What the hell went wrong?

I was all set to eat my words about Lord of the Rings, then along comes Return of the King and I'm wondering if my first impressions were the right ones.

Lets me recap first though.

Fellowship of the Ring: I loved that book, it made me want to start off on my own adventure, explore new places, and so on, it was faster paced than I remembered, even the first part, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also went back to my old Aragorn/Boromir haunts from whence I first shipped ;D.

Two Towers: All around favourite book, I loved it to death. Helm's Deep, the journey to Mordor, just loved it. And my favourite ever part of the book was the Entmoot and the destruction of Isenguard. Yay! Mass terror and destruction and flooding! I love Ents.

And finally, Return of the King, which was where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
To be honest, the Frodo bit wasn't bad, although it did get slightly repetitive, and if I hadn't been secretly rooting for Sauron by this point it would have been a lot better. I never really liked Frodo and Sam, in fact, my main problem with the books (and the reason I have trouble writing fanfic about it) is that none of the characters really grab me. But anyway, that storyline was okay.
But the other one... to be honest, it was the message it was sending that made me want to throw the book out of the tube window (yes, I did want to do that). Firstly, Tolkien must have had serious issues with women, because there are a grand total of six female characters in the book and that's counting Rosie Cotton and Shelob. But the thing that made me want to break something was the treatment of Eowyn.
She constantly gets shunted aside, and when it comes to her big moment of glory (facing down the Witch-king), she gets knocked out and the Ringwraith gets killed by a hobbit, who stabs hin in the knee. I'm sorry, but the feminist in me was screaming blue murder at about that point.
And, to add insult to injury, she gets meekly 'tamed' by Faramir, and immediatly renounces the way of the sword to become a healer instead. At this point, Faramir (who I'd liked up to then) suffered a downward plunge, the likes of which I have rarely experienced.

My next problem had actually been bugging me from the start, but really came out here. Everytime we hear about the men and elves, it seems as though they're on the way out, their power is always waning, nothing was as good as it was previously, etc. The only one who seems to be gaining any power is Sauron. According to my Moorcock-warped mind, this should mean that he will be the new power, and good/evil be damned! Instead, the good guys win, and it just seems... wrong, as though they shouldn't have. I guess I'm reading too much realistic fantasy (go George Martin!) but it just smacked me wrong. The restoration of everything just seemed like delaying the inevitable. Sauron's time had come, and to fight against it was useless.
So that was why I supported the Dark Lord, that, and I've always had a crush on the Ringwraiths (*drool*). And that is why, ultimately, I didn't like to books. It just seemed a little too conveniant.

My friend Olga doesn't like the Luddite influences, I sort of agree, but it's more the railing against the inevitable that irritates me (hence, my dislike for Tanis), as well as against progress. It just struck me wrong, went against the grain.

I wonder if the woman problem would be solved in the films (never saw RotK).

At first I thought that my dislike was due to the burgeoning popularity of the books at the onset of the films. I was wrong.


Skull Bearer.

What the hell went wrong?

I was all set to eat my words about Lord of the Rings, then along comes Return of the King and I'm wondering if my first impressions were the right ones.

Lets me recap first though.

Fellowship of the Ring: I loved that book, it made me want to start off on my own adventure, explore new places, and so on, it was faster paced than I remembered, even the first part, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also went back to my old Aragorn/Boromir haunts from whence I first shipped ;D.

Two Towers: All around favourite book, I loved it to death. Helm's Deep, the journey to Mordor, just loved it. And my favourite ever part of the book was the Entmoot and the destruction of Isenguard. Yay! Mass terror and destruction and flooding! I love Ents.

And finally, Return of the King, which was where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
To be honest, the Frodo bit wasn't bad, although it did get slightly repetitive, and if I hadn't been secretly rooting for Sauron by this point it would have been a lot better. I never really liked Frodo and Sam, in fact, my main problem with the books (and the reason I have trouble writing fanfic about it) is that none of the characters really grab me. But anyway, that storyline was okay.
But the other one... to be honest, it was the message it was sending that made me want to throw the book out of the tube window (yes, I did want to do that). Firstly, Tolkien must have had serious issues with women, because there are a grand total of six female characters in the book and that's counting Rosie Cotton and Shelob. But the thing that made me want to break something was the treatment of Eowyn.
She constantly gets shunted aside, and when it comes to her big moment of glory (facing down the Witch-king), she gets knocked out and the Ringwraith gets killed by a hobbit, who stabs hin in the knee. I'm sorry, but the feminist in me was screaming blue murder at about that point.
And, to add insult to injury, she gets meekly 'tamed' by Faramir, and immediatly renounces the way of the sword to become a healer instead. At this point, Faramir (who I'd liked up to then) suffered a downward plunge, the likes of which I have rarely experienced.

My next problem had actually been bugging me from the start, but really came out here. Everytime we hear about the men and elves, it seems as though they're on the way out, their power is always waning, nothing was as good as it was previously, etc. The only one who seems to be gaining any power is Sauron. According to my Moorcock-warped mind, this should mean that he will be the new power, and good/evil be damned! Instead, the good guys win, and it just seems... wrong, as though they shouldn't have. I guess I'm reading too much realistic fantasy (go George Martin!) but it just smacked me wrong. The restoration of everything just seemed like delaying the inevitable. Sauron's time had come, and to fight against it was useless.
So that was why I supported the Dark Lord, that, and I've always had a crush on the Ringwraiths (*drool*). And that is why, ultimately, I didn't like to books. It just seemed a little too conveniant.

My friend Olga doesn't like the Luddite influences, I sort of agree, but it's more the railing against the inevitable that irritates me (hence, my dislike for Tanis), as well as against progress. It just struck me wrong, went against the grain.

I wonder if the woman problem would be solved in the films (never saw RotK).

At first I thought that my dislike was due to the burgeoning popularity of the books at the onset of the films. I was wrong.


Skull Bearer.