Where's the magic in LotR?

Magic in LotR is just technology and art

Oh for fuck’s sakes. Why is it that the majority of you dumb fucks don’t know what magic is in Tolkien?

Oh look someone who ACTUALLY understands what magic is in Tolkien

He thought fucking up people with Glamdring had more style points.

this applies to elves but not wizards. Gandalf DOES get physically exhausted every time he uses magic in combat, at least before his rebirth. How is that "art"

That's why it's a dead franchise. No one's gonna watch the new movie or care about LOTR in 30 years. Naruto and other anime will still be relevant. Fuck old white men creations.

Real magic also glows like a nuclear powered light house on fire in the unseen world. That's why Glorfindel was useless despite being elf jesus back from the dead. He couldn't take a shit in a cave under a mountain without Sauron seeing him pinch it off. Most of his actions in the 3rd age were to be simply distracting and disruptive as he couldn't actual surprise Sauron.

Did you not see his smoke rings

Gandalf is a Maiar, basically an angel. He was ordered to get the people of Middle-Earth to defeat Sauron, not do it himself.

why didn't Eru just evaporate Sauron?

Don't do much? Gandalf and Sauronman are always doing something magical.

Gandalf, a fire/light mage, whimsically sets off fireworks for kids

bullies Bilbo with deep voice and growing stature

he lights his staff in the darkness

he uses light to battle a balrog

he dies and is returned by god himself

he illuminates himself so brightly when returning to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli and effortlessly defeats them

he heals Theoden

fights off ring wraiths with light

Sauronman

hurls Gandalf around with his mind

causes storms in the mountains

uses magic to make Urukhai

uses magic in his voice to hypnotize and soothe people

corrupts the mind of various people and talks through Theoden

Trying to save his soul probably

Tolkien’s middle-earth has many prime directive and sufficiently advanced parallels. The elves are examples of sufficiently advanced elves (alien to men, not the world) that don’t consider their works to be magical, and the wizards are the equivalent of alien (actually alien to / predating the world) sages taking the guise of old men (humans have an age bias when it comes to listening to people) being sent down by a higher society to guide lesser life forms a more subtle way after a previous, more involved attempt, had ended in disaster, reshaping middle-earth into its current form. Pic related.

The elves look to the Maia/wizards much the same way humans (and hobbits) look to the elves. Magic is a bar, it is higher or lower, depending. The wicked machines of Mordor are compared to sorcery.

Everything is Music/Song to Eru/God. It’s a point in the series that magic is just… a point of view. A way of looking at the world. Tolkien had called it ‘enchantment’, or being enchanted by something to the point of seeing it as magic.

Gandalf is under a prime directive. Sauron (and later Saruman) is not. Gandalf makes fireworks to bring joy and laughter. Sauron and Saruman use the likes to produce weapons and bombs for war. Gandalf calls himself a wizard, as he may as well be, but he doesn’t go out of his way to steer ignorance and start cults and form evil religions, like Sauron.

uses magic to make Urukhai

they came from the breeding pits tho

He does some flashy magic in the books a few times. Kills some goblins with lightning. Shoots some fire at the nazgul. But Hackson cut it out.
Still, Sauronman does some big magic with controlling the weather that one time. And there was the magic fight between Sauronman and Gandalf, though it was pretty dull.

It would have been nice to see more magic from Gandalf. Just to remind everyone he's a wizard and not just a good swordsman.

How is that "art"

Anything you do or make can be considered art. Art is inseparable from nature, really. Tolkien was convinced we could be making a lot more beautiful things in the world, and this is what the elves represent. Mordor represents the modern day, hideous industry. This was due to his time in the world war, where he was convinced the war machine/industry was akin to wickedness, or sorcery.

Biological manipulation is a form of sorcery in a lot of works of fantasy, like Game of Thrones. Valyrians bred humans to beasts to form man-beasts. How do you think they made dragons?

Also almost all of the villains were engineers of some kind.

Wait. There was ANOTHER middle earth to the left???

In the fall of gondolin morgoth used literal tanks , I mean steel beast and dragons propelled by flame to break the walls and pour orc troops into the city

Yeah he really hated the ugliness of machinery. “Why not make it nicer?”. Humans really don’t get beauty/magic.

yes and that was the cool, really magical part. Nothing on "current" middle earth comes close to its majesty

he speaks black speech over the growing orcs

they are born fully grown and understand language

the creation and corruption of the orcs is evil magic by itself

Tolkien himself said that using magic to mess with the natural order of things (such as mixing races of orc and human) was blasphemous.

Tolkien understood that was is “supernatural” or “unnatural” or “magical” was really just a matter of perspective.

Often the capital-w wizard is so transcendent and humble that they won’t see themselves as capital-w wizards. They’d sooner think of things greater than themselves, or see WHY a thing is called or seen as magic to begin with.

Magic makers.

They are proud of their ignorance and idiocy too. It's wild how confident they are to be dumb and announce it to the world like they're impressing everyone.

Yeah it was destroyed in the first age when the gods came to ME to fight Morgoth.

Chinese thought bugs were magic for thousands of years so I don’t see why anything else can be seen as magic. Drop a shiny candy bar wrapper into the past and suddenly it’s a form of magic. It doesn’t take much.

can be seen as magic.

can’t* be seen as magic

Math was also seen as magic for thousands of years… all the way back to Pythagoras and his crazy bean hating numerical cults, and all the way up to Isaac Newton and his obsession with sacred Jewish/Solomonic geometry.

Was Wormtongue possessed by Sauroman? Were they both?

dude, science, it’s like magic

All I’m getting from this thread is that Tolkien was le Reddit

They don't read

Yeah but not in the same way.

that man (Grima) is twisted through Saruman's mouth and will

You see Tolkien's magic is just different and also Gandalf is reduced to being a weak mortal and he would get tired if he did magic

Gandalf fights a giant demon with a sword, kills it with fire and lightning, and throws it off the top of a mountain, and you get to actually see all of that in the movie. What the fuck are you cunts talking about

>that man (Grima) is twisted through Saruman's mouth and will

He was probably completely possessed when Saruman makes him eat the hobbit sherif

falls off some stairs and into a cavern

only reason gandalf defeated the balrog is because they fell into water which turned it into a weak slimey creature that had lost all its fiery power

Where's the magic in LotR?

Everywhere? Immortal elves, talking moving trees, the rings, the palantirs, the nazgul, the giant eagles, Shelob, the "i can make the elements rage on a mountain pass just by talking"... magic all of it.

Also the istari are just called wizards by mortals but they are not really wizards in the D&D sense, they are maia, you can think of them as angels or capped demigods that have assumed the guise of old men to guide mortals in their struggles against the enemy. Mortals don´t understand them or even know their names, heck even most elves only use words that are basically descriptions to refer to them so, basically it´s simpler for people to just call them wizards even though they are not.

nah he burst into flame again

Yeah, but where's the super saiyen 3 kayoken attacks and shooting lasers from your fingertips? This magic is boring shit

Even if you go solely by the movies, you see Gandalf calling lightning down on the Balrog.

Why did the balrog want to fuck with him anyway? And didn't their fight last weeks off screen like a DBZ battle spanning multiple episodes?

the Balrog was in full Shrek mode and he wanted everyone out of his swamp (cave)

When you're a balrog, you don't need a reason to be an asshole. That said, it did try to run away once it realised it had bitten off more than it could chew, but Gandalf chased it down.
IIRC it took three days for him to corner it at the peak, and two days for him to kill it there.

Wtf why didn't he just let it flee, Gandalf sounds like a shitlord

Distinction without difference.
Tolkien spinning in circles to try to keep "magic" as demonic intercession (Catholic dogma) out of his pagan inspired stories, and blatantly failing.

because fuck corrupted maiar. Not racist, just don't like 'em

shooting fireballs and casting lightnings

its not a videogame, retard

It had killed all the Dwarves and stolen their kingdom and made that entire area a friend to evil. He was already fighting it, may as well finish the job. And there was also a chance that it would decide to work with Sauron/Saruman and attack their allies like the Elves, Ents, or Rohan

Where's the magic in LotR?

Magic seen in LotR movies:
Sauron's mace.
Gandalf's fireworks.
The One Ring making people invisible.
Sauron existing as a flaming eye.
Ring-Wraith ring detection powers.
Ring-Wraith cursed swords.
Ring revealing different realm.
Arwen's river-horses.
Magic dwarven door.
Gandalf's light-shield.
Gandalf cracking the bridge.
The Balrog.
Galadriel's future mirror.
Galadriel's evil form.
The Palentir.
Gandalf reincarnating.
Saruman ragdolling Gandalf.
Ring changing size.
Ring granting long lifespans and transforming Gollum.
Elves being immortal.
Certain elves glowing.

There's more examples but I can't be bothered. And there's even more examples in the books. I don't know what you were expecting. Maybe only shooting spells at each other like Harry Potter counts as magic for you?

Is there only one balrog? I assumed it was a species

Middle earth was a flat earth unti the second age.
When the men of numenor tried to sail to the undying lands after sauron had corrupted their king Eru "broke the world" and turned it into a globe so they could never reach valinor which exists tangentially to our world. The path the elves sail is a tiny little straight that is still connected. If you watch someone sailing from the grey havens youd see them get smaller and smaller as they approach the horizon, but never go over the horizon, because they're traveling on a straight path.

There were a bunch of them long ago but it's one of the last ones alive. Most were killed in the ancient war. This one hid down there for a really long time until the Dwarves woke him up.

The orcs didn't kill the dwarves in Moria?

Gandalf is the equivalent of an angel, or an AI. He’s not actually a human, though he does share human characteristics, like forgetfulness and enjoying human activities, like smoking, something that Saruman hated / associated with lesser creatures.

— Now truth to tell, observing Gandalf’s love of the herb that he called ‘pipe-weed’ (for which he said, if for nothing else, the Little People should be honoured), Saruman had affected to scoff at it, but in private he made trial of it, and soon began to use i; and for that reason the Shire remained important to him. Yet he dreaded that this should be discovered, and his own mockery turned against him, so that he would be laughed at for imitating Gandalf, and scorned for doing so by stealth.

Balrogs are the same race as the wizards. They are corrupted Maiar, who took on demonic forms when they sided with the Enemy. The wizards took on the humble sagely guise, to guide, and not to abuse their powers. They aren’t meant to be weapons. Balrogs were meant to be weapons. The wizards are meant to be guardian angels, or guardian sages, if there is no other course of action, like when Gandalf deters the Nazgûl, or confronts the Balrog, because sometimes mortals just cannot prevail without divine intervention.

Of Pipe Weed, Gandalf, and Saruman

— Now because of his dislike and fear, in the later days Saruman avoided Gandalf, and they seldom met, except at the assemblies of the White Council. It was at the great Council held in 2851 that the 'Halflings' leaf' was first spoken of, and the matter was noted with amusement at the time, though it was afterwards remembered in a different light. The Council met in Rivendell, and Gandalf sat apart, silent, but smoking prodigiously (a thing he had never done before on such an occasion), while Saruman spoke against him, and urged that contrary to Gandalf's advice Dol Guldur should not yet be molested. Both the silence and the smoke seemed greatly to annoy Saruman, and before the Council dispersed he said to Gandalf: 'When weighty matters are in debate, Mithrandir, I wonder a little that you should play with your toys of fire and smoke, while others are in earnest speech.'

— But Gandalf laughed, and replied: 'You would not wonder, if you used this herb yourself. You might find that smoke blown out cleared your mind of shadows within. Anyway, it gives patience, to listen to error without anger. But it is not one of my toys. It is an art of the Little People away in the West: merry and worthy folk, though not of much account, perhaps, in your high policies.'

(continued)

— Saruman was little appeased by this answer (for he hated mockery, however gentle), and he said then coldly: 'You jest, Lord Mithrandir, as is your way. I know well enough that you have become a curious explorer of the small: weeds, wild things, and childish folk. Your time is your own to spend, if you have nothing worthier to do; and your friends you may make as you please. But to me the days are too dark for wanderers' tales, and I have no time for the simples of peasants.'

— Gandalf did not laugh again; and he did not answer, but looking keenly at Saruman he drew on his pipe and sent out a great ring of smoke with many smaller rings that followed it. Then he put up his hand, as if to grasp them, and they vanished. With that he got up and left Saruman without another word; But Saruman stood for some time silent, and his face was dark with doubt and displeasure.

Saruman was a nofun bitch. This makes me laugh.

Wrong. He’s using basic logic. Clarkean logic. “Any sufficiently advanced art/tech is indistinguishable from magic” is basic logic.

Those who are too used to their wonders will no longer see them as wonders. The magic is lost. You can’t rely on people to still see the magic in the world.

Look at the 21st century, practically an Atlantean age. But is it? Zoomers are ignorant and uneducated, unappreciative cunts, who can’t explain to you how their tabloids or cellphones work, only how to work them.

Because again:

Often the capital-w wizard is so transcendent and humble that they won’t see themselves as capital-w wizards. They’d sooner think of things greater than themselves, or see WHY a thing is called or seen as magic to begin with.

Saruman spent literal centuries coping and seething over the fact that, despite being the leader of the Istari, everyone who mattered always considered Gandalf the wisest.

dude weed but in a fantasy setting lmao

The movies portray white > grey like he’s the superior wizard, but it’s really a lot more even in the books. Gandalf is the wiser, and more feared, because Saruman deep down is an egotistical and frightened spirit.

What kind of crazy wizard shit can the valar do?

The wisest person will never go by “the Wise”, which is foreshadowing Saruman’s faults, and pride, especially his obsession with “many colours”.

Don’t listen to that one. He’s just talking about greater angelic beings. Gandalf and Saruman and Sauron, etc, are lesser angelic beings. Sauron was lesser to Morgoth, who was the greater spirit.

Gandalf actually does a lot of magic in the books, like causing massive fires.

The Maia (not the Valar) can do wizardly things, they’re just told not to do it often. It makes them a crutch. They are told to be subtle about it. They only act in open when there’s no other solution. Guardian angels.

Form the earth, erect and destroy massive structures at will, and other stuff like that.

Why didn't Gandalf just spam Word of Power in battles?

Did Sauron have any chance of succeeding with his plans? If, say, frodo had been caught in mordor among the orcs, the ring was returned to sauron and the human resistance had collapsed, would eru keep sending more potent enemies at him until he was defeated?

Drains all your mana which only regens at a rate of 1 every 10 turns, noob

Gandalf soloed the Nazgûl in the first book but this wasn’t shown in the movie. The hooded idiots thought he was just an old man, lul.

The campaign limited characters to one level up per mission

Did Sauron have any chance of succeeding with his plans

Not really. The powers in the West weren’t all that concerned. Not as much as last time anyway.

They knew who he was. They would have killed him if he had the ring on him. Once they realized he didn’t have the ring they fucked off.

he drove five of them off at weathertop, but even he acknowledged that taking on the nine would have been foolhardy.

Sauron was about to win it all without the ring had Frodo not taken the ring to mt. Doom for an at the buzzer win

Valar are basically pagans gods / archangels, they stopped intervening directly in the world because they tended to erase part of the continent whenever they went to war.

Nah he exploded at them with magic power. He btfo’d them.

Gandalf wouldn’t take the ring, and even had he, the Nazgûl wouldn’t have been able to do anything to him.

Yes but I don’t think the Valar would have cared much since they’re safely away in the west. Everything is just as planned to Eru since he’s more or less the Author.

According to Anon Babble and reddit gandalfs actually a high level fighter with 18INT and an assload of arcane gear and (quarterstaff, rings), clever use of feats (magic initiate; cantrips, low level spells) and multi class into paladin or Eldritch Knight for specific spells from their list + extra slots. Racewise hed be some celestial demi-godlike being (Aasimar)

And why can Gandalf 1v5 ringwraiths? How many ringwraiths would it take to beat one Balrog?

They’re using braindead dee en dee logic anon. Wizards and Clerics are historically the same fucking thing, and magic isn’t a willy nilly free for all.

Gandalf was actually the one to pursue the Ringwraiths. The fight could be seen in the distance by Frodo.

He tracked them down after the events at Bree:
— “I galloped to Weathertop like a gale, and I reached it before sundown on my second day from Bree – and they were there before me.”

Where they are too afraid to fight him during the day:
—“...they felt the coming of my anger and they dared not face it while the Sun was in the sky. But they closed round at night, and I was besieged on the hill-top, in the old ring of Amon Sûl.”

Forgot how Tolkien just randomly drops bits of lore without any context and then moves on with whatever is happening.

It was six, not five.

Tolkien states:

— [The Nine] assemble near Weathertop. [One] remains [while three] go on eastwards on or near Road. . . .

— Gandalf reaches Weathertop but does not overtake [Witch=king and other four Riders]; for they become aware of his approach as he overtakes them on Shadowfax, and withdraw into hiding beside the road. They close in behind.

— [The Witch-King] is both pleased and puzzled. For a while he had been in great fear, thinking that by some means Gandlaf had got possession of the Ring and was now the Bearer; but as Gandalf passes he is aware that Gandlaf has not got the Ring. What is he pursuing? He himself must be after the escaping Bearer; and it must therefore somehow have gone on far ahead. But Gandalf is a great power and enemy. He must be dealt with, and yet that needs great force.

— [The five] follow Gandalf hotly to Weathertop. Since Gandalf halts there, [the Witch-King] suspects that that is a trysting place.

— Gandalf is attacked by [the five plus the rider who had stayed near Weathertop] on night 3-4. Frodo and Aragorn see the light of the battle in the sky from their camp.

— Gandalf repluses the Nazgûl and escapes northwards at Sunrise, and follos the Hoarwell up towards the mountains. [Four Riders], are set in pursuit (mainly because [the Witch-king] thinks it possible he may know of the whereabouts or course of the Bearer.) But [the Witch-king and Khamûl] remain watching Weathertop. Thus they become aware of the approach of Frodo. [The other three] return from East.

Gandalf isn’t a chump.

fights off ring wraiths with light

This was fucking kino and perfect in the movie. Not too showy but it made it clear how powerful Gandalf is, also the music. Fucking kino man.

I wish we saw this in the movies

Guys, GUYS, I'm sorry to bring this up, but the real chump is Radaghast. Supposedly the same level as Gandalf but he sits out the entire War of the Ring playing with animals in the forest? Imagine if two powerful wizards had been going against Sauron. They could have easily walked into Mordor with how powerful they were together. Tolkien should have had the two Blue wizards show up as evil and Radaghast had to lead a mission to hold them off or something.

I like the two blue wizards who just fucked off and no one can say why. Maybe they were gay or something.

The wizards weren’t supposed to match force with force though. They weren’t meant to solve mens’ problems. They’re inspirers.

Imagine a remake where Gandalf is shooting fireballs and casting lightnings to take down entire armies.

Gandalf was this OP in the LOTR PS2 games, especially ROTK. Very kino