Messaging

The problem fantasy movies have with anti-war messages is everyone runs around deep-voiced talking to each other about how war is bad…until the orcs show up. Then it’s ‘kill them all, show no mercy, death and fire!’

So war is bad. Unless the other side is a race of bad guys.

So, like, if you hate elves, aren’t they a race of bad guys? Aren’t Tolkien’s orcs elves*?

*Yes and no. Yes, if you take the Unfinished Tales and a few other sourcebooks as canon (which most people do). Yes, if you take the movies as canon and assume Saruman wasn’t lying when he told the Uruk Hai the story of orcish origins. No (or maybe really), if you stick strictly to the printed book LotR and Hobbit.

BTW, since the elvish afterlife is a thing in Tolkien, killing them all and letting the Valar sort them out is actually a perfectly valid, in-world strategy.

My point here is that anti-war messages in fantasy stories sometimes don’t make any sense.

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