8 ms·
The Terrible Secret (2011)
- _bxg1 8y ago> Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. In what universe? Every Tolkien fan I know, including myself, loves Tom Bombadil and sees his omission from the movies as their biggest shortcoming.
- rossdavidh 8y agoI think there are (and always have been) a lot of readers of LotR who don't like Bombadil. If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon crawl and the nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with Bombadil grates. I, myself, like him just fine. But it is true that a lot of people who liked the more "swords and sorcery" aspects of LotR, did not like Bombadil. And that's a goodly portion of the people who read the books (tho' by no means all).
- _bxg1 8y ago> If you're in it for the epic battle scenes [and not Tom Bombadil because he isn't violent enough] I feel sorry for people with so little capacity for whimsy and magic
- zentropia 8y agoAnd they especially dislike the songs.
- ajmurmann 8y ago> If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon crawl and the nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with Bombadil grates. If that's what you are looking for LotR might be one of the worst fantasy books one could pick.
- DougWebb 8y agoI agree; LotR is really a fantasy book for fans of walking places.
- klipt 8y agoA good long hike in book form!
- fhars 8y agoIf you are into long hikes in book form, you may still catch up with Corey Olsen if you hurry: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRcn1s0q8qONMGz https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRc...
- DrScump 8y ago"Journeys require endpoints. Otherwise, you're not Frodo, you're just a homeless guy wandering around with stolen jewelry."
- bmurphy1976 8y agoBombadil was the remnants of a children's story left in an adult book. That's why he's a weird character, doesn't really fit anything and is quickly forgotten. He should have been edited out.
- hopler 8y agoWe all have remnants of a children's story in our adult lives. Perhaps we lose something by editing it out.
- empath75 8y agoA lot of people just skip that part.
- OneWordSoln 8y agoWell, you can count myself and my 10yo son in on the Tom Bombadil fan club members, for sure (my son knows from listening to the audiobook version). As far as shortcomings go, I feel that the movie's bastardization of Faramir was the worst travesty because his honor in the face of having the ring in his grasp is one of my favorite parts of the books. Making him drag the ring-bearer back to the city ensured that I will never watch the movies again. As well, that crap with Aragorn getting lost and then fighting back by himself was an utter travesty, and the crap with his fiance was crap, too (except for where they subbed her in for Glorfindel in the race to Rivendell), as much as I understand that they wanted a woman to play a more prominent role. That said, Eowyn's story should have been enough and at least they didn't mangle her. But, yeah, it would've been really cool to have a Patrick Stewart Tom Bombadil.
- hopler 8y agoAll in all, better to make an existing king a queen, or make an existing knight a lady (but with otherwise same plot and dialogue), if you feel it is necessary, than to take one of most carefully researched and written novels in history and just rewrite it. Or make a spin off story that focuses on the role of some overlooked women. Or better, a satire or a separate work that alludes to LotR as commentary.
- _bxg1 8y agoI'm a little biased towards the movies because they were what I experienced first, but I respect the criticisms of them. That said, I personally feel their treatment of Aragorn was the best liberty they took. He felt fairly one-dimensional in the books; his whole character was about his destiny to be king and he reminded everyone he met. In the movie he doesn't want power; he struggles between his fear of it and his desire to help the world. This struggle over the kingship mirrors the struggle over the ring (which both he and Gandalf face, among others) and makes him much more compelling as a character. I also liked the Arwen subplot; she really wasn't a character at all in the books. I thought their relationship was powerful and expanded upon his being pulled between the realms of elves and men (of which his Numenorean heritage was a microcosm).
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- twic 8y agoI found the Tom Bombadil part tedious and irrelevant to the rest of the book. I don't love him. I have a friend who can't stand him - "bloody irritating character and songs" is the phrase i have recorded.
- cheerlessbog 8y agoHe doesn't advance the story and he doesn't develop the characters. He was easy to cut out of the movie because no changes were required elsewhere.
- yoz-y 8y agoI liked LotR and Hobbit books very much and would count myself as a fan. I did not really like the movies but removing Tom Bombadil was one of the better decisions they made when making the movies. If anything, I think they did not cut enough out. I liked the passage as a curiosity because of the (English) language, but story-wise I think it was pretty weak and did not bring much overall.
- _bxg1 8y agoI think he represents an interesting whiff of the much older, deeper beings in the world which are only fully covered in The Silmarillion. The fact that he's such a being and also simple and light-spirited speaks to the underlying purity of goodness in the world that is the underlying theme of The Lord of the Rings, and I think that's beautiful. I do sympathize with the decision to cut him from the movies; his chapter was a large and neatly isolated part of the story, and the movies were strapped for screen time as it was. But it was still a loss.
- DonHopkins 8y agoAt least he and his wife were parodied in Bored of the Rings! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings BOTR: Tim Benzedrine Allusion: Benzedrine, a stimulant drug popular during the 1950s, and a reference to Timothy Leary. LOTR: Tom Bombadil BOTR: Hashberry, wife of Tim Benzedrine Allusion: "Hashbury", the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, or hash(ish)-berry. LOTR: Goldberry
- Ntrails 8y agoI dont think i have ever met anyone who thought that was the thing the films fucked up. I can totally understand that the scenes are self contained, and length was an issue. I was far more aggravated by replacing Glorfindel with Arwen, as a first example.
- mrec 8y agoWhy did that aggravate you? It's Glorfindel's only appearance in the book, so we're not really losing anything. There were a lot of irritations, but the only really unforgiveable fuckup for me was the complete dog's breakfast they made of the Pelennor Fields.
- telchar 8y agoI agree, Pelennor Fields left me very dissatisfied. And Faramir's character assassination was also a really unnecessary departure from the story.
- jhbadger 8y agoI was annoyed how they made Gimli into a comic relief character, myself.
- Ntrails 8y agoBecause Arwen could not have ridden against the 9, at all. They could have replaced Glorfindel or removed him, i understand, but the powers he had came from having lived over the sea. Arwen was born in Middle Earth and simply could not do what was attributed to her in the films. (It is the earliest lore incompatible change that springs to mind)
- lisper 8y agoIf there was ever a clickbait title, this is it. It should be "Tom Bombadil's Terrible Secret" or "Wild Speculations about Tom Bombadil" or "Let's Geek Out About Tom Bombadil" or something like that. (NOTE: At the time of this writing, the title is "The Terrible Secret".)
- johnchristopher 8y agoWow. My first thoughts were about the debunking of the secret scam from a few years ago.
- lisper 8y agoShh! One does not speak of the secret scam!
- hopler 8y agoAn essay is allowed to have an intriguing title. The problem is on aggregators like HN for ripping titles our of context and not providing any context but domain name.
- lisper 8y agocorememory.io is not exactly a huge clue here. (And the site actually seems to be devoted to chamber music. Go figure.)
- carapace 8y agoI thought from the domain and title it would be about some arcane flaw in a CPU or something. And I always thought Tom Bombadil was the Green Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man
- chmaynard 8y agoAgreed. Dang, please update title to "Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil".
- est31 8y agoIMO this is the most likely fan theory out there towards Tom Bombadil. Prior discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237
- chmaynard 8y agoOP here. I added a reference to the original article, which was titled "Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil".
- kurthr 8y agoMillennialist bunk, get off my lawn! ;^) Really, Tom is old... older than the elves, and he (like the willow and the huron) are tired of having these whipper-snappers come by and ask them to save them from danger and do their -chores- adventures for them. Old men just wanna have fun... and the gold ring ain't their bag (or problem). Merry and Frodo are lucky they remember their time with him any more than Gildor or Farmer Maggot (or they remember him differently). In the old days we didn't expect everyone to be nice or have transparent understandable motives... and we walked up Mt Doom both ways.
- efficax 8y agoPeople don't like Bombadil? He was always my favorite part of the books
- mnbvkhgvmj 8y agoThere are several inaccuracies and inconsistencies in this. - Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil. - Tom Bombadil had heard about Frodo's journey from both elves and hobbits. I.e. He was known to and communicated with both. - Was there not a hobbit song about him? As to why the hobbits had little to do with Tom Bombadil... - A character of his power could easily have chosen to wipe the hobbits memories. Maybe this was his usual approach to hobbit intruders? - Another possibility it that given Hobbits extreme social taboo about adventures and their fetish for respectability it is quite possible that many hobbits had interacted with Tom Bombadil but few talked about it (e.g. Farmer Maggot).
- hannasanarion 8y agoOr it could be that he is unremarkable in most of his appearances. As the article states, he is presented as the epitome of hobbithood: a jolly old man who loves song and drink and rarely leaves home, who just so happens to live near a dangerous place. If Gildor and Farmer Maggot met him, they would have found him entirely unremarkable: just another hobbit with a strange taste in homesteading.
- ekianjo 8y ago> - Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil. the text does not say otherwise. But the text is correct that Elrond does not seem to have clear memories of him. From LOTR itself: > [Elrond said,]‘The Barrow-wights we know by many names; and of the Old Forest many tales have been told: all that now remains is but an outlier of its northern march. Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard. In those lands I journeyed once, and many things wild and strange I knew. But I had forgotten Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name. Iarwain Ben-adar we called him. He is not even sure it is the same person that the hobbits are referring to.
- chrisweekly 8y agoTangent: where/how can I obtain the animated 1977 version of The Hobbit? I had it on vinyl, and remember watching the film. YouTube's got a random selection of scenes but not (AFAICT) the whole thing.
- chadaustin 8y agoNetflix DVD has it.
- hopler 8y agoI assume you are looking to pirate it or in an undisclosed non-USA geography, because it's easy to find on many paid streaming systems and on dvd
- 0815test 8y agoWhy would you assume that? I think he's just looking for a physical copy. Given what sibling comment says, I assume it was published on DVD at some point.
- ageofwant 8y agoPffft, apart from several just wrong assertions about who knew who, and who likes what, I always assumed Tom Bomadil was just some archetype of Tolkien himself. Both fundamental to the world he built and completely apart from it.
- pookeh 8y agoExactly. I find Sam from Game of Thrones to be in a similar spot.
- dTal 8y agoWow, I read this only a few days ago, on some kind of Tom Bombadil kick, which I think might have been triggered by a Bombadil-related question in the StackExchange sidebar. The memeworld works in mysyerious ways.
- huffmsa 8y agoIt's definitely best that Tom was left unexplained. We humans (or maybe just me personally) love being mystified by unexplained, other-worldly powers and beings. Tom is presented as someone both powerful enough to take the ring and protect it, but also someone who'd forget about it and lose it in a swamp. He's not playing by the rules that Tolkien established for the rest of the characters in the books. He could have power beyond comprehension, or zero power, because Tolkien just didn't know what to do with him. But it's up to the reader to make that decision. Is he One Punch Man, or is he really just a nobody?
- rossdavidh 8y agoFrom Elrond's comments on him at the Council, he's basically an Earth Elemental (which would make Goldberry a Water Elemental, I suppose), a personification of the element of earth. But, I agree that it's better that JRRT left it with room for some mystery.
- whatusername 8y agoThat's almost as good as the Darth Jar Jar theory: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar...
- balfirevic 8y agoThat was much better than I expected, thanks!
- jakubp 8y agoBombadil was the name of a doll in Tolkien's home. That's why he was the "oldest", because the name predates the book itself. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil
- debatem1 8y agoI always assumed that Tom Bombadil was a kind of ur-hobbit; a jolly being largely immune to the hostile magic swirling around him and capable of opposing it at points but temperamentally disinclined to truly rule.
- joshuaellinger 8y agoIf you actually want to understand why Tom Bombadil is in the story, read Christopher Tolkien series on the creation of the Lord of the Rings. It was originally envisioned as a sequel to the Hobbit with a slightly more grown up audience. When JRR wrote it, he hadn't even settled on Sauron as the bad guy. He vaguely thought the bad guy would be Treebeard! He got Frodo and co. all the way to Rivendell before he connected his other story (the Silmarillion) to the LOR story. Bombadil was left in, in my mind, because he had to explain how four hapless hobbits could throw the black riders off the trail and still escape from the forest. And he didn't really have any editorial constraints until the movies came along. Sure, you can invent some just-so-story to explain him but the truth is that the tale evolved in the decades it took to write and so it has vestigial parts.
- maliker 8y agoNo way, Bombadil is great. He’a immune to the powers of the one ring [1]. He’d rather sing about badgers than conquer the world. He’s a reminder of weird and awesome and maybe a little scary powers in the universe that we may never understand. Bombadil’s scene is one of my favorites alongside the one where Frodo almost gives the ring to Galadriel but she resists [2]. Another meditation on power. [1] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the-ring-in-fact-affect-tom-bombadil https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the-rin... [2] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when-frodo-offers-her-the-ring-is-galadriel-really-tempted-or-just-making-a-po https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when-frodo-o...
- Angostura 8y agoInteresting, because I remember when I first read Fellowship aged 11 or 12 I was absolutely sure that Bombadil would turn out to be a bad one, beguiling and leading the Hobbits to their doom, for much the reasons outlined by the author. I was pretty sure when they went to be in his conttage that night, they wouldn't be waking up to a happy morning. I didn;t really trust him until they got to Bree.
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- gumby 8y agoI always liked him and was surprised to learn that that he had been excluded from the films. But I’d never thought of him as a conservationist and rescuer of animals (and flora) rejected by polite society! A Tolkeinish John Muir. How lovely!
- ncmncm 8y agoNot well-disposed toward humans, elves, hobbitses and others who cut down trees means evil? That's a bit too Manichaean for me.