6 Lord of the Rings Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball
#3.
Gandalf Leads The Fellowship On A Magical Mystery Tour
Gandalf's leadership in The Fellowship of the Ring exemplifies the perils of on-the-job training. Let's test your knowledge of the trilogy with the following questions:
1. How many horses did Gandalf insist the Fellowship bring?
2. What would Gandalf have done if Frodo didn't just happen to figure out the password Gandalf had forgotten at the Mines of Moria?
3. What was Gandalf's game plan once he saw that everyone in Moria was dead?
4. How many times did Gandalf hitch a ride with his giant eagle friends?
And now for the answers:
1. Zero (save one brave pony).
2. That giant squid would've eaten everyone.
3. "Into the mines!"
4. Twice - first when Saruman traps Gandalf on top of a tower; and then when, uh, Bilbo finally throws the Ring in, err, Mount Gloom (sorry, we felt bad spoiling the series for our 20 internet-less readers who are somehow viewing this site on a cave wall.)
"Thank you, my friend. I now have nine hours of superfluous battle scenes to attend to."
That there's a laundry list of botch jobs. The sheer fact that Gandalf forgot to outsource the trip to Mordor to the eagles is unforgivable, but what's more heartbreaking is that he's even more useless when comes back from the dead.
When Gandalf is resurrected in The Two Towers, his main job is to not use magic and just gallivant around on his horse, staring at the planetarium light show ensconced in his disco stick.
"This horse can, like, totally read my mind."
In short, everything would've come out mostly the same for the Fellowship of the Ring if they simply dumped Gandalf with a dimebag of wizard weed at the first gas station they passed. Come to think of it, his "smoking habit" explains his memory problems rather aptly.
"This is some prime Gondor Kush, brah. They fertilize the plants with troll shit."
#2.
Gandalf Blames Pippin for His Own Fuck-up
Yes, Gandalf appears on the list twice.
Let's go back to Moria for a second, because it's there in that mine where the crucial plot point of the first film happens; the crew is attacked by orcs and the Balrog demon and (spoiler!) Gandalf seemingly dies.
The whole thing is triggered when Pippin sets off a Rube Goldberg reaction (that is, knocking a skeleton down a well) causing a racket that awakens every subterranean horror in a four-mile radius. Gandalf screams at Pippin, even hinting that it would be better if he had fallen down the well, indirectly blaming him for the catastrophe that follows.
"I know you're there, Gandalf. Please stop trying to kill me."
Bullshit.
The crew was moving silently through the mines, not drawing any enemy attention. They're most of the way through when they reach the tomb of Balin... and Gandalf stops to read a book he found.
That's why they were lingering in the tomb, that's why Pippin started fidgeting around and knocking things into wells. And everybody knows it's a mistake; a panicked Legolas whispers to Aragorn, "we cannot linger here." Guys, if the elf is worried, you should be worried.
Dudes this hard don't scare easily
And it's not like Gandalf didn't know the place was infested with bad guys; he's the one who spent the several scenes leading up to that insisting that they not go in. So why the heck does he take a pit stop mere minutes from the Mine's exit to read some dead dwarf's diary?
Is there some secret he learns from the book? Valuable background information? No, he learns that bad guys have invaded and killed everybody. Keep in mind this is a book the found among hundreds of dead bodies with arrows in their backs. We had kind of pieced that together, asshole.
By the end of the clusterfuck battle, Gandalf's dead and a cave troll nearly offs Frodo, who is protected only by his uncle's creepy, Siegfried-and-Roy-style unmentionables.
Thanks to Gandalf the Grey's literacy break, the last words to his friends were "Fly, you fools!" It was only at his own death that he realized what an albatross he had always been to the Fellowship.
#1.
Sauron Gives Hand-To-Hand Combat A Whirl
The first several minutes of Fellowship of the Rings recount Sauron's salad days of Middle Earth conquest, and boy oh boy, was he one power-drunk cat. He had the power of the cosmos on his trigger finger, a magic mace that could feather-dust entire armies to smithereens, and a fancy helmet that could substitute as a nautical mine. In sum, he was the most dapper despot around, and he fucking knew it.
So when it came time to kill a scrub like the hero Isildur, he should've been home in time for Mrs. Sauron to fix him a nice bowl of lava soup, no?
Ahem, let's take a look at the clip. It starts at 2:45:
He has his human enemy on the ground at his feet. One enemy, with tens of thousands at his back. He then sloooowly reaches out with his ringed hand, allowing his finger to get chopped off. The ring is detached, he dies, his entire empire collapsing with it.
What was trying to do, exactly? Tousle Isildur's hair? Shake his hand? Steal his wallet? Had Sauron ever read a goddamn Green Lantern comic, he'd know that if you've got godhood sitting on your index finger, you do not get into fisticuffs. You create giant egg beaters and rolling pins and xylophone mallets and bludgeon your opponent into organ paste.
Had Sauron simply worn the ring around his neck (like everyone else in the damn movies), or geez Louise, forged it into his feather-dusting mace, the trilogy would have been 554 minutes shorter than its theatrical run time, and Peter Jackson would've been forced to cram a $285 million budget into four minutes. Just imagine. If Sauron hadn't been so grabby, Lord of The Rings: Sauron Smashing Some Guy With A Hammer would be the best (and last) film any of us would ever see.
Good reviews would sadly be hard to come by.
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And check out more incompetent characters, in 7 Classic Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball and 6 Evil Henchmen Who Sucked at Their Job.
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Im sorry, but TE FUCK? Gandalf the white was the one who summoned the riders to helms deeps aid. If they'd "stuck him with a bag of wizzard weed" then helms deep would have fallen, legolas, gimli, and aragorn would have died, and humanity would have perished halfway through movie 2.
ReplyThis is funny but I will say one thing about the eagles.....they are not some pet belonging to Gandalf they are a fairly ancient race of sentient birds who, and if people had read The Hobbit would know, won't fly over places where men live. In short the reason Gandalf didn't get the eagles to fly to mount doom is because they would have refused to do so for fear of being shot down by men.
ReplyFunny. Inaccurate, but funny.
ReplyAs for Gandalf stopping to read, in retrospect it seems dumb, but the point about there being no valuable information actually explains why Gandalf stopped. He had no information, they were moving more or less blindly, and could use whatever knowledge they could find. The fact that they didn't find anything doesn't mean the attempt was stupid.
"What was Gandalf's game plan once he saw that everyone in Moria was dead"
Replywell his plan was to return and take the gap of rohan, but the giant squid broght down the gates, so into the mines was a forced option.
The main mistake of gandalf was relying on frodo to take a decition. thats why they went to moria in the first place. he was a crappy leader
Even if you disagree with some of their points, you have to admit that they are right about Urkel V. Predator. I always laugh at that line.
ReplyThis article if hilarious. Gandalf's screw up that he blamed Pippin for doesn't occur in the books. And in the book Theodin sends in a soldier to oversee Wormtongue.
ReplyAlright, I could be wrong here, but I don't think so. It was always my impression that SAURON was the WitchKing, and the Nazgul were his servants. It was SAURON who got killed by Eowyn, and the guy in the forest was just a Nazgul.
ReplyNope. Not at all. The Witchking was the head of the Nine Riders, and one of the holders of the Nine Rings of Men.
Sauron never left home. And his Fate was intertwined with the One Ring, the master ring.
I've always kind of wondered what Sauron thought he was going to do with the ring once he got it. Would he have his Nazgul put it in his eye like a tiny little contact lens? Would he wear it as a piercing? Or slip it on a flamey eyelash? I like to imagine that if they had captured Frodo, an orc would have brought Sauron the ring and he would have just been like.... "Fuck. No fingers."
ReplyIt's only in the movie version that Sauron has no physical form. In the book, it is pretty clear that he does (although not 100% conclusive).
Oh and also the dark riders that were after the hobbits can't see in the books, their horses see for them. Apparently they can smell though which still makes that scene not make sense, unless the cabbage or whatever threw off their smell, but that part wasn't explained in the book. Sorry to pick at the article, but its still funny from the movie point of view.
ReplyHe went after the sound
I just started reading the books and I've noticed a lot of these mess-ups are just in the movies. The movies leave out so much stuff from the books that it just isn't the same story. In the book Gandalf ends up remembering the password to the door to Moria after a few trials and errors. And the part about him stopping to read the book he did because he didn't know exactly where he was and it was so dark that they had to kind of feel their way around (gandalf didn't want to light up his staff too bright incase it was still infested with orcs and goblins). Oh and gimli was curious to see what became of balin and the other dwarves that attempted to reclaim Moria.
ReplyYeah, the movies had to leave some justification out because they were already almost 10 hours long. Also, if they actually included everything detailed in the books, it would be around 5-7 movies going at an incredibly slow pace with an hour or two of historical flashbacks.
Honestly, Redblackdragon, I would've watched that. Me and Tolkein's children would've made up the entire theater, however.
and i wish people would shut up about the eagles, its just annoying to have everyone point that out continually as if we've never heard it before. its not an original idea and it doesn't even make sense. sauron can see anywhere in the world he looks. he knows the ring has gone to elrond. so he's watching to see what happens. if a giant eagle suddenly appeared flying a hobbit, and he's been searching for a hobbit, he would probably tell the black riders to get on their flying monsters and go sort it the f**k out.
Replyalso why does the black rider in the fellowship have to be the witch king? there are 9 people wearing totally identical robes, its more than likely it wasnt him
I've always thought that Gandalf should have just made the eagles take the ring to Mt. Doom.
the one ring was not some green lantern esqe piece of crap that grants users the power to warp reality but still struggle in fights. It was created to control the other rings of power and the only way sauron could do that was by investing his own power in it. he then wears it to get his own power back to normal levels.
ReplyYou guys are hilarious. This article just made my day. Gandalf is a dick. How DID the worlds best sniper archer miss the most important target?
ReplyI'll freely admit to only having read the books once, so there's probably something I've forgotten. But when the Ents attack Isengard at the end of TTT, why doesn't Saruman (the Head of the wizard order, mind you) perform any magic to defend himself? He just runs back inside like a terrified old guy whose lawn has been invaded by unruly teenagers. Does it happen this way in the book?
ReplySaruman is far more pathetic in the book - remember how he dies in the Shire? I think he's simply admitting defeat...
Gandalf makes it pretty clear (in the book) that Saruman's power has diminished and become diluted as a result of his evil-doing. One big theme in Tolkien's stories is that the creation, domination, and use of evil creatures and devices requires a permanent contribution of one's power; this happened to Sauron when he created the One Ring, just as it did to Morgoth (Sauron's master in the bad old days) when he spawned the orcs and trolls and dragons and pretty much screwed up the very earth. The same thing has happened to Saruman: his power has been dispersed into his machines and servants, leaving him with little real power other than his voice.
These... I don't know where to start. That was AWESOME. I LOL'd my way through them all...
ReplyI just gotta' say....I love the "a.k.a. the Bassist for Driveshaft" comment. So many people never make that connection and it put the biggest grin on my face ever. And I'm sorry, but Merry is a badass. The end. Also....these comments miss a few key plot points, and seem not to recognize the fact that these movies are in fact based on a book and thus, have to follow certain rules. But meh. Whatever.
ReplyI'm looking at the comments and all I see are butthurt fanboys nitpicking this hilarious article. Learn to take a f*****g joke, guys, seriously.
ReplyYou butthurt LOTR fanboys WOULD nitpick this article. I'd like to see you write something this hilarious. This thing is damn funny, just leave it at that for Christ's sake.
ReplyYou know why comedians are good at stand-up routines?
Because generally, they make valid points with their jokes. This didn't.
6 Reasons Why Cracked Should Stop Trying to Write About LOTR:
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies1. Nobody at Cracked read The Hobbit.
2. Nobody at Cracked read The Fellowship of the Ring.
3. Nobody at Cracked read The Two Towers.
4. Nobody at Cracked read The Return of the King.
5. Nobody at Cracked read The Silmarillion.
6. Nobody at Cracked watched the movies, either - or can't remember the key points in the movies.
except they did all that.....numerous times the columinists have also pointed out that it was just in the movie not the book.
Also its a humor website. Not factual. Dont take it to seriously.
5. Nobody with time on their hands read the Silmarillion..
I've read ALL five books, thank you, and seen the movies, and can still take the joke.
Funny is funny is funny, and it's entirely possible to tell someone if they got something wrong while being polite. If it's important enough to get that nasty, then send them a private message, which they would be more likely to not only read, but take seriously. (As seriously as a humor site can, anyway!)
I mean you pointing out plot holes that are the filmmakers fault, not J R R Tolkien..the book is alot better :)
ReplyNONE OF THESE ARE PLOT HOLES. figure out what a plot hole is