The Return of the King

What Hacker News says

1. fcatalanFeb 2026
   The charge of the Rohirrim in Return of the King also works for me
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2. bigstrat2003Oct 2023
   Yeah, I definitely would never describe the prose in LOTR as not serious. In The Hobbit absolutely (and to be fair it was a children's book), but not LOTR. One of the things that the book LOTR does best compared to the movies is the prose!

   For example, compare the book and film versions of the scene in Return of the King when Eowyn confronts (and kills) the Witch-King. In the book it goes like this:

   "Then out of the blackness in [Merry's] mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.

   "'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'

   "A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.'

   "A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'

   "'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'

   "Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'"

   Now compare the movie version of this scene. Obviously there's no narration, but the dialogue is significantly compressed and loses all its flavor.

   "I will kill you if you touch him!" "You fool! No man can kill me!" (Eowyn removes her helmet) "I am no man!"

   I don't blame Peter Jackson for the change. His movies got a lot wrong when adapting the book, but this wasn't one of those things. The original dialogue, even if condensed, would not work very well for a movie. But even though the change was necessary, it still reduces the dialogue from something epic (in the literal sense of the word) and beautiful, into just a generic action hero moment. The book version is just so much better.

   And this is not an isolated incident, either. Throughout the movie trilogy, scenes which were written with beautiful prose in the book have most of their beauty taken away due to the need to write dialogue in a way that works better in a movie. It's necessary, for sure! Even so, however, it means that I can't agree with the claim that the LOTR movies handle such things better than the book's prose does.

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3. yesbabyyesMar 2022
   These are also great in my opinion (book as well as film): The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Jurassic Park.
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4. tlearMar 2020
   Lord of the Rings. My mother bought first two books(translated into Russian) randomly because she heard it was good(it was one of the books that Party did not approve of before the Perestroika). I saw it lying around when I was 14. I proceeded to read both first and second basically non-stop skipping school next day. Then figured out that we could not find the third as it was not printed in Russian yet(at least could not find it where we lived), had to wait couple month to read Return of the King. I read it in English about 7-8 times since and as I became fluent the book only became better.

   Besy/Demons, Dostoevsky. I read it after I finished Archipelago Gulag I was 15. It is potent stuff, the most powerful thing I ever read by far. Highly recommended. The more you know and read about Russian revolution and what followed the better.

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5. 11thEarlOfMarJul 2017
   I can't resist... Reminds me of the Beacons of Minas Tirith from Return of the King, probably my favorite sequence in the entire trilogy:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz51CiG2nA

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6. MrZongle2Feb 2017
   Crack open Tolkien's The Silmarillion or the appendices to Return of the King and you won't lack for names.
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