Despite being composed in August, still, alas, a timely video 😅 The thing about Vingilot, Bird-Elwing, and other 'unrealistic' magical aspects is: they ARE magic, very much presented as exceptions to the normal order of things. The characters did not anticipate them, and react to them with wonder and awe. Elwing didn't wink cheerily and fire off a one liner before she sprouted wings.
Those examples have always made me a bit uncomfortable though. In my mind, I do as I'm getting a "traditional explanation of what happened" that is there to cover for some unknown or hard-to-explain reality that did follow the rules. Maybe I'm wrong, but I find it easier to digest this way
@@enriqueparodiYT1 to me though attempting to find explanation in those supernatural moments blunts the experience somewhat. One has to remember they aren’t exactly frequent, and looking for answers at what appears to be magic or from a force unknown would snap us out of the secondary belief. Tolkien wasn’t daft, the frequency of which he wrote these events is such that when they do happen they are incredibly seismic and memorable, and this keeps it tight within the story. And, the feeling iv always had with said events is that magic is coursing through Middle-earth during the first age…less so as the days progress.
Another major issue with the series is breaking the rules for *one* character specifically. Doing something which will kill another character, or contintually benefiting from good luck and convenience. One of the traits associated with Mary Sues is that the rules of the storyworld bend around them. Note: this does not apply to Gandalf coming back from the dead, as there is an explanation in the book for why and how that happened. Gandalf is a Maia, a spirit being in human form, and it is well known that they can be given new bodies (or create them for themselves as Sauron did). When Gandalf died his spirit form went to Illuvatar (God) who sent him back until his mission was complete.
Well said! It's very annoying when people respond to criticisms of fantasy (of late it is almost always around RoP) with "it's just a fantasy" or something similar. It's like they have somehow missed the fact that any fictional universe has to have a set of consistently applied rules otherwise there's no point to it. Just because there's dragons doesn't mean anything goes.
Yeah I've heard this a lot recently as a response to criticism of RoP..... its like, Tolkien never said that Elrond wasn't a word class break-dancer so were not shitting all over the lore.... Tolkien never said that Samwise didn't have an AR50..... Tolkien never said that Sauron's favorite activity isnt performing as part of a middle-earth drag act at the Prancing Pony a Friday night....
It happens a lot with D&D. When you tell a story in D&D your players are the audience and also writing half the story so if there isn't a set framework of expectations in the game world then not only will the players have less fun but their characters might die. A lot of DMs make up stuff on the spot that rug pulls the expectations in the name of a "cool moment" like having the bad guy do something impossible to make the players fear them, when it ends up making it feel like bullshit. You hear the argument that it's fantasy a lot.
Well, his first fiction trilogy was more 'driving under the influence of Tolkien', which is understandable. But since then he has done many wonderful fantasy-historicals taking place in not-Italy, not-France, not-China, and (my favorites) not-Byzantium.
The cornerstone of fantasy as a literary genre has always been myths, legends, and folk stories, and the DNA of those has always been human experience. I absolutely agree realism belongs in fantasy. Some of the issues are that it seems like people nowadays are not only unwilling, or even capable of suspending their disbelief, but that they have little grasp of basic storytelling elements. In regards to the Rings of Power, it's possible that they're simply feeding an audience that's languished in superhero movies for the past two decades.
Stuff like the Galadriel scene imo actually detaches us from the fantasy because of how silly it all looks. We are suddenly reminded that this is a program stunt made for a certain audience, the polar opposite of an escapist thought. Jackson did this is in his films as well. It doesn’t feel particularly necessary, but maybe to be expected. Things like dragons, talking trees and flying ships are what make the fantasy setting fantasy. The other stuff, not so much.
Classic fight: hero is weaker than the villain, overcoming a burden to succeed. Modern fight: heroine is stronger than the villain, catering to a power-fantasy.
The rules change between books of the Bible. No one expects Romans to really be consistent with Exodus or Revelation to be consistent with Amos. It's the same with each Tolkien work or adaptation. You really shouldn't judge the Silmerrilion by the same standard as The Hobbit, and you shouldn't judge the rings of Power by the same standard of Lord of the Rings. Each story tells its own mythos, and as far as there are inconsistencies, it should be understood that each author is seeing the world through their own eyes.
I don’t think the Bible is really applicable here. The rules of physics don’t change between Genesis and Revelation. Also what inconsistencies between the Hobbit, LOTR, and Silmarillion are you talking about?
I can easily believe Galadriel being launched off the tip of a sword, because the actress playing her is about 3 feet tall. Seriously, I try to overlook the actress's hight but she's so damn tiny. I have no idea how tall Kate Blanchett is, but in the Jackson adaptations Galadriel's presence was towering. She's a Noldor, not a Keebler.
Cate Blanchett was so awesome in the Hobbit movie when she walked barefoot and weaponless into Dol Guldur and you saw her take on her whole power. What an amazing actress. She made Elven magic so real.
Cate Blanchett is 5'9", or 1.74 m. But Jackson made her look taller, both in LOTR and Hobbit. To be fair, she is also slender and fine-boned, which also make her look taller. Tolkien says Galadriel is 6 feet, so only 3" is added to her height.
The reason that Legolas's superhero stunts in Jackson's LotR are borderline acceptable is first that it is a bit self-referentially comedic (I think), but more importantly because the stunts were an extremely small part of huge battle actions. In The Hobbit, Legolas and Tauriel were important characters, and their actions were important, and proportionally preposterous. In Rings of Power, Galadriel and Arondir (who does his share of superhero stuff) are two of the most important characters, and everything they do is presumed to be very important to the story, and so must bear more scrutiny still.
I agree with you entirely. With regards to Elendil though, his height could have been shown by using the same techniques, such as forced perspective, as were used to reduce the apparent height of the dwarves and 'harfoots'. The Numenoreans were one of the races I thought they'd have no problem portraying. Oh well.
@@creepyoldlady2995 my point is you can't insert things that don't fit into the world. Ie balrog scene, Aragon calls a orbital strike from satellite based phaser weapons platform. The balrog is instantly vapourised after gandalf says this foe is abivey all of you, a Demon of the dark world, of dread etc. Gandalf then goes oh, I didn't realise you had a satellite weapon, I guess he's not really that much of a problem now , let's get moving. The scene then continues with Aragorn using his sword. It's never explained how Aragon has star trek level of technology nor is it shown in any other lotr lore, and the greatest technology in middle earth is forging steel.
@@billybobby7607 Tolkien addressed the issue of Elven technology in one of his letters. He said that the Elves were "the scientists of Middle-Earth," and that some of what seemed to be magic could be the relics of a lost technology. He didn't mention anything specific, but I wonder if Elrond, known as the greatest Lore-master, might have used an Elven technology in healing, as when he discovered the shard of the Nazgul blade in Frodo's shoulder. Tolkien doesn't describe Elrond's healing power, but he does give somewhat of a description of the mental technique Aragorn uses to heal Eowyn and Merry in Return of the King. There seems to be more to it than a magic spell.
I had just been advocating for this very same thing. Well written & relatable fantasy has internal logic and guiding principles. And they allow for the viewer or reader to ground themselves in their expectations. Fantasy is never wholey nebulous, because the genre itself is a mechanism to express an amalgamation of intellectual ideas. Tolkien was very clear about the importance of the fantastical myth. And how it is used to uncover & return to the valuable aspects of what we have lost as a people. To dismiss the geres' inherent function is the inablility to understand the work itself, whatever that may be. Fans of "The Rings of Power" fail to understand this, because it is surface level entertainment to them. There is little to be derrived from an adaptation that fails to understand & expound upon it's core principles. Tolkiens' theology, his spirituality, his dogmatic delineation between good and evil.
This is something I've told people in both RPGs and fiction writing in general for a long time. It's not a fantasy/reality dichotomy, it's a consistency issue, and it is a relatability issue. Whenever you write anything fictional (or even if you're trying to relate a fantastic real-life experience), you have to stick near the bounds of what your audience can relate to. If you stray too far, once it offends their sense of personal experience about the world, you've lost them. Consistency is a bit more specific of an issue in the relatability realm. If you do one thing, then do something which, by the audience's perspective, completely violates the mere existence of the first thing, without giving them at least a thread to an explanation in near time, you'll lose them, too. The reason I present it this way is because of the prima facie contradiction that usually comes up in conversation when you say that there should be more "realism" in fiction (either fantasy or sci-fi, or even just general fiction). It short-circuits the obvious off-the-cuff "well, it's FANTASY, duhhh!" rebuttal. I've avoided watching the RoP series because, even at its outset, it seemed like a gratuitous cash grab more than a sincere attempt to tell a story in Tolkien's world. Whoever they got as a creative consultant for JRRT's works (assuming they even bothered getting one) should be fired and sent back to their newsstand job, presuming it wasn't just a case of the writers ignoring the advice of an expert JRRT scholar that they should have hired and listened to before, during, and after writing the screenplay.
@@marieroberts5458 Well, then they deserve to be relegated to the dustbin of crap tv shows and mocked relentlessly for any future attempts to ruin classics.
The passage referenced in the video. Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy may be, as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that “the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough- though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or “transcript of life” that receives literary praise. To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, storymaking in its primary and most potent mode. Tolkien - On Fairy Stories
Is he saying you have to elaborate why or how the sun appears to be green in a fictive world or it is just decoration? With todays knowledge about light and how vision works we can explain this easily. I assume for Tolkien the colour of light and its connection to wavelength must have been a mystrerium, that could just been explained by someone with a special elvish talent^^
@@nostalji93 That's exactly what he said, though, to make Green Sun believable "will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft." as in - if you just say, 'the sun is green in my world', then your world is shallow, fanciful and unbelievable. It takes skill, thought and labour of the writer to make a world in which there is a believable green sun, not to mention everything connected to it. And that's what Tolkien has been more successful than everyone else - everything in his work is either true to our world or so well written into the world that they belong there, and aren't just some fanciful nonsense. BTW, they already knew about wavelength back then, though I don't know if Tolkien himself studied it
@@BeresVonSaladir Well certainly not exactly since I paraphrased in my own words to see if I understand what he said. English isnt my first language so I am very thankful for you elaboration. It helps me a lot. Yeah good point. After I wrote my comment I checked myself and saw that they discovered infrared light by measuring the temperature around the visible light (shining through a prism) in the year 1800... I asked myself the same question. How much would Tolkien as a linguist know about physics? On the one side its clearly not his field of expertise, on the other I know Tolkien as incredible insightful and I assume education in general wasn't as specific as it is today.
Tolkien knew quite a bit outside his field. He might not have known that specifically but he was a professor at Oxford and well educated, and did a lot of reading even apart from that.
Very well said. "It's not that there are no rules, but there is a different set of rules." Is a very concise way to explain the principles of fantasy world-building. The author creates a world with added natural laws, and for that world those added laws are just how the world is. Thus, every time the author breaks these added rules the world feels less real for the audience.
You make a really good point here, I see this argument a lot: people saying "You can believe in elves and dragons, but you want realism in volcanoes, distances traveled, or character motivations?" Yes, actually- it is easier for me to believe in dragons than it is to believe in violations of basic logic, cause and effect, time and distance, or basic psychology as I understand it. Fantasy stories are still based on the world that we know and rely on our understanding of these basic things. If you want to depart from them in a story, you need to establish the new rules. Otherwise, we understand stories by assuming that logic and physics work the same. I can believe in a dragon but I would expect it to follow principles of logic, physics, and psychology that are somewhat recognizable. I don't believe a story is possible without cause and effect. Without it, it's just events happening.
Everything in this video is right in light of what we have seen in the series so far including: - All of the main characters surviving a volcanic eruption (something which Tolkien wrote about killing Elves) - Implied killing of one character, but which will prove not to be so since he has to be alive for another event. So this will result in a fake death/coming back from the dead which has to be accounted for. - Teleporting over long distances in a short time which it is established in universe that such travel takes a long time. It takes Frodo and Sam many months to walk from Rivendell to Mordor. Yet we see characters in ROP travelling an equivalent distance in a matter of hours or a day. - Inconsistencies in terms of wounds/injuries. In one episode they are shown to be easily treatable and characters recover within a day, but in the next episode "there are no healers available" (despite the character being a King) and the character has to be taken thousands of miles for treatment.
In my opinion, the issues you identify are at least in part due to gaming’s influence on literature and movies. The characters all now have multiple lives, powers are gained by objects obtained, secrets are unlocked with objects obtained, with the objects and powers and secrets being the goal of the show or book. So many stories are just cheap fiction due to the dependence of writers on gaming as a model for literary truth.
Exactly. Very good point. And Comic books and the inundation of movies based on them of the last decades. Even the Jackson trilogy is far too action based (including silly nonsense like Legolas surfing on shield) because this was seen as necessary for success, I believe. If one reads LotR one is surprised how relatively short and few the fight/battle episodes are, even the two big ones (Helm's Deep and Pelennor fields) are not as long as one usually remembers them.
I think it’s more the influence of shounen anime, characters gaining powers in the middle of the fight is a common shounen trope. Like oh no I am totally outmatched but then something happens in the middle of the fight that makes me extra feisty and now I’ve discovered I can go Super Saiyan. Video games you gain powers by fighting and leveling up, but you don’t gain powers in the middle of battle.
This has been one of my core problems that has driven me away from Star Wars. Every single ability you ever see a character use is now just a video game ability you unlock from a skill tree by reaching Jedi Level 15 or whatever. It completely removes any kind of spiritualism or symbolism that certain figures are able to achieve certain feats because they have a uniquely special understanding of or relationship with the force. No everyone is just advancing down a video game character path. Nothing anyone did in the OT is even remotely impressive or meaningful like it was in the story. Everyone can do it.
Thank you! You made your point beautifully and hopefully more people get convinced this way. I always use the example of: If Harry Potter just pulled out a Glock and shot Voldemort in the face, would that be irrelevant because it's just Fantasy? It might be funny, but it would ruin the internal consistency of the storytelling.
A glock doesn't really break the rules of the universe since a Glock would exist in the muggle world. So it is still consistent with the internal logic of that universe. The question is whether Lord Voldemort would so easily die to muggle weapons. He would probably have magic magic barriers that shields him from silly muggle attempts like that.
@@tefazDK I see your point, but I don't think it would remain consistent with a Glock. We've never ever seen Wizards use guns. Although it would obviously be super easy to just blast a magazine into whoever and they would die (maybe not voldemort). It's just not established as a thing that happens/exists in the universe that way.
Great video on this subject; I'll be saving it to show to ignorant people who are too thick to see through the "but there are dragons" argument at first glance. One thing I'd add is for people who talk about "plot holes" or "inconsistencies" too readily and prior to in-depth analysis. In our world, if we see something we don't immediately understand, take for example a balloon rising into the sky when we have no idea what helium is and think it should fall down, we don't automatically say "the world is inconsistent and ridiculous; such a thing could never really happen" when clearly it did, but rather we either just accept it and move on or we try to figure out what we got wrong, either way realizing that the problem is with our own understanding and not with the laws of physics. Similarly, it's incumbent upon us to give any world that's intended to be internally consistent - which Middle Earth is - exactly that same treatment, with the original author setting the rules. Just because we don't immediately understand how dragons fly and find enough to eat doesn't mean they can't, but rather that our understanding is too limited to grasp how they do it (probably involving them being Maiar and not just any old creatures). It's up to us to discover those rules if we care enough to, or to accept the phenomena at face value if we don't. Authors of fan fiction by definition don't set the rules and are bound to those of the world they claim their story to be a part of insofar as they want the story to be believable in that context, and shouldn't be surprised if it gets rejected when it starts breaking them. Of course if an original author doesn't care about the internal consistency of his own world, we have no reason to, either - debating the physics of a scene out of a Monty Python movie for example would be ridiculous - but Tolkien certainly did care and put a lot of effort into it, and so deserves the full benefit of the very few doubts he left open.
Thank you! I've been saying this for YEARS my god I hate that argument so much. It's like a logical bypass that people use whenever there's criticism for bad worldbuilding, writing and storytelling. So because it's all made up it can't be criticized for being internally inconsistent?
For Star Wars, it may be that the midi-chlorian count of the individual allows for a certain amount of channeling of the Force, though all that requires is stipulating that count in the writing. It may create a limit to what an individual of a given species can accomplish, though, and that may be why masters like Yoda try to teach the Judo approach of doing as little as possible to affect the outcome you want and using as many environmental conditions already in play to reduce the required input even further. This would require even the strongest individuals to train a lifetime to affect things on a planetary scale. I think you're right, though, about holding the ship; Ren had trained extensively and seems to be a naturally potent user of the Force, but he wasn't at a "And just where do you think you're goin...?" level.
Totally agree, but think there's a better Star wars example out there: Rey and healing with the force. This power doesn't seem to have any limitation as it heal the same wound that killed Qui Gon. Saving a loved ones was the reason Anakin fell to the dark side aswell, so introducing this ability that late to the story makes his whole arc feel stupid.
Regarding the first Star Wars trilogy (I refuse to watch the others) my understanding is that, while the Force is unlimited, the people trained to use it are not. Luke has to struggle against himself to learn to use the Force; that's part of his hero's journey. Even then, safety and success are not assured. He and his fellow pilots still have to fly those ships, which is a tricky business. The Force is just a weapon that the Jedi are trained to use. I gather that the training process was completely dispensed with in some of the later movies, which in my humble opinion is stupid. Without the struggle to overcome the obstacles within yourself before you are able to fight your enemy, the story loses a great part of its interest, everything becomes less personal. That initial inner victory should give added meaning to all the conflicts that follow.
Not a disagreement with your take, but I find it very easy to turn off critical thinking to make something palatable. I do it all the time - the best example being the purely spectacle driven Dragon Ball series, and I like how it doesn't try to be more than it is - I can still enjoy the experience, but I do hold it in lower regard. I think that's loosely speaking the difference between suspension of disbelief and secondary belief. My issue with the RoP series is that they turned art into content. Despite the mythological leaning, it was never about the action or the scenery or the "coolness"; it was fundamentally about the virtues of respect, bravery, humility, gratitude, and pity (though I believe mercy to be a better word in context), and they bastardised it. If it's art, it's meaningful. If it's content, it's expedient.
Even with Dragon Ball (of which I have seen little), you have somehow internalized a set of rules by which you think their world works. If they break those rules with no explanation (a hero waves a hand, and all his enemies disappear instantly and all the dead heroes reappear) you will still be annoyed and taken out of the story. We assume that Middle-earth operates by rules close to our own world's, and that things like Eärendil's marvelous ship are wonders precisely because they are exceptional.
You're right about the weight of the sword. I wanted to add one remark about that. In the account of the Battle of Barad-Dur (in which Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron's hand) it refers to Elendil's sword Narsil breaking underneath him when he was dropped/thrown by Sauron. This is translated in the movies to it breaking when Isildur tries to grab it but Sauron steps on it first, which is entirely credible if not lore accurate. A sword will break if a large amount of weight is put on one side of it, whilst the other is being lifted or pulled.
The breaking of Narsil should not be because of some freak physical accident. It's more like Merry's blade going up into smoke when making contact with the Witch King, I think. The breaking of the Sword signifies the self-sacrificial effort of Gil-Galad and Elendil necessary to overthrow Sauron. (Cf. Wagner's Ring, despite Tolkien's dislike: The first time Nothung is shattered by Wotan's Spear and Siegmund is killed, but reforged and wielded by Siegfried it cleaves the Spear another time.)
@@bartolo498 Its not an accident. It breaks in the movies because Sauron intentionally steps on it when Isildur reaches for it. He's reaching down to kill Isildur like he did his father, and Isildur just swings the broken sword at him. Its the irony. It represents victory clawed from defeat and Sauron's hubris. He'd just killed Elendil and thought Isildur stood no chance against him, but Isildur took up his fallen father's broken sword and defeated him with it.
One small point on The Force. While The Force might be able to technically do anything, that doesn't mean that everyone is equally able to use the Force or that anyone is capable enough with it to, say, crush the Death Star. Just because someone can use Magic doesn't mean they're immediately as powerful as the strongest mage. It's pointed out throughout Star Wars that Anakin Skywalker and his lineage is particularly gifted in the Force. that they are able to use it to an extent that *breaks the rules*. And even They aren't able to destroy the Death Star with the Force - even if, technically if they became powerful enough, they could.
Hey i recently came across your excellent channel and you have reminded me why i love Tolkien's works so much, it has been well over a decade since i read any of his books but i think I'm going to have to dust them off again.
I’ve realized why I hate that Galadriel launching scene and that the hobbit movies do the same kind of thing. First in Tolkiens works battle is very grounded the elves fight in battle lines and have archers. The only difference between them and the humans is experience and some slight physical differences. They do not leap over people or do ridiculous leaps toward the big monsters face like they do in the hobbit movies and rop.
In my opinion, it's the same reason a couple of the shots/scenes from the trilogy don't hold up to well also (the legalos skateboard stuff and surfing olyphants comes to mind), and even more so in the Hobbit films (jumping from falling stone to falling stone).
@@holysecret2 I believe even Viggo Mortensen has said he was getting a bit disillusioned with the CGI towards the end (RoTK). We were lucky the Trilogy was made when it was and not later!
"Takes you out of the story..." Yes, this is a major problem. In his wonderful book "On Moral Fiction" John Gardner talks about what he calls the 'fictional dream' which every author strives to create. Such dreams must be consistent, true to their own internal rules, in order to be compelling and convincing. When an author violates the rules he has set for himself he disrupts the fictional dream and weakens our belief in that dream and in the story. Such interruptions and disruptions throw us out of the dream and back into our own world, which of course is not what we as readers want. This can happen where logic and probabilities (either physical or psychological) are violated, as in the sword incident with Galadriel. Tolkien was increasingly concerned about this problem as he worked on his myth, striving always to make it more consistent and 'real' in terms of of science. That is why he discarded his early myth of the creation of the sun and moon. Contemporary obsessions and concerns, whether 'good' or 'bad,' can also disrupt the fictional dream and cause us to lose belief. I think that the scouring of the Shire does this, and of course 'Elves are taking our jobs' is a much worse example of the same thing.
I can't be the only one who thought that Legolas in LOTR and The Hobbit movies absolutely stretched the bounds of what can be considered "believable" with his exploits and physics-breaking.
Honestly any archer hero is essentially a super soldier. It is very hard to shoot accurately while moving at a fast pace and with piercing power. It kind of be boring though if he just stood in one place though
Very true. You need to establish gravity before the power of flight means anything. And there needs to be some progression/explanation towards the actualizing of that power in a particular instance/character, or else it's just a bunch of stuff floating around.
I absolutely agree with the premise of the video. Internal consistency is extremely important for works of fantasy. For all those reasons you mentioned. What I don't agree with is the two examples used. One from Rings of Power and one from Star Wars. Rings of Power (small disclaimer: I hate RoP for how they treated what Tolkien envisioned for the main characters, their fates, the events of Second Age, and from episode 6 onward it's not even a good quality random fantasy show anymore) You say that Galadriel balancing on the sword, being lifted on the sword is unrealistic in the universe? But I say "Let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow- an Elf!" ...well, actually Legolas says that on the Karadhras pass in "Fellowship of the Ring". And somehow he did run light over snow, not falling down into it, even though his weight was surely enough to make him fall into the fresh snow. How did he do that? Did he have magical shoes? Did he lower his center of mass to under the sheet of snow? Or something else? We don't know and I don't know whether anyone was interested enough to ask J.R.R. Tolkien that. But he did run light over snow somehow. And on the same principle Galadriel, despite how ridiculous and "string-fu" that scene looked, was also able to be lifted on the sword and thrust into the air. Star Wars Over the years in Expanded Universe (now known as Star Wars Legends) and in the new canon too, we have seen examples how the Force can be used to do the extraordinary feats. But it really does not create any issues, lack of stakes, inconsistencies. It's still a matter of having both a lot of experience and a lot of very rigorous and arduous training in understanding and manipulating the force, as well as having innate extraordinary powers to begin with. Darth Vader or his apprentice Galen Marek (AKA Starkiller) are shown to be able to move things as big as Star Destroyers with the Force, but they both had innate powers with the Force and years of training, and were also extremely exhausted after that. Rey... Rey is a very unfortunate example but let's give JJ Abrams a bit of slack and say he wanted her to have incredible Force power as a one in a thousand generations embodiment of the Force or something. But even then, it's not that anyone could do everything with the use of the Force. There will always be stakes and rules and requirements for this. Just like not everyone can get their request fulfilled by Iluvatar. It did happen three times in the entire history of Arda but that does not mean any random Joe, Tom or Hirgon can just pray to Eru and have an island disappear under the wave.
Note that Legolas doesn’t claim to BE light, but that he can *run lightly.* I don’t think we’re supposed to take from that that he weighs very little. Also remember that Galadriel is wearing a full suit of armor, which would weigh a good bit all on its own.
100% agree, a Fantasy World still has to be realistic in its own setting. Thats the reason why Tolkiens, Martins (and others) worlds are so good. Good Fantasy autors don't spend hundreds and tausands of hours in world building, only for show makers, make a "well its fantasy, you can do whatever you want" out of it.
My favorite example- the tv show Streets of San Francisco. While some of the car chase scenes let’s say “strained credulity”, when a car goes into a turn as one model, then the camera shifts and it comes out of the turn as a different model car, credulity is not just strained but destroyed.
I very much agree that there should be rules and limitations set in stories. Magic rules (eg Brandon Sanderson) are crucial when writing fantasy stories. Having physics rules is also important. A lack of limitations with either of these can be world-breaking and leave the reader/watcher/gamer frustrated and no-longer caring about the story and characters.
The suspension of disbelief I have maintained is the most important thing for any fantasy world. I think the way Tolkien looks at it really truly is just saying the same thing in a different way for the sake of it.
Love this topic and kudos to you Sir. I'd like to add that I find that in Star Wars, the Force itself is not a problem. As an analogy, Jesus himself says if you have faith enough, you could tell a mountain to move. The Force really is all powerful and you can IN THEORY do anything. The limits are in the mind, but also in native strength and ability. Another example from another fandom: Mad Eye Moody tells all the students that they could whip out their wands, collectively point them at him, yell the Killing Curse, and he'd doubted that he'd get so much as a nosebleed. Because they didn't have the power...you'd need to really mean it, and be a fairly powerful wizard to boot, before you could succeed. You could do anything with the Force, but you must have the raw power/talent and the training, and training can only take you so far. Which is why only a very small percentage of the people who love playing sports can then excell enough to make a living at it, nevermind being the best of the best. So Rey or Ben Solo/Kylo Ren doing amazing things works for me, because they have the raw power and natural talent. Rey's point in favor is that she has the both the ability and some training, but she has the theory internalized - she can do anything. In fact, because she has no preconceived notions of 'Jedi can't do this' and "Sith can't do that' , she can do it all, so long as she throws all her strength at the task. However, untrained and un-practiced, she should be having issues with stamina and just not accounting for good old Newton's law "every action has its equal and opposite reaction", the 'I just drove myself into the ground trying to pull the ship back to earth' joke. That's where it breaks down for me.
You are very right: you need consistency and certain rules in order for a plot to work. When you disregard logic, time, space, and certain laws of physics you produce a mess. Example? Rings of Power
Have you ever spoken anything of Trotter, the wooden footed hobbit? I find it very interesting how entirely different the story would be, as, after appearing in early drafts, he was eventually replaced with Strider. He was supposed to have had his wooden feet because of torture in Mordor, but that’s all I know of him. The thing is, while certainly interesting, I feel as if there isn’t much point in speculation on how it would affect the story as we know it - the more “standard” what-ifs, where the basis is mostly in the choices pre-existing characters could’ve made, is obviously much different than replacing a pivotal character within the history as we know it. If that makes sense, it’s a bit late here and I’m getting drowsy. Regardless, I find Trotter to be a fun little factoid about the early drafts of these books that we hold so dear, which also holds incredible implications to what the plot in its entirety would even be - and there’s something very hobbitlike about that - a small, insignificant detail, with massive potential for change.
@@TolkienLorePodcast gotcha, and thank you for the reply - thats what I had figured, it feels like one of those topics that would either need other characters similar to him to make a list out of it, or something like that
Good video. The lines mentioned in the original 3 Star Wars film are somewhat vague. It can depend how you interpret them. I took it as Vader refering to the force itself not one person being able to weild all of that power. The whole force in the universe being greater than the Death Star makes sense. As for Yoda's line there might be a limit to mental power that doesn't have to do with weight per say. Sensing an entire planet well enough to exert the force on it might be a lot different than a rock or an X Wing. Or maybe it was true as far as a rock or an X Wing, but not as an absolute. It can work thought of this way. I'm not surprised Disney Star Wars went for the pulling ship out of the sky absurdity.
About the Force thing, it is clearly shown that using the Force takes a mental toll on the person, so no, you can't do everything with the Force, plus the Jedi practice restrain as much as anything else...
It's never explained anywhere that controlling bigger objects takes more of a toll than smaller ones, and if it is, then Yoda is wrong in stating there's no difference between a pebble and an x-wing. There are force-users other than Jedi, people who purposely throw constraint to the wayside...
I'm agree with you. I'm going to add, the disney trilogy of star wars is like rings of power of amazon, they ignored all the rules and lore, they destroyed a wonderful tale. the 6 original movies had a lot of consistency and the stakes were always high. Rings of power gives nothing just because the plot needs silly situations to happen, the pompeya mount doom incident was the worst, at this point they want us to believe that kriptonians lives in middle earth, anyway, great conent, keep it up!!
That's what happens when the work is done by people who don't care about the product. In the past people who were passionate about things used to write about it, and make movies and games about it. Now since it's all so "merchandised" after that projects like the LOTR trilogy had so much of an economic success, they only care about the money, and it's done by people who don't actually care about the product or the message it should be giving. The exact same things is happening in the gaming world in general sadly. It's all shiny, with cosmetic microtransactions and loot boxes (some sort of slot machine mechanic) and all they care about is to make money, sell copies, sell currencies internal to the games, and the end result it's that the quality of the actual content is below ground and many are turning to indie games, because no matter the fact that indie developers don't have all the money and manpower of the big gaming corporations, the games are actually better because they are small projects developed by people who may not have a lot of means but they have the passion for the product, and that's absolutely recognizable to the end consumer.
I agree with you on all points except for Star Wars one. It is best to approach the Force as a philosophical concept, than magic. Because it isn't magic per se and closely resembles Buddhism or what can be called a pholosophical religion. One of the theories tells us that the Force is actually limitless, but people are not. If a person cannot imagine destroying the Death Star, then a Force user cannot destroy it. People's imagination has bounds in the universe of Star Wars. And if your imagination is so vast and you can truly believe that you can destroy the Death Star, then you're one with the Force and you're no longer a living person, but a Force spirit. But then you no longer have desires that you had previously. Your imagination is the limit. And Yoda's phrase was a commentary on how Luke cannot imagine being strong. Darth Vader"s comment was about Palpatine and how his believe in his capacity of becoming the ruler, and has corrupted enough minds for him to become the Emperor. Compared to that, Death Star is actually insignificant. Plus there is a theory about capacity of a certain individual (the strength of Force sensitivity) and constraints of a person's own imagination combined. And then there is midi-chlorians. To be fair I never really thought about that as I'm a person who has a major in Japanese religions (Japanese Buddhism, Shinto etc.) and Japanese mythology, and this concept is prerequisite to a lot of religions in general. But now that I thought about it for a while I understand why Lucas thought to introduce midi-chlorians to the lore. The constraints of your own imagination as a limiter of sorts is a philosophical concept that is rarely applied to sci-fi or fantasy in the West, but can be found in a lot of countries in Asia (Mob Psycho or Mushishi are some of the recent examples). Edit: I'm not talking about sequel trilogy ofc, as it is not Lucas' films anymore and they have no connection to Star Wars ideology and philosophy that was invisioned by him.
Tolkien never created a world without the normal rules of physics. He created a world with the mythology of pagan Northern Europe. He chose mythological creatures that could inhabit his world and tell a story that resonated in his, and our, hearts. This was a deliberate choice he made. If I want an alternative universe, I will read much different authors than Tolkien. Thee are well written books that have much different basic rules that govern the characters. You have honestly pointed out how modern screenwriters and their tech departments can ruin fantasy by making decisions that are not consistent in their universe.
"He created a world with the mythology of pagan Northern Europe." - that is a far to simplistic and reductive take. Some things are inspired by that, while others are not. Numenor is based on Atlantis, which is a Greek/Egyptian(possibly) tale. Gondor is geographically placed somewhat close to where Rome would be and somewhat inspired by the Byzantine empire. Rohan is the closest to being inspired by Germanic/Norse/Goths.
"Just stupid looking...no fulcrum, no nothing to make it into a lever..." It reminds me of the discussion about whether coconuts are native to Mercia and weight ratios between swallows and coconuts...
In Star Wars expanded universe the force still follows some general laws of reality. You can heal a person, but you need the proper medical knowledge and bacta is still more efficient if slower. You can have sacrifice of 100 of Siths to crush a star to explode, but sending in the bomber fleet does the job easier. Its said in 2nd or 3rd book of Night Watch from Lukjanenko, by Boris Ignatievich, a grand mage and leader of the Watch. - Magic can do lot of things, but fliping a switch to get light is easier and more convenient. I am a person who can get out of my supression of disbelief quickly for small things. And the most recent moment for me was in CP:Edgerunners. When Lucy starts to do lot of weird mistkes with David's her treatment towards David. While some is in universe, it still is often out of common sense (and it made me question if she even does love him). And there are lot of ways she could deal with it, without giving away his predicament to him. But then i realized it only served to boost the idea of vicious cicles of CP lore "Live fast, die young". And that was it for me. They lost me, even thou i still find it one of the best drama anime of recent. On the other hand i played an adult oriented CP+high magic themed game from smal team and their lore is rich and these situations are either ironed out or just squished by absolutely flat response, a real and mundane approach to it, yet it did not hurt the narrative in any way, on contrary, it made it more compeling.
You can create everything you like. But you have to keep it logical. Thats how you can have marvel hero's without a problem. Tolkien already set the rules of logic.
When you say that anything goes just because it's fantasy, you destroy any idea of there being rules, and get to a point where you can just say, "if it's fantasy, why are they climbing a cliff, why don't they just sword-a-pult everyone up to the top?" I like the 'like reality unless noted' rule. I'd like to see shows start deliberately subverting this stuff.
I don't have a problem with the way the force is portrayed in the OT. Yes, its limitations are smaller than Luke believes, but that doesn't mean they are easy to figure out or master. Yoda visibly struggles to move the X-Wing, but it's still doable. It does make sense that if you can move things with the force you could use it to speed up the healing process, but you'd probably need a complex understanding of medicine to accomplish that. Also, it's kept a bit vague, but my impression from Yoda's lessons is that while you can achieve great feats of violence to destroy and conquer, using the force for those goals is self-destructive and short-sighted.
In terms of realism the biggest crimes of RoP are the willful ignorance of things like time, logistics, and training. The showrunners clearly have no real world experience doing anything. Tolkien carefully researched phases of the moon, calculated travel distances, etc. In this show people just go on a stroll for dozens of miles without even a flask of water. Entire armies move thousands of miles without provisions, covering the distance in a couple days. The "soldiers" of the greatest army in the history of Middle Earth train in the public marketplace. WTF? I am a military historian by profession and this shit is driving me crazy.
17:45 Ahh but the idea of that is one becoming powerful enough in the force to achieve the ability to be able to do that. Darth Vader always resented the Tarkin Initiative and the Death Star itself because he was well aware of what exactly could be achieved through the force. The problem with Sith is they seek absolute control of the force itself, which is why they become undone through the darkside of the force. The irony is the Jedi can be technically stronger than Sith and achieve even more greater powers in the force but they chose not to, only following their strict, dogmatic rules. Quin-Gon is a example of breaking from the rule and attaining more ability, discovering new powers through the force. I wouldn't call it a contradiction, we just have never seen such force sensitives hone specific powers and ability through the force. The sequels however play completely fast and loose with how one can use the force, like Rey effortlessly picking up massive boulders through the force, while having practically no training whatsoever. We're just later meant to believe she can "just do it" because of NIKE and "THE FORCE IS FEMALE" lol.
In the older, better timeline, using the Force to push a fleet away came at the cost of the Force-user's life on account of the titanic energies involved.
This is so true. Is the writters work create the boundaries of disbelieve in its own fantasy. Thats what helps in creating a good selfrelying story or snother one without sense or coherency. Literally the trash of RoP VS LoTr.
Galadriel attack troll is possible but look stupid and bad , legolas in the hobbit are bad too when he walk on falling brick. But when she kill that orc in 1 swing that kind of ok regarding her power level
Picture Harry Potter flying on a broomstick. This is magical, this is fantasy. Picture Harry Potter just standing in the middle of the sky. This defies the laws of physics, this looks dumb. Magical/fantasy elements are cool because they break the rules of our universe and allow fantastical things to happen. If the universe has no rules then breaking them means nothing and the fundamental part of fantasy is undermined.
that's why george introduced the midichlorians, to turn the force into a scifi concept and something more concrete so further stories in the IP could set more boundaries, many elements of the prequels were introduced to enable star wars to handle being a 'universe' instead of just being forced to tell the same story over and over and only be on desert planets etc. but fans went off about all that 'not being star wars' and so the force is _unleashed_ and it's going to stay vague and creep up in power -- it took a long time for the disney people to realize embracing the prequels saves them a lot of ground work, unfortunately after the sequel trilogy was done. so be careful what you wish for.
Shouldn't the world be round? Bugs Bunny proved it is round by throwing a ball around the world, shouldn't that be canon? It is fantasy too! jk, that said you make a good point about the importance of the need for realism in Fantasy, I guess that's why I've always despised the Legolas feats in Jackson's filmes, both in LOTR & the Hobbit. Just to correct you a little with the Force is that by the time of the PT & OT trilogies, no Jedi or Sith has the might to crush the Death-Star anymore. In the ancient era, they could cause supernovas and control them, so that both sides have been getting weaker over the millennia, with the OT seeing a resurgence in power in universe, so that they are getting back to being as strong as those from the end of the New Sith Wars. What is more is that the Force in KOTOR II's backstory was used to power up a death-star styled device called the Mass-Shadow Generator. That said, the Force has always had internal universe consistency to its logic, the trouble was that with the advent of 2007 or so all that lore and logic was tossed out because it was around that time Lucas basically retired, and stopped hovering over almost every SW writer's shoulders. ;)
Made back in August, eh? I imagine you have since come across many, many things since that you'd similarly have many, many criticisms for regarding RoP.
I just don't like medieval fantasy whatsoever, but even then I still enjoyed the video as it makes perfect sense. Even if something doesn't make sense in the real world, it needs to make sense in the world that the story is made for. While logically a dragon should be be able to fly with the wings it has, but in the worlds they're in, it does... doesn't mean if you see someone start doing push-ups with theye eyelashes, when you never seen it before this one moment, that you should be like "Well I guess this makes sense too."
"bUt tHeRe aRe dRaGoNs!!!" is a prime example of the midwit line of thinking that is incapable of grasping that a fantasy world needs to have a more or less consistent internal logic for it to be able to suspend disbelief unless you are at the level of a 3 year old in terms of brain capacity. I see this line of reason so much on Reddit that it likely permeates the MCU and Disney fans in general to the largest degree (and applies to Bezos fans as well).
The worst part of what I can only describe as an epidemic of intellectual decline is how superior people using such "arguments" act in their ignorance. When they say things like "there are dragons" to justify turning their brains off, they're almost always talking down to people who are actually using their critical thinking skills.
People who try to justify things that make no sense with "but you are fine with dragons", should watch this video. Yes, dragons make perfect sense in a fantasy setting. Galadriel shoving guards much bigger and stronger than her around like it's nothing doesn't make sense. These two things are not contradictory.
I can see your argument to a point. At some point we just have to let go of our reality and embrace what we are reading or watching. I’ve known plenty of scientists, Neil Degrasse Tyson for example, who say that movies such as Interstellar or The Martian were great movies. Not scientifically accurate but the acting and script made up for the scientific inaccuracies. NDT would often say say that if at the end of movie he was entertained then that is all that matters. Myself personally I enjoy the Rings of Power (waits for angry comments). That being said the only LOTR book I ever read was The Hobbit. I don’t think Rings of Power compares to the LOTR Trilogy but I enjoy it nonetheless. Maybe if I read all of the books I wouldn’t like the show that much. As an example I hate the Halo series. I played all of the video games and read most of the books. The way Paramount just butchered that character infuriated me to no end. That’s my two cents. Keep up the content.
You should give the books a go. They are beautifully written, the world is a living breathing thing, full and rich with lore and amazing characters. It is a wonderful experience. The show, on the other hand, is soulless. And DAMN! what they did to Masterchief in the Halo show was horrible! In fact, the whole show was utter sh.t. I've played those games for 22 years! And read all the books. How to destroy a stoic hero in one season. Pathetic attempt at a Halo series. But what Amazon are doing to Tolkiens world is infinitely more heinous. (its cool if you're enjoying it though. Just try the books when you can. But buy old copies, or find a.... Cough... "Free" digital copy.... Cough.. 👍)
HA! I liked the HALO series because I never read the books or played the games. Even still, some of the choices they've made in the series irritate me. My 25 year old son played the game and read the books-- when he was 13 he even wrote a brief Halo fanfiction (god that was a long time ago) story. We are able to enjoy the series to a point. I read fantasy pretty much exclusively and I find nothing about this RoP that is worth watching. By episode 4, I decided "Well, if I just stop thinking of it as Tolkien, perhaps I'll like it more." I still have many issues with contradictory character issues, time jumps, continuity issues, and the list goes on. And, low budget Cobra Kai knocked RoP out of the top spot in streaming shows. That says a lot. I won't be back for a second season. There is nothing to redeem this mess, especially knowing they already started filming s2, leaving me to believe there is no time to course correct (fire all the writers and McKay and Payne) and get this show back on even footing. I'll just watching via the UA-camrs. So much more fun.
A lot of that shit is going. It's about obeying in-universe logic and rules ie the verisimilitude of the setting. Not all people get that. Heck, not all writers get that...
I know no one likes talking about it, but the worst offender for requiring suspension of disbelief is the diversity in the casting in modern fantasy. I say the worst because It's ever-present throughout the entirety of the show/movie and is also the hardest to have an actual conversation about.
"In places the snow was breast-high, and often Boromir seemed to be swimming or burrowing with his great arms rather than walking. ... With that he sprang forth nimbly, and then Frodo noticed as if for the first time, though he had long known it, that the Elf had no boots, but wore only light shoes, as he always did, and his feet made little imprint in the snow." How is being yeeted by a sword any different? Clearly elves can weigh next to nothing whenever they wish to?
Why would you ever need to be yeeted by the sword if you weigh nothing to start with? That’d be something they’d be capable of doing themselves would it not?
@@NotSoSerious69420 Because when you weigh nothing you also can't apply force... Thus make yourself weightless and have a friend yeet you, then in the air become weighted again so that you can apply force to your sword strikes. Of course having someone yeet you with the hands the way everyone else would assist someone starting a wall jump or something would be smarter, but would look less cool. And yes none of this argument makes sense it works, I wasn't being serious in the first place.
Yeah but this kind of issue goes way back. Like when someone becomes "immaterial" and phases through walls, but somehow doesn't fall through the floor. Truth is a lot of people don't have that much critical thinking.
Clearly the bottoms of their feet aren't phasing except when passing through the wall. It would take an immense amount of control, but the human brain has incredible control over its body's movement already, so it's not world-breaking unless you make it be.
True, a good story sets down a basic set of rules. Whatever those rules are depends on the world and the story. But those rules ARE the rules. It is what gives realism for the viewer/reader. Even Manga and Anime that gets out huge fighting scenes set SOME rules. And we are talking about super sayan's through energy balls at each other that can chew through rock. THAT is the set of rules. The thing Rings of Power does is... eh.. I dunno. There doesn't seem to be rules or reality of plot that makes sense of characters that keep in one line of thinking or... anything. These writers are HORRIBLE! If they were given a non Tolkien series it also would be HORRIBLE. They can't write themselves out a wet paper bag! I can accept magic existing, dragons, maiar, elves etc... as long as the story is grounded and it makes internal sense. Eh I let myself out to take a lovely pumice bath, I hear an vulcano explode, if I am on time I an take the PYROCLASTIC FLOW head on....
even fantasy worlds need to be subject to things like basic physics if for no other reason than we, the audience, have certain expectations about how things like basic physics work. It's not a question about whether or not the world is fantastical, it's that you've broken the immersion of the audience by showing them something patently ridiculous that our mind rejects on a basic level. Flying ships CAN do that, unless you have good art direction where we see things like giant balloons or downwards facing propellers or some sort of magical science macguffin that lets our minds know 'okay, there's probably a reason for this'. At that point your immersion can over-ride your rational thought because cause and effect is still in play, there's a rational reason for it even if it's not exactly scientifically sound Dragons, wizards, dark gods, etc.... all that stuff our brains can accept if you take the time to build a world that makes it SEEM rational. Dragons can be super powerful, but if they're extremely rare we can accept why they haven't over-run the world. Wizards... sure, magic is this rare or super difficult skill you need to learn, so the mundane world can still be largely what we expect. That kind of stuff makes enough sense that we can just roll with it for the sake of a good story. episode 1 of your fantasy series showing the main character defying gravity just to look cool? yeah, that's just not going to pass intellectual muster in most viewers, even if they understand exactly why or not. You've jarred the audience out of their immersion before you really even roped them in in the first place.
Despite being composed in August, still, alas, a timely video 😅
The thing about Vingilot, Bird-Elwing, and other 'unrealistic' magical aspects is: they ARE magic, very much presented as exceptions to the normal order of things. The characters did not anticipate them, and react to them with wonder and awe. Elwing didn't wink cheerily and fire off a one liner before she sprouted wings.
Those examples have always made me a bit uncomfortable though. In my mind, I do as I'm getting a "traditional explanation of what happened" that is there to cover for some unknown or hard-to-explain reality that did follow the rules. Maybe I'm wrong, but I find it easier to digest this way
@@enriqueparodiYT1 to me though attempting to find explanation in those supernatural moments blunts the experience somewhat. One has to remember they aren’t exactly frequent, and looking for answers at what appears to be magic or from a force unknown would snap us out of the secondary belief.
Tolkien wasn’t daft, the frequency of which he wrote these events is such that when they do happen they are incredibly seismic and memorable, and this keeps it tight within the story. And, the feeling iv always had with said events is that magic is coursing through Middle-earth during the first age…less so as the days progress.
Another major issue with the series is breaking the rules for *one* character specifically. Doing something which will kill another character, or contintually benefiting from good luck and convenience. One of the traits associated with Mary Sues is that the rules of the storyworld bend around them.
Note: this does not apply to Gandalf coming back from the dead, as there is an explanation in the book for why and how that happened. Gandalf is a Maia, a spirit being in human form, and it is well known that they can be given new bodies (or create them for themselves as Sauron did). When Gandalf died his spirit form went to Illuvatar (God) who sent him back until his mission was complete.
I like that expression "bend around them". That hits the nail neatly on the head.
It was whether Tolkien acknowledged it or not his version of the resurrection
Well said! It's very annoying when people respond to criticisms of fantasy (of late it is almost always around RoP) with "it's just a fantasy" or something similar. It's like they have somehow missed the fact that any fictional universe has to have a set of consistently applied rules otherwise there's no point to it. Just because there's dragons doesn't mean anything goes.
Cheap minds give cheap arguments
@@di3486 Actually that's "simple minds give simple answers". There's no such thing as a "cheap" answer.
Y'all be sounding ridiculous when u say shouldn't be no black people
Yeah I've heard this a lot recently as a response to criticism of RoP..... its like, Tolkien never said that Elrond wasn't a word class break-dancer so were not shitting all over the lore.... Tolkien never said that Samwise didn't have an AR50..... Tolkien never said that Sauron's favorite activity isnt performing as part of a middle-earth drag act at the Prancing Pony a Friday night....
It happens a lot with D&D. When you tell a story in D&D your players are the audience and also writing half the story so if there isn't a set framework of expectations in the game world then not only will the players have less fun but their characters might die. A lot of DMs make up stuff on the spot that rug pulls the expectations in the name of a "cool moment" like having the bad guy do something impossible to make the players fear them, when it ends up making it feel like bullshit. You hear the argument that it's fantasy a lot.
Guy Gavriel Kay (who helped Christopher Tolkien as editor) refers to his fiction as "history with a quarter-turn to the fantastic".
Well, his first fiction trilogy was more 'driving under the influence of Tolkien', which is understandable. But since then he has done many wonderful fantasy-historicals taking place in not-Italy, not-France, not-China, and (my favorites) not-Byzantium.
The cornerstone of fantasy as a literary genre has always been myths, legends, and folk stories, and the DNA of those has always been human experience. I absolutely agree realism belongs in fantasy.
Some of the issues are that it seems like people nowadays are not only unwilling, or even capable of suspending their disbelief, but that they have little grasp of basic storytelling elements.
In regards to the Rings of Power, it's possible that they're simply feeding an audience that's languished in superhero movies for the past two decades.
Stuff like the Galadriel scene imo actually detaches us from the fantasy because of how silly it all looks. We are suddenly reminded that this is a program stunt made for a certain audience, the polar opposite of an escapist thought. Jackson did this is in his films as well. It doesn’t feel particularly necessary, but maybe to be expected.
Things like dragons, talking trees and flying ships are what make the fantasy setting fantasy. The other stuff, not so much.
Classic fight: hero is weaker than the villain, overcoming a burden to succeed. Modern fight: heroine is stronger than the villain, catering to a power-fantasy.
Setup your rules and be consistent with the rules.
The rules change between books of the Bible. No one expects Romans to really be consistent with Exodus or Revelation to be consistent with Amos.
It's the same with each Tolkien work or adaptation. You really shouldn't judge the Silmerrilion by the same standard as The Hobbit, and you shouldn't judge the rings of Power by the same standard of Lord of the Rings.
Each story tells its own mythos, and as far as there are inconsistencies, it should be understood that each author is seeing the world through their own eyes.
@@Steven_Edwards aren't all legendarium is one.
I don’t think the Bible is really applicable here. The rules of physics don’t change between Genesis and Revelation. Also what inconsistencies between the Hobbit, LOTR, and Silmarillion are you talking about?
@@Steven_Edwards How is the Bible not consistent?
I can easily believe Galadriel being launched off the tip of a sword, because the actress playing her is about 3 feet tall. Seriously, I try to overlook the actress's hight but she's so damn tiny. I have no idea how tall Kate Blanchett is, but in the Jackson adaptations Galadriel's presence was towering.
She's a Noldor, not a Keebler.
5 foot 3. Playing a character who is supposed to be 6 foot 4. It is so stupid.
Lmaooo, they cast a hobbit as an elf😂 I think Cate is close to 6’ and in the movies, for some shots she used huge platforms to look even taller.
Cate Blanchett was so awesome in the Hobbit movie when she walked barefoot and weaponless into Dol Guldur and you saw her take on her whole power. What an amazing actress. She made Elven magic so real.
To be fair.... Elves are essentially weightless...
Cate Blanchett is 5'9", or 1.74 m. But Jackson made her look taller, both in LOTR and Hobbit. To be fair, she is also slender and fine-boned, which also make her look taller. Tolkien says Galadriel is 6 feet, so only 3" is added to her height.
I think the writers learned of the scene where Legolas walked on snow without an imprint and thought it meant that Elves can be weightless......
The reason that Legolas's superhero stunts in Jackson's LotR are borderline acceptable is first that it is a bit self-referentially comedic (I think), but more importantly because the stunts were an extremely small part of huge battle actions. In The Hobbit, Legolas and Tauriel were important characters, and their actions were important, and proportionally preposterous. In Rings of Power, Galadriel and Arondir (who does his share of superhero stuff) are two of the most important characters, and everything they do is presumed to be very important to the story, and so must bear more scrutiny still.
I agree with you entirely.
With regards to Elendil though, his height could have been shown by using the same techniques, such as forced perspective, as were used to reduce the apparent height of the dwarves and 'harfoots'. The Numenoreans were one of the races I thought they'd have no problem portraying. Oh well.
Or what the Movies used to make the Elves feel Taller even if they were not really ...
It's like lotr and then suddenly a man comes along with a later rifle and shoots balrog in the head and kills him.
It'll be like wtf
@@billybobby7607 Ha! You remind me of that great scene in the first Indiana Jones movie when Indy shoots the swordsman. God, that was funny.
@@creepyoldlady2995 my point is you can't insert things that don't fit into the world.
Ie balrog scene, Aragon calls a orbital strike from satellite based phaser weapons platform. The balrog is instantly vapourised after gandalf says this foe is abivey all of you, a Demon of the dark world, of dread etc.
Gandalf then goes oh, I didn't realise you had a satellite weapon, I guess he's not really that much of a problem now , let's get moving.
The scene then continues with Aragorn using his sword. It's never explained how Aragon has star trek level of technology nor is it shown in any other lotr lore, and the greatest technology in middle earth is forging steel.
@@billybobby7607 Tolkien addressed the issue of Elven technology in one of his letters. He said that the Elves were "the scientists of Middle-Earth," and that some of what seemed to be magic could be the relics of a lost technology. He didn't mention anything specific, but I wonder if Elrond, known as the greatest Lore-master, might have used an Elven technology in healing, as when he discovered the shard of the Nazgul blade in Frodo's shoulder. Tolkien doesn't describe Elrond's healing power, but he does give somewhat of a description of the mental technique Aragorn uses to heal Eowyn and Merry in Return of the King. There seems to be more to it than a magic spell.
I had just been advocating for this very same thing.
Well written & relatable fantasy has internal logic and guiding principles. And they allow for the viewer or reader to ground themselves in their expectations. Fantasy is never wholey nebulous, because the genre itself is a mechanism to express an amalgamation of intellectual ideas. Tolkien was very clear about the importance of the fantastical myth. And how it is used to uncover & return to the valuable aspects of what we have lost as a people.
To dismiss the geres' inherent function is the inablility to understand the work itself, whatever that may be.
Fans of "The Rings of Power" fail to understand this, because it is surface level entertainment to them. There is little to be derrived from an adaptation that fails to understand & expound upon it's core principles. Tolkiens' theology, his spirituality, his dogmatic delineation between good and evil.
This is something I've told people in both RPGs and fiction writing in general for a long time. It's not a fantasy/reality dichotomy, it's a consistency issue, and it is a relatability issue.
Whenever you write anything fictional (or even if you're trying to relate a fantastic real-life experience), you have to stick near the bounds of what your audience can relate to. If you stray too far, once it offends their sense of personal experience about the world, you've lost them.
Consistency is a bit more specific of an issue in the relatability realm. If you do one thing, then do something which, by the audience's perspective, completely violates the mere existence of the first thing, without giving them at least a thread to an explanation in near time, you'll lose them, too.
The reason I present it this way is because of the prima facie contradiction that usually comes up in conversation when you say that there should be more "realism" in fiction (either fantasy or sci-fi, or even just general fiction). It short-circuits the obvious off-the-cuff "well, it's FANTASY, duhhh!" rebuttal.
I've avoided watching the RoP series because, even at its outset, it seemed like a gratuitous cash grab more than a sincere attempt to tell a story in Tolkien's world. Whoever they got as a creative consultant for JRRT's works (assuming they even bothered getting one) should be fired and sent back to their newsstand job, presuming it wasn't just a case of the writers ignoring the advice of an expert JRRT scholar that they should have hired and listened to before, during, and after writing the screenplay.
They had a Tolkien scholar and they fired him or he left when they were clearly not taking his advice.
@@marieroberts5458 Well, then they deserve to be relegated to the dustbin of crap tv shows and mocked relentlessly for any future attempts to ruin classics.
The passage referenced in the video.
Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy may be,
as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that “the inner
consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the
rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is
easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often,
remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for
decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human
language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough-
though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or “transcript of
life” that receives literary praise.
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding
Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special
skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in
any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, storymaking in its primary and most potent mode.
Tolkien - On Fairy Stories
Is he saying you have to elaborate why or how the sun appears to be green in a fictive world or it is just decoration? With todays knowledge about light and how vision works we can explain this easily. I assume for Tolkien the colour of light and its connection to wavelength must have been a mystrerium, that could just been explained by someone with a special elvish talent^^
@@nostalji93
That's exactly what he said, though, to make Green Sun believable "will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft." as in - if you just say, 'the sun is green in my world', then your world is shallow, fanciful and unbelievable. It takes skill, thought and labour of the writer to make a world in which there is a believable green sun, not to mention everything connected to it. And that's what Tolkien has been more successful than everyone else - everything in his work is either true to our world or so well written into the world that they belong there, and aren't just some fanciful nonsense.
BTW, they already knew about wavelength back then, though I don't know if Tolkien himself studied it
Require labour and thought, something the recent modern craft lacked a ton.
@@BeresVonSaladir Well certainly not exactly since I paraphrased in my own words to see if I understand what he said. English isnt my first language so I am very thankful for you elaboration. It helps me a lot.
Yeah good point. After I wrote my comment I checked myself and saw that they discovered infrared light by measuring the temperature around the visible light (shining through a prism) in the year 1800... I asked myself the same question. How much would Tolkien as a linguist know about physics? On the one side its clearly not his field of expertise, on the other I know Tolkien as incredible insightful and I assume education in general wasn't as specific as it is today.
Tolkien knew quite a bit outside his field. He might not have known that specifically but he was a professor at Oxford and well educated, and did a lot of reading even apart from that.
I am so with you on this take. My biggest complaint with any media lately.
don't forget to thank educational institutions for that.
Very well said. "It's not that there are no rules, but there is a different set of rules." Is a very concise way to explain the principles of fantasy world-building. The author creates a world with added natural laws, and for that world those added laws are just how the world is. Thus, every time the author breaks these added rules the world feels less real for the audience.
You make a really good point here, I see this argument a lot: people saying "You can believe in elves and dragons, but you want realism in volcanoes, distances traveled, or character motivations?" Yes, actually- it is easier for me to believe in dragons than it is to believe in violations of basic logic, cause and effect, time and distance, or basic psychology as I understand it. Fantasy stories are still based on the world that we know and rely on our understanding of these basic things. If you want to depart from them in a story, you need to establish the new rules. Otherwise, we understand stories by assuming that logic and physics work the same. I can believe in a dragon but I would expect it to follow principles of logic, physics, and psychology that are somewhat recognizable.
I don't believe a story is possible without cause and effect. Without it, it's just events happening.
Everything in this video is right in light of what we have seen in the series so far including:
- All of the main characters surviving a volcanic eruption (something which Tolkien wrote about killing Elves)
- Implied killing of one character, but which will prove not to be so since he has to be alive for another event. So this will result in a fake death/coming back from the dead which has to be accounted for.
- Teleporting over long distances in a short time which it is established in universe that such travel takes a long time. It takes Frodo and Sam many months to walk from Rivendell to Mordor. Yet we see characters in ROP travelling an equivalent distance in a matter of hours or a day.
- Inconsistencies in terms of wounds/injuries. In one episode they are shown to be easily treatable and characters recover within a day, but in the next episode "there are no healers available" (despite the character being a King) and the character has to be taken thousands of miles for treatment.
In my opinion, the issues you identify are at least in part due to gaming’s influence on literature and movies. The characters all now have multiple lives, powers are gained by objects obtained, secrets are unlocked with objects obtained, with the objects and powers and secrets being the goal of the show or book. So many stories are just cheap fiction due to the dependence of writers on gaming as a model for literary truth.
Exactly. Very good point. And Comic books and the inundation of movies based on them of the last decades. Even the Jackson trilogy is far too action based (including silly nonsense like Legolas surfing on shield) because this was seen as necessary for success, I believe. If one reads LotR one is surprised how relatively short and few the fight/battle episodes are, even the two big ones (Helm's Deep and Pelennor fields) are not as long as one usually remembers them.
I think it’s more the influence of shounen anime, characters gaining powers in the middle of the fight is a common shounen trope. Like oh no I am totally outmatched but then something happens in the middle of the fight that makes me extra feisty and now I’ve discovered I can go Super Saiyan. Video games you gain powers by fighting and leveling up, but you don’t gain powers in the middle of battle.
This has been one of my core problems that has driven me away from Star Wars. Every single ability you ever see a character use is now just a video game ability you unlock from a skill tree by reaching Jedi Level 15 or whatever. It completely removes any kind of spiritualism or symbolism that certain figures are able to achieve certain feats because they have a uniquely special understanding of or relationship with the force. No everyone is just advancing down a video game character path. Nothing anyone did in the OT is even remotely impressive or meaningful like it was in the story. Everyone can do it.
@@Wynneception You hit the nail on the head there about there being no meaningful symbolism or spiritual understanding.
Thank you! You made your point beautifully and hopefully more people get convinced this way.
I always use the example of: If Harry Potter just pulled out a Glock and shot Voldemort in the face, would that be irrelevant because it's just Fantasy?
It might be funny, but it would ruin the internal consistency of the storytelling.
A glock doesn't really break the rules of the universe since a Glock would exist in the muggle world. So it is still consistent with the internal logic of that universe. The question is whether Lord Voldemort would so easily die to muggle weapons. He would probably have magic magic barriers that shields him from silly muggle attempts like that.
@@tefazDK I see your point, but I don't think it would remain consistent with a Glock. We've never ever seen Wizards use guns. Although it would obviously be super easy to just blast a magazine into whoever and they would die (maybe not voldemort). It's just not established as a thing that happens/exists in the universe that way.
Great video on this subject; I'll be saving it to show to ignorant people who are too thick to see through the "but there are dragons" argument at first glance.
One thing I'd add is for people who talk about "plot holes" or "inconsistencies" too readily and prior to in-depth analysis. In our world, if we see something we don't immediately understand, take for example a balloon rising into the sky when we have no idea what helium is and think it should fall down, we don't automatically say "the world is inconsistent and ridiculous; such a thing could never really happen" when clearly it did, but rather we either just accept it and move on or we try to figure out what we got wrong, either way realizing that the problem is with our own understanding and not with the laws of physics.
Similarly, it's incumbent upon us to give any world that's intended to be internally consistent - which Middle Earth is - exactly that same treatment, with the original author setting the rules. Just because we don't immediately understand how dragons fly and find enough to eat doesn't mean they can't, but rather that our understanding is too limited to grasp how they do it (probably involving them being Maiar and not just any old creatures). It's up to us to discover those rules if we care enough to, or to accept the phenomena at face value if we don't. Authors of fan fiction by definition don't set the rules and are bound to those of the world they claim their story to be a part of insofar as they want the story to be believable in that context, and shouldn't be surprised if it gets rejected when it starts breaking them.
Of course if an original author doesn't care about the internal consistency of his own world, we have no reason to, either - debating the physics of a scene out of a Monty Python movie for example would be ridiculous - but Tolkien certainly did care and put a lot of effort into it, and so deserves the full benefit of the very few doubts he left open.
Thank you! I've been saying this for YEARS my god I hate that argument so much.
It's like a logical bypass that people use whenever there's criticism for bad worldbuilding, writing and storytelling.
So because it's all made up it can't be criticized for being internally inconsistent?
For Star Wars, it may be that the midi-chlorian count of the individual allows for a certain amount of channeling of the Force, though all that requires is stipulating that count in the writing. It may create a limit to what an individual of a given species can accomplish, though, and that may be why masters like Yoda try to teach the Judo approach of doing as little as possible to affect the outcome you want and using as many environmental conditions already in play to reduce the required input even further. This would require even the strongest individuals to train a lifetime to affect things on a planetary scale. I think you're right, though, about holding the ship; Ren had trained extensively and seems to be a naturally potent user of the Force, but he wasn't at a "And just where do you think you're goin...?" level.
Totally agree, but think there's a better Star wars example out there: Rey and healing with the force. This power doesn't seem to have any limitation as it heal the same wound that killed Qui Gon. Saving a loved ones was the reason Anakin fell to the dark side aswell, so introducing this ability that late to the story makes his whole arc feel stupid.
I think it underlines the point that his fall was for nothing. He's a tragic character.
Regarding the first Star Wars trilogy (I refuse to watch the others) my understanding is that, while the Force is unlimited, the people trained to use it are not. Luke has to struggle against himself to learn to use the Force; that's part of his hero's journey. Even then, safety and success are not assured. He and his fellow pilots still have to fly those ships, which is a tricky business. The Force is just a weapon that the Jedi are trained to use. I gather that the training process was completely dispensed with in some of the later movies, which in my humble opinion is stupid. Without the struggle to overcome the obstacles within yourself before you are able to fight your enemy, the story loses a great part of its interest, everything becomes less personal. That initial inner victory should give added meaning to all the conflicts that follow.
Not a disagreement with your take, but I find it very easy to turn off critical thinking to make something palatable. I do it all the time - the best example being the purely spectacle driven Dragon Ball series, and I like how it doesn't try to be more than it is - I can still enjoy the experience, but I do hold it in lower regard. I think that's loosely speaking the difference between suspension of disbelief and secondary belief.
My issue with the RoP series is that they turned art into content. Despite the mythological leaning, it was never about the action or the scenery or the "coolness"; it was fundamentally about the virtues of respect, bravery, humility, gratitude, and pity (though I believe mercy to be a better word in context), and they bastardised it.
If it's art, it's meaningful. If it's content, it's expedient.
RoP has completely murdered Tolkien's themes.
Even with Dragon Ball (of which I have seen little), you have somehow internalized a set of rules by which you think their world works. If they break those rules with no explanation (a hero waves a hand, and all his enemies disappear instantly and all the dead heroes reappear) you will still be annoyed and taken out of the story.
We assume that Middle-earth operates by rules close to our own world's, and that things like Eärendil's marvelous ship are wonders precisely because they are exceptional.
Galadriel in some ways represents the lady Maria. And they turned her into a common soldier...
You're right about the weight of the sword. I wanted to add one remark about that. In the account of the Battle of Barad-Dur (in which Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron's hand) it refers to Elendil's sword Narsil breaking underneath him when he was dropped/thrown by Sauron. This is translated in the movies to it breaking when Isildur tries to grab it but Sauron steps on it first, which is entirely credible if not lore accurate. A sword will break if a large amount of weight is put on one side of it, whilst the other is being lifted or pulled.
The breaking of Narsil should not be because of some freak physical accident. It's more like Merry's blade going up into smoke when making contact with the Witch King, I think. The breaking of the Sword signifies the self-sacrificial effort of Gil-Galad and Elendil necessary to overthrow Sauron. (Cf. Wagner's Ring, despite Tolkien's dislike: The first time Nothung is shattered by Wotan's Spear and Siegmund is killed, but reforged and wielded by Siegfried it cleaves the Spear another time.)
@@bartolo498 Its not an accident. It breaks in the movies because Sauron intentionally steps on it when Isildur reaches for it. He's reaching down to kill Isildur like he did his father, and Isildur just swings the broken sword at him.
Its the irony. It represents victory clawed from defeat and Sauron's hubris. He'd just killed Elendil and thought Isildur stood no chance against him, but Isildur took up his fallen father's broken sword and defeated him with it.
One small point on The Force.
While The Force might be able to technically do anything, that doesn't mean that everyone is equally able to use the Force or that anyone is capable enough with it to, say, crush the Death Star.
Just because someone can use Magic doesn't mean they're immediately as powerful as the strongest mage.
It's pointed out throughout Star Wars that Anakin Skywalker and his lineage is particularly gifted in the Force. that they are able to use it to an extent that *breaks the rules*. And even They aren't able to destroy the Death Star with the Force - even if, technically if they became powerful enough, they could.
Hey i recently came across your excellent channel and you have reminded me why i love Tolkien's works so much, it has been well over a decade since i read any of his books but i think I'm going to have to dust them off again.
I’ve realized why I hate that Galadriel launching scene and that the hobbit movies do the same kind of thing. First in Tolkiens works battle is very grounded the elves fight in battle lines and have archers. The only difference between them and the humans is experience and some slight physical differences. They do not leap over people or do ridiculous leaps toward the big monsters face like they do in the hobbit movies and rop.
In my opinion, it's the same reason a couple of the shots/scenes from the trilogy don't hold up to well also (the legalos skateboard stuff and surfing olyphants comes to mind), and even more so in the Hobbit films (jumping from falling stone to falling stone).
The skateboard feels fine to me, I agree on the olyphant though. And hobbit of course, but that's a given.
@@holysecret2 I believe even Viggo Mortensen has said he was getting a bit disillusioned with the CGI towards the end (RoTK). We were lucky the Trilogy was made when it was and not later!
Lmao and Orlando bloom is just like "it was a fabulous moment" "absolutely fabulous"...
"Takes you out of the story..." Yes, this is a major problem. In his wonderful book "On Moral Fiction" John Gardner talks about what he calls the 'fictional dream' which every author strives to create. Such dreams must be consistent, true to their own internal rules, in order to be compelling and convincing. When an author violates the rules he has set for himself he disrupts the fictional dream and weakens our belief in that dream and in the story. Such interruptions and disruptions throw us out of the dream and back into our own world, which of course is not what we as readers want. This can happen where logic and probabilities (either physical or psychological) are violated, as in the sword incident with Galadriel. Tolkien was increasingly concerned about this problem as he worked on his myth, striving always to make it more consistent and 'real' in terms of of science. That is why he discarded his early myth of the creation of the sun and moon. Contemporary obsessions and concerns, whether 'good' or 'bad,' can also disrupt the fictional dream and cause us to lose belief. I think that the scouring of the Shire does this, and of course 'Elves are taking our jobs' is a much worse example of the same thing.
This is exactly what ruined "RRR" for me. If the protagonists are invincible, there can be no tension.
I can't be the only one who thought that Legolas in LOTR and The Hobbit movies absolutely stretched the bounds of what can be considered "believable" with his exploits and physics-breaking.
You aren't. Those scenes were terrible for that precise reason.
Legolas and Gimli produced all the worst moments, change my mind.
@@saerain You must have a higher tolerance for Peregrin Took than I do.
Honestly any archer hero is essentially a super soldier. It is very hard to shoot accurately while moving at a fast pace and with piercing power. It kind of be boring though if he just stood in one place though
Very true. You need to establish gravity before the power of flight means anything. And there needs to be some progression/explanation towards the actualizing of that power in a particular instance/character, or else it's just a bunch of stuff floating around.
I absolutely agree with the premise of the video. Internal consistency is extremely important for works of fantasy. For all those reasons you mentioned.
What I don't agree with is the two examples used. One from Rings of Power and one from Star Wars.
Rings of Power
(small disclaimer: I hate RoP for how they treated what Tolkien envisioned for the main characters, their fates, the events of Second Age, and from episode 6 onward it's not even a good quality random fantasy show anymore)
You say that Galadriel balancing on the sword, being lifted on the sword is unrealistic in the universe? But I say "Let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow- an Elf!" ...well, actually Legolas says that on the Karadhras pass in "Fellowship of the Ring". And somehow he did run light over snow, not falling down into it, even though his weight was surely enough to make him fall into the fresh snow. How did he do that? Did he have magical shoes? Did he lower his center of mass to under the sheet of snow? Or something else? We don't know and I don't know whether anyone was interested enough to ask J.R.R. Tolkien that. But he did run light over snow somehow. And on the same principle Galadriel, despite how ridiculous and "string-fu" that scene looked, was also able to be lifted on the sword and thrust into the air.
Star Wars
Over the years in Expanded Universe (now known as Star Wars Legends) and in the new canon too, we have seen examples how the Force can be used to do the extraordinary feats. But it really does not create any issues, lack of stakes, inconsistencies. It's still a matter of having both a lot of experience and a lot of very rigorous and arduous training in understanding and manipulating the force, as well as having innate extraordinary powers to begin with. Darth Vader or his apprentice Galen Marek (AKA Starkiller) are shown to be able to move things as big as Star Destroyers with the Force, but they both had innate powers with the Force and years of training, and were also extremely exhausted after that. Rey... Rey is a very unfortunate example but let's give JJ Abrams a bit of slack and say he wanted her to have incredible Force power as a one in a thousand generations embodiment of the Force or something. But even then, it's not that anyone could do everything with the use of the Force. There will always be stakes and rules and requirements for this. Just like not everyone can get their request fulfilled by Iluvatar. It did happen three times in the entire history of Arda but that does not mean any random Joe, Tom or Hirgon can just pray to Eru and have an island disappear under the wave.
Note that Legolas doesn’t claim to BE light, but that he can *run lightly.* I don’t think we’re supposed to take from that that he weighs very little. Also remember that Galadriel is wearing a full suit of armor, which would weigh a good bit all on its own.
And her suit of armour could not be made of light Mithril because, in the show, it is not discovered yet.
100% agree, a Fantasy World still has to be realistic in its own setting. Thats the reason why Tolkiens, Martins (and others) worlds are so good. Good Fantasy autors don't spend hundreds and tausands of hours in world building, only for show makers, make a "well its fantasy, you can do whatever you want" out of it.
My favorite example- the tv show Streets of San Francisco. While some of the car chase scenes let’s say “strained credulity”, when a car goes into a turn as one model, then the camera shifts and it comes out of the turn as a different model car, credulity is not just strained but destroyed.
Likely already mentioned, but fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson said magic systems can be soft or hard with their rules, but they should have rules.
I very much agree that there should be rules and limitations set in stories. Magic rules (eg Brandon Sanderson) are crucial when writing fantasy stories. Having physics rules is also important. A lack of limitations with either of these can be world-breaking and leave the reader/watcher/gamer frustrated and no-longer caring about the story and characters.
The suspension of disbelief I have maintained is the most important thing for any fantasy world. I think the way Tolkien looks at it really truly is just saying the same thing in a different way for the sake of it.
Love this topic and kudos to you Sir.
I'd like to add that I find that in Star Wars, the Force itself is not a problem.
As an analogy, Jesus himself says if you have faith enough, you could tell a mountain to move.
The Force really is all powerful and you can IN THEORY do anything. The limits are in the mind, but also in native strength and ability.
Another example from another fandom: Mad Eye Moody tells all the students that they could whip out their wands, collectively point them at him, yell the Killing Curse, and he'd doubted that he'd get so much as a nosebleed. Because they didn't have the power...you'd need to really mean it, and be a fairly powerful wizard to boot, before you could succeed.
You could do anything with the Force, but you must have the raw power/talent and the training, and training can only take you so far. Which is why only a very small percentage of the people who love playing sports can then excell enough to make a living at it, nevermind being the best of the best.
So Rey or Ben Solo/Kylo Ren doing amazing things works for me, because they have the raw power and natural talent. Rey's point in favor is that she has the both the ability and some training, but she has the theory internalized - she can do anything. In fact, because she has no preconceived notions of 'Jedi can't do this' and "Sith can't do that' , she can do it all, so long as she throws all her strength at the task. However, untrained and un-practiced, she should be having issues with stamina and just not accounting for good old Newton's law "every action has its equal and opposite reaction", the 'I just drove myself into the ground trying to pull the ship back to earth' joke.
That's where it breaks down for me.
You are very right: you need consistency and certain rules in order for a plot to work. When you disregard logic, time, space, and certain laws of physics you produce a mess. Example? Rings of Power
Have you ever spoken anything of Trotter, the wooden footed hobbit? I find it very interesting how entirely different the story would be, as, after appearing in early drafts, he was eventually replaced with Strider. He was supposed to have had his wooden feet because of torture in Mordor, but that’s all I know of him. The thing is, while certainly interesting, I feel as if there isn’t much point in speculation on how it would affect the story as we know it - the more “standard” what-ifs, where the basis is mostly in the choices pre-existing characters could’ve made, is obviously much different than replacing a pivotal character within the history as we know it. If that makes sense, it’s a bit late here and I’m getting drowsy.
Regardless, I find Trotter to be a fun little factoid about the early drafts of these books that we hold so dear, which also holds incredible implications to what the plot in its entirety would even be - and there’s something very hobbitlike about that - a small, insignificant detail, with massive potential for change.
I think I might have mentioned it once or twice but not in a dedicated sort of way.
@@TolkienLorePodcast gotcha, and thank you for the reply - thats what I had figured, it feels like one of those topics that would either need other characters similar to him to make a list out of it, or something like that
The Jack Reacher series required just as much suspension of disbelief as Tolkien. 😉 and as I'm writing you just made a similar point!
Good video. The lines mentioned in the original 3 Star Wars film are somewhat vague. It can depend how you interpret them. I took it as Vader refering to the force itself not one person being able to weild all of that power. The whole force in the universe being greater than the Death Star makes sense. As for Yoda's line there might be a limit to mental power that doesn't have to do with weight per say. Sensing an entire planet well enough to exert the force on it might be a lot different than a rock or an X Wing. Or maybe it was true as far as a rock or an X Wing, but not as an absolute. It can work thought of this way. I'm not surprised Disney Star Wars went for the pulling ship out of the sky absurdity.
Love your vids bruh... keep 'em coming....
About the Force thing, it is clearly shown that using the Force takes a mental toll on the person, so no, you can't do everything with the Force, plus the Jedi practice restrain as much as anything else...
It's never explained anywhere that controlling bigger objects takes more of a toll than smaller ones, and if it is, then Yoda is wrong in stating there's no difference between a pebble and an x-wing. There are force-users other than Jedi, people who purposely throw constraint to the wayside...
I'm agree with you. I'm going to add, the disney trilogy of star wars is like rings of power of amazon, they ignored all the rules and lore, they destroyed a wonderful tale. the 6 original movies had a lot of consistency and the stakes were always high.
Rings of power gives nothing just because the plot needs silly situations to happen, the pompeya mount doom incident was the worst, at this point they want us to believe that kriptonians lives in middle earth, anyway, great conent, keep it up!!
That's what happens when the work is done by people who don't care about the product.
In the past people who were passionate about things used to write about it, and make movies and games about it.
Now since it's all so "merchandised" after that projects like the LOTR trilogy had so much of an economic success, they only care about the money, and it's done by people who don't actually care about the product or the message it should be giving.
The exact same things is happening in the gaming world in general sadly.
It's all shiny, with cosmetic microtransactions and loot boxes (some sort of slot machine mechanic) and all they care about is to make money, sell copies, sell currencies internal to the games, and the end result it's that the quality of the actual content is below ground and many are turning to indie games, because no matter the fact that indie developers don't have all the money and manpower of the big gaming corporations, the games are actually better because they are small projects developed by people who may not have a lot of means but they have the passion for the product, and that's absolutely recognizable to the end consumer.
I agree with you on all points except for Star Wars one. It is best to approach the Force as a philosophical concept, than magic. Because it isn't magic per se and closely resembles Buddhism or what can be called a pholosophical religion. One of the theories tells us that the Force is actually limitless, but people are not. If a person cannot imagine destroying the Death Star, then a Force user cannot destroy it. People's imagination has bounds in the universe of Star Wars. And if your imagination is so vast and you can truly believe that you can destroy the Death Star, then you're one with the Force and you're no longer a living person, but a Force spirit. But then you no longer have desires that you had previously. Your imagination is the limit. And Yoda's phrase was a commentary on how Luke cannot imagine being strong. Darth Vader"s comment was about Palpatine and how his believe in his capacity of becoming the ruler, and has corrupted enough minds for him to become the Emperor. Compared to that, Death Star is actually insignificant. Plus there is a theory about capacity of a certain individual (the strength of Force sensitivity) and constraints of a person's own imagination combined. And then there is midi-chlorians.
To be fair I never really thought about that as I'm a person who has a major in Japanese religions (Japanese Buddhism, Shinto etc.) and Japanese mythology, and this concept is prerequisite to a lot of religions in general. But now that I thought about it for a while I understand why Lucas thought to introduce midi-chlorians to the lore. The constraints of your own imagination as a limiter of sorts is a philosophical concept that is rarely applied to sci-fi or fantasy in the West, but can be found in a lot of countries in Asia (Mob Psycho or Mushishi are some of the recent examples).
Edit: I'm not talking about sequel trilogy ofc, as it is not Lucas' films anymore and they have no connection to Star Wars ideology and philosophy that was invisioned by him.
I guess it's supposed to echo elven magic, like Legolas walking along the top of the snow in the book and movie, plus breaking physics in the movies.
Tolkien never created a world without the normal rules of physics. He created a world with the mythology of pagan Northern Europe. He chose mythological creatures that could inhabit his world and tell a story that resonated in his, and our, hearts. This was a deliberate choice he made.
If I want an alternative universe, I will read much different authors than Tolkien. Thee are well written books that have much different basic rules that govern the characters.
You have honestly pointed out how modern screenwriters and their tech departments can ruin fantasy by making decisions that are not consistent in their universe.
"He created a world with the mythology of pagan Northern Europe." - that is a far to simplistic and reductive take. Some things are inspired by that, while others are not. Numenor is based on Atlantis, which is a Greek/Egyptian(possibly) tale. Gondor is geographically placed somewhat close to where Rome would be and somewhat inspired by the Byzantine empire. Rohan is the closest to being inspired by Germanic/Norse/Goths.
Great point about Yoda and the X-Wing.
"Just stupid looking...no fulcrum, no nothing to make it into a lever..." It reminds me of the discussion about whether coconuts are native to Mercia and weight ratios between swallows and coconuts...
In Star Wars expanded universe the force still follows some general laws of reality. You can heal a person, but you need the proper medical knowledge and bacta is still more efficient if slower. You can have sacrifice of 100 of Siths to crush a star to explode, but sending in the bomber fleet does the job easier.
Its said in 2nd or 3rd book of Night Watch from Lukjanenko, by Boris Ignatievich, a grand mage and leader of the Watch. - Magic can do lot of things, but fliping a switch to get light is easier and more convenient.
I am a person who can get out of my supression of disbelief quickly for small things. And the most recent moment for me was in CP:Edgerunners. When Lucy starts to do lot of weird mistkes with David's her treatment towards David. While some is in universe, it still is often out of common sense (and it made me question if she even does love him). And there are lot of ways she could deal with it, without giving away his predicament to him. But then i realized it only served to boost the idea of vicious cicles of CP lore "Live fast, die young". And that was it for me. They lost me, even thou i still find it one of the best drama anime of recent.
On the other hand i played an adult oriented CP+high magic themed game from smal team and their lore is rich and these situations are either ironed out or just squished by absolutely flat response, a real and mundane approach to it, yet it did not hurt the narrative in any way, on contrary, it made it more compeling.
Yep. Agreed.
You can create everything you like. But you have to keep it logical. Thats how you can have marvel hero's without a problem. Tolkien already set the rules of logic.
I hear you bro
I think that’s why I like anime so much. Most popular shonen keep in line with their own internal world.
I so agree with what you have said!
I just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you waited to post this video until you'd watched most of the first season.
When you say that anything goes just because it's fantasy, you destroy any idea of there being rules, and get to a point where you can just say, "if it's fantasy, why are they climbing a cliff, why don't they just sword-a-pult everyone up to the top?" I like the 'like reality unless noted' rule.
I'd like to see shows start deliberately subverting this stuff.
I don't have a problem with the way the force is portrayed in the OT. Yes, its limitations are smaller than Luke believes, but that doesn't mean they are easy to figure out or master. Yoda visibly struggles to move the X-Wing, but it's still doable. It does make sense that if you can move things with the force you could use it to speed up the healing process, but you'd probably need a complex understanding of medicine to accomplish that. Also, it's kept a bit vague, but my impression from Yoda's lessons is that while you can achieve great feats of violence to destroy and conquer, using the force for those goals is self-destructive and short-sighted.
In terms of realism the biggest crimes of RoP are the willful ignorance of things like time, logistics, and training. The showrunners clearly have no real world experience doing anything. Tolkien carefully researched phases of the moon, calculated travel distances, etc. In this show people just go on a stroll for dozens of miles without even a flask of water. Entire armies move thousands of miles without provisions, covering the distance in a couple days. The "soldiers" of the greatest army in the history of Middle Earth train in the public marketplace. WTF? I am a military historian by profession and this shit is driving me crazy.
17:45 Ahh but the idea of that is one becoming powerful enough in the force to achieve the ability to be able to do that. Darth Vader always resented the Tarkin Initiative and the Death Star itself because he was well aware of what exactly could be achieved through the force. The problem with Sith is they seek absolute control of the force itself, which is why they become undone through the darkside of the force.
The irony is the Jedi can be technically stronger than Sith and achieve even more greater powers in the force but they chose not to, only following their strict, dogmatic rules. Quin-Gon is a example of breaking from the rule and attaining more ability, discovering new powers through the force. I wouldn't call it a contradiction, we just have never seen such force sensitives hone specific powers and ability through the force.
The sequels however play completely fast and loose with how one can use the force, like Rey effortlessly picking up massive boulders through the force, while having practically no training whatsoever. We're just later meant to believe she can "just do it" because of NIKE and "THE FORCE IS FEMALE" lol.
In the older, better timeline, using the Force to push a fleet away came at the cost of the Force-user's life on account of the titanic energies involved.
This is so true. Is the writters work create the boundaries of disbelieve in its own fantasy. Thats what helps in creating a good selfrelying story or snother one without sense or coherency. Literally the trash of RoP VS LoTr.
Well vocalised, thank you.
Galadriel attack troll is possible but look stupid and bad , legolas in the hobbit are bad too when he walk on falling brick.
But when she kill that orc in 1 swing that kind of ok regarding her power level
Picture Harry Potter flying on a broomstick. This is magical, this is fantasy.
Picture Harry Potter just standing in the middle of the sky. This defies the laws of physics, this looks dumb.
Magical/fantasy elements are cool because they break the rules of our universe and allow fantastical things to happen. If the universe has no rules then breaking them means nothing and the fundamental part of fantasy is undermined.
that's why george introduced the midichlorians, to turn the force into a scifi concept and something more concrete so further stories in the IP could set more boundaries, many elements of the prequels were introduced to enable star wars to handle being a 'universe' instead of just being forced to tell the same story over and over and only be on desert planets etc. but fans went off about all that 'not being star wars' and so the force is _unleashed_ and it's going to stay vague and creep up in power -- it took a long time for the disney people to realize embracing the prequels saves them a lot of ground work, unfortunately after the sequel trilogy was done. so be careful what you wish for.
Shouldn't the world be round? Bugs Bunny proved it is round by throwing a ball around the world, shouldn't that be canon? It is fantasy too! jk, that said you make a good point about the importance of the need for realism in Fantasy, I guess that's why I've always despised the Legolas feats in Jackson's filmes, both in LOTR & the Hobbit.
Just to correct you a little with the Force is that by the time of the PT & OT trilogies, no Jedi or Sith has the might to crush the Death-Star anymore. In the ancient era, they could cause supernovas and control them, so that both sides have been getting weaker over the millennia, with the OT seeing a resurgence in power in universe, so that they are getting back to being as strong as those from the end of the New Sith Wars. What is more is that the Force in KOTOR II's backstory was used to power up a death-star styled device called the Mass-Shadow Generator.
That said, the Force has always had internal universe consistency to its logic, the trouble was that with the advent of 2007 or so all that lore and logic was tossed out because it was around that time Lucas basically retired, and stopped hovering over almost every SW writer's shoulders. ;)
Made back in August, eh? I imagine you have since come across many, many things since that you'd similarly have many, many criticisms for regarding RoP.
I agree
I just don't like medieval fantasy whatsoever, but even then I still enjoyed the video as it makes perfect sense.
Even if something doesn't make sense in the real world, it needs to make sense in the world that the story is made for. While logically a dragon should be be able to fly with the wings it has, but in the worlds they're in, it does... doesn't mean if you see someone start doing push-ups with theye eyelashes, when you never seen it before this one moment, that you should be like "Well I guess this makes sense too."
The Hobbit is a good example Bilbo tackling Azog is probably the best example. Legolas stuff got way worse .
"bUt tHeRe aRe dRaGoNs!!!" is a prime example of the midwit line of thinking that is incapable of grasping that a fantasy world needs to have a more or less consistent internal logic for it to be able to suspend disbelief unless you are at the level of a 3 year old in terms of brain capacity. I see this line of reason so much on Reddit that it likely permeates the MCU and Disney fans in general to the largest degree (and applies to Bezos fans as well).
The worst part of what I can only describe as an epidemic of intellectual decline is how superior people using such "arguments" act in their ignorance. When they say things like "there are dragons" to justify turning their brains off, they're almost always talking down to people who are actually using their critical thinking skills.
Well said.
My suggestion is to completely ignore Rings of Power as part of the Tolkien lore. That show is an insult to Tolkien.
Exactly
I keep it simple, unless magic is obviously applied, physics applies without exception.
New that we've seen the show they've showed us the the villains are the heroes and the heros are the villains.
What do you say in the intro
Mae govannen. It means “well met” in Sindarin elvish.
@@TolkienLorePodcast thank you
Love this. The Goblin town scene damn near ruined the Hobbit, and honestly, Legolas's abilities kinda drag down both movies.
People who try to justify things that make no sense with "but you are fine with dragons", should watch this video. Yes, dragons make perfect sense in a fantasy setting. Galadriel shoving guards much bigger and stronger than her around like it's nothing doesn't make sense. These two things are not contradictory.
If there are no rules, then the heroes can do anything- Why most comic book stories and especially movies suck.
I can see your argument to a point. At some point we just have to let go of our reality and embrace what we are reading or watching. I’ve known plenty of scientists, Neil Degrasse Tyson for example, who say that movies such as Interstellar or The Martian were great movies. Not scientifically accurate but the acting and script made up for the scientific inaccuracies. NDT would often say say that if at the end of movie he was entertained then that is all that matters.
Myself personally I enjoy the Rings of Power (waits for angry comments). That being said the only LOTR book I ever read was The Hobbit. I don’t think Rings of Power compares to the LOTR Trilogy but I enjoy it nonetheless. Maybe if I read all of the books I wouldn’t like the show that much.
As an example I hate the Halo series. I played all of the video games and read most of the books. The way Paramount just butchered that character infuriated me to no end.
That’s my two cents. Keep up the content.
You should give the books a go. They are beautifully written, the world is a living breathing thing, full and rich with lore and amazing characters. It is a wonderful experience.
The show, on the other hand, is soulless.
And DAMN! what they did to Masterchief in the Halo show was horrible! In fact, the whole show was utter sh.t. I've played those games for 22 years! And read all the books. How to destroy a stoic hero in one season. Pathetic attempt at a Halo series.
But what Amazon are doing to Tolkiens world is infinitely more heinous.
(its cool if you're enjoying it though. Just try the books when you can. But buy old copies, or find a.... Cough... "Free" digital copy.... Cough.. 👍)
HA! I liked the HALO series because I never read the books or played the games. Even still, some of the choices they've made in the series irritate me. My 25 year old son played the game and read the books-- when he was 13 he even wrote a brief Halo fanfiction (god that was a long time ago) story. We are able to enjoy the series to a point.
I read fantasy pretty much exclusively and I find nothing about this RoP that is worth watching. By episode 4, I decided "Well, if I just stop thinking of it as Tolkien, perhaps I'll like it more." I still have many issues with contradictory character issues, time jumps, continuity issues, and the list goes on. And, low budget Cobra Kai knocked RoP out of the top spot in streaming shows. That says a lot.
I won't be back for a second season. There is nothing to redeem this mess, especially knowing they already started filming s2, leaving me to believe there is no time to course correct (fire all the writers and McKay and Payne) and get this show back on even footing. I'll just watching via the UA-camrs. So much more fun.
A lot of that shit is going.
It's about obeying in-universe logic and rules ie the verisimilitude of the setting.
Not all people get that. Heck, not all writers get that...
Marvel comedies come to my mind
...and after you made this video, there is of course the tiny little issue with the Pyroclastic flow...
I know no one likes talking about it, but the worst offender for requiring suspension of disbelief is the diversity in the casting in modern fantasy. I say the worst because It's ever-present throughout the entirety of the show/movie and is also the hardest to have an actual conversation about.
This should be screenwriting 101. How can a billion production can oversee this flaws is beyond me.
Recorded back in august….had no idea just how disappointed he would really get
"In places the snow was breast-high, and often Boromir seemed to be swimming or burrowing with his great arms rather than walking.
...
With that he sprang forth nimbly, and then Frodo noticed as if for the first time, though he had long known it, that the Elf had no boots, but wore only light shoes, as he always did, and his feet made little imprint in the snow."
How is being yeeted by a sword any different? Clearly elves can weigh next to nothing whenever they wish to?
That’s not clear at all. You left out Legolas’ line.
Why would you ever need to be yeeted by the sword if you weigh nothing to start with? That’d be something they’d be capable of doing themselves would it not?
@@NotSoSerious69420 Because when you weigh nothing you also can't apply force... Thus make yourself weightless and have a friend yeet you, then in the air become weighted again so that you can apply force to your sword strikes.
Of course having someone yeet you with the hands the way everyone else would assist someone starting a wall jump or something would be smarter, but would look less cool.
And yes none of this argument makes sense it works, I wasn't being serious in the first place.
Yeah but this kind of issue goes way back. Like when someone becomes "immaterial" and phases through walls, but somehow doesn't fall through the floor. Truth is a lot of people don't have that much critical thinking.
Clearly the bottoms of their feet aren't phasing except when passing through the wall. It would take an immense amount of control, but the human brain has incredible control over its body's movement already, so it's not world-breaking unless you make it be.
If you want good consistent writing.. may I suggest you watch house of the dragon?
You may, but I won’t take your suggestion because I don’t have HBO and I’m not really interested in GRRM’s stories lol.
@@TolkienLorePodcast fair enough the writing in it is good though an time jumps are well done
True, a good story sets down a basic set of rules. Whatever those rules are depends on the world and the story. But those rules ARE the rules. It is what gives realism for the viewer/reader.
Even Manga and Anime that gets out huge fighting scenes set SOME rules. And we are talking about super sayan's through energy balls at each other that can chew through rock. THAT is the set of rules.
The thing Rings of Power does is... eh.. I dunno. There doesn't seem to be rules or reality of plot that makes sense of characters that keep in one line of thinking or... anything. These writers are HORRIBLE!
If they were given a non Tolkien series it also would be HORRIBLE. They can't write themselves out a wet paper bag!
I can accept magic existing, dragons, maiar, elves etc... as long as the story is grounded and it makes internal sense.
Eh I let myself out to take a lovely pumice bath, I hear an vulcano explode, if I am on time I an take the PYROCLASTIC FLOW head on....
even fantasy worlds need to be subject to things like basic physics if for no other reason than we, the audience, have certain expectations about how things like basic physics work. It's not a question about whether or not the world is fantastical, it's that you've broken the immersion of the audience by showing them something patently ridiculous that our mind rejects on a basic level.
Flying ships CAN do that, unless you have good art direction where we see things like giant balloons or downwards facing propellers or some sort of magical science macguffin that lets our minds know 'okay, there's probably a reason for this'. At that point your immersion can over-ride your rational thought because cause and effect is still in play, there's a rational reason for it even if it's not exactly scientifically sound
Dragons, wizards, dark gods, etc.... all that stuff our brains can accept if you take the time to build a world that makes it SEEM rational. Dragons can be super powerful, but if they're extremely rare we can accept why they haven't over-run the world. Wizards... sure, magic is this rare or super difficult skill you need to learn, so the mundane world can still be largely what we expect. That kind of stuff makes enough sense that we can just roll with it for the sake of a good story.
episode 1 of your fantasy series showing the main character defying gravity just to look cool? yeah, that's just not going to pass intellectual muster in most viewers, even if they understand exactly why or not. You've jarred the audience out of their immersion before you really even roped them in in the first place.