my headcanon here is that legolas is just BARELY visibly holding it together
since canon tells us that mirkwood elves like to party and are fully capable of passing out from drunk
so legolas is using EVERYTHING HE HAS to fuck with gimli and pretend he hasn’t a clue what it’s like to be affected by alcohol
while inside he’s all ‘sdkla;hgsj you can do this leggles you can do this’
‘don’t think about that time you blacked out from dorwinion wine while naked in the middle of an impromptu archery contest’
‘and all your friends drew orc penises on your face’
‘and when you woke up you were halfway to dale without a clue as to how you got there’
‘And especially don’t think about that time you drank so much that the dwarves you were supposed to be watching escaped in the empty barrels of wine.’
‘Dad never let me hear the end of that one’
Leggles
While all of the above is great, I’d like to offer that dwaven ‘ale’ probably isn’t made from barley. they live underground. what grows underground? Mushrooms. I’m saying Dwarven Ale is halucinogenic. I’m saying Legolas was tripping balls.
One overlooked thing that really sets the Lord of the Rings films apart from other franchises is how earnest they are-
Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! 😉 Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”
But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.
And when Lord of the Rings does “lean on the fourth wall” to talk about storytelling within the film, it’s never to make jokes about How Ridiculous These Storytelling Tropes are (the way most films do)…. but instead to talk about how valuable these stories can be. Like Sam’s Speech at the end of the Two Towers: the greatest stories are ones that give you something to believe in, give you hope, that help you see there are things in a bleak violent world that are worth living for
Earnestness is so much cooler than all the hip cynicism in the world. You go LOTR
So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences
We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s
But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time.
Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture
Rohan is even farther back, based on old anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)
Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture
And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times
And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed, and life didn’t yet exist
And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as
“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”
Still my favorite story from the Lord of the Rings set: Viggo Mortensen bonded so much with the horse he rode in the movies that after filming was over he bought it from its owner. If that doesn’t warm your heart I don’t know what could.
don’t forget that he also bought arwen’s horse for her stunt rider when she couldn’t afford it awww
also sort of relevant viggo also bought the horse that costarred with him in the movie hidalgo and subsequently took the horse (tj) with him to the red carpet premier.
Also most of the Riders of Rohan are actually women because when they put out that call mostly women showed up with their horses and the costume team just stuck beards on them.
if this isn’t the best post i don’t
So you’re saying the entire Rohan army could have killed the Witch-King of Angmar.
Witch King: No living man can kill me!
several thousand riders of Rohan: *rip their fake beards off*
Throughout the Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir wears unique leather bracers (forearm-guards) adorned with the symbol of the White Tower and the Seven Stars…
After Boromir’s death, Aragorn takes up his bracers. He takes them as a reminder that Boromir’s kingdom is now his kingdom, that Boromir’s burden now falls on his shoulders….or just as something to remember his friend by…
Aragorn wears them throughout the Two Towers…
And Return of the King….
And when we’re shown a “flash-forward” to Aragorn’s death, many long decades after The War of the Ring, he isn’t laid to rest in a king’s priceless silver armor. Instead, we find out…
...Aragorn keeps Boromir’s bracers all his life, and is buried in them
Look it’s basic party ettiquite that if something unfortunate happens to a player character, you’re allowed to loot for the good gear, but you can’t sell it. Ever.
I got misty-eyed. Then I read the response and went, “Yeah, that pretty much happened in my last campaign.”
Loki is the Philosopher King 