I should be doing hw said:
I just watched the Fellowship because of this thread :lol Great movie, gets better as I get older.
I have some questions though.
#1
I don't understand the concept of this 'Ring of Power' fully. It was forged at mount doom, with what? What was Sauron before the ring was forged? The Eye? Because thats what he became after he lost it and I hardly think losing a couple of fingers caused it. I read here that Morgoth or something brought him to ME so he already was powerful anyway, why does he need the ring after it is forged?
Also, why do regular people go invisible when they wear it or is it just 'magic'.
#2
Is Aragorn's past ever explained further than 'he is in self-exile'? Do the books shed any further light on this?
#3
Did Tolkien ever write anything that took place after the events of LOTR, like expanded bits of characters or some sort of epilogue that you don't find in the movie?
#4
In this movie the Elf chick gives Aragorn her 'light' or something, saying she chooses a mortal life now. Why does she get upset about outliving Aragorn then in the last movie? Or do Elves live longer by default even without that, from what I can gather, eternal life necklace.
1: Sauron was a humanoid being, the Lord of Darkness in Middle-earth at the time (his master, the original dark lord Morgoth, was chained and bound beyond space and time at that point). Sauron never became the eye. That's how the movies represented him, due to an honest misreading. Sauron did have a physical body during the War of the Ring (the book mentions how Gollum had met Sauron himself, and noticed that one of his fingers was missing). The 'eye of Sauron' is what people who gaze into the palantiri see. It's up for debate if the 'eye' is just a manifestation of Sauron's piercing mind and will, or the only part of his body he allows to be seen. But Sauron never becae a floating eye of fire like in the movies.
Sauron made the One Ring to enslave the other Rings of Power, so that he could control the other races of Middle-earth. Where Morgoth desired mainly destruction of Eru's creation, Sauron desired might and power.
The invisibility effect is just magic.
2: The main story of LotR doesn't really delve into much of Aragorn's backstory, but IIRC it's mentioned in the appendices, and in books like Unfinished Tales, History of ME etc.
3. Well.. He did begin work on a sequel to LotR, but abandoned it after about one chapter. Otherwise there isn't much material dealing with history post-LotR, as Tolkien was mainly concerned with the Silmarillion and the writings dealing with the elves, the creation of Arda etc.
4. Elves weren't actually totally immortal. Tolkien gave a very convoluted and difficult explanation behind the mortality and life of elves, how their souls are tied directly to Arda etc., but they could certainly die from wounds or from losing the desire to live. They could also die of old age, but it would take them massive amounts of millennia to reach such an age (I think I once read somewhere that some guy with too much time on his hands had came to the conclusion that Galadriel was, at the time of LotR, something like 13.000 years old). So Arwen was probably upset because she knew she would spend thousands of years grieving over Aragorn, unless she died of wounds, grief or something. Also, IIRC, when humans died, they would go to the Halls of Mandos to await their fate after death, and then go on to Eru knows where, but the elves would be reborn again.
