Ramblin' 'bout Rings

 

An interview about LOTR, friendship, and fantasy.

Hello Schlubs! Hope you’ve been surviving and thriving during this hot and hellish summer. As I’m writing this, I just finished my rewatch of Return of the King. Unfortunately, my writing speed is closer to climbing up the Stairs of Cirith Ungol than flying on an eagle – so the essay will get here when it gets here. In the meantime, I sat down with my good friends Claire and Josh a few months ago to discuss all things Lord of the Rings. In addition to being lovely people, they both have deep connections to Tolkien’s work: Claire studied linguistics in college due to Tolkien’s impact, and Josh’s wedding vows quoted Tolkien’s prose (it was a beautiful ceremony). You can find out more information about them both at the bottom of the page!

Enjoy the interview!  

The Brothers Hildebrandt, The Unexpected Party

Where is the best place in Middle-earth to grab a drink? 

J: Bree, probably. That’s the only time we see different races kind of mingling, I think that would be interesting. It’d make for a fun place. 

C: Bree is so grimy. The two places I would like to grab a drink are The Green Dragon because what a safe place to just get sloshed. And coffee in Rivendell would be a nice little patio sesh. 

G: I was thinking about The Prancing Pony, but after watching Fellowship, everyone is just spilling beer, guys are feeding ferrets on their shoulders. It’s chaos. If LOTR had been Star Wars-ified, where every character on screen has their own comic series, I would have loved to hear more about the ferret guy. 

J: They might make it now. 

G: I'd agree with Claire. The Green Dragon is just an English pub, so it feels like a cop-out, but it does seem like the ideal place to have a big pint. 

C: I'm sure there are some great taverns in Minas Tirith too. 

J: I was going to say that throwing down with the people of Rohan could be fun, but I hate mead. Do you think that's all they're drinking? Mead? 

C: They seem kind of mead-coded. 

What do you think is schlubby about LOTR? 

C: I love this question. I've got two two parts. One: Boys! It's just…boys. It's boys boys boys boys boys boys boys boys! And that is where the best schlubbing happens. 

In a grander sense, it takes place in the Third Age where everything is falling apart. It's the time of men. You'll not find any schlubbiness in the First Age when everything is fresh and clean, and it's just elves hanging out with the gods.

I was revisiting your substack, Gray, and your first post tone-setting about hangovers and bags underneath eyes and everybody looking half asleep is just how I think of the race of men in LOTR. It's the darkest hour of the world when everybody's just had enough. No one's got anything left in them. 

J: That's very close to what I was going to say. You’re just traveling through this landscape and the scenery and you just see so many things that were once very dope. And you're like: How was that made? Like seeing the Argonath! It makes you realize that men could fall. Everything's kind of falling apart and it could just keep going that way.

G: I didn't pick that up until I read the book. This is a post-apocalyptic setting. The elves are living in the post-apocalypse at this point. One of my favorite characters in the book, Ted Sandyman, Sam's asshole drinking buddy, says that he doesn’t think the elves are even real! Everything and everyone has just moved on. 

LOTR is often criticized for being vanilla. What's a weird quality to LOTR that you think defies that branding? 

C: My favorite thing in contrast to my last answer of just “boys” is that there's so much crying! Everybody cries. Nobody leaves Middle-earth with dry eyes and they all verbalize how much they love each other – which I think defies a lot of The Witcher-esque toxic masculinity of the more recent genre.

J: What’s weird might be the sheer virtue that not a lot has been written or created from it. We don't have an exact backstory for every single character. We don't know about the blue wizards and stuff like that. There's a lot of mystique left in the world. Other genre things always have more added to the point where everything is explained. And I appreciate there are these gaps that Tolkien purposefully was like: Well, I don’t know. 

M.W. Kaluta, Arwen and King Elessar

I’ve played D&D with both of you, and you're both creatives in your own right, so how does LOTR influence your taste in fantasy? 

C: Nothing has ever affected me more than LOTR. When I realized Elvish was a thing, and that LOTR was just the container for Tolkien's languages, I was like: I'm gonna learn that crap. I made a little binder and years later I studied linguistics in school. Tolkien's the reason I got my degree. I feel very blessed by this person. I would not be who I am without Tolkien. 

As far as D&D goes, a lot of my characters are reflections of me and are reflections of LOTR. I thought it was so cool that Gandalf had so many different names. He's Mithrandir here and Olórin there. My favorite D&D character was Gal, who had names he went by within his different communities. He was just Gandalf as a bard. 

J: When I first started DMing, I pulled from as many Tolkien things as possible and tried to almost be in a pseudo-setting of Middle-earth.

And then as I played a little bit more and got into college, I wanted to do the exact opposite. So anything that wasn't your stereotypical fantasy setting, I suppose. I think that's why I really got into Eberron, where it was like fantasy melded with technology.

But now, I think I'm starting to get a little bit more of an urge to go back to those roots. I’d love to have a more humble, downtrodden setting. 

G: I think a big misconception that DMs and writers take from Tolkien is that you have to write 50,000 years of history for your homebrew setting. Something that's so inspired by LOTR, but was such a hit for me, was Elden Ring. There's a long history to its setting, but like any FromSoftware game, nothing is explained to you. It's taking those LOTR roots and shaping them a little bit differently. It'll take a common fantasy race and turn it into something that you've never seen before, like the Trolls with the hollow chests. You carry the preconceived notions of these tropes into the setting and are rewarded by new and different interpretations.  

J: I don't even think LOTR really does much explaining either. Tolkien has his own ideas of how things happened, but they're also conflicting. That's very much how Elden Ring and Dark Souls have all the lore but also a lot of interpretations. 

C: I also like tall elves. I think that was a good choice on Tolkien’s part.

J: Yeah, agreed.  

G: Oh my god, I didn't even realize he invented that. 

Why do you think the movies have such staying power?

J: I think the fact that it was made when it was made, most everything was handcrafted. It was very in the elements, shooting in the rough. The movie would not get made the same way today. Not to say that it couldn't get made today, but it just wouldn't be made that way. I don't think it needs to be remade.  

C: Yeah, I can't imagine anybody else. The only director who could possibly remake LOTR today is Denis Villeneuve. Because he just does so much practical stuff. I think the amount of human energy and life force that was put into building the world…they spared no expense, and everyone just devoted themselves entirely to this art.

G: Would love to see Villeneuve’s brutalist Middle-earth. 

What is your favorite musical motif in the movie? 

J: The one that plays in my mind the most is the music during Helm's Deep. I believe it's when the orcs are marching on it.

C: Historically, it was always “Concerning Hobbits” for me. What an easy tune to love. “Bridge of Khazad-dum” (Gandalf’s death) is another one. When that 11-year-old boy sings? An angel. Ugh. Chills. Every time. And at the very end, when they're saying goodbye at the Grey Havens, the song “Into the West” is a favorite. Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens wrote that song! Everybody from top to bottom was just so involved and so talented. 

G: On the Gandalf's death note, I have shamefully played that song so many times during a character death in D&D. It works, except the studio recording has Frodo yelling “No!” So that always cuts in and breaks the tension. I’d have to go with Rohan's leitmotif. The violin that plays when the characters ride up to Edoras. It’s unbelievable.

What season do you rewatch?

C: I feel like there's a right answer to this question, and it’s fall. One of my dream birthday parties is just a LOTR marathon. Pajamas, people go in and out. We did one of those in college, and that was a great day. We just cooked all day. My birthday is in the fall, so it's a cozy movie. 

J: It's very much a “bad event is happening in the world and I just want to shut everything out and live in Middle-earth for a minute” kind of movie for me. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, PS2

What are your favorite supplementary materials?

G: This is open to video games, books, albums, even things that are inspired by LOTR.

J: Two things come to mind. The PS2 and GameCube games for Two Towers and Return of the King are so sick. They're so much fun and are even good now, which is kind of wild. It's just a game that you could play during a sleepover and get through most of it. On your first playthrough, you’d play as like lore accurate characters that were in this scene and whatever, but once you beat it you can just play as like anybody. So you can have Gandalf at Helm's Deep. It's an incredibly fun game and it was a staple of all of our sleepovers. 

The other thing is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards. On their album Murder of the Universe, they have a suite of songs that are very LOTR. One is called “The Lord of Lightning” and the other one's “The Balrog.” That whole suite is just like this epic fight that makes a 15-minute song.

C: That's so funny. I tried the Return of the King video game on PS2, and it was my first video game like that. I had only played Battlefront and I could not get past the fucking ghosts. 

J: Oh yeah.  

C: Now that I'm more video game literate, I’d like to revisit it if you say it's still good. 

J: It's a great game just to throw on with another person and crank through it. It's also part of the era where the video game was also just the movie. So all of a sudden it'd splice in live-action scenes and you'd just be seeing the actors and shit. As a kid, I loved that.  

G: I just remember my friend bogarting Gandalf, and I was just Pippin throwing rocks. So I thought the game sucked. 

J: This is something that's so drilled in my mind that even when I dressed as Samwise for Halloween, I assumed he fought with a frying pan. I don't think he does in the movies, but in the video games, that's like his main weapon. 

G: He bonks orcs with one during the cave troll fight, which I just rewatched and it's really frightening. 

C: Oh my gosh. The cave trolls are so sympathetic to me. They had no choice and they gotta fight until they can't. Gutting. 

As for supplementary materials, I have this atlas of Middle-earth that was so instrumental to my reading of the books. It's got a map of almost every location mentioned in the First, Second, and Third Ages. It shows the flat earth and then the spherical earth. It has the dates that every party stopped at individual locations. I went through it with my boyfriend yesterday because we just watched Return of the King, and he was like: How long did this take, do you think?”

And I was like: Well, buddy, here you go! I know exactly. It took three days. This is where they were on your birthday. That kind of thing. It's incredible. 

J: I also like The Nature of Middle-earth. It just has every mention of plants and whatnot in there and likens it to real-life nature. 

Josh as Samwise Gamgee – armed with frying pan.

Why can't anyone else get it right?

G: Claire, have you watched Rings of Power? 

C: Oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. I didn't finish it. Jesus Christ. The show is so bad. There is no heart in anything that has been made since. It feels so sterile and economic. It's just corporate LOTR.  

J: I would agree with that. I do think there are some moments where I can tell that there are people involved who are super passionate about it. Overall, I don't like it either. I think it's pretty bad. 

G: Corporatization is a good way of putting it. Because it's clear that the people behind the scenes care about it, but it's missing that spark. Aside from it being so glossy, there are some Looney Tunes-ass storytelling decisions within it.

Even going back to The Hobbit trilogy, which is its own can of worms, Peter Jackson himself couldn't recapture that magic again. Part of it is because he was kind of forced to do it contractually with two months of prep. 

J: I do think that he could have done a good Hobbit movie if he'd had the time and the control. I think fundamentally the decision to split it into three movies was terrible. The third one is like five pages in the book and it's a two-and-a-half-hour fight scene on the screen.  

G: Those movies are silly, but bad silly. There's nothing behind the eyes of this one. 

C: So Jurassic Park is my other favorite movie, and the point of that movie is just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And then they made six more! That's how I feel about LOTR. There's just a fundamental misunderstanding by these people who are trying to profit off of this story. Of what it means to people and where it comes from. 

One of my favorite examples is in The Hobbit when the dwarves are fighting the wargs. Thorin has this epic moment, and they just throw in the Nazgûl theme from LOTR. It's just…what are you guys doing? Do you even know what you're working with? 

Claire as a lesser known Tolkien character, Elaine from Seinfeld

What would you like to see from future adaptations? 

G: I'm going to run down the list of adaptations that are coming: We have the second season of the Amazon series with season three to follow. We have the planned remakes of the trilogy. So just full-on remakes of the three books. We have our favorite one coming up, The Quest for Gollum. And then we have an anime movie called The War of the Rohirrim. Which, out of all of the ones I just listed, that's the one that sounds the most exciting to me. 

So beyond your recommendation that they shut them all down, what would you like to see from future adaptations? 

J: I would like them to tell the story they're trying to tell without trying to ape the movies. I love the movies, and it feels inauthentic when the Amazon series tries to recreate the films. Just do their own thing and try to do that well. There didn't need to be hobbits in it, even though I do like the harfoots, but they’re not necessary for the story of whatever they're trying to tell.

C: I would like for them to use as little CGI as possible because things don't age well and it also feels like a cheap cop-out of creating art when they just make everything behind a computer.  You can't get people to be immersed in the story when it doesn't exist on camera, and it really shows in Rings of Power. I would also like for them to take their dang time. That anything is coming out in 2026 boggles the mind. 

G: I think the thing they need to do is what they missed out on with Guillermo Del Toro’s Hobbit movies, which is to just get Jackson out of your mind completely. Who knows if it would have been good, but it’d be distinct. Do not make anything look like what they did in the trilogy, even if it's different from the book. I think that’s possible while still being faithful to the ideas of the book. Otherwise, it's just going to be the diet coke version of the trilogy. 

I'm cautiously optimistic about The War of the Rohirrim because it reminds me of what the Wachowskis did with The Animatrix.

Are there any other stories in this universe that you would like to see adapted? 

J: The Fall of Gondolin would be such a great story. It's Morgoth, the ultimate evil, trying to find this hidden elf city. 

C: I think I would love for The Silmarillion to be adapted. It’s gorgeous. It's one of those collections that I think would make a great anime because it's all the gods and stuff. There's no way it would be good live-action. Lúthien and Beren’s love story would be so pretty in watercolor. I would also love another stab at The Hobbit from someone who took it seriously. And by taking it seriously, I mean, didn't take it seriously. It's a very silly book.  

G: No more GoPro shots? 

C: Yeah, I laughed out loud in the theater when I saw that. 

J: Get the Safdie brothers to make The Hobbit. 

G: I'm imagining Bilbo, in those Uncut Gems-style arguments where everyone's talking over each other trying to get the dwarves out of his house.   

Which character are you having a night out with?

J: I think Gandalf would be very fun. He seems like he likes to imbibe. Everyone keeps offering him wine and he smokes a lot. He'll have a good time. He also has lots of wisdom. I would like to ask him a lot of questions.

G: That's like that question: Would you rather have a million dollars or dinner with Jay Z? 

J: I think the conversation I would have would be worth a million dollars. I feel like the scene of Bilbo and him smoking seems like a real, chill night that I'd like to have. Absolutely. 

C: I initially wrote that I would like a girl's night. I would like to go out with Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn. Just go out on the town, or wine night in Rivendell because I bet they have a lot to say about everything that's going on and all the decisions that they don't get to be a part of – except for Galadriel. I don't have a great answer for this question because there's not anyone that I wouldn't want to go out with. Maybe I wouldn't want to go out for a night with Sam. I feel like he's the least interesting. Or Gimli. I'm not a big drinker. 

J: Gimli was my second choice. Feels like he would pressure me into drinking a lot, and that could be a lot of fun.

G: Legolas would be weird to go out with. I think women would come up to you and be like: Your friend is creeping us out.

I was thinking of Éomer, but I think that it would be like hanging out with a really hardcore frat guy or somebody who's been in the military. I agree on a girl's night, but I would just go solo with Éowyn and hit the town. I think she would be one of those people where you're texting her to come out and she's stalling. But once you get a couple of drinks and you guys are dancing, it'd be the best night of your life. She would definitely fist-fight somebody for you too. 

C: Yeah, she'd get down with karaoke  

J: Bilbo's seen some stuff. I think he would have a lot of cool things to say. And Frodo as well. I'm just thinking about the best conversation over a drink. Because drinking is not the end for me. Just how death is not the end.  

C: You know what, Sam would be a great listener.

J: Théoden would probably tell you some cool stories. It doesn't seem like it would take much for him to get out the casks and crank some Steely Dan. 

Pauline Baynes, A Map of Middle-earth

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Claire Rogers is a goofball currently based in Portland, OR. She doesn't publish work (yet?) but she's happy to read yours! She loves sci fi/fantasy, all things linguistics, save-scumming in Baldur's Gate 3, and her two gremlin cats.

Joshua De Lanoit is a motion designer and wizard based in Des Moines, Iowa. When he's not blasting goblins with fireballs, he's busy trying new recipes in the kitchen, playing in too many D&D campaigns, and spending quality time with his dog and wife.

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Special thanks to Austin Smoldt-Sáenz, Elena Bruess, Joshua De Lanoit, Claire Rogers, and Max Seifert.