You must log in or # to comment.
doomscrolling the palantir
What a brilliant image and very in keeping with Tolkien’s disdain for modern technology. Sauron using technology to run a psyop on Gondor, and it worked.
And the people proselytizing despair get away with it because toxic positivity has been such a powerful negative force. Hope isn’t smiles and ignorance, it’s riding to the black gate trusting that Frodo and Sam are doing their jobs even though you can’t personally see them.
I like your take on hope. Doing your part hoping the rest of your battle group is doing theirs too.
It relies on trust, which there is also too little of nowadays.
My eyes roll out of my skull every time I see some “humanity is doomed, it’s our nature to kill ourselves, if only we weren’t so selfish and shortsighted” spiel, which always ignores the actual structural causes of the problems in favor of some weepy original sin diagnosis.
I don’t understand why they removed Denethor’s Palantir from the movies, it’s like the whole point of his character, without it nothing he does makes sense
I wouldn’t say it doesn’t make sense. Movie Denethor looks like someone who has completed and utterly cracked under stress.
Not only did his favoured son die, but he died after not wanting to go to Rivendell and Denethor forcing him to go and take the ring. Denethor blames himself for the death of Boromir.
Add to that the fear and pressure of bordering Mordor at a time when he knows Sauron is preparing for war and your city is right on their doorstep, it doesn’t seem that crazy that he cracked.
He certainly has more depth in the book, and there’s more sympathy towards him, but he still makes sense in the films IMO.
As they say, “misery loves company.”
He was so in despair he started eating tomatoes absolutely unhinged
