Tag: lord of the rings

prophetofthesufferpuppets:

coolnerdynursingstudent:

obtrta:

neuxue:

Okay I know we always go on about Marvel’s uncanny casting ability. 

But if you thought they were the only ones, let me draw your attention to this man:

Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn son of Arathorn, aka Sexiest Ranger in Middle Earth

  • would hike, often for more than a day, to remote filming locations, in costume, for the sake of authenticity
  • was the best swordsman Bob Anderson (swordsmaster/instructor for LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) says he has ever trained
  • occasionally writes poetry (more book!canon than film!canon but um hello)
  • does all his own stunts
  • lived all over and speaks about 23940209384 languages
  • you know that scene at the end of Fellowship when he’s fighting the Uruk-hai? And one throws a dagger at him and he hits it away with his sword? Yeah, the guy who threw it was supposed to miss, but accidentally threw it directly at Viggo. Who just casually Aragorned and hit it away. 

They actually cast Aragorn to play Aragorn

Can I just add a few things?

  • Would randomly give chocolates to the hobbits
  • According to John Rhys-Davis (aka Gimli), whenever you have a large cast, one or two actors will naturally become the leaders. Guess who ended up in that role.
  • Single-handedly convinced cast and crew to camp out to shoot a scene in the sunrise
  • Once hit a wild rabbit with his car by accident. Promptly stopped his car and went to see if the rabbit was dead, needed a vet or if the only merciful thing to do was to finish killing him. The rabbit was dead. Viggo realized he was hungry. So he took the rabbit, made a fire by the roadside and ate it.
  • According to cast and crew, sometimes you’d just see him disappear in the middle of the night and suddenly he’d come back with fish he’d caught
  • Had his sword with him at all times. Slept with once.
  • The best horse rider of the cast, hands down. Rides better than lots of pros, according to a horse trainer. Couldn’t bear to part with his horse at the end of the shooting, so he bough him. The next movie of his also involved horses, and he bought his horse in that one, too.
  • Knows how to survive in the wild. I’m not kidding.
  • Hand-stitched a few things in his costume for an authentic “I live away from civilization” Ranger feel. Also told the weapons department to make him a small bow because “Aragorn lives in the wild, he needs a hunting bow, or he’ll starve to death” – literally nobody else had thought about that. Also requested a small stone to sharpen his sword. Suggested that Aragorn would take Boromir’s arm guards after his death. 
    • Speaking of hand-stitching, once he was touring Japan with a reporter for an article. Walked into a store, took a tshirt, bought it, cut off the print and hand-stitched it into the hat he was wearing. The reporter was going “?????????” the entire time.
  • Peter Jackson literally sometimes called him Aragorn by accident

• Came up with the tune for the Song of Lúthien that he sings in the Extended Edition.

• Not only was he the best swordsman Bob Anderson trained, prior to filming, he had absolutely no training WHATSOEVER.

• The fight on Weathertop was the first thing he filmed as Aragorn, with like a couple weeks of training, and he did in wonderfully.

• He and Sean Bean basically became brothers on the set, very much like how their characters came to consider each other brothers.

• He made friends with the stunt crew—who were almost entirely native Maori—by head butting them. It became so popular that it spawned the head-butting greeting between Balin and Dwalin in The Hobbit.

He grew so attached to his horse that he ended up adopting him and bringing him home to his ranch.

I went to [Tolkien’s] public lectures. They were absolutely appalling. In those days a lecturer could be paid for his entire course even if he lost his audience, provided he turned up for the first lecture. I think that Tolkien made quite a cynical effort to get rid of us so he could go home and finish writing Lord of the Rings.

“He gave his lectures in a very, very small room and didn’t address us, his audience, at all. In fact he looked the other way, with his face almost squashed up against the blackboard. He spoke in a mutter. His mind was on finishing Lord of the Rings, and he was really musing to himself about the nature of narrative. But I found this so fascinating that I came back week after week, as did one other person. I’ve always wondered what became of him, because he was obviously equally fascinated. And because we stuck there, Tolkien couldn’t go away and write Lord of the Rings! He would say the most marvelous things about the way you take a very basic plot and twitch it here and twitch it there—and it becomes a completely different plot.”

—-Diana Wynne Jones

#I don’t know if I find this more enchanting for a really interesting discussion on worldbuilding and narrative #or the fact that DIANA WYNNE JONES PREVENTED JRR FROM WORKING ON LOTR A WHOLE SEMESTER BECAUSE SHE MADE HIM DO HIS JOB OH MY GOOOOOOOD THAT #IS #HILARIOUS #I LOVE HER SO MUCH

(via basileus)

belaartblog:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

sexybaldwin:

lifehasstarted:

spookyloop:

msdistress:

bunjywunjy:

crazievoice:

elan-morin-tedronai:

Two Finnish students decided to build a slightly more hardcore gingerbread house. (source, in Finnish tho)

Slightly

is that fucking Barad-dûr

image

Here’s a picture of the finished Ginger-Dûr. (Source: Turkulainen, unfortunately only in Finnish, but there are other nifty gingerbread houses in the gallery. My other fave is the Moomin house.)

The article says it took 13.5 kilos of gingerbread dough to make this and it’s over a metre tall. The guys who made it are also studying construction engineering so no wonder…

sexybaldwin

I call this a CHALLENGE!

hsavinien:

philliptunalunatique:

this isn’t a fucking competition, bard.

I…I recognize the joke, but these are totally different kinds of bows, each with its own benefits and suited to its user. 

Bard’s using a longbow. 

  • Longbows are awesome and take a fuckton of regular practice to use, because the muscle strain required to be a longbowman(/woman) actually deforms the arms and back of the user. 
  • “Bard the Bowman” is still known by that sobriquet even though he’s low status, his family’s life and profession changed when the dragon attacked.  Why would he be called that, if not that he’s still in regular practice and people see him using the thing over and over and over? 
  • Longbows are less-damaged by damp than composites, being made of once single piece of wood rather than layers of material, which is handy if one lives in the middle of a freaking lake.
  • The longbow changed the face of warfare in real life, esp. for England.  They’re effective killing machines over long distance, even against armored enemies. 
  • Conclusion: Bard’s a tank-muscled distance shot used to fighting with good sightlines.

Legolas and Tauriel use recurve bows, albeit in different styles.

  • Legolas’ looks like a Turkish bow, though I don’t recall seeing him use a thumb draw (which is not mandatory if you’ve got super strong elf-fingers, I guess).
  • Tauriel’s looks to be a Scythian composite bow by the shape.
  • Composite recurve bows are much easier to use in confined spaces and at odd angles. 
  • They have been historically used by folks who specialize in archer tricks like multiple arrow shots (a thing we have seen Legolas do). 
  • Because of the curves, composites pack heavy draw weight (the factor that determines with what force, i.e. how fast and far, the arrow will travel) into limited space.
  • Short draw (the distance you have to pull back the arrow to shoot it) means a quicker release time and quicker time to get your next arrow on the string.
  • Legolas and Tauriel fight in a forest, not know for long sight lines or easy travel, nor for enemies who can be seen coming.  They need weapons that won’t be getting caught on a bush at an inopportune time. Likewise, you see fewer spears and longswords among the elves of the Greenwood.
  • Conclusion: Legolas and Tauriel are guerrilla fighters from a heavily-forested territory and their weapons reflect that.

Kili also uses a composite recurve bow.

  • For practical purposes, note that Kili has significantly shorter arms than any of the other archers here mentioned. Long draws, like on Bard’s longbow, are not feasible and that means he’s not going to get the power he is capable of producing.
  • Dwarves are fucking strong, all right?  That wee little bow looks very like the Mongolian horse-bow in size and shape that my friend used with a draw weight of 55 lbs.  (I’m not a weakling and I can draw 35 for a decent length of time when in practice).  Kili’s could easily be upwards of 75-100 lbs.
  • Kili’s a hunter.  Likely, his main concern with a bow (when not following his uncle on an inadvisable quest) is the procurement of dinner for his family.  To do that with a bow you need to be very quiet or very quick on the draw.  Dwarves are not known for being super-quiet, though I believe I remember something about Fili and Kili being better at that than is typical.
  • Anything that can kill a deer can probably kill a person (or an orc).  That little horse-bow can easily kill or maim.
  • Conclusion: Kili is a hunter. He uses a bow that allows for the production of a lot of power at short notice and is suited to his size and strength.

Bigger is not always most effective.  Your medieval weaponry rant has concluded for the day, unless someone wants to talk to me about swords.