcs did indeed retain the immortality of their elvish origins. I’d like to think that somewhere deep inside a core of their true nature remained and perhaps this soul (for want of a better word) did return to the Halls of Mandos while the corrupted element was destroyed. As you say, that might reflect some of their lifestyle choices: their outer corruption driven to evil while the inner trapped elvish soul also sought the release from bondage (hmm, that last phrase sounds familiar) that the physical death of their corrupted body would bring.
If I can bring Jung into this for a moment, perhaps the orcs still had access to the collective unconscious racial memory of the elves… Shadrak and Gorbag could therefore have had dreams of walking under the Trees, which may explain their bad temper!
You can see why this was accounted the most hateful to Illuvatar of Melkor’s deeds