I believe Our Lord makes them fight the Balrog as penance

No, the penance will be listening to Eowyn sing for 10 years




Extended edition viewers will get this, this is the only part I will actually skip in LOTR

No, the penance will be listening to Eowyn sing for 10 years




Extended edition viewers will get this, this is the only part I will actually skip in LOTR

Come now, I don't think it's bad

Well,well

I guess I will have to excommunicate from all of Arda all of thee and thine who thinkest the movies of LOTR be good.

Condemned thou art to watch The Sound of Music, forever looped in 4K, until thine eyes are cleansed and ears unstopped. Or you go absolutely mad, whatever comes first!!!

Cruel and unusual punishment that!

Might I opt for the death penalty?

If I were to be Orwellian in this matter ......

"We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him."

You must learn to abhor the movies, and embrace The Sound of Music......The hills are alive!!!!!! 

There's still hope, at least you're not so inhumane as to make us watch the Star Wars Holiday Special !

Come now, I don't think it's bad

I agree. I would like to add a few points --

1. It's a central part of LOTR -- the cultures intricately designed by Tolkien, and creating languages (and cultures) was the reason he wrote the whole series to begin with.
2. She can sing just fine. Her voice is quite melodious. What's the problem, she doesn't sing modern songs in English from the 2020s? No thanks!
3. Related to #2, the song sounds foreign, which is a GOOD thing because this is supposed to be Middle Earth, not America circa 2020. Her song in a foreign language pulls me INTO the movie rather than OUT of it. If she sang "Come on baby, one more time" it would violently rip me out of LOTR. Instead, this song evokes the mysterious culture of Rohan, which the viewers know little about.
4. Parts like this are what made the book (and the movie) good. If it were all battle scenes, it would get tiring.
5. Suspension of disbelief was particularly easy, since these white boys and girls look very Celtic, and the ancient language used by Rohan sounds very much like Gaelic, at least to my untrained ear that doesn't know Gaelic.

The whole thing works. Well. Very well.

On a side note, watching these films again makes me realize that just 20 short years ago we had films with an all-white (and Jєωιѕн) cast and no one would bat an eye.

Yet, now you have Middle Earth materials (like the Shadow of War game) which adds non-whites to the story, not to mention that the upcoming Prime "Rings of Power" series will undoubtedly add woke choices.

On a side note, watching these films again makes me realize that just 20 short years ago we had films with an all-white (and Jєωιѕн) cast and no one would bat an eye.

Yet, now you have Middle Earth materials (like the Shadow of War game) which adds non-whites to the story, not to mention that the upcoming Prime "Rings of Power" series will undoubtedly add woke choices.

The black guy in the game is a Haradrim ambassador. He went to Gondor as a boy and grew up there and when the war of the Ring began he took Gondors side. He isn't Gondorian by birth.