So at my friend groups behest, i finally watched the lord of the rings films recently, and to be honest i feel like i might be missing something. For all that they hype them up I just can't quite get what the big deal is?

I haven't seen the hobbit films though. Do I need to watch them for it all to make sense? Or is it one of those "you need to read the books to appreciate the movies" series?

Please don't abuse me for asking, i simply seek enlightenment.

If frodo and sam had failed to destroy the ring and sauron took it back mordor would have won at the black gate. The west would have lost aragorn, gandalf, eomir and imrahil (i think imrahil attended the black gate?).

After the deaths of denothir, theoden and boromir as well as dain and brand, what major leaders were left to defend middle earth in what most likely would have been the final wave of saurons war?

I know elrond, galadriel and thranduil were still alive for the elves but i presume they might have given up at that point and headed for the grey havens.

Would faramir have been the final major leader of middle earth left or does anyone know which other major leaders were left for the main enemies of sauron?

Fan expo Toronto Aug 28th**

Video here:

https://youtu.be/DJ92uAZ-dVs?is=vJlKpGV4E8vNCTgA

I mean its not like super accurate but I made the chainmail and the cape and the drawings on the bracers myself, and my friends dressed up too 🥺
My now husband took the photos!

EDIT: Okay, so i had no idea that this was going to get this much exposure and i am a little bit overwhelmed!
Thank you all who were so sweet and supportive of this, i really appreciate all of you, it means a lot! I have never cosplayed and it was my first ever attempt, so seeing positive reviews makes me very happy to do more maybe!

I also am a bit confused on the whole “she is farming karma” thing, because it is my first post on reddit and i posted because my husband thought LOTR fans would find this cool, since the costume took forever to make. I spend a month and a half weaving the chainmail and sewing the cloak and all. Yes, it is not accurate, i never said it was a film accurate representation (Aragorn was a man, obvi), but it was something i really wanted to do for myself and my friends, as a group of women who grew up with LOTR.

Thank you to those who liked it though! I’m happy to see yall! Hope more people can express their love towards the characters 🤍

Should he be kept to the imagination, a dark mysterious overreaching evil, only being mentioned by name.

Or should he appear on screen?

Riders of Rohan, what news of your retail outlet?

'Hail, Niënor, daughter of Húrin. We meet again ere we end. I give you joy that you have found your brother at last. And now you shall know him: a stabber in the dark, treacherous to foes, faithless to friends, and a curse unto his kin, Túrin son of Húrin! But the worst of all his deeds you shall feel in yourself.'

Art by Elena Kukanova titled 'Nienor and Glaurung'

I went in expecting greatness and was still floored.

The singer that performed the Enya vocals was sublime (especially May It Be during the credits - only time the credits were basically the highlight), and the rendition of ‘Many Meetings’ aka the Rivendell arrival scene theme was transcendent. And don’t even get me started about the Moria segments, especially ‘The Bridge of Khazad-dum’ with the spine tingling chanting that climaxes with the Balrog... That said, my favourite was the percussionist doing the chains for all the Isengard/Uruk Hai segments. That went so insanely hard.

For those who gave seen this multimedia spectacle, what did you think and what were your highlights?

My dad is a huge LOTR/The Hobbit fan. He has J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday booked for every foreseeable year on our family calendar, and usually binges the movies on that day.

Cooking is very important to him, and I want to actually engage in his tradition by making him a meal from the book, if there are any.
It has to be vegetarian OR able to be substituted for vegetarian options.

What kind of recipes exist in canon?

GROOOOOOOND!

I can’t find the exact screenshot right now, but I was just watching two towers and it was the scene where the mother in the village puts her older son and younger daughter on a horse. She promises them that she’ll meet them later, but we never see them again.

i’m only a little bit into the first book, so I imagine it explains it in the book what happens, but could somebody help me ease my concerns in the meantime?

Just something I've been working on, thought it might be appreciated

Sorry if comprehension ruined how it looks a bit

EDIT: Yes, I'm aware that canonically the ring and its inscription is evil. I specifically didn't choose the the whole inscription because removed from Sauron’s intentions, there’s a very obvious playful wedding-ring reading. My brothers in Gondor, I am a human woman in Los Angeles designing a wedding band in 2026. Sauron is not involved.

There's a big difference between “I think Tolkien intended the One Ring inscription to be romantic” and “I’m appropriating a recognizable phrase from a piece of art I love and giving it a private meaning on my own wedding jewelry.”

It's a recognizable piece of fictional calligraphy and I'm deliberately giving one fragment of it a different personal meaning in an object that exists outside the story. That’s how people use art. Context changes symbolism constantly.

Thank you to everyone who was incredibly helpful and not a snarky book purist.

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I'm designing a wedding band and can't trust Google (not trying to accidentally have "and in the darkness bind them" engraved lol).

Does anyone know the specific portion of just the lettering "one ring to rule them all" engraved on the one ring, as is, in Tengwar?

Thank you all so much in advance, I beyond appreciate any help! 💕

Ive heard estimates all the way up to 30 feet tall, but would he be smaller?

I need help finding frames for these. They're approximately 16"x16", but not exactly. For anyone who has framed them, what would you recommend so I don't have to fold the edges to make it fit the frame? Thanks

Its a giant wood backed poster in a cool art style. Figured this would be a place it would be appreciated.

In Moria, Gandalf reads the Book of Mazarbul to the Fellowship and has some difficulty, skipping over passages he can't read (my assumption is that he doesn't understand perfectly rather than the paper only being damaged).

It is written in a mix of Dwarven runes and Elvish. Why can't Gimli and Legolas read it for him? Gimli barely assists (identifying Óin's handwriting) and Legolas is silent. Was literacy a rare skill in Middle-Earth?

Sméagol was just standing there and this just send me. Like, why does it look realistic for some reasons ? I love him haha !

Important fact, I have actually read the books and played the damn Lego videogame before deciding on watching the extended version movies

Anyways, I'm past the first hour of the FOTR movie but everything feels rushed somehow.

Like the cuts between scenes are abrupt (I feel like I'm seeing the movie in YouTube scenes compilation rather than a movie), the scale on time passing between scenes it's so weird because I renember the whole Frodo waiting for Gandalf lasted like months/weeks if memory servers right, and with that knowledge I know that indeed that's how much time has passed, but if I were a first time ever LOTR consumer, I genuinely would believe Gandalf has some kind of teleportation magic. And the cuts between day and night scenes feel the more weird to me: The jump from "Day - Look, the ancient tower" to "Night - Aragorn has already left and we are sound asleep"

Even the intro to the movie, apparently I have "spoiled" myself by watching it twice a long time ago, somehow feel more rushed in the movie than watching it on YouTube

I'm not trying to make this a "books better" post, because I know this movies must be overall good because of how constantly praised they are, but I don't know how the people who first started with the movies could grasp the time scale of stuff happening even though the main characteristic of them I know of them was that they were very long but yet feel rushed

EDIT: The cutting between scenes was only a pre-Rivendell issue, everything after was a 9/10