For dragon enthusiasts
The problem with big data is that there’s a lot of it.
This is a trivial point, but it’s like asking what’s hard about lifting 495lbs. The 495lbs are the problem.
Every twelve second data run I take is 84mb. Each model degree of freedom increases the data size by a factor of a hundred, as in I can search for one mdof with 100 data runs, but two takes 10,000, and three mdof takes a million.
Are we really all bound by our mistakes for the rest of our lives?
Is binding others really worth being bound in turn?
I’ve started watching movies with English subtitles, even if the dialogue is in English.
My desire to go to bed on time is directly opposed by the fact I do my best work at 2AM.
I like peanuts.
In #3, Bo5A, Gandalf says Sauron put people after Thorin. This is a weak and insufficient explanation.
First, wasn’t that established when Gandalf found the contract on Thorin written in the Black Speech? Which happened before Gandalf asked Thorin who he told, meaning Gandalf already knew of the contract. Are a bunch of Black-Speech Speakers running around, putting hits on dwarves, such that big G doesn’t know which one it might be?
Second, how does Sauron know the specifics of when exactly Thorin is leaving the Blue Mountains and Shire? Or is Azog just hanging out in waiting? If Sauron is using his vision powers to look for dwarves, why can’t he do that looking for hobbits with rings o’ power later?
Third, the whole bit of the mountain’s strategic importance is dumped with the exposition stick. No build up, little discussion. Legolas and Tauriel do make it from Erebor to Gundabad in a day (or possibly a little more because the timeline is unclear), and they definitely make it back in a day, so Erebor must be on the cusp of Gundabad. But Gundabad’s in the Misty Mountains, which is several days travel by the forest road. Even for elves going swiftly Hold on, the army of orcs from Gundabad makes it in less than a day to show up for the battle. And they’re travelling by day again, though they set out at night. Same for the Dol Guldur orcs, which are explicitly shown moving during the day. How is any of this possible?
The whole strategic timeline and geospatial positioning is a mess. And maps are one of the main things that make Middle Earth so interesting. Tolkien did the research, mapped it out, and for the movies to casually discard that is deeply frustrating.
The third point is utterly unnecessary anyway. Sauron should have needed the dragon horde to pay his mercenaries, which would have supported the money-bad(bad!) subplot.
How did Smaug figure out Thorin was called Oakenshield? Wasn’t the dragon sleeping all through that?
Tolkien did get fuzzy with the location of Thangrodim, so if I allow Gundabad a locational-superposition of any place with the badness, it could work. BTW, this is why Fonstad’s The Atlas of Middle Earth is so nice. Her maps are wonderful.
When I read Night’s Master, I said it was better than I liked.
I like the Hobbit movies better than they are.
Carrying the Fire is pretty good, at this point.
Rewatching these, I still don’t understand the subplot of how the bad guys know what’s what.
In the first one (AEJ), Gandalf asks Thorin, “Who did you tell you were coming?” and Thorin says, “Nobody, I swear.”
In the second (DoS), it’s revealed that two highwaymen were in pursuit of Thorin at Bree. Other highwaymen had attempted to rob Gandalf, and he found a contract on Thorin’s head, written in the black speech. This leads to Gandalf seeking out Thorin.
But that whole arc isn’t really resolved. Was Sauron using his vision powers? It’s possible, but there’s no insinuation that is so. Nor is Sauron’s palantir mentioned.
From DoS’s opening scene in Bree, it is apparent that Sauron’s agents were pursuing Thorin from before he decided to head to Erebor. But at that point, he was just tooling around, looking for Thrain. Thrain in the books was being tortured in Dol Guldur, hence where Gandalf found him and got the map and key, but in the movies Gandalf explicitly doesn’t know anyone’s at Dol Guldur. Hence why he bumbles in and walks around in DoS.
Now that whole bit was poorly done and basically filler, but it does concretely establish Thrain and Gandalf don’t meet at Dol Guldur.
So why was Sauron looking for Thorin, and how did the orcs, including Azog, know specifically when Thorin had left the Blue Mountains and the Shire?
Also, if Gandalf DOESN’T meet Thrain in Dol Guldur, how does he get the map? If Thrain is, as Thorin suggests, wandering the wilds of Dunland, Gandalf could have met him before the movies and gotten map and key. Gandalf would have been in the right place at the right time. But it’s super weird Gandalf wouldn’t later mention, ‘Hey, I found your Dad, he’s crazypants, here’s his stuff.’
These aren’t random details. There are whole scenes devoted to building these points. Am I missing something?
Edit: It’s possible that Saurman has already turned, likely even, and is watching Thrain at least a year before AEJ. Saruman has crebain in Dunland, as disclosed in the Fellowship movie. If Gandalf found Thrain, got the map and key, and Saurman saw it, Saruman could have reported to Sauron who figured out what was going on, wrote a contract on Thorin, and had Azog in waiting at the beginning of AEJ.
But none of those actions are disclosed, except Gandalf meeting Thrain at some point. Saruman and Sauron would be doing a lot of key stuff off-camera that is addressed but never resolved on-camera.
Evil powers are attacking me. The Car Keys Gnomes have allied themselves with the That-Stupid-Book-I-Was-Just-Reading Gremlins, and the I-Had-It-In-My-Hand-Not-Ten-Seconds-Ago Wendigos are running interference.