"Minas Tirith" - Eric's Thoughts

Yes, yes, I know. No blog yet about the movie. I'm still deciding whether I'm going to watch it. It's just sooooo long and I remember it being pretty cheesy. What can a man do against such reckless hate (against a movie)???

But the good news is I read the first chapter of Return of the King. It wasn't a bad one -- at the beginning. Gandalf goes into Minas Tirith with Pippin, they meet with Denethor, Pippin swears to be a good hobbit to Denethor (i.e. conscripts into the army), Gandalf is amused by it, and a random soldier teaches passcodes to the Hobbit, and the random soldier's son makes fun of the hobbit's height but then they walk around Minas Tirith with a man-crush and literally holding each other's hands. The chapter ends with a cliffhanger of . . . another meeting with Denethor. What could the madman want now? (We don't know he's been driven mad yet.)

I thought the chapter was a bit slow at the beginning, but on some level does some necessary world building. The reader can picture Minas Tirith and its seven levels. (Why seven?)

The scene picks up when Pippin and Gandalf meet the Steward Denethor. Denethor is an interesting fellow--the reader can immediately tell he has a string of darkness to him, and that something is not quite right. Of course, Tolkien sells it as the death of his most favored son, but a repeat reader knows what's really going on: Denethor's been looking at things he shouldn't.

Beregond is the random soldier that introduces Pippin to life as a citizen. Nothing particularly exciting about Beregond, he seemed like a pretty flat character, but so is Pippin. The absence of Denethor and Gandalf for the remainder of the chapter becomes apparent: nothing really happens except that Pippin sees some of the city, and hangs out with something who far taller but fifteen years younger.

Now that I think about it, this is actually kind of a weird chapter, and excluding the cameos of Gandalf and Denethor, I found it to be a little tiring. A little more plotting might have been nice here. Pippin aimlessly walks around Minas Tirith without a real objective, and while he does, so does the reader.