They went to Mordor-lago?
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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They were smart to avoid Atlanta, the traffic there is horrible.
Also, the whole mines of Moria part makes sense, being Kentucky and all.
They were smart to avoid Atlanta, the traffic there is horrible.
Ya but they had to go through Chattanooga, which is way more infuriating.
Mordor being in Florida checks out.
Yup. Just outside of Jacksonville. I knew it.
After reading the books, I felt like the movies were rushed (yes, even the extended editions). You just didn't get a sense for how long and arduous their journey was. It took Sam and Frodo a month just to get to Rivendell alone, and you truly felt like you were out hiking and camping with the hobbits for all that time.
In the movies, they just bump into friends and allies, spend a night at Bree (plus a couple nights out camping in the wild), run from the Nazgul, then they're magically there at Rivendell. Doesn't seem like it took more than a few days tops.
The whole journey to Mordor and back took a whole year. Imagine spending a whole year walking and camping across America and you might get a sense for how long it took them.
Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should've been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey. Even the extended editions cut lots of story and rushed the pacing to keep the story moving forward.
That or just some other more effective narrative exposition to give the viewer a better sense of time.
Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There's already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it's illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
I didn't mean explicitly "narration" when I said narrative exposition since that isn't it's definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn't bore people to tears.
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One way Tolkien adds tension and time is to end with a cliffhanger for Sam and Frodo in book 4 (part 2 of Two Towers) you then start following Merry and Pippin in book 5 (part 1 of Return Of The King) and have to read all of that before returning to Frodo and Sam in book 6.
Reference: A bit about the 6 books https://screenrant.com/lord-of-the-rings-tolkien-6-books-why/
Yes! The Two Towers novel ended with Frodo supposedly dead from Shelob, and Sam picking up the ring to finish the journey. It was almost halfway into Return of the King that we find out Frodo is still alive and Sam needs to rescue him!
That was such a great plot twist. I was kind of sad they didn't follow that chain of events in the movies. The whole Shelob thing was resolved really quickly, about halfway into Return of the King.
The other R. R. tried that too, except he still hasn't finished the book where the cliffhanger should resolve.
I haven't read or watched it so take it with a huge block of salt but ...
I don't think GRRM has it in him anymore. The hype was too great, the wait has been too long, he's been harassed about it for years, probably hates even thinking about it by now. add to that a very badly received conclusion to the TV series which already left a bad taste with the audience, probably doesn't help.
it's the HL3 problem: it's been so long nothing can possibly match the expectation. Trying to do it would be dumb at this point.
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Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should've been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey
Depending on how well the Harry Potter show goes, I won't be surprised at all if we see this eventually
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When you think about it, they basically walked twice as far as that since they’re so small.
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They had to go all the way to Florida 😔
Worse, Jacksonville.
Still better than staying in Ohio.
ok, but then... how come at the end of the first movie can they see Mt doom in the distance. does sight work differently in this age?
i cant see the smokies from Florida.
//UNWATCHABLE
/s
As an answer to your not-a-question, I think it would imply that Arda is an absolutely massive planet, such that your sight line would be further.
Is there any evidence the Lord of the Rings world is round? The world was canonically created with magic, so it doesn't need to follow our version of physics
Not a lore expert, so if anyone else challenges me on this, they're almost certainly right.
The world was flat at one point, but canonically became round at the end of the second age (before LOTR). That said, some beings can still perceive the world differently. Primarily this is in reference to elves' ability to just piss off and leave the world behind, but maybe all non-humans have some latent ability to see things humans can't?
So the way I understand it is that the elves can sail to the Undying Lands. And by doing that they use the "straight road" and just take a hard pass on gravity and sail tangent to the round earth
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Yes. It started out flat but was made round in the 2nd age. LOTR occurs in the 3rd age.
I wonder if you could calculate that. I thought that on a level area, the horizon is about 6 miles out (or is it 12?) based on that, could you calculate the size of the world based on the height of mount doom and the distance it would be?
Can't help but wanna see this overlaid on a mall map: these hobbits had to get to JC Penny from the Books-A-Million. A harrowing journey of many months.
So Bilbo took I-88 but got to the border of New York, said nah I'm good, then went back the way he came.
Frodo & Sam took a wrong turn at the Indiana border and then got lost until they wound up in Florida.
Oh damn. I did that in 3rd grade over summer vacation! Cool.
I had a minivan tho
I like the idea of the full fellowship just chilling in a minivan playing road trip games.
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Are you telling me california is the undying lands?
And the Shire is in Manhattan, Kansas.
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Jacksonville ...
Pfft, that’s like 2 days’ drive, tops.
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