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Absolutely thought "I must be living in a bubble" when I read this: I don't think I've spoken to a single book-reader who wasn't vocally disappointed by the omi

Absolutely thought "I must be living in a bubble" when I read this: I don't think I've spoken to a single book-reader who wasn't vocally disappointed by the omission of Tom from the films. He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters.

PeterCorless 4y ago
I was mostly bummed the barrow-wights were utterly missing from the movies.
jrumbut 4y ago
And beyond that, I thought the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common. But he is definitely one of the most interesting characters and one of the best ways the story shows it is taking place in a big world with a lot of different things going on.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common Certainly that he's more than meets the eye (that seems plain) but the conclusions here seem less common... I think it's interesting to contrast the speculation in this article with the depiction of elves in The Hobbit (book) - much less obviously a benign force than as portrayed in LoTR. The author's assumption - accepted as given at the outset - is that the "evil" within the Old Forest is genuine, rather than a representation of a certain perspective. The thesis is then that Bombadil must be guilty by association. This initial assumption seems simplistic to me. A common trait of mystical (especially nature-connected) beings in northern European mythology (at least!) is a duality of intent - being a perhaps-positive yet untrustworthy force. This seems reflected in a lot of Tolkien's world; while Sauron / the Ring / others do have a more directly corrupt "evil" attributed to them, there's much more ambiguity elsewhere - it says of Old Man Willow that "his heart was rotten, but his strength was green": rotten != evil and in the context of nature has positive connotations (alcoholic fermentation) elsewhere in his writings. Green isn't necessarily positive either, but the usage here is notable.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    It's admittedly in a different part of the book, so may be linguistic styling rather than lore-indicative, but the Old Forest felt more "wild" than "evil." In the Old Forest, there were certainly dangers, including some lethal ones, but loosely organized and operating independently. More druidic. Whereas Sauron / Morgoth were far more hierarchical in structuring their domains, exerted dominion over their forces, and attempted to implement a master plan.
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
      The forests are selfish and harsh to outsiders but wish merely to sit and be left alone. The evil of Sauron and Saruman is their wish to spread and dominate (which puts Saruman in direct conflict with the forest, to his loss).
    - tsegratis 4y ago
      The old forest to me was always the Ent wives gone wild
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      It's possible to have a disorganized evil! Maybe I just like a secret villain. I always assumed a component of the forest was a way to keep Hobbits at home and home with the Hobbits.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        Definitely #iRestockYaoiInTheBibleSection #chaoticEvil
      - WJW 4y ago
        Interesting, because I've always seen the hobbits as being so insular that they wouldn't need any conspiracy forest to keep them inside the Shire: it was such a paradise (and most hobbits so "boring") that nobody felt any desire to venture outside. Bilbo and Frodo were very much viewed with suspicion for their world-wandering ways, after all.
lisper 4y ago
> He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters. Why? He doesn't actually do anything except drone on and on about the color of his boots. He doesn't advance the story in any way (which is why it is so easy to omit him in adaptations).
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  Tom represents the Great Mystery, the great unknown of the beyond that is all seeing and all knowing and all powerful. Omitting him is like omitting the whole premise of the book. It's like making a movie based on the Bible but omitting the Resurrection of Jesus.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Sorry, but that just doesn't compute for me at all. Tom is a silly character with no gravitas. He puns his own name just to make it rhyme with "yellow" -- over and over again. And there is nothing in Tom's story that is even remotely comparable to the Resurrection. The Resurrection is a key event in the Bible story. It is something that happens to change the dramatic arc of all mankind. In Tom's story, nothing happens at all. The scene at Mount Doom where the Ring is finally destroyed is analogous to the Resurrection, not Tom Bombadil.
    - adamc 4y ago
      He's more the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Who is he? Why does no one know of him? Incongruent facts are always interesting. IMO.
    - WJW 4y ago
      Tom is perhaps silly, but just the fact that he can is seemingly immune to all the Ring can do (with it being implied to be the most powerful artifact in all of Middle Earth, strong enough to even influence Maia like Gandalf) makes him have enough gravitas. If anything, his silly antics make him even more intriguing: how did he gain that power and is it because or despite his silliness?
- 4y ago
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Agree. Tom represented a couple of things for me when reading the books. First, he represented all the small pockets of unknown magic that could exist in Middle Earth. I would stare at the map of Middle Earth in the front of the book and wonder about the parts not covered in either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. What strange things might be there? Tom heightened my sense of wonder about the world. But second, Tom showed up just as the hobbits seemed to have met their darkest hour. You can dismiss this as deus ex machina on the part of the author, but it was a needed break from the stress and anxiety that had been building to a crescendo at that point. And I thought perhaps Tolkien was suggesting that sometimes you have to trust in the benevolence of strangers — or that some higher power is watching over the most vulnerable.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
Now you can speak to one! Perhaps it was the age when I first read the books (~12 or so years old) – but I loved the contrasts between the cozy world of the hobbits and the more savage, epic nature of the rest of Middle-earth. For me, Tom Bombadil never fit well into either of these categories. There was a while where I heard about Tom Bombadil potentially being Eru Ilúvatar, but that theory has been found pretty lacking in various aspects, as well as having been debunked by Tolkien himself.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
I read the books as a kid, twice. I was glad they left Tom out of the movies. I mean, what he means to the story and the mythology is STILL being debated, 40 years after I read the books, and that was decades after they had been written. If Jackson had included him in the movies, he would have had to make an interpretation about his nature, one way or the other, or face endless waves of criticism from people (casuals) who don't understand that the character was left vague in the writing. I'm glad he didn't try to nail it down in the medium of film.
- WillAdams 4y ago
  The thing is, he didn't need to be in the movies _per se_ --- they just needed to have the Hobbits swallowed up by Old Man Willow, then fade to black, then they awaken on the Barrow w/ a couple of swords, and the ponies tied up nearby, and a figure riding away on a pony humming/singing a tune. Folks who had read the books would know what had happened, folks who hadn't would just have to accept it as a magical incident/rescue w/o explanation.
  - whatgoodisaroad 4y ago
    IIRC, there is a scene in the extended cut of the RotK that alludes to this part of the story.
    - WillAdams 4y ago
      Did they also remove Aragorn tossing swords onto a bed in the Prancing Pony?
- lucideer 4y ago
  Jackson would've had to make an interpretation about his presentation, not about his nature. I see no reason a similar approach to his literary description couldn't be achieved cinematically. Fwiw I would've cast Tom Waits. And had musical scenes.
tigerlily 4y ago
I for one was more relieved than disappointed. I never bothered with the Hobbit films, and don’t plan to see the forthcoming Amazon production.

PeterCorless 4y ago

I was mostly bummed the barrow-wights were utterly missing from the movies.

jrumbut 4y ago

And beyond that, I thought the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common. But he is definitely one of the most interesting characters and one of the best ways the story shows it is taking place in a big world with a lot of different things going on.

lucideer 4y ago
> the first half or so of this reading (that Bombadil is a lot more than meets the eye) was also common Certainly that he's more than meets the eye (that seems plain) but the conclusions here seem less common... I think it's interesting to contrast the speculation in this article with the depiction of elves in The Hobbit (book) - much less obviously a benign force than as portrayed in LoTR. The author's assumption - accepted as given at the outset - is that the "evil" within the Old Forest is genuine, rather than a representation of a certain perspective. The thesis is then that Bombadil must be guilty by association. This initial assumption seems simplistic to me. A common trait of mystical (especially nature-connected) beings in northern European mythology (at least!) is a duality of intent - being a perhaps-positive yet untrustworthy force. This seems reflected in a lot of Tolkien's world; while Sauron / the Ring / others do have a more directly corrupt "evil" attributed to them, there's much more ambiguity elsewhere - it says of Old Man Willow that "his heart was rotten, but his strength was green": rotten != evil and in the context of nature has positive connotations (alcoholic fermentation) elsewhere in his writings. Green isn't necessarily positive either, but the usage here is notable.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  It's admittedly in a different part of the book, so may be linguistic styling rather than lore-indicative, but the Old Forest felt more "wild" than "evil." In the Old Forest, there were certainly dangers, including some lethal ones, but loosely organized and operating independently. More druidic. Whereas Sauron / Morgoth were far more hierarchical in structuring their domains, exerted dominion over their forces, and attempted to implement a master plan.
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    The forests are selfish and harsh to outsiders but wish merely to sit and be left alone. The evil of Sauron and Saruman is their wish to spread and dominate (which puts Saruman in direct conflict with the forest, to his loss).
  - tsegratis 4y ago
    The old forest to me was always the Ent wives gone wild
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    It's possible to have a disorganized evil! Maybe I just like a secret villain. I always assumed a component of the forest was a way to keep Hobbits at home and home with the Hobbits.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Definitely #iRestockYaoiInTheBibleSection #chaoticEvil
    - WJW 4y ago
      Interesting, because I've always seen the hobbits as being so insular that they wouldn't need any conspiracy forest to keep them inside the Shire: it was such a paradise (and most hobbits so "boring") that nobody felt any desire to venture outside. Bilbo and Frodo were very much viewed with suspicion for their world-wandering ways, after all.

lisper 4y ago

> He was certainly one of mine & my sibling's favourite characters. Why? He doesn't actually do anything except drone on and on about the color of his boots. He doesn't advance the story in any way (which is why it is so easy to omit him in adaptations).

forgotmypw17 4y ago
Tom represents the Great Mystery, the great unknown of the beyond that is all seeing and all knowing and all powerful. Omitting him is like omitting the whole premise of the book. It's like making a movie based on the Bible but omitting the Resurrection of Jesus.
- lisper 4y ago
  Sorry, but that just doesn't compute for me at all. Tom is a silly character with no gravitas. He puns his own name just to make it rhyme with "yellow" -- over and over again. And there is nothing in Tom's story that is even remotely comparable to the Resurrection. The Resurrection is a key event in the Bible story. It is something that happens to change the dramatic arc of all mankind. In Tom's story, nothing happens at all. The scene at Mount Doom where the Ring is finally destroyed is analogous to the Resurrection, not Tom Bombadil.
  - adamc 4y ago
    He's more the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Who is he? Why does no one know of him? Incongruent facts are always interesting. IMO.
  - WJW 4y ago
    Tom is perhaps silly, but just the fact that he can is seemingly immune to all the Ring can do (with it being implied to be the most powerful artifact in all of Middle Earth, strong enough to even influence Maia like Gandalf) makes him have enough gravitas. If anything, his silly antics make him even more intriguing: how did he gain that power and is it because or despite his silliness?
4y ago

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Agree. Tom represented a couple of things for me when reading the books. First, he represented all the small pockets of unknown magic that could exist in Middle Earth. I would stare at the map of Middle Earth in the front of the book and wonder about the parts not covered in either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. What strange things might be there? Tom heightened my sense of wonder about the world. But second, Tom showed up just as the hobbits seemed to have met their darkest hour. You can dismiss this as deus ex machina on the part of the author, but it was a needed break from the stress and anxiety that had been building to a crescendo at that point. And I thought perhaps Tolkien was suggesting that sometimes you have to trust in the benevolence of strangers — or that some higher power is watching over the most vulnerable.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

Now you can speak to one! Perhaps it was the age when I first read the books (~12 or so years old) – but I loved the contrasts between the cozy world of the hobbits and the more savage, epic nature of the rest of Middle-earth. For me, Tom Bombadil never fit well into either of these categories. There was a while where I heard about Tom Bombadil potentially being Eru Ilúvatar, but that theory has been found pretty lacking in various aspects, as well as having been debunked by Tolkien himself.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

I read the books as a kid, twice. I was glad they left Tom out of the movies. I mean, what he means to the story and the mythology is STILL being debated, 40 years after I read the books, and that was decades after they had been written. If Jackson had included him in the movies, he would have had to make an interpretation about his nature, one way or the other, or face endless waves of criticism from people (casuals) who don't understand that the character was left vague in the writing. I'm glad he didn't try to nail it down in the medium of film.

WillAdams 4y ago
The thing is, he didn't need to be in the movies _per se_ --- they just needed to have the Hobbits swallowed up by Old Man Willow, then fade to black, then they awaken on the Barrow w/ a couple of swords, and the ponies tied up nearby, and a figure riding away on a pony humming/singing a tune. Folks who had read the books would know what had happened, folks who hadn't would just have to accept it as a magical incident/rescue w/o explanation.
- whatgoodisaroad 4y ago
  IIRC, there is a scene in the extended cut of the RotK that alludes to this part of the story.
  - WillAdams 4y ago
    Did they also remove Aragorn tossing swords onto a bed in the Prancing Pony?
lucideer 4y ago
Jackson would've had to make an interpretation about his presentation, not about his nature. I see no reason a similar approach to his literary description couldn't be achieved cinematically. Fwiw I would've cast Tom Waits. And had musical scenes.

tigerlily 4y ago

I for one was more relieved than disappointed. I never bothered with the Hobbit films, and don’t plan to see the forthcoming Amazon production.