The Hobbit - Blunt The Knives (Auralnauts Smash Mix) has been added as a related post - related requested by OverLord on that post.

They stole this video from Christopher Lee's official channel, this video was originally posted back in 2013. Just before his work on The Hobbit.

What they didn't mention about Hobbiton was that it was actually built twice.

The first time (for the LOTR movies) they built it as a traditional temporary set, designed to be taken down after filming. The land then reverted to a sheep farm. But when they did the hobbit movies they actually built the set out of stone and wood, so you can actually go there and walk around the town.

Odd, in the last 3 years Beck has won 5 times the awards that Kanye has...and Kanye only won in 2013 because he collaborated with JZ and JZ won....so if Beck's not worthy of the best album award, Kanye must not be worthy of any award....besides, he's just a gay fish married to a photo shopped hobbit, there's no award for that.

Isildur wears it while escaping his ambush by orcs, and does indeed turn invisible before it slips off his finger. Unfortunately the argument is available that he, like the hobbits, has every reason to value stealth in that moment. It's notable that both he and Frodo are made aware (in Frodo's case by Galadriel) that the ring's real strength is beyond them.

Bombadil wears it briefly as well, of course, and doesn't vanish. But he's a pain in the ass. Others might say it's because he's an ainu, duh. Or shut up, he's a deliberate anomaly. I'd claim, not with a tremendous amount of canonical justification it has to be said, that it's because he's all physical; a personification of middle-earth and even the ring can't shove him into the shadow world.

Regarding the ring and invisibility, do we ever see/read about anyone except Sauron or the hobbits (incl gollum) wearing it?

I could be wrong, but I don't remember any of the humans or elves wearing it. So it's possible it does grant other wearers different abilities.

Yeah, I read the Hobbit about 25 years ago, and the Lord of the Rings a few years later... what's your point?

The one thing that I don't like about the One Ring explanation:

It turns you invisible, unless you are the one person for whom it was actually designed (Sauron).

To me, it seems like the rings of power and especially the one ring should grant a more consistent actual power than that. The three elven rings made by Celebrimbor outside the influence of the one are much better examples.

Narya is the "ring of fire", and in the timeline of LoTR it is held by Gandalf. Which makes sense, because he does a lot of fire-related stuff with his magic. Nenya is the "ring of water" held by Galadriel, and Vilya the "ring of air" held by Elrond. These are used less consistently in the books (or movies), but one movie example is the flood that helped save Frodo and get him to Rivendell. In the movie, the flood is shown as being made of water with horse shapes surging through it, which suggest the magical influence of both Nenya and Vilya (water and air) working together. Anyway, those 3 rings have a consistent and fairly well established list of powers associated with their "elemental" attachments, fire, water, and air.

But the one ring lacks that consistency. It is supposed to help Sauron with his urge to dominate, but it doesn't really explain how that works. It doesn't make him invisible; only others who wear it. Also, it helps him to control or at least influence the wearers of the other rings. That is probably the best, most established power of the one ring, but it is also a bit shaky because wearers other than Sauron don't get those abilities. It seems to make other wearers just more susceptible to corruption, greed, and lust for power.

To me, I think it would be more interesting if the one ring actually granted a more specific power, unique to the psychological state of the wearer. The consistently presented thing about the one ring is that it corrupts, and nothing corrupts more than power. So basically, I think that the one ring should be analyzing whoever wears it, and granting them a unique power that is specifically designed to provide them with their greatest source of temptation to abuse that power.

The invisibility power actually makes a lot of sense for hobbits. As presented in the video here, they generally aren't very ambitious. BUT, hobbits are established as being stealthy beings by default, so granting them invisibility is a good source of temptation to turn that stealthiness into more nefarious purpose. So, I don't mind that the three main hobbit (or hobbit-like) wearers (Gollum/Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo) all consistently get the invisibility power out of the ring.

Human wearers like Isildur would have less consistent powers granted by the rings, because they have more diverse motivations than hobbits. Just as an example, I'd think that Isildur would be motivated by martial prowess and leadership after watching his father killed by Sauron and the human/elven armies decimated at the end of the second age. So, the ring could perceive that about him and grant him physical power and charisma to lead -- both of which would be very easily turned to corruption. Invisibility just doesn't logically provide the same level of temptation for someone like Isildur.

Finally we come to Sauron himself. He is already an exception to the "ring grants invisibility" concept. But for him, the ring should (and arguably does) represent power and control. Sauron had to put on a false face and play the role of deceiver to get Celebrimbor and the other elves to accept him and create the other rings. Having to stoop to that rather than simply crushing them made him despise that sort of approach; after creating the one ring he cast that aside and became all about sheer power and domination, rather than trickery and deception. So, I see the ring's powers granted to Sauron himself as being sort of a conversion of those cunning/deceptive abilities into might, self preservation, and overwhelming mental dominance that allows him to control his orc armies.


Sorry for the length of that -- I have just always felt that the established powers of the one ring would be a bit more interesting if they led to corruption through real power granted to the wearers, rather than "it makes them invisible, but not Sauron, and in general corrupts them, just because".

I haven't seen The Hobbit 3 - do they talk about the Seven at all in the film? It would have been a great way to link the Hobbit films with the darker, bigger world of the LotR trilogy if Thorin had come into possession of one of them after Smaug was killed.

They should have called it The Hobbit: The 2 and a Half Hour Videogame (starring Evangeline Lilly as token female character!)

Good list. Here's mine.

The Good: 1. The Babadook 2. Nightcrawler 3. Gone Girl 4. Guardians of the Galaxy 5. Snowpiercer 6. Blue Ruin 7. Foxcatcher 8. Under the Skin 9. The Guest

The Bad: The Hobbit 3

The Unseen: Boyhood, Whiplash, John Wick, Birdman, Citizen 4, Interstellar

Your video, Hobbit Sword Glows Blue Near Unprotected WI-FI, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Never having read any of the Tolkien books, I made the questionable decision to read the Silmarillion before any of the other books (except the Hobbit). I gained one distinct advantage in reading through the LOTR books in that I already knew almost all of the stories that are only briefly told by the various characters. But was it worth it? Yes, though only the second half of the book was really captivating for me.

Sadly, some quick google searching indicates that the Silmarillion is still owned by the Tolkien estate who doesn't appreciate PJ's treatment of the LOTR/Hobbit. Maybe someday another studio/director might get the chance...

The Silmarillion reads very differently than Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, or any novel really... It has a sort of scripture / Biblical feel about it, even beyond the creation story that starts the book being a Tolkien-style Genesis.

But even beyond that, there is a lot of great material in there if you can get around the denseness of it. The story of the war that finishes off the first age is really, really good.

But before you give the book a shot, know that 1 page of Silmarillion takes longer to digest than 1 page of most texts. Very helpful to get the footnote annotated edition that has an appendix to refer to to help remind you when characters pop up that haven't been mentioned for a LONG time, etc.

Ah, this video would have been nice twenty years ago when I had a week long nerd argument with someone about the nature of wizards. I insisted they were like the Olympians and were basically the demi-gods of Middle Earth while my opponent was convinced they were men, citing Gandalf's apparent focus on men and hobbits. I had to trawl through a bunch of JRR and Christopher's material to win that argument - a 4 minute video may have saved me some stress!

Like JRR, I haven't been able to finish the Silmarillion (managed the first two parts only), though I did enjoy The Music of the Ainur as one of the coolest creation stories I've come across.