The Film Cynic Looks At The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

We learn:

1. Evil power is invested in rounded objects, such as rings and palatiri, and must be countered by long, hard objects, such as swords and staves and arrows.

2. Arwen, the privileged daughter of an immortal, gives up her immortality so she can be with dirty, grim Aragorn instead of one of the numerous pristine and gorgeous Elves she meets every day.

3. It's funny to be short and belligerent.

4. Sauron easily picks Frodo out of a crowd in Hobbiton, but not while he is walking right through Mordor a few miles away.

5. Elves and the good Human races are pale of complexion, while Orcs and the evil Human races are dark complected. Some of the latter also have tattoos and piercings.

6. Cutting down trees to replace them with lifeless industrial complexes may result in an army of angry tree-people smashing your buildings with big rocks.

7. It takes four or five enormous arrows to the chest to kill one human, while one tiny Elven arrow can kill an armored Orc.

8. Humans come in “men” and “women,” with significant differences in dress code. Elves come in “elves,”and all wear flowing robes.

9. Young lower-class boys with no weapons training going to war to protect their families is noble and brave. Young upper-class women with considerable training doing the same thing is foolish and impulsive.

10. The film contains three female characters, if you do not count Rosie Cotton (and really, who would?). Male characters frequently hug each other and exchange long looks.

We deduce:

1. See Freud, Sigmund, theories of. But who knows, perhaps sometimes a pointy hat is just a pointy hat.

2. Contrary to Tolkien's statements, Elves are not immune to inborn mental illness.

3. Insert joke about almost any male actor in Hollywood. We're going with Tom Cruise, because he wasn't actually on the cast of the film.

4. One very large corrective bifocal could have changed the fate of Middle Earth.

5. Peter Jackson and Tolkien were both middle-aged white guys. Que sorpresa.

6. But inexplicably, it never happens to Boeing or the government of Cuba.

7. Perhaps making the armor out of tinfoil was a bad idea.

8. Aragorn had better have a very serious discussion with Arwen before they get to the “having babies” stage of the relationship.

9. Better a dead boy than a live woman. Especially if she's got hold of one of those pointy things.

10. It's just a coincidence that Sir Ian McKellan has a starring role in this film, right?