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TheDeath
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posted March 17, 2009 06:20 PM |
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And that's exactly what I call predictable and unoriginal and boring. You think twists are so awesome that those who avoid them actually are either too stupid to "get them" or don't know about them? They do it on purpose, because twists are, apart from being predictable and sometimes even unrealistic even for non-fantasy movies, boring...
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and it's lightyears ahead of destroying everything
Not quite. That's the nature of the Joker though, he isn't a demon or some other kind of "extreme evil", he is just a corrupted psychopath. There's a big difference, and in my opinion, both have their places of course -- kudos to a story who includes them both and does it well without glitches.
Ask a robot without feelings, or one with any compassion or any human or animal characteristic, or one who inherited ONLY the evil (as in fantasies), as some kind of a complex Aesop (not quite literally but you get the point). You cannot possibly say that it should act like a human tyrant, because even THOSE have whole different ways, and because there is always the "more evil" way of things than a human because humans always have at least some feelings that represent good or something, no matter how small. Not to mention some people (even on this board, I won't mention) think that suffering is better than nonexistence (aka destruction), so which one is more evil?
If the story is supposed to portray some extreme evil and something inhuman, you don't actually turn to portray it simply from humans... Tolkien even represented them detailed enough to actually even figure out his philosophy in this regard -- something which "Reality shows" lack. (of course you need philosophy to portray something "non-human"  )
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JollyJoker
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posted March 17, 2009 08:00 PM |
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I struggle to see your point, actually. I've read things over a couple of times, but I can't make much sense of it, and the things I can make sense of I seem to disagree with.
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SwampLord
Supreme Hero
Lord of the Swamp
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posted March 17, 2009 08:04 PM |
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Quote:
Atleast the Scourge has more interesting motives then Sauron who is just "Destroy all intelligent and humanoid speices!!!".
Are you serious?
First of all, Arthas basically is the Scourge, 99% of the scourge are mindless zombies.
Secondly, Arthas is *not* interesting as a character at all. He's your typical fallen hero. That's it.
Honestly, the fact that a hack job of a video game (no matter how much fun it may be; I own WCIII and love it) is being compared to LotR's story and declared superior is just sad.
Furthermore as pointed out, not only does Blizzard blatantly mine from other game systems but they even copy stories within their own games. At least Tolkien made an original story with unoriginal material.
And have you even read the damn books? Sauron DOES NOT want to kill all of Middle Earth. He wants to SUBJUGATE it, exactly like Arthas. There is no difference at all in their goals whatsoever, except that Sauron is not an angsty teenager who formed with a necromancer of UltimateDarknessTM and is now an angsty zombie giant.
Plus, the very concept of Tolkien's monsters and the origin of Orcs in particular is far more horrific and creative in general than Blizzard's undead.
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted March 17, 2009 08:08 PM |
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Originality is overrated and ceases to be an agument from here on.
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Doomforge
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Retired Hero
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posted March 17, 2009 08:10 PM |
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Quote:
You think twists are so awesome
umm.. no? Why do you think I do?
A good writer should portray the races in a very "real" way, not give some general ideas on them and leave the rest for us to imagine.
So far you have not provided a single argument that Tolkien's races aren't lame, Deathy 
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mamgaeater
Legendary Hero
Shroud, Flying, Trample, Haste
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posted March 17, 2009 08:18 PM |
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A good writer should portray the races in a very "real" way, not give some general ideas on them and leave the rest for us to imagine.
but this is one of the stronger points of why Tolkien's book is so well accepted.
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Doomforge
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posted March 17, 2009 08:22 PM |
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I can't understand why.
The members of each race were extremely similar.
Take Sapkowski's Elves. Those were so different, so real, with their haughty, poetic hatred towards humans. But not all were like that. Some just understood that it's the end of their age. Some even were friendly towards humans. Each elf in "The Witcher" was a personality of his/hers own. Try that book, I'm sure you will be amazed of how well he portrayed the Elves. Even if his dwarves were a bit too similar to each other, elves were brilliant.
Tolkien's elves are poorly portrayed. They are all the same.
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alcibiades
Honorable
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of Gold Dragons
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posted March 17, 2009 08:40 PM |
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9 pages of posts that I haven't read ... lolz  ... just wanna say that I actually agree fully with op. I realize Tolkien brought a lot of new and creative things to fantasy - in fact, he literally invented modern fantasy - but in terms of story and particularly character development, I don't think LOTR has much to offer.
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phoenixreborn
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Unicorn
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posted March 17, 2009 08:44 PM |
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Mytical made some good points addressing that Alci.
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DagothGares
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posted March 17, 2009 09:01 PM |
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Sturgeon's law:
* Corollary 1: The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction (or fantasy in this case) is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.
* Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field. (It's clear this doesn't necessarily follow from the Revelation.)
* Our Corollary: The difficulty of getting a group of people to agree on which is the non-cruddy 10% exponentially approaches infinity as the size of the group increases. (Or, "Crud is in the eye of the beholder... so to speak.")
o Our Second Corollary: This is because the other 90% is further divided into "Total Crud", "Crud You Like Anyway", and "Other Crud" The exact proportions of this division has never been researched, and, aside from Total Crud, most likely varies on the individual, for reasons mentioned above.
* Critic's Corollary: 90% of people lack the taste necessary to distinguish between crud and non-crud.
* The Theorem Of Narrow Interests: The more constrained the thing you're looking for, the fewer good examples exist.
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SwampLord
Supreme Hero
Lord of the Swamp
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posted March 17, 2009 09:20 PM |
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Originality is overrated and ceases to be an agument from here on.
In my opinion originality does in fact have its benefits; unoriginal stories can be excellent, but an original story is refreshing and interesting, and since everything about this thread is subjective, I'll use whatever I want to as an argument, thanks.
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phoenixreborn
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Unicorn
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posted March 17, 2009 09:27 PM |
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In fact the more I think about a case can be made for treating television and literature separately.
Tolkien's story falls very much into the traditional/religious format beginning-middle-end good/evil arc. On a show like Futurama or a drama show based around a place like a police station each episode stands on its own and separate episodes are loosely connected. A character like Calculon exists solely for joke purposes, where a character like Shelob is meant to represent something.
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Cepheus
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Far-flung Keeper
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posted March 17, 2009 09:28 PM |
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Quote:
Tolkien's elves are poorly portrayed. They are all the same.
I'm not sure if you're grasping the fact that Tolkien's elves are the original portrayal - before then, the Elf as a creature was largely shown as a cap-wearing goblin thing.
There was no stereotype to base them on before LotR: his version spawned the stereotype. You can hardly blame the author if you think the original version is a poor version.
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Doomforge
Admirable
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Retired Hero
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posted March 17, 2009 09:30 PM |
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I'm NOT saying they are not original.
So stop using that argument.
He created them, yes.
He created their lore.
He also made them boring because he never thought of developing a deeper personality to them, like Sapkowski did.
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted March 17, 2009 09:58 PM |
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TheDeath
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posted March 17, 2009 10:01 PM |
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Quote:
A good writer should portray the races in a very "real" way...
You mean make them humans...
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So far you have not provided a single argument that Tolkien's races aren't lame, Deathy
I did plenty. You provide one that they are lame. No and "must be closer to humans" is NOT gonna cut it.
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He also made them boring because he never thought of developing a deeper personality to them
Thank God he didn't make them humans -- after all, why the pointless different SPECIES when it can just be a different culture, about what you are advocating?
How many times must I say this? Nothing is POINTLESS into Tolkien's brilliant writing. In your case, "different species" would be utterly pointless -- why not make them all human instead if they are all gonna share the same characteristics and variety among individuals?
They are different species in Tolkien's style because it MATTERS (for the subtle "allegory", but meh, no one seems to ever take this into account).
in effect, let's make elves have the following traits: human desire, human feelings, cheating, lying, subject to temptations (best example against temptation: cyborgs), betray, think only of themselves or individualistic (counter example in RL: ants), have a desire 'dream', love the same way as a human, hate the same way as a human, get mad, be stressed, or have every member be "an individual" and thus subject to differences (like humans) instead of them being more collective type of species (like ants).
Even RL provides an example. Here's a tip: if you want human traits, USE HUMANS, NOT A DIFFERENT SPECIE. Tolkien didn't and had a reason. Now if you want to bash his doings, bash the use of different species, because it is utterly pointless to have "humans with bigger ears" a totally different specie if they can just as well be called "humans" (in mentality).
What about Angels (in other types of fantasy)? Should they also have the same "variations" as humans? What about demons? What about robots??? Should they all be subject to betrayal, corruption, and HUMAN DESIRE?
I mean sure, to make 90% portrayal of humans we need a different species... for what? Ah, just for kicks right? Just cause you felt like adding a new species, even though it is 90% human in mentality of course?
But like I said, if you can't imagine a different species and WHY you must put a different species to represent it (it is for a REASON not just utterly "because I liked it that way" like you seem to suggest), then you can't philosophize about how it is to not share most human traits (some are though to keep consistency).
In brief, Tolkien is not just an "awesome story" (or "crappy story"), it has a MEANING behind.
And JollyJoker, I have explained too many times in this thread the same thing again, and thank goodness I wasn't only speaking to you at least so I didn't waste it on nothing (I didn't even realize I was replying to you, or rather, I didn't care). You seem to have a hobby calling things "incomprehensible" and not worth replying to (despite the fact that you never provide exact data on what you don't understand), but I wonder whether you actually even take the time to read it better or use some common sense judgment (yeah, blame me for not being native english speaker). (and not just against me, though that is usually the case it seems)
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Geny
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted March 17, 2009 10:06 PM |
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I hate to say it, but... this is becoming a typical OSM thread. Here's a challenge for you guys: try to read the last page or so (your posts as well as the others) and try to count the number of connections between the points different members make when they talk to each other.
I personally can hardly get above 3.
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted March 17, 2009 10:21 PM |
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Quote:
I hate to say it, but... this is becoming a typical OSM thread. Here's a challenge for you guys: try to read the last page or so (your posts as well as the others) and try to count the number of connections between the points different members make when they talk to each other.
I personally can hardly get above 3.
People tactfully ignore the points other people make, if they can't make a rebuttal. The technique of making it a matter of taste (Not making a middleground!) is not given to many...
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xerox
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posted March 17, 2009 10:26 PM |
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And now I will talk about Warcraft lore instead because I LOTR is boring after 9 pages lol.
Sylvanas was never retconned but lots of 9-yr olds who played though she was a Night Elf untill Blizzard changed her whole model, texture and everything in WotLK. Now she is beautiful.
Rise of the Lich King comes in one month but I already have it because I won it on BlizzPlanet.com
The book states in the end that Arthas banished what was left of his own good side and Ner'zhul so that he would rule the Scourge alone.
Also Arthas is like 26 years old in Wc3
I agree that its kind of lame that Starcraft 1and Warcraft 3 is almost the same... but the story worked and most people enjoyed it and didnt think about it.
If you like fantasy go Warcraft and if you like sci-fi go Starcraft.
I have never stated that Tolkien sucks, only his name does. I love LOTR but I dont understand why people speak of it as it is an work of Zeus (lol)
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body and
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TheDeath
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with serious business
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posted March 17, 2009 10:41 PM |
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Quote:
but the story worked and most people enjoyed it and didnt think about it.
that kinda explains really why you can only get "the big picture" in Tolkien's stuff and why you call it overrated
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This thread is pages long: 
